Category Archives: Moving to a stress-free reality

Moving to a stress-free reality

The need to be SPECIAL

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Every day, people all over the world discover they have a need to be “special”.

This “need” is actually a misplaced one, as the real need that drives the desire to be special is a very normal and fundamental human need to be accepted. However, thanks in part to advertising, people today believe that they need to be special as a way of ensuring that they are accepted. Being accepted is a normal human desire. If one was accepted in ancient times, it meant that you got to live in the community and not be banished by your tribe. Banishment often put you in a survival or more likely lethal scenario of trying to survive in the wild alone. Ignore the heroic sole survivor notions of Hollywood – living alone in ancient times was usually a death sentence – you’d either starve or become some predator’s lunch.

Conform, or else

Because there is so much judgment of people these days, it is normal that one can feel less than secure in one’s level of acceptance. If one is exposed to modern advertising, we see constant reminders that we need to dress a certain way or behave a certain way to be accepted. This message is reinforced in school playgrounds and classrooms, as well as when we go to work. Churches emphasize conformity as well, and, when we get home, family sends the same message. In fact, it is hard to find a place where we do not have this sort of message being given to us: conform or be excluded.

Why is there such a drive in the modern world for conformity? Interestingly, it arises from the same source – a need for acceptance. The deal is: “If you do what I say, I will feel better, as it will appear to me that you are accepting my ways.” This is a way of coping with insecurity – coercing others into conformance with our beliefs and ideas. If we can get enough people to join the “I agree with Frank” club, we’ll rest easier, knowing that all these people are “on our side”. This also drives the need to get as many converts to our side as possible, as then we don’t have to examine our beliefs or ideas, as so many others are already on the same wavelength. We can hide in the crowd, safe from self-examination and introspection. This hiding in the crowd is used by most everyone these days, and it is insidious. We support a limited range of sports teams, and usually the local one, regardless of performance. We watch local news and read the local newspapers. When someone says they are moving into our area, we feel vindicated in our own choice to have moved there. If someone moves out, we question their decision, if not their sanity. We may even suddenly remember that we did not really like them all that much, so good riddance…

Round and round it goes

It becomes a vicious circle, with our need for acceptance driving our desire to have others conform to our ways. Every day, we see the world through the optic of “does this decision confirm my established beliefs and previous decisions?” That which does not reinforce the status quo is shunned or consciously ignored, as to pay attention to it would possibly open the door to questions about how we got here in the first place. Our egos seem to be too fragile to contemplate abandoning established and entrenched ideas, except in times of turmoil, when they reluctantly relinquish the known and search desperately for the new known, that which will become the new standard.

As time goes on, we have more and more conformity in the world, with world styles getting closer and closer together each year. The Internet and TV have encouraged this a lot, as images of how to be are transmitted constantly to all four corners.

We are bombarded with images and admonishments to be like each other, and if we buy product X we will be an individual, albeit identical to all the others. There is a constant tension between the need to be seen as an individual and the need to be accepted by the global tribe. No wonder stress is a major problem for many people.

So, what is the way out of this quagmire? Simply put, it is to notice the drivers in our behaviours, consciously question what we are doing and how we feel when we don’t do something. This feeling is often going to be one that is uncomfortable. Nevertheless, noticing this feeling is a step towards getting free of it. If we notice fear, for example, when we contemplate undertaking some activity or project that would be considered “weird”, accepting that fear and then releasing it, and thereby it’s hold on us, enables us to make decisions without emotional drivers taking control. As we proceed to notice and release these feelings each time we have to make a decision and consider making one e different from last time, the power of these conformance emotions will diminish. Eventually, they will have little if any hold on us. We will be able to make decisions without our internal fears of rejection or non-acceptance arising to keep us in line. We will taste true freedom.

Copyright 2010 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved

Moving to a stress-free reality

Are you being seen?

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Did you ever notice the tension that arises in you when people are not seeing you for who you are, but are only noticing something about you? Even worse, they may be only paying attention to something over  which you have little influence, like your eyes, your height, your employment history.

They “see” you, but they don’t really see “you”.

I witnessed a dramatic example of this a few years ago at a retreat workshop. Amongst the various people attending was a woman who would  meet most western standards for being attractive. She was tall,  shapely, pretty and blond. She was also invisible to most of the other people attending at any level beyond that of her appearance. This became blatantly apparent when we were asked to do an exercise in appreciation – everyone gathered around her as she sat on the floor and spoke to her words of appreciation. What I noticed was how she started crying as one after another people told her how pretty she was, how nice she looked, and words to that effect. She blinked back the tears for a second when my turn came and I said her tears were welcome. The comments about her physical attributes continued and her tears flowed again.

