Hi Greenshade

I like what L.B. Smedes said about shame

If you persistently feel you don’t measure up, you are feeling shame—that vague, undefined heaviness that presses on our spirit, dampens our gratitude for the goodness of life, and diminishes our joy…. Most shame we experience and take on is undeserved.

“Shame is heavy; grace is light. Shame and grace are the two counterforces in the human spirit: shame depresses; grace lifts. Shame is like gravity, a psychic force that pulls us down. Grace is like levitation, a spiritual force that defies gravity. If our spiritual experience does not lighten our life, we are not experiencing grace. . . .

“The lightness of grace does not lift all the sandbags that drag the spirit down. It lightens life by removing one very dead weight in particular—the weight of anxiety about being an unacceptable person. Grace gives us courage to track down the sources of unhealthy shame, see it for the undeserved pain it is, and take steps to purge our lives of it completely. It sets loose the lightest feeling of life; being accepted; totally, unreservedly accepted. . . .

“I believe that the only self I need to measure up to is the self my Maker meant me to be.

“I believe that I am accepted by the grace without regard to my deserving.

“I believe that I am accepted along with my shadows and the mix of good and bad I breed in them.

“I believe that I am worthy to be accepted.

“I believe that grace has set me free to accept myself totally, and without conditions, though I do not approve of everything I accept.

“I believe that nothing I deserve to be ashamed of will ever make me unacceptable.

“I believe that I can forgive anyone who has ever infected me with shame I do not deserve.

“I believe that I may forgive myself for anything that I have ever done to shame myself or another person.

“I am gratefully proud of being who I am and what I shall be.

“I believe that the grace heals the shame I do not deserve and heals the shame I do.

Hi coconut
Read this mornings feature article and thought you might find it helpful.

I hope you find a way not to be so hard on yourself

https://tinybuddha.com/blog/you-dont-suck-at-life-how-to-stop-believing-your-inner-bully/

Hi Coconut (great handle)

Like you I’m a great story teller. My mind just won’t quite down at times and most of the stories I tell myself are negative. end result low self esteem  = social awkward.  The advice I was most commonly given was to stop telling myself negative stories and only tell positive ones. As I never fully believe the positive stories I was spinning it didn’t work.  It actually made things worse.

What did work was when I noticing when I was telling myself a story and just stop telling it without filling the gap with other stories or the like. No labeling, no judgments, no excuses, no incrimination, no ‘positive thinking… When I couldn’t stop the story I acknowledged that and moved on.

You may also find Viktor Frankl’s work helpfull

1. Dereflection: Dereflection is aimed at helping someone focus away from themselves and toward other people so that they can become whole and spend less time being self-absorbed about a problem or how to reach a goal.
2. Paradoxical intention: Paradoxical intention is a technique that has the patient wish for the thing that is feared most. This was suggested for use in the case of anxiety or phobias, in which humor and ridicule can be used when fear is paralyzing. For example, a person with a fear of looking foolish might be encouraged to try to look foolish on purpose. Paradoxically, the fear would be removed when the intention involved the thing that was feared most.
3. Socratic dialogue: Socratic dialogue would be used in logotherapy as a tool to help a patient through the process of self-discovery through his or her own words. In this way, the therapist would point out patterns of words and help the client to see the meaning in them. This process is believed to help the client realize an answer that is waiting to be discovered.

“The greatest challenge in life is to be our own person and accept that being different is a blessing and not a curse. A person who knows who they are lives a simple life by eliminating from their orbit anything that does not align with his or her overriding purpose and values. A person must be selective with their time and energy because both elements of life are limited.”  ― Kilroy J. Oldster

A  necessary ingredient to the simple life is “to know thyself” which just based on the majorly of posts on this site, not so simple.

A good place to start then might be to remove from your life any material objects that you don’t need. Each object you dispose of or keep will tell you much about yourself and what a simple life might mean to you.

