How To Never Get Angry: 3 New Secrets From Neurosciencehttps://www.bloglovin.com/blog/post/2001038/4568239842

How To Never Get Angry: 3 New Secrets From Neuroscience
how-to-get-rid-of-anger
They’re one inch from your face, boiling with rage, screaming and yelling at you.

And all you want to do is scream and yell back. But you know that’s not going to be good for anyone…

I’ve talked before about how to deal with others who are angry and irrational, but how can you control those emotions in yourself?

Looking at the neuroscience, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.

So let’s dig into the research on how to get rid of anger, what you’re doing wrong, how to do it right and how it can make you and those around you much happier…

 

Suppressing Anger Is Rarely A Good Idea
You grit your teeth and hold it in: “I’m fine.”

The good news is suppression works. You can bottle up your feelings and not look angry. However…

It’s almost always a bad idea. Yes, it prevents the anger from getting out, but when you fight your feelings they only get stronger.

Via The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking:

…when experimental subjects are told of an unhappy event, but then instructed to try not to feel sad about it, they end up feeling worse than people who are informed of the event, but given no instructions about how to feel. In another study, when patients who were suffering from panic disorders listened to relaxation tapes, their hearts beat faster than patients who listened to audiobooks with no explicitly ‘relaxing’ content. Bereaved people who make the most effort to avoid feeling grief, research suggests, take the longest to recover from their loss.

When you try to stop yourself from crying, the tears aren’t cathartic. You don’t feel better afterward.

And anger is no different. What happens in the brain when you try to clamp down on that rage? A whole mess of bad stuff.

Your ability to experience positive feelings goes down — but not negative feelings. Stress soars. And your amygdala (a part of the brain closely associated with emotions) starts working overtime.

Via Handbook of Emotion Regulation:

…experimental studies have shown that suppression leads to decreased positive but not negative emotion experience (Gross, 1998a; Gross & Levenson, 1993, 1997; Stepper & Strack, 1993; Strack, Martin, & Stepper, 1988), increased sympathetic nervous system responses (Demaree et al., 2006; Gross, 1998a; Gross & Levenson, 1993, 1997; Harris, 2001; Richards & Gross, 2000), and greater activation in emotion-generative brain regions such as the amygdala (Goldin, McRae, Ramel, & Gross, 2008).

And here’s what’s really interesting: when you suppress your feelings, the encounter gets worse for the angry person, too.

You clamp down on your emotions and the other person’s blood pressure spikes. And they like you less. Studies show that over the long haul this can lead to lousy relationships that aren’t as rewarding.

Via Handbook of Emotion Regulation:

Socially, experimental studies have reported that suppression leads to less liking from social interaction partners, and to an increase in partners’ blood pressure levels (Butler et al., 2003). Correlational studies support these laboratory findings. Individuals who typically use suppression report avoiding close relationships and having less positive relations with others; this dovetails with peers’ reports that suppressors have relationships with others that are less emotionally close (English, John, & Gross, 2013; Gross & John, 2003; Srivastava, Tamir, McGonigal, John, & Gross, 2009).

And fighting your feelings uses a lot of willpower. So afterwards you have less control and that’s why you’re more likely to do things you regret after you’re angry:

…bad moods foster risk taking by impairing self-regulation instead of by altering subjective utilities. Studies 5 and 6 showed that the risky tendencies are limited to unpleasant moods accompanied by high arousal; neither sadness nor neutral arousal resulted in destructive risk taking.

(To learn how to win every argument, click here.)

Now some of you might be saying, “I knew bottling it up was bad! You should let that anger out!”

Wrong.

 

Don’t Vent Your Anger
So you punch that pillow. Or yell and rant about the encounter to a friend. Not a good idea.

Venting your anger doesn’t reduce it. Venting intensifies emotion.

Via Handbook of Emotion Regulation:

…focusing on a negative emotion will likely intensify the experience of that emotion further and thus make down-regulation more difficult, leading to lower adjustment and well-being.

Sharing your feelings with others constructively is a good idea but “getting it out” tends to snowball your anger.

What does work? Distracting yourself. But why would distraction help?