Some of the people around her had a smile on their face, and I suspect they thought she was crying tears of joy. I was not so sure, and when I spoke to her later that day, my concerns were confirmed. She had been  crying from feeling not seen for who she was. We talked a little that day about how people were always looking at her only long enough to notice her physical gifts, and were ignoring the rest of her. She had pretty much resigned herself to a life of being invisible, alone in the crowd. Not too surprisingly, as we got to know each other a little better over the course of the workshop, her inner reality was slowly revealed and  she said her good-byes with a beaming smile as she climbed into her husband’s truck for the drive home. All it took was for someone to actually pay attention to her with a desire to see “her” for who she was.

I’ve seen this surface-surfing played out in other situations as well, and sometimes it is self-inflicted. At another workshop, one of the participants introduced himself as a recovering alcoholic. Within moments, it was like someone had erased the memory of almost everyone present, as from that time onward, he was referred to as “the alcoholic”. No more information about him was solicited, and most people seemed content to put him in that box.

Why do people focus so much on the exterior?

The question that arises here is why do humans have a tendency to quickly put people in boxes and then leave them there. Certainly there is a survival instinct at work – in caveman days, we had to quickly size up the threat level of some new person who approached the tribe. But this only provides a partial explanation, and it does not account for the way that people often focus so much on the surface.

One possible reason why we do this is the need to keep a certain distance between ourselves and others. Most of us no longer live in very small communities, and cannot reasonably be in close emotional contact with everyone we meet in a day. Using a form of shorthand, we label people and then move along to the next new input in front of us.

Another possible reason is that we are responding to a perceived insecurity on the part of the other person. This is particularly true when we praise someone for that which they have little control over (putting aside cosmetic surgery and make-up for the moment). We may think that we are providing some sort of appreciation to the other person when we compliment them on their looks, but in fact it is a poor bargain. It looks something like this:

“If you notice my physical aspect and tell me flattering words about how nice I look, I’ll pretend to like that, even though I am only getting crumbs instead of what I really want – sincere acknowledgment and appreciation for who I am as a person, a recognition and acceptance of my intrinsic worth.”

There are a number of compilations of what people need to survive and flourish, and this one is a good example. All these compilations refer to some basic needs we humans have to be Accepted, Acknowledged, and Appreciated. When people comment on the physical aspects of someone, they are making token gestures of appreciation. They often think that if they do not flatter the other person, then that person will feel insecure and not accepted.  This concept is greatly promoted by those who want you to buy their products and services so you will conform to a societal model of attractiveness. Every day, we are bombarded by messages about how we need to look and act like “supermodels”. What exactly is so “super” about a “model” that is actually airbrushed and digitally enhanced. Even “supermodels” don’t match the image of what they need to look like.

Even Celebrities want to be loved

One of the most poignant things to observe these days is the quest for celebrity-hood. So many people are constantly promoting themselves, directly and by association with other celebs, jockeying for position on the ladder of celebrity-hood. They adopt a persona of breathing rarefied air, only socializing with other VIPs and somehow being “special”.  I suspect that underneath all this posturing and publicity-gathering activity is a deep-seated desire to be really seen for who they really are. Like all humans, they desire the love, acceptance and acknowledgment that brings true tears of joy and well-being. Even those who are sincerely realistic and humble about their contribution to the arts can find themselves caught up in the tide of needing to become someone more “celebrity-like”. Stepping aside and letting that tide flow past is possible, but one needs to be aware of it and act according to one’s inner guidance.

Our modern world, with all its trappings of the latest fashion and gadgets, provides poor surrogates for that which we truly desire and thrive upon. The pursuit of a new pair of Manolo Blanco shoes or a big screen TV or an electronic gadget like an iPhone may bring a temporary sense of thrill (the chase!) but it pales in comparison to actually feeling truly seen and appreciated. In the hectic daily rat race, we lose sight of what we really want and are overwhelmed by the flood of advertising, direct and indirect,  that purports to show us what we “need”.

