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People love stories, so much so that it seems to be hard-wired into us. We’re always looking for ways to make sense out of the random events in life and find a way to relate them to ourselves.

We gotta stop it.

Here’s the thing. We feel before we think, and problems are created by associated emotions that push us into reflexive behaviors. If our bad habits and phobias and problems are reactions that happen without thinking, why do we think so much?

We do it to make sense of our reaction to ourselves after the fact (even if after the fact is only a split second after you start feeling drawn to act out the problem)  and we try to justify and explain what’s happened or what’s happening. This helps us feel more in control of our lives, but the downside is that sometimes we can’t (or don’t want to) come up with an explanation right away and so we create reasons why we can’t understand what happened.

The 2 most common reasons that ensure you’ll never change the behavior are that the problem is unconscious and there’ a deep-rooted core belief, and both of these causes can’t be solved without a lot of work. You need lots of Freudian-style digging or deep hypnosis to root out unconscious stuff. As for core beliefs, you may even have an idea of what the core belief is, but the fact that it’s a core belief means you’ll have to spend a long time trying to dig it out. Both of these reasons make it seem like changing the problem will be a HUGE undertaking.

And then there’s the little voice that sometimes asks, “what if it’s buried deep for a reason?” That alone takes the problem and turns it into something that’s caused by the mental equivalent of a monster under the bed.

Watch out! You might not like what you find in the darkest recesses of your mind, and it may even destroy you!!

Except that’s all a lie.  Try looking at it a different way.

The feelings that cause your problem are just feelings. There’s nothing special about them. They don’t have a deeper meaning. They’re not caused by beliefs.  There’s nothing dangerous or scary. They’re just reactions you have, and if you learned those reactions once, you can un-learn them.

Looking at it that way takes away all the extra stories we tell ourselves and simplifies.

That’s important, because change is simple.

Think about it. Where in your life have you been making your problems more complicated than they really are? What happens if you take that all away? You might find yourself thinking about your problems in a different way.

That way is, apparently, to NOT walk on a ski trail, but how was I supposed to know that? It all started when my buddy Casey and I went hiking in the snow on some hiking trails someone told Casey about. It was a beautiful day, with snow crusted on every tree branch like some sort of winter fantasy land, and it was even fairly warm (for winter, of course).

We set out on some trails that had been packed down by some sort of plow and was criss-crossed by ski trails. It was a pretty vigorous trail even so, and we were getting a pretty good workout. Every once in a while, we’d meet someone cross-country sking going the opposite way and being in a good mood on such a beautiful day, we’d greet them heartily. They weren’t generally quite so friendly, but I put that down to the fact that most people are just cowards when it comes to strangers (very true in my experience).

Then, an hour in and halfway down the trail, someone FINALLY says something. Apparently, and neither Casey or I know cross-country skiing ettiquette because neither of us cross-country ski, hikers are generally not allowed on ski trails.

Oops! Unfortunately, there was no way to know since there were no signs saying “No hiking during ski season”. In fact, the signs said “Hiking and Skiing Trails.” Let’s see. How did it go…

Older male skier: “You know you’re not supposed to be hiking on ski trails.”
Casey: “Yeah. We just found that out.”

That was a pretty funny response, I think. The other guy, however, didn’t take it so well. Oh well. That would be his choice.

When the guy’s wife said something along the same lines to me, my response was, “Yeah, we didn’t know. On the upside, though, we’re on our way out now.” No guilt, no bad feelings. To me it was no big deal at all, even if I was the only one to think so. I didn’t do anything intentionally wrong, so I had a clean conscience, and that’s what matters to me. I can remember several years ago when it would have bothered me a lot and I’d have been terribly embarrassed and guilt-stricken.

Also, while footsteps on a ski path might be an inconvenience, inconvenience doesn’t harm people. And even on the remote chance that a footstep causes someone to turn a ski, then that makes a pretty good object lesson that you should always pay attention to where you’re going, which will only help them in the long run.

The funny part, though, was my buddy’s reaction after they moved on. He claimed that he didn’t care what they thought of him, but he was visibly agitated, and wouldn’t let it go, talking about what a jerk that guy was. I pointed out that if it really didn’t bother him, he wouldn’t be going on and on about it.

The next reason he gave was that he just doesn’t like people telling him what to do. That may or not be true-I have waaaaay better things to do than analyze my friends-but it still serves as a good example of what it REALLY means to not care what people think. If you can’t stop thinking about it, and you’re getting agitated, you DO care. If, on the other hand you don’t feel anything-no embarassment, no anxiety, no guilt, no anger, no desire to laugh it off-then you’re really not bothered by it.

It’s pretty rare, though, to feel that way when people confront us. Even I might usually be bothered by many kinds of confrontation, so when I have an experience that’s so completely counter to what I’m used to, I like to take note.

It’s like that old buddhist story where two monks meet a cranky old woman at a stream who demands that they help her across. One puts her on his shoulders and wades across, but she spends the entire time complaining how uncomfortable it is. When they reach the other side, he puts her down and the two monks continue on their way.

After a while, the second monk asks the first, “Why did you help such a shrew?”

The second replies, “I put her down on the river bank. Why are you still carrying her?”

As far as I’m concerned, though, the best part of the story is that after the one couple said something to us when we were just past the halfway point, every other group we passed on the way out said something too! That drove Casey nuts.

But I thought it was hilarious!

So what are you carrying that you don’t need to?

3D Mind is all about getting to the root of what’s going on.  One thing that makes it difficult sometimes, though, is that after the initial reaction or belief that sears itself into the mind, we have reactions to that reaction.  We beat ourselves up after the fact.  We try to make sense of why we didn’t meet our own expectations with a judgment of ourselves.  From there, we elaborate on the judgments we made until we have a whole host of reasons to blame other people, the world, and ourselves.

I’m lazy.  I’m a loser.  I can’t do it.  I’m not good enough.  I’ll never be…  These are all excuses and rationalizations we make to explain what went wrong because what really happened was too quick for us to notice.  We felt something and reacted and tried to explain away the aftermath, but instead only confusing the issue. Read the rest of this entry »