Because your brain has limited resources. Thinking about something else means you have less brainpower to dwell on the bad stuff:

Research suggests it is because both cognitive tasks and emotional responses make use of the same limited mental resources (Baddeley, 2007; Siemer, 2005; Van Dillen & Koole, 2007)… That is, the resources that are used to perform a cognitive task are no longer available for emotional processes. Accordingly, people can rid themselves from unwanted feelings by engaging in a cognitive activity, such as doing math equations (Van Dillen & Koole, 2007), playing a game of Tetris ( Holmes, James, Coode-Bate, & Deeprose , 2008)…

You know that famous marshmallow test?

Experimenters put a kid alone in a room with a marshmallow. If the child can resist eating it, they get two marshmallows later. The kids who succeeded in waiting went on to achieve better grades and more success in life. (They also stayed out of jail.)

Now this study has been covered a lot, but what they don’t usually talk about is how the successful kids avoided temptation; how they reduced those powerful emotions screaming, “EAT THE MARSHMALLOW NOW!!!”

They distracted themselves. Walter Mischel, who led the famous study, explains.

Via The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control:

Successful delayers created all sorts of ways to distract themselves and to cool the conflict and stress they were experiencing. They transformed the aversive waiting situation by inventing imaginative, fun distractions that took the struggle out of willpower: they composed little songs (“This is such a pretty day, hooray”; “This is my home in Redwood City”), made funny and grotesque faces, picked their noses, cleaned their ear canals and toyed with what they discovered there, and created games with their hands and feet, playing their toes as if they were piano keys.

And this works with other “hot” emotions too — like anger.

(To learn the secrets of grit from a Navy SEAL, click here.)

I know, I know; when someone is yelling in your face it’s really hard to distract yourself. But there’s a way to do this that’s very easy and backed by neuroscience research…

 

The Answer? “Reappraisal”
Imagine the scene again: someone is screaming at you, one inch from your face.

You want to scream back. Or even hit them.

But what if I told you their mother passed away yesterday? Or that they were going through a tough divorce and just lost custody of their kids?

You’d let it go. You’d probably even respond to their anger with compassion.

What changed? Not the event. Situation is the same. But the story you’re telling yourself about the event changed everything.

As famed researcher Albert Ellis said: You don’t get frustrated because of events, you get frustrated because of your beliefs.

Research shows that when someone is exploding at you a good way to “reappraise” the situation and resist getting angry is simply to think:

“It’s not about me. They must be having a bad day.”

As one of the neuroscientists behind the study said:

“If you’re trained with reappraisal, and you know your boss is frequently in a bad mood, you can prepare yourself to go into a meeting,” Blechert suggested. “He can scream and yell and shout but there’ll be nothing.”

When you change your beliefs about a situation, your brain changes the emotions you feel.

Via Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long:

In one of Ochsner’s reappraisal experiments, participants are shown a photo of people crying outside a church, which naturally makes participants feel sad. They are then asked to imagine the scene is a wedding, that people are crying tears of joy. At the moment that participants change their appraisal of the event, their emotional response changes, and Ochsner is there to capture what is going on in their brain using an fMRI. As Ochsner explains, “Our emotional responses ultimately flow out of our appraisals of the world, and if we can shift those appraisals, we shift our emotional responses.”

Reappraisal works for anxiety too. Reinterpreting stress as excitement can improve your performance on tests.

And what happens in your brain?

Your amygdala doesn’t get worked up like it does with suppression. In fact, the little guy calms down.

Via Handbook of Emotion Regulation:

Evidence that reappraisal can directly influence this amygdala circuitry comes from consistent findings in positron emission tomographic (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of healthy individuals showing reappraisal-dependent decreases in amygdala activation in response to negative stimuli.

As opposed to bottling up, when you tell yourself “they’re having a bad day“, angry feelings plummet and good feelings increase.

Via Handbook of Emotion Regulation:

By contrast, experimental studies have shown that reappraisal leads to decreased levels of negative emotion experience and increased positive emotion experience (Gross, 1998a; Feinberg, Willer, Antonenko, & John, 2012; Lieberman, Inagaki, Tabibnia, & Crockett, 2011; Ray, McRae, Ochsner, & Gross, 2010; Szasz, Szentagotai, & Hofmann, 2011; Wolgast, Lundh, & Viborg, 2011), has no impact on or even decreases sympathetic nervous system responses (Gross, 1998a; Kim & Hamann, 2012; Stemmler, 1997; Shiota & Levenson, 2012; Wolgast et al., 2011), and leads to lesser activation in emotion-generative brain regions such as the amygdala (Goldin et al., 2008; Kanske, Heissler, Schonfelder, Bongers, & Wessa, 2011; Ochsner & Gross, 2008; Ochsner et al., 2004) and ventral striatum (Staudinger, Erk, Abler, & Walter, 2009).