A simple gesture can mean a lot

The next time that you notice yourself about to say some flattering statement about some surface aspect of someone, see if you can stop for a moment and find something more significant and meaningful to mention. Notice something about them, as a person. How can you know what they might want to hear? Take a moment and ask yourself what about you do you want appreciated. Most of us look for the same things from others, including:

  • Acceptance of who we are,
  • Acknowledgment of our individual being,
  • Appreciation for how we contribute to the world being a better place, and a
  • Sense of connection to others.

If you take the time to notice how positive or upbeat or relaxed you feel when you are with someone, and then tell them that instead of commenting on their hair, you will be talking to their being and their heart. If you are addressing someone who is in some way a celebrity, tell them how their work touches you instead of the usual “you are so talented” or “you are so beautiful”. Go ahead, plant some seeds of true appreciation.

Dr. Gary Chapman has some excellent research on the Five Languages of Love, in which he examines how couples can learn how best to relate to each other in ways that each will truly appreciate. Chapman says that many of the issues that couples face is simply due to their not speaking the same language of love – he’s doing the dishes and what she really needs is more time to be held.  This same principle can be extended to everyone you interact with – notice something real about them, something intrinsic.

What do you really want?

It is perfectly normal to be a bit confused about what you want from others. After all, you are bombarded with messages which are designed to shape your thinking, telling you that what you want is someone who meets some template that was created by those who sell you “enhancement” products and services. You constantly see images of people speaking platitudes as if they meant something, and you see people pretending to like them. The volume and intensity of this propaganda is only increasing and it causes a lot of stress as we all know deep down what we want, and yet we don’t get it very often.

Take some time, notice what feelings come up for you when you ponder what you’d really like to have. Release any feelings and thoughts that get in the way of that vision, using something like AER. Then start the ball rolling by investing in the positive and true appreciation of others. Notice what there is to be noticed about them, their contribution to the world and their way of being. See them in the way you want to be seen. They’ll be a little surprised at first, but many will join the party given a little time and encouragement by example.

Copyright 2009 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved

Healing and our Brains, Moving to a stress-free reality

Stressed out from working too hard?

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Did you ever wake up one day and realize that you’ve been working way too hard at something? That there is a much better way to accomplish the exact same thing, with much less effort and struggle?

This waking up happened when I was listening to a recording of a relationship therapist talking about how he gets people back on track. He mentioned that they have to “do the work” and how it took a lot of commitment, and one had to be in this “for the long haul”. I was not exactly thrilled by this labour-intensive approach, to say the least.

Overall, his approach was one which contained a lot of concepts that I hear commonly promoted:

– success is the result of persistence and much hard work,
– having a better life takes a lot of effort,
– changing your behaviours requires serious, long term work, and
– the process of personal change takes place over a long time.

My well-considered, totally scientific, and peer-reviewed reply to these concepts is “phooey”. Now, before you think I’ve jumped ship into the camp of “all you need is to think positive thoughts, say some affirmations and invoke the all-powerful Law of Attraction” crowd, relax. Having created a couple of rather successful companies in my former life as an entrepreneur, I know from personal experience (and a fair amount of related research) that neither the “work long and hard for many years” nor the “magic wishing bean” formula is what is really happening when people get more of what they want in their lives.

In a nutshell, what I have observed is that when people are able to achieve personal and business success, it is a result of several factors, including:

– doing the right things in the right order at the right time
– making appropriate mid-course corrections when needed
– having a vision of where they want to go, and some solid plans on how to get there
– being mainly free of any internal blocks to success.

This last factor is a key one, as anyone who has self destructive bad habits and/or beliefs will not be able to succeed, no matter how much effort they invest. They will continually find ways to stop themselves from obtaining that success, often at the last minute. More information on this can be found here.

The importance of altering the influence of self-sabotaging habits, thoughts and beliefs is not new – people have been talking about this for many years. In fact, one of the most famous books of the past century was Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, a work with much influence on many of the modern approaches to self improvement and success. While it certainly contains many useful and empowering concepts, this book, and much of the self-improvement industry, concentrates mainly on cerebral changes without giving much consideration for the rest of our being. It is sort of like trying to improve a car’s ride by properly inflating one of the four tires, and neglecting the other three. It is possible that the car will drive a little better with that one properly inflated tire, but the goal of a better ride is unlikely to be achieved if the other tires are under or over inflated. The same thing happens when we only focus on improving our minds, and neglect to take care of our bodies and our hearts.

The other potential problem that arises when one focuses exclusively on improving one’s thought processes in order to institute personal or professional change is that the likelihood of disappointment is higher – all the eggs are in one basket. If those efforts to improve thought processes are not successful, then one could feel more like a failure than a success.