The second step may be determining what you want with regards to relationships. Some might argue that the more people you relate to the more complex your life will be. Open yourself to love and you open yourself to being hurt… which begs the question if the desire for a simple life is really a wish for a life without pain? If so what your looking for is not Life, simple or otherwise, as pain is an integral part of life. (without pain we rot)

Life as it is, is complex in its simplicity. Even so the experience of life is something other so no two experiences the same. The simple life for one person may be living in a tent for another a house.

Hi Kat

The situation your in sounds very frustrating. For many reasons communication between family can become difficult as so much of the past and sense of self can be involved (for everyone) Mark and Anita might help you with that.

With regards to “other people can multitask but I feel like I just can’t”  the idea of multitasking isn’t real.  Ego consciousness is linear so no one multitasks. The best we might do is divide our focus on a number of tasks before us however this remains doing one thing a time. We can divide our force in shorter and shorter periods of time so it might appear that we are doing multiple tasks at the same time but that is a illusion. Study have shown that most people don’t handle splinting their focus over multiple tasks that well.

You might be much happier if you can forget this notion of feeling like you should be able to multitask. Focus on the present, what you need to work on now and the rest will follow

Hi Christina

The universe if giving you a challenge as it sounds like the perfect place to practice doing something you love without attaching to how you view others are looking and judging you.  Not easy but can you imagine what it might feel like not to allow others to influence how you feel about what your doing! To dance as if no one is watching. Master that and there would be no limits to what you might achieve.

I used to get so uptight dancing or completing a wood working project. Trying to be perfect and getting so upset when I made a mistake.

One day I go so tired of myself I just said screw it. I wanted to make a toy chest and Instead of measuring a hundred times I measured twice and cut away. I used wood that was I had lying around that was warped, blemishes didn’t matter.  I didn’t have the tools to fix things and used what I had.  And you know what? It all worked. Every “mistake” worked and even made it better. It was amazing just going with what happened in the moment. When I wasn’t trying to make things happen and instead allowed things to happen – but with intention. A kind of doing by not doing I started to enjoy the process.

I had the same experience with my dancing. When I let go of expectations how things should be or look, and trying to fix mistakes instead of working with the “mistake” did I learn to dance.

The word Art comes with allot of baggage that more often gets in the way of art. It doesn’t have to matter if one of the intentions of your art is to make money. It can be fun entering into the consumers mind and discovering what they might like while adding something of yourself to it. Is it art? I think so but who’s to say… or care.

I always liked those ‘ground hog’ type stories were the main character keeps repeating the same day over and over until they get it right. Wouldn’t that be nice. Then again, the main character is stuck for a very long time and even commits suicide several times. How many life times “days” did it take for him to get it right.

If you could go back in time to fix a problem, you would likely have to redo that a few times and then fix what happens next… Then its likely the first attempt of undoing the past would change what you know and what you would change…a possible never-ending cycle.… Even if we get it “right” (to our liking) looking back life, love and suffering remain interconnected. (From a ALL encompassing perspective suffering is LOVE – chew on that for a while)

The idea of fixing our past it’s a kind of like the karma and reincarnation concept… only in the movie you get to remember… You might say that the idea of Karma is a type of remembering that were all really bad at, as it takes a great deal of effort to become conscious of all the factors behind our actions and there affects.

The goal of repeated “life times” could be the perfection of the spirit… however I suspect once that state of being is reached one would look back and not change anything, as everything experienced, the good and the bad is what brought you to that state. And of course, with that  the very idea of good and bad disappears.

That said it’s the tension between what we judge as good and bad that leads to “conscious awakening’.   Its Irony but basically suggest that you are exactly where you need to be to get to where your gong next. So, stop trying to change the past and Instead address your perspective from which you view it. Learn and move forward.

I think what you really desire is to “fix” your experience of yourself so that you might be different, no loner you? Begs the question what is this something you identify with as being you? If you “fixed” all your experiences would you, still be you? Would you notice?

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by Peter.