What about the social results? People who reappraise report better relationships — and their friends agree.

Via Handbook of Emotion Regulation:

Reappraisal, by contrast, has no detectable adverse consequences for social affiliation in a laboratory context (Butler et al., 2003). Correlational studies support these findings: Individuals who typically use reappraisal are more likely to share their emotions— both positive and negative— and report having closer relationships with friends, which matches their peers’ reports of greater liking (Gross & John, 2003; Mauss et al., 2011).

You know when you get angry and start telling yourself, “They’re out to get me! They want to make my life miserable!”

That’s reappraisal too — in the wrong direction. You’re telling yourself a story that’s even worse than reality. And your anger soars. So don’t do that.

As the infomercials always say, “But wait there’s more!” Reappraisal holds another big benefit: remember how suppression sapped self-control and made you do stuff you later regretted?

Well, just like the kids in the marshmallow experiment, reappraisal can increase your willpower and help you behave better after intense moments.

Walter Mischel explains:

The marshmallow experiments convinced me that if people can change how they mentally represent a stimulus, they can exert self-control and escape from being victims of the hot stimuli that have come to control their behavior.

(To learn the secret to how to get people to like you — from an FBI behavior expert, click here.)

Okay, let’s wrap this up and learn the research-backed way to make sure that anger doesn’t come back…

 

Sum Up
Here’s how to get rid of anger:

Suppress rarely. They may not know you’re angry but you’ll feel worse inside and hurt the relationship.

Don’t vent. Communication is good but venting just increases anger. Distract yourself.

Reappraisal is usually the best option. Think to yourself, “It’s not about me. They must be having a bad day.”

Sometimes someone gets under your skin and suppression is the only thing you can do to avoid a homicide charge. And sometimes reappraisal can cause you to tolerate bad situations you need to get out of.

But that said, telling yourself a more compassionate story about what’s going on inside the other person’s head is usually the best way to go.

And what’s the final step in getting rid of that anger over the long haul so you can maintain good relationships?

Forgive.

It’s not for them, it’s for you. Forgiveness makes you less angry and more healthy:

Trait forgiveness was significantly associated with fewer medications and less alcohol use, lower blood pressure and rate pressure product; state forgiveness was significantly associated with lower heart rate and fewer physical symptoms. Neither of these sets of findings were the result of decreased levels of anger-out being associated with forgiveness. These findings have important theoretical implications regarding the forgiveness–health link, suggesting that the benefits of forgiveness extend beyond the dissipation of anger.

As the old saying goes: Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.

So remember: “They’re just having a bad day.”

If it can stop these tykes from gobbling marshmallows it can stop you from going ballistic on people.

8 Ways to Deal With Difficult People

Elyse Santilli: 8 Ways to Deal With Difficult People http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elyse-gorman/8-ways-to-deal-with-difficult-people_b_8041682.html

8 Ways to Deal With Difficult People

 13 hours ago | Updated 12 hours ago

Elyse Santilli Writer and life coach at NotesOnBliss.com, your guidebook to happiness and creating a beautiful life

 Teacher Ram Dass once said: “If you think you are so enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents.”

It’s great advice. Whether it’s your parent, lover, friend or colleague, we all have people who trigger us. Something about them touches our wounds and brings out the worst in us — our pain, irritation, impatience, anger or even hostility.

Sound familiar? If so, here are eight powerful ways you can deal with difficult people who push your buttons.

1. Set your intention.

Our intentions shape our day and our destiny. If you know you will be spending time with someone who triggers you, set an intention in advance of your encounter.

I intend to feel good. I intend to stay calm. I intend to embody love and kindness.

Your intention will help guide your thoughts and actions. You can also bring your intention to mind whenever you feel tempted to slip back into old patterns of reaction and negativity.

2. Practice mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the art of being present in the moment and observing your thoughts and feelings as they arise, rather than getting lost in them and confusing them with who you are.

