Last year a woman contacted me because she felt like The Work wasn’t working for her.
She would go through the process of asking herself the four questions, and turn her thoughts around, but she was still feeling pretty rotten about her relationships with some people in her life.
She was trying to do The Work on her own, she said. She would get some light bulbs of awareness.
But then have some kind of interaction in life that was pretty stressful.
Her son was really bothering her. Still. After doing The Work on him a whole bunch of times!
The idea of taking a teleclass appealed to her, but she wasn’t sure THAT would “work” either. She thought there might not be enough time, individual attention, or relief if she worked in a group.
What do we humans mean when we’re saying that something is NOT WORKING?
For me, when I’ve thought something wasn’t working well, I’ve felt pain, stress, unhappiness, worry, danger, or disappointment around the same issue or situation or person, over and over.
In other words, I feel uncomfortable emotions. And with these feelings comes the conclusion: this isn’t working! I’m at my wits end! I have to do something different!
One of the strongest places I ever experienced this was around my addiction to binge-eating and obsessing about food, or dieting, or fixing my body.
I met a life coach once who said that when people would complain and tell about a repetitive activity or experience in their lives that led to failure or unhappiness, he asked people the question sometimes,“how’s that working for ya?”
It was a little sarcastic. I might have rolled my eyes when I was in my twenties and knew the whole relationship I had with food was NOT working for me.
Duh!
Or so I thought.
Because here’s the funny thing. When I connected for the first time with a therapist who did not appear to think I better get over this whole bulimia and self-starvation thing ASAP….
….I had the chance to study my relationship with food in a new and deep way.
Who would you be without the thought that some relationship in your life MUST end, that it is 100% not working, that you need it fixed?
Like, yesterday!?!
You might be invited to take a second look, a deeper or closer look.
You might stick with some process, or find an ongoing support group, or keep doing The Work, or keep studying, keep questioning the way you’re perceiving it all.
You might start to see it all as a fascinating and adventurous journey, with rough patches and sweet patches.
As soon as I saw what WAS working in my relationship with food, even though it felt violent, I could slow down a bit, without a demand on the inside that it must change.
I saw benefits, advantages, and reasons why that relationship was helpful. For example, when I felt too lonely, or terrified, or angry, it would help me change the channel of my feelings.
It showed me my fears, my panic about life, my mistrust. It made me reach out for help.
It showed me that I believed in there not being enough for me, or too much for me, to deal with.
I believed that I would starve or be overwhelmed, not only with food, or decisions, but with the entire world. With everything that happened.
“If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” ~ Desmond Tutu
I thought food was my enemy, my own mind was my enemy, big feelings were my enemy, and I believed my own thoughts were something I needed to be against.
As I found The Work and captured all those mean, vicious, nasty, horrible thoughts on paper…I began to feel relief.
I began to laugh.
The woman who contacted me? She enrolled in Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven.
The structure made her sit down, even if she did it 10 minutes before our group call together, and write out a Judge Your Neighbor worksheet.
She had to share all those nasty thoughts about her own son with the group! And they didn’t dismiss her or avoid her. They listened and accepted that her thoughts were also theirs at some point or another.
She was not the worst mother ever, or the worst person.
I used to never, ever tell people that I was once someone who had bulimic episodes, had starved myself for two years. So embarrassing.
“In the story of my life as a person, something always seems to be lacking.” ~ Joan Tollifson
I received this note from the same dear woman last month:
I’d like to sign up for the Year of Inquiry group starting in September. I can’t come to the retreats, but want you to know, that I would if I lived any closer. After I took your Teleclass last year, my relationship changed not only with my son, who now speaks to me…but my brother who I had written off forever. I can hardly believe that as I did The Work and did NOT make plans to talk with my son, out of the blue he called. All I did was question my beliefs, and everything started changing. Thank you Grace, I couldn’t have done it without doing the class. Now, I just want to keep going. ~ Toronto, CANADA
If you find that you’d like the support of sinking in to this inquiry process so that it goes from your head down into your heart and your whole body (and then maybe out into the entire universe)…
…and if it appeals to you but you see that you’d like some support…
…then come on board with us for the practice of looking at and examining and understanding what you’re thinking, without pushing it away or trying to destroy it.
It might start working, you never know.
“When you believe in things that you don’t understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain’t the way.” ~ Stevie Wonder
Love, Grace
P.S. Only ONE spot left in Year of Inquiry YOI that starts on Thursday. Read about it or register here.
Click Here to read about or register for the 8 week teleclass Turning Relationship Hell to Heaven. Still room for two on Thursday mornings 8 am 9/12-11/7 (no class 10/10).