Must… Work… Harder…

There is a phenomenon in which people often re-double their efforts when what they are doing does not produce the results they want. They see no other option than to “try harder”.  I was in that place at times during my life, so I know what frustration can arise when one tries and tries and still doesn’t reach a goal.

The paradigm guiding these sorts of approaches can be expressed as

Awareness + Effort = Success

We become aware of something such as a bad habit that we have, and we then expend a lot of effort trying to either suppress it or convert that habit into something useful. Maybe we put up notes around the house or office, reminding ourselves to not do “X” or to always do “Y”. Maybe we create some home-brew aversion therapy, punishing ourselves each time we catch ourselves doing something we decided not to do any more. Or maybe we tell ourselves what we want to be, trying to visualize it and repeating these affirmations day after day. And, to add to our self-inflicted labours, we analyze and study relentlessly our habits, beliefs and thoughts, trying to figure our why we do “X”. No matter what particular approach we adopt under this paradigm, the underlying principle is the same: change takes much effort and time and is a struggle.

For many years, I laboured under that illusion, like so many others. I “worked’ at change. I used many techniques and “tools of the personal development trade” to try to shape my thoughts, to attempt to convert them, to instill what I wanted in place of what was there. It was a lot of work. It was often a struggle, and it generated disappointment any time I was not able to advance as fast or as fully as I wanted.

The funny thing is that I was following the script that so many personal growth systems claim is the answer: work at altering your thought patterns to match those of the successful people and you will become successful. What is rarely, if ever, mentioned is that this sort of struggle against our existing beliefs and patterns not only wears on us, it is expensive in terms of emotional and physic energy. It is almost like having a tug-of-war between your two arms – how can that result in a real victory?

Fortunately, all this “work” taught me something very valuable – success was not obtained through the sole application of awareness and effort and that struggling with myself was actually counter-productive.   I discovered that rather than trying to use force and willpower to get myself somewhere, I could get there doing something rather different – I could relax.

Let go and flourish

After trying so many of the effort-based approaches, I came across a path that is so simple and yet so effective. This paradigm can be expressed as:

Awareness Deepened + Intentional Release = Possibility = Success

In this paradigm, when we become aware of something about ourselves that we want to be different, such as a habit or belief that does not serve us, we deepen into a full awareness of the experiences around that situation. We notice how we are when we are involved with it, paying attention to our body sensations, our feelings and emotions, our thoughts, etc. Having noticed what goes on for us, we then intentionally release any of the emotional and mental glue that holds that unresourceful habit, belief or thought in place. At the beginning, it may be a bit hard to figure out how to release this glue, and that is where a system like AER can help a lot. Once we intentionally release any emotional and/or mental glue, it suddenly becomes possible to consider all sorts of new possible approaches to our projects and even to our beliefs and worldview. Projects which were hard become easier. Motivation is easier to find and resistance to success and change lessen, often dramatically.

For example, if I was considering applying for a new job, and I was very nervous about it, the old paradigm would have me trying to psyche myself up for the interview, perhaps cajoling myself into a sense of false confidence.  I might have talks with myself, rationalizing my fear in an attempt to minimize them. I might repeat over and over some sort of mantra-like affirmation such as “I am worthy of this job”. These are all common coping mechanisms being applied to try to wrestle feelings into submission using mental processes. This could be an exhausting tug-of-war, with much expenditure of effort and time and great potential for stress to be stored up from the process.

With the Intentional Releasing paradigm, one would simply start by noticing any tension in the body that arose upon contemplating the interview, set the intention to allow that normal human feeling to flow out, and then use an integral release technique such as AER to facilitate the release of the tension. If anything else arose, such as thoughts of self-doubt, these too would be released in turn until all the “stuff” that was coming up and bothering us when we contemplated the job interview was released out of our system. This releasing process is not one of struggle or effort, but one of allowing normal accumulated stress and feelings to flow out. Instead of feeling worn down by the effort, one feels relieved to have let go of the blocks.

While there are a few things that can slow down this release process, such as any attachment to beliefs and feelings, etc., most people quickly distinguish between themselves and their feelings, thoughts and beliefs, and are quite happy to let those that do not serve them any longer to flow out.

So, if you have been trying hard to shape yourself into a better person or achieve a challenging goal and have found it a tiring and stressful process, consider using the new paradigm of releasing instead.

Copyright 2009 Robert S. Vibert, all rights reserved