When you are mindful, you have more control over your reactions to life. When someone triggers an emotional response in your body or a negative thought in your mind, you take a step back and observe what is happening inside of you.

Being the observer gives you the space and opportunity to take a few deep breaths, centre yourself, and consciously choose a new positive response — rather than mindlessly reacting out of habit and instinct.

3. Open your heart.

Negative emotional states usually provoke a noticeable physical response in your body — you may feel a knot in your throat or stomach, your muscles tense, or heat and heaviness around your heart area.

In that moment, you are closing off your heart centre and trapping the negative energy you feel inside of you. When you store this energy inside your being, you will continue to attract — and be triggered by — similar people and events in your future.

The next time you feel triggered and your body begins to tense up, make a conscious decision to take a few deep breaths, relax your shoulders, and imagine your heart opening — no matter how much it feels like closing. As you continue to breathe deeply, allow your feelings to rise and then fall away again, like a wave in the ocean.

4. See the gift.

Difficult people who push our buttons can be one of our greatest gifts in life. By bringing out the worst in us, they make us aware of where we need to grow. By touching our inner wounds, they bring them to the surface where they can be examined and healed.

Often we feel triggered now because of an incident in our past that we never fully healed from or released. Instead, we kept the memory, emotional pain or consequent self-limiting story buried deep within our heart and subconscious.

The poet Rumi once wrote: “Your task is not to see for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

Thank the difficult people in your life, for they are showing you the barriers you may have constructed around your heart in the past to protect yourself that may now be limiting your experience and influencing what you can attract into your life. 

Once you dissolve these barriers by forgiving the past and choosing to remain mindful and open-hearted in the present, you open yourself up to greater experiences of love, joy and inner peace.

5. Be wary of unexamined assumptions.

Sometimes we react negatively to people because we have conscious or unconscious beliefs and expectations about who they are and how they should act.

We may also have a hidden agenda to gain something from them to fill a void in ourselves — like love, praise or support. When they don’t provide what we seek in the form we are seeking it, we feel resentful and irritable.

In either case, there is an unexamined assumption running the show: that other people are in some way responsible for your happiness.

The truth is, your happiness is entirely up to you. No one can take it from you (unless you let them) and no one is responsible for making sure you are happy.

We are all responsible for filling ourselves up so that we feel loved and supported from within. And when we do, the people in our life will often naturally change their behaviour to become more loving and supportive towards us, because our outer world is always a reflection of our inner state of being.

Make it a habit to sit alone for five minutes each morning and imagine your heart and body filling up with love and light from above. Carry this feeling with you throughout the day.

We search the world for happiness in romantic partners, jobs, houses and bank balances, and yet we are so quick to throw it away at the slightest provocation. Start valuing your happiness like it is one of your most prized possessions — it is.

6. Practice forgiveness.

Everyone is doing their best from their level of consciousness and awareness.

Often, the people who trigger us are not even fully aware of the effect they are having on us. Even if they are aware, they may not be in a position to change their behaviour yet, simply because they are so deeply trapped in their own mind, patterns and emotional wounds.

Practice forgiveness whenever you are able to. Forgiveness does not mean condoning their behaviour. Forgiveness means seeing past their external behaviour to the light of their inner spirit, their soul, which is made of the same energy and love as your own soul – it’s just been temporarily obscured.

Don’t forget to forgive yourself too — have compassion for yourself and the challenging situation you are in, which is calling upon you to grow and be your best.

7. Be the lighthouse.

People can bring out the worst in each other, or bring out the best in each other.

The same way that a group of people meditating can have a positive ripple effect on the world, your own loving energy, peace and grace can have a positive effect on the difficult people in your life.

Many people are unable to see or change their own destructive patterns and behaviour. However, when you hold a positive space for them, staying calm, loving and present, this can allow them to subtly shift into these feelings too.

Picture yourself as the lighthouse, cultivating your inner light and love for those who need it.

8. Ask your Higher Self for help.

The book A Course In Miracles states: “Fear is a sure sign you are relying on your own strength.”

You are not in this alone. If you doubt your ability to remain calm, present and open-hearted around someone difficult in your life, call upon your Higher Self to step in and guide you through it.

You can establish the connection with a small pause and prayer: Higher Self, I desire to deal with this person in my life with compassion, patience and love. I’m not sure whether I can remain calm, so I step aside and let you lead the way. And so it will be.

