Well, I’m still struggling with this mental mechanics thing. There is just so much to it that I could do a post a day for the next month. Just to give you an idea, it involves such things as your internal map (ego), beliefs, values, generalizations, strategies, how you process information, how you receive information from the outside world, how you use this information to form internal representations (pictures), the roll of emotions, and much more. I’m working on a condensed version. But it will take a while, if yall are still interested.
In the mean time, I have decided to get down to the most important two things I learned. Understanding the Personal Responsibility principle is the key to using all this information. Understanding the Witness method changed my life. Its how I went from an uptight, pissed off all of the time person to someone who is happy and peaceful, and having fun most of the time. (Not all the time, but much more than before).
This is a tough one for most people to get. It was for me. But I was determined, and once I understood these next two things, a lot of stuff changed in my life.
Personal Responsibility
You must understand that whatever happens to you comes from inside you. It is your perception of a happening that determines its reality to you!
We have all learned to play the blame game. Something happens outside of us, and if it was not something we wanted to happen, we have learned to place blame on that happening. Someone says or does something we “don’t like”, or we do something and don’t get the results we wanted, and our internal map, our “ego” has been programmed to place fault somewhere. We blame the happening, or we blame ourselves for somehow causing the happening. We react in a negative way both physically and emotionally. Our body releases chemicals in to our system that cause us to feel bad. We begin to focus on what we don’t want, with the intention of avoiding it. Basically, we suffer. This is a learned reaction!
Blame insinuates that we have done something wrong. This is simply not the case. We react to a happening based on the programming in our unconscious mind. We learned these reactions when we were too young to have control of that programming.
Personal responsibility is about accepting that we place the meaning on all the happenings that are going on in our lives. Stuff happens. But we choose what meanings we put on that stuff, thus creating our reality, our experience of life. We have some control over what happens in our immediate life. And we can work at creating the life we want. But we have virtually no control over what happens in the outside world (basically because there are millions of other people out there trying to get what they want). Placing blame on these outside happenings is playing white must win.
So, personal responsibility is about doing away with the blame game. It’s about understanding that it’s not things that happen outside of us that create our reality, it’s our perception of those things. It’s about learning to accept and deal with all the happenings that we cannot control. It’s about realizing that we can place meanings, on all happenings, that will allow us to create peace, happiness and success in our lives. It’s about letting whatever happens be ok,.
Please do not be afraid to ask questions about this. As I said, it was a tough one for me and I want those who are interested to understand it.
Next the most important thing I have learned!
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