Have you got one particular person you’d like to deep dive into your concepts and stressful thoughts about them?
March 23 9 am PT we’ll start a teleclass (you can dial-in with your computer) series Relationship Hell To Heaven. You’ll get to look at people you’ve had trouble with in your life.
The best part is….you don’t have to try to get along with them, change yourself, create a goal of acting “right” or have any expectations or plans.
Only inquiry.
Awareness changes everything. Click HERE to read more, or to join the six session telecourse Relationship Hell To Heaven.
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Speaking of plans.
These are funny things, plans.
Like a map, or directions on how to build something….plans can offer a very, very good way and an efficient way to reach a goal or a dream.
I block out time to write my book, for example. I notice when I don’t do this, weeks go by without one single word getting written on it as other things come up instead.
Calendars appear to be required for me, and I still lose track of appointments every so often.
Classes, steps, how-to’s, instruction books, trainings, rehearsals.
All of these exist because they’re so incredibly helpful. Our minds can’t hold everything. What an awesome invention to write things down, store information, create a map, follow a path, not have to reinvent the wheel.
Except.
Sometimes plans come along, or we receive them, and they don’t feel supportive, they’re not making things lighter. They’re actually making things more burdensome, or somehow, something’s off.
Like the strict diet, for example.
Since I’ve worked with so many people who are working on compulsive or emotional eating in their experience….
….I often ask people what kind of food or eating works for them.
(Everyone in the current Eating Peace Core class sent me their eating plan, for example).
People feel scared about having to have it on paper and how going outside of the “plan” means…..
…..you’re making a mistake, doing it wrong, screwing up, too rebellious.
Lots of us felt the burden of school plans. We must learn x, y, z and get graded well, and then we’ll succeed.
The most important thing about plans, I see now, is to hold them as useful, unless they aren’t.
If you hate plans, or if you love plans and can’t live without them, these two polarities both tend to be stressful.
Recently, someone was organizing a group vacation (that I was not 100% committed to, but part of the group).
We got the “plan” via email.
My thought…..JEEZUS. STOP TRYING TO RUN THE SHOW!
Heh heh.
My reaction?
Feel good I had not committed to the thing. Make a quick getaway. Say I just realized I can’t be there. Slip out quietly, so I don’t have to deal with plan-maker.
But let’s inquire instead.
He shouldn’t make such rigid, detailed plans.
Is it true?
Yes! He’s deflating the whole spontaneous, fun side of everything.
Can I absolutely know it’s true, these plans, the schedule, the “rules”, the laws, the expectations….are awful? Removing the fun?
Can I absolutely know he shouldn’t make such plans? Can I even know they are rigid?
No.
Who would I be without the thought?
Who would I be without the belief he should chill out, or the plan is a burden or stifling?
So funny.
All I needed was this one question and I saw within seconds that I could say yes and no to whatever was happening on the list. I could come and go, no one was “making” me do anything.
I could see how great it is to have a leader, someone super in charge with a lot of ideas. I can also see how great it is I can say without defense or without attacking this leader that “I’m in”, and a few of the activities or items on the schedule I won’t be attending.
I don’t have to have this one email change my whole entire day, or my thoughts about attending altogether.
Turning the thoughts around: he should make these plans, and they’re soft and flexible (turns out, this was completely true). I myself shouldn’t make such rigid, detailed “plans” for handling his plans in my head.
I wrote to my friend the leader and connected, honestly and openly about what I thought worked, and didn’t work, about the apparent plans.
There was no earthquake, or hail storm, or terrible rage against me for not wanting to go along with all the plans.
My “plans” that I would be pressured to keep the plans, were not the way it turned out.
My planning about what would happen if I resisted the plans was not reality.
No planning was necessary, at all.
“We are intuitive beings, but somehow in our conditioning we seem to have been trained to rely on process thinking, figuring things out, like we have to live life with a strategy….Of course you can use your mind to think, have thoughts, but you are very free. There is no need for plans. You don’t have to do any forensics on your thinking. You just move on.” ~ Mooji
P.S. Come join Relationship Hell To Heaven if you have someone in your life you call “controlling”. Just saying.