Elyse is a writer, life coach and happiness teacher at NotesOnBliss.com and the creator of the Beautiful Life Bootcamp online course. She teaches people to align with their inner spirit, design a life they love, and expand their happiness and inner peace. 

the unreliable narrator

The Unreliable Narrator

The most powerful stories may be the ones we tell ourselves, says BRENÉ BROWN. But beware—they’re usually fiction.

MY HUSBAND, Steve, and I were having one of those days. That morning, we’d overslept, Charlie couldn’t find his backpack, and Ellen had to drag herself out of bed because she’d been up late studying. Then at work I had five back-to-back meetings, and Steve, a pediatrician, was dealing with cold-and-flu season. By dinnertime, we were practically in tears.

Steve opened the refrigerator and sighed. “We have no groceries. Not even lunch meat.” I shot back, “I’m doing the best I can. You can shop, too!” “I know,” he said in a measured voice. “I do it every week. What’s going on?”

I knew exactly what was going on: I had turned his comment into a story about how I’m a disorganized, unreliable partner and mother. I apologized and started my next sentence with the phrase that’s become a lifesaver in my marriage, parenting, and professional life: “The story I’m making up is that you were blaming me for not having groceries, that I was screwing up.”

Steve said, “No, I was going to shop yesterday, but I didn’t have time. I’m not blaming you. I’m hungry.”

Storytelling helps us all impose order on chaos—including emotional chaos. When we’re in pain, we create a narrative to help us make sense of it. This story doesn’t have to be based on any real information: One dismissive glance from a coworker can instantly turn into I knew she didn’t like me. I responded to Steve so defensively because when I’m in doubt, the “I’m not enough” explanation is often the first thing I grab. It’s like my comfy jeans—maybe not flattering, but familiar.

Our stories are also about self-protection. I told myself Steve was blaming me so I could be mad instead of admitting that I was vulnerable or afraid of feeling inadequate. I could disengage from the tougher stuff. That’s what human beings tend to do: When we’re under threat, we run. If we feel exposed or hurt, we find someone to blame, or blame ourselves before anyone else can, or pretend we don’t care.

But this unconscious storytelling leaves us stuck. We keep tripping over the same issues, and after we fall, we find it hard to get back up again. But in my research on shame and vulnerability, I’ve also learned a lot about resilience. For my book Rising Strong, I spent time with many amazing people—from Fortune 500 leaders to long-married couples—who are skilled at recovering from setbacks, and they have one common characteristic: They can recognize their own confabulations and challenge them. The good news is that we can rewrite these stories. We just have to be brave enough to reckon with our deepest emotions.

In navigation, dead reckoning is how you calculate your location. It involves knowing where you’ve been and how you got there—speed, route, wind conditions. It’s the same with life: We can’t chart a new course until we find out where we are, how we came to that point, and where we want to go. Reckon comes from the Old English recenian, meaning “to narrate.” When you reckon with emotion, you can change your narrative. You have to acknowledge your feelings and get curious about the story behind them. Then you can challenge those confabulations and get to the truth.

I’ll walk you through it. The next time you’re in a situation that pushes your buttons—from a breakup to a setback at work—and you’re overwhelmed by anger, disappointment, or embarrassment, try this practice.

Engage with your feelings.

Your body may offer the first clue that you’re having an emotional reaction; for instance, your boss assigns the project you wanted to a colleague, and your face begins to feel hot. Or your response may involve racing thoughts or replaying the event in slow motion. You don’t need to know exactly where the feelings are coming from; you just have to acknowledge them.

My stomach is in knots.

I want to punch a wall.

I need Oreos. Lots of them.

Get curious about the story behind the feelings.

Now you’re going to ask yourself a few questions. Again, it’s not necessary to answer them right off the bat.

Why am I being so hard on everyone?

What happened right before this Oreo craving set in?

I’m obsessing over what my sister said. Why?

This step can be surprisingly difficult. You’re furious because Todd got the project, but it may feel easier to steamroll over your anger with contempt: Todd’s a brownnoser. This company’s a joke. Getting curious about your feelings may lead to some hard discoveries: What if you’re more hurt than you realized? Or whatif your attitude could have played a part? But pushing through discomfort is how we get to the truth.

Write it down.

The most effective way to become truly aware of our stories is to write them down, so get your thoughts on paper. Nothing fancy—you can just finish these sentences:

The story I’m making up…

My emotions…

My body…

My thinking…

My beliefs…

My actions…

For instance, you might write, I’m so peeved. I feel like I’m having a heatstroke. She thinks I’m incapable. I want to hurl a stapler.

You can be mad, self-righteous, confused. A story driven by emotion and self-protection probably doesn’t involve accuracy, logic, or civility. If your story contains those things, it’s likely that you’re not being fully honest.

Get ready to rumble.

It’s time to poke and prod at your findings, exploring the ins and outs. The first questions may be the simplest:

1. What are the facts, and what are my assumptions?

I really don’t know why my boss picked Todd. And I didn’t tell her I was interested in the project—I figured she knew.

2. What do I need to know about the others involved?

Maybe Todd has some special skill or she has me in mind for something else.

Now we get to the more difficult questions:

3. What am I really feeling? What part did I play?

I feel so worthless. I’m failing in my career. And I don’t want to ask for anything because someone might say no.

You may learn that you’ve been masking shame with cynicism, or that being vulnerable and asking for what you want is preferable to stewing in resentment. These truths may be uncomfortable, but they can be the basis of meaningful change.

Figuring out your own story could take 20 minutes or 20 years. And you may not make one big transformation; maybe it’s a series of incremental changes. You just have to feel your way through.

If you’re thinking this sounds too hard, I get it. The reckoning can feel dangerous because you’re confronting yourself—your fear, aggression, shame, and blame. Facing our stories takes courage. But owning our stories is the only way we get to write a brave new ending.

Brené Brown, PhD, is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work and the author of Daring Greatly. This essay is adapted from her new book, Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.

TELL IT!

“What stories can do…is make things present.”

courtesy O Magazine

6 Signs You Worry Too Much About What Others Think: Why It’s a Problem and What to Do About It

Dr. Gary Trosclair: 6 Signs You Worry Too Much About What Others Think: Why It’s a Problem and What to Do About It http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-trosclair-lcsw/6-signs-you-worry-too-much-about-what-others-think-why-its-a-problem-and-what-to-do-about-it_b_8028604.html

6 Signs You Worry Too Much About What Others Think: Why It’s a Problem and What to Do About It

 

Dr. Gary Trosclair Gary Trosclair, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, and author of I’m Working on It in Therapy: How to Get the Most out of Psychotherapy

 

It’s very human to want to be liked. Isolation is dangerous for our mental health. But if you betray yourself to get people to like you, that causes problems that are at least as bad if not worse. I’ll explain why in a moment, but first let’s look at some signs that you worry too much what others think about you.

1. You do things you don’t want to do and you resent it.

2. You no longer (or never did) really know what you want.

3. You’re afraid to say what you really believe.

4. You spend time with people you don’t like or you avoid people out of fear. 

5. You struggle to make your own decisions. 

6. You imagine that people are upset with you when they really aren’t. 

Here’s why it’s a problem: 

Deep inside of us, along with our need to be liked, we also have a need to be authentic, to think and live in our own unique way. Nature made us this way so that we could think critically and develop creative solutions rather than rushing headlong over a cliff with the rest of the herd. If we all thought alike the human race would have died out long ago. 

As Bertrand Russell wrote, “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” 

We thrive when we get along with others, and think and act independently at the same time. If you aren’t doing both, you’re out of balance, and your psyche will complain about it with either depression (“No one likes me.”) or anxiety (“I have to get them to like me”). These are often warning signs, and if not heeded, things can get really bad. That’s why it’s dangerous to worry too much what others think about you. 

Here’s what to do about it:

1. Find your people: Don’t imagine that you can stop caring what everyone thinks. Seek out the people who see your strengths and goodness and whom you trust. Stick with them and take what they say seriously. When you fear that they’re thinking badly of you, check it out: Ask them what’s going on. A small group of friends or community can go a long way in increasing security. It’s important to know that you’re loved.  

Bernard Baruch put it well when he said, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” 

2. Face it down: What if other people do think badly of you? Thank goodness! If everyone likes you, you’re probably not being true to your self. Ask yourself “What’s the worst that could happen?” and come to terms with it. 

3. Spend time alone or in therapy: In order to remember or learn what you want, need and believe you’ll need to have periods of time when you can hear yourself without worrying about the voices of others. Journal. Talk to yourself. Ask yourself what you need. Find ways to make yourself happy that don’t depend on other people. Psychotherapy can also help with this because it focuses on hearing what’s inside of you. 

4. Experiment judiciously with speaking your mind. This could mean taking some chances. You may not be able to do this at work, since we usually need to maintain an appropriate persona at work. And, sadly, if you belong to a racial or sexual minority, you are probably wise to be gaurded in certain situations. But exercising your opinion elsewhere can build confidence. This can be scarey, but it can also be liberating. Avoidance breeds anxiety, while mastery brings self esteem. Here again, therapy is a safe place to start. 

5. Decide what’s truly important to you: Is what people think of you high on that list? Make a short list, post it on your fridge, send yourself reminders on your phone, and don’t let critical folks who are suffering from insecurity come between you and fulfillment. 

6. Find your inspiration: Name three characters–real or from literature or film (for example Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt, Malala Yousafzai, Misty Copeland, Katniss Everdeen or Harry Potter) that have faced these same fears and overcome them. Carry their image in your mind. Authenticity is an archetypal theme: For millennia we’ve used stories of heroes and heroines that have not followed the crowd to help us overcome our own fears. Images of their courageous acts reach older parts of your brain–fear centers that may not respond to simple logic–and can free you to follow your intentions. 

This being true to your whole self–this individuation–isn’t easy. It takes courage and perseverance, but in the long run it feels better. And for many people, bringing their unique offerings to the world is what gives their life meaning. 

Here’s how Carl Jung put it: “May each one seek out his own way. The way leads to a mutual love in community…Therefore give people dignity and let each of them stand apart, so that each may find his own fellowhsip and love it.. Give human dignity, and trust that life will find the better way.”

truth

   
   

suffering

http://thelazyyogi.com/post/127238800864/yeah-okay-youve-got-a-lot-of-things-to-say

unicornsandknights135 said 

Yeah, okay, you’ve got a lot of things to say. What about people who’ve suffered from physical abuse? It’s all well and good to remain in your throne and judge people who committed it. But what if the person who did it was hung from the banisters and hit with a stick. And what if they still managed to maintain some innocence. Why do people judge people who perpetrated the physical abuse, so much?

It is easier for us to recognize the suffering in a victim than it is for us to recognize the suffering in the perpetrator that caused the act of violence. To heal the victim’s suffering is to help move on from such a crime. To heal the perpetrator’s suffering is to prevent such a crime from ever happening. 

Here are several thing that can help to keep that in perspective. 

1. If someone is happy and at peace, they cannot and will not consciously harm others. There is no interest in such things and nothing to be gained for them. Real happiness is imbued with contentment. All forms of violence be it physical or otherwise comes from a place of unrest, unhappiness, discontentment, and fear of lack. 

2. In order to harm others, there is a certain degree of sanity that is forgotten. When Jesus was being murdered, he said “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” This isn’t about taking the moral high ground; it’s about insight into ignorance. Rather than seeing those murderers as inherently bad, which is the meaning of “judgement,” it is important to recognize ignorance as a kind of intoxicated state in which you really don’t fully understand what you are doing, why you are doing it, to whom you are doing it, and who you are as the doer. 

3. Ignorance is temporary. It is not an identity or essential nature. Because ignorance is like a kind of intoxication, one can sober up. That is the whole ideal and purpose of rehabilitation, repentance, and forgiveness. 

Think of the prison system here in the US. We are very judgmental without being very constructive. We tell people that they are bad, that they have done wrong, and then we punish them. Yet we do not heal them, the punishment rarely serves to connect cause to effect, and often it simply makes things worse by fostering resentment and hate. By not healing and helping those who have committed crimes and wrongful acts, we are not benefitting the wellbeing of our society at large. 

It is obvious to most people that a victim needs healing. But the recognition that the perpetrator needs similar attention rather than scorn and hate is a very mature and subtle understanding. Tonglen meditation and Tibetan Buddhist compassion contemplations were instrumental in making me aware of this not just conceptually but in practice within my own life. The book Becoming Enlightened by the Dalai Lama is a wonderful introduction. 

This is how we can learn to forgive others and also ourselves of things we still consider unforgivable and unthinkable. Forgiveness does not mean that whatever happened was “okay and all good” but that your mind non-violently accepts those happenings and attends to how best to move forward. 

One of my favorite quotes from Thich Nhat Hanh sums this up well: “When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.”

Namaste my friend. 

thelazyyogi 

joyful abandon 

a little freedom

“The sooner you stop trying to make the world appear according to your expectations, the sooner you will experience a little freedom from feeling helpless in the world.”

Cee

the key

Samantha Ushedo: Self-Love Is the Key to Getting Anything and Everything You Want http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samantha-ushedo/selflove-is-the-key-to-ge_b_8012050.html

Self-Love Is the Key to Getting Anything and Everything You Want

 

Samantha Ushedo Life Coach. Self-Love Teacher. Inspirational Speaker. Creator of the First Love Yourself Sisterhood.

 

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times: Sam, self-love is a hard sell. No one walks around thinking, “How can I love myself more?”

What you’re thinking is: 

How can I lose 20 pounds?

How can I find true love, a best friend, my soul mate?

How can I improve my relationships with family and friends?

How can I make more money, get ahead?

How can I get healthier?

Is this you?

Trust me, I get it.

You’re a smart, successful, high achieving woman who wants it all and wants it now but you may be caught up in the “when… then” game.

Do any of these sound familiar?

When I lose 20 pounds, then I’ll be able to wear a bikini on the beach.

 When I meet the man of my dreams, then I’ll finally be happy.

When I get the promotion, then my money problems will disappear.

Essentially, what I’m hearing is that self-love isn’t exactly high on your priority list.  

Can I ask why?

Because, if you think about it, what is the one thing that all human beings want more than anything else in the world?  

To be loved and to be happy.  

And what do they think they’ll get from being thinner, looking and feeling healthier, having better relationships and being more financially secure?

You guessed it: love and happiness.

Most of us think that we can change how we feel by changing our external circumstances. We try to feel differently by looking outside of ourselves, believing the key is “out there”, but the truth is, you’re looking in the wrong place. We can exhaust ourselves trying to change our external circumstances to achieve some external results, but at the end of the day, if you don’t go within, you go without. When we learn to flex our self-love muscles and choose love over fear, that is when your transformation begins.  

I speak from experience, and had to learn this important lesson the hard way. It took 5 years, debilitating cystic acne and almost $30,000 (yes, I totaled it up) trying to fix myself, to find that external something that would solve all my problems before I realized that everything I was doing was simply treating a symptom of a bigger issue, which was that I didn’t love or fundamentally accept myself. I was living my life based on the need for outside validation, approval, and affection. Every choice I made in my life was coming from a place of fear, rather than love.  

There is little doubt in my mind that suffering from severe cystic acne was the Universe’s way of saying to me, “You’re not meant to be doing this anymore sweetheart and unfortunately, the only way you will listen is if we send you a message you can’t ignore.”

Message received. Loud and clear.

Now, you may not have cystic acne like I did, for you it could be something different entirely. But I want you to think about that thing in your life that is constantly plaguing you, looming over you like a big, black cloud. That thing you’re struggling with, that is keeping you stuck and unhappy. If I can impress one thing upon you today, let it be this: You are good enough. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a thigh gap, you’re currently single, you have acne on your face or your career hasn’t taken the direction you expected it to. No amount of dieting, green juicing, and Tinder dates is going to be the key to unlocking your happiness.  

You need to FLY. First Love Yourself.

The first and often only step you need to find the success, happiness, health and fulfillment (in any area of life) that you seek begins with first loving yourself. That’s why I created this resource to help you make self-love a choice rather than an afterthought in your life.  

Self-love is a choice you make in every moment of every day for the rest of your life. Just like you would join a gym or hire a trainer to strengthen your physical muscles, you can exercise your self-love muscle in much the same way. And you do this through practice, commitment and consistency. When you become aware of the way you relate to yourself, learn to cultivate self-compassion and take action on doing the things that truly light you up inside, you are laying the foundation to develop a beautiful relationship with the most important person in your life… yourself.

And that, my darling, is the key to getting anything and everything you want.

every positive thought

https://www.tumblr.com/bryantmcgill/127357173681

your own