Hrvatska verzija dolje ↓
Name three things that would make you happier. Go ahead, do it. This post is not going anywhere.
May I try to guess what you were thinking of? I bet you named at least one of the following things: more money, bigger house, better car, better relationships with friends/colleagues/people in general, better job, less trouble with my husband/wife/kids/family members.
Now read the list again. Notice how most of the things (if not all) are OUTSIDE of yourself. Was there even one thing on the list that is an internal quality?
We are constantly given information how happiness is dependent on outside qualities. Not only happiness, but actually anything that we want in life. No matter what you could wish for, you need someone else or something else to give it to you. Do you want to have money? Get a job (at someone else’s company). Do you want to loose weight? Eat exactly this, do exactly that. Listen to these trainers, to those nutritionists. Want to feel loved? Find someone to love you. Want knowledge? Go to the university or a course and get a diploma (that someone else must certify).
No matter what you want in life, anyone else, but yourself is good enough to give you that. You are not good enough to start your own business and make your own money. You are not strong enough to bring yourself back to health. You have no knowledge enough to know which food makes you bloated or causes cramps. You cannot tell yourself which exercises you enjoy best. You are not capable to love and know your own value yourself. You cannot decide for yourself which knowledge is of greatest interest and best use for you.
Think about your job for a second. Where did you learn those exact skills? Did they teach them to you in school? Or you learned them on the job, from your colleagues, by experience? School doesn’t really teach us how to do any job. It’s extremely ineffective in that. Yet, we still believe in university diplomas like it is a holy cow. Why is that?
Another beautiful example I love is medicine. For whatever symptoms you might be experiencing in your body, they have already invented a pill. Take this one, take that one. Most of the times it works. What they don’t tell you is that for most of those times that a pill worked on you, you didn’t even need one! Your body has the ability to cure itself. Every single research involving placebo pills has proven that. In every study with placebo pills, both patients who took the real pill and those who took placebo pill were feeling better. How is that possible? Because YOU are the placebo! Your thoughts, your beliefs are the placebo. If you KNOW you can cure yourself, you will. Your body knows how, but living in this world made you forget that.
That is not surprising. Since we were little kids, that was the message given to us. There were always rules made by the others that we were supposed to follow. No questions asked. There were always parents’ wishes that we were supposed to fulfill, otherwise we would be made to feel guilty for not doing so. I wrote about guilt last week, and its devastating consequences on us. All standards ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘wonderful’ and ‘horrible’ came from the outside. No one ever asked us to make our own. No one ever made us connect with ourselves and be free to understand what was best for us. Naturally, once we grew up, we were completely disconnected from ourselves, and we knew no more even those things that kids intuitively know.
Kids possess the powers. They know that they have the power and they can do anything themselves. Problem is that that power doesn’t get strengthened but gets killed instead by our parents as we grow up.
Our parents also forgot about their powers and adopted what their parents taught them – that power is outside of themselves. So, they see their kids the same way – powerless and incapable of making good decisions without them. They see them as undeveloped little creatures who have no knowledge, no wisdom, and need to be told what to do. That cannot be further from the truth.
‘You will fall from that tree!’ screams petrified mother. She runs like the wind to scream at her son and shame him for even daring to climb up there! ‘You will fall! You will break your arm!’ she continues. ‘Get down immediately!’, she demands.
So what if he does fall? What if he breaks his arm? His wound will heal in no time. That’s how it works with our young flexible bodies. What that mother doesn’t understand is when she is screaming ‘You will fall! You will break your arm!’, she is actually saying: ‘you are incapable of knowing what is good for you, only I know that and you should listen to me’, ‘you cannot keep yourself safe’, ‘it is not OK to be playing and exploring the world’, ‘the world is not safe’.
By blocking his wish to climb that tree and shaming him for it, she is killing all the ambition in him. Depending on the shock this episode was for him, he might never dare to try to climb again. He will not dare to climb that tree, nor to climb anything in life, really. He will always be too scared to make any step forward. No matter how desperately he would want it, he will not go for it anymore. He will be paralyzed in place with that fear that you engraved into him. Great job, mom!
If you let him climb, he will lean on his natural intelligence and learn his own lessons by himself. He will learn that it is OK to be who he is, and it is OK to explore the world. He will learn he can trust his own judgment, and in case something happens, he has a safe place to go to and there will be his parents to comfort him and help him heal. He will be happy to explore because he will not be scared of failure, he will not be scared at every step that he will break his arm. He will not even think about that. So, believe it or not, his chances are much slimmer to get hurt by himself than when you are imprinting this picture of his broken arm into his mind.
If you think a little bit about it, in your life you never really learned anything from what other people were telling you. You always experienced it yourself. So, it is not other people who taught you something, but it was you, yourself who learned by using their lessons as tools. Remember that. Use your outer world as a tool, but don’t forget that the one who makes it all happen – is YOU. The only thing we can learn from other people forcing their life lessons on us is guilt.
Zašto ne vjerujemo u sebe
Nabroji tri stvri koje bi te učinile strenijim. Ajde, učini to. Ova objava ne ide nikud.
Mogu li pokušati pogoditi što si zamislila? Kladim se da si nabrojao barem jednu od sljedećih stvari: više novaca, veća kuća, bolji auto, bolji odnosi s prijateljima/kolegama/ljudima generalno, bolji posao, manje problema s mužem/ženom/djecom/članovima obitelji.
Sad ponovo pročitaj listu. Primjeti kako je većina stvari (ako ne i sve) IZVAN tebe. Je li se na listi našla brem jedna od tvojih unutarnjih kvaliteta?
Konstantno nam daju informacije kako naša sreća ovisi o vanjskim kvalitetama. Ne samo sreća, već zapravo bilo što što želimo u životu. Bez obzira na to što bi želio, treba ti nešto drugo ili netko drugi tko bi ti to dao. Želiš imati novac? Nađi posao (u tuđoj firmi). Želiš li smršaviti? Jedi točno ovako, radi točno onako. Slušaj ovog trenera, onog nutricionistu. Želiš se osjećati voljeno? Nađi nekoga tko će te voljeti. Želiš znanje? Idi na fakultet ili na tečaj po diplomu (koju netko drugi mora izdati).
Bez obzira što želiš u životu, bilo tko osim tebe je dovoljno dobar da ti to pruži. Nisi dovoljno dobar da započneš svoj vlastiti biznis i zaradiš svoje vlastite novce. Nisi dovoljno jak da se sam vratiš u zdravo stanje. Nemaš dovoljno znanja da znaš koja ti hrana izaziva nadimanje ili grčeve. Ne možeš odlučiti sam koje vježbe ti se najviše sviđaju. Nisi sposoban sam voljeti sebe i znati svoju vrijednost. Nisi sposoban odlučiti koje je znanje najkorisnije i od najvećeg interesa za tebe.
Razmisli o svom poslu na trenutak. Gdje si naučio te vještine? Jesi li ih naučio u školi? Ili si ih naučio putem vlastitog iskustva, na poslu, s kolegama? Škola nas ne uči zapravo kako raditi ni jedan posao. Škola je vrlo neefikasna u tome. Bez obzira na to, mi još vjerujemo u fakultetske diplome kao da je sveta krava. Zašto?
Još jedan primjer kojeg ja jako volim je medicina. Za bilo koji simptom koji osjećaš u svom tijelu već je izmišljena tableta. Uzmi ovu, uzmi onu. Većinu vremena funkcioniraju. Ono što vam ne govore je da za većinu puta kad je ta tableta funkcionirala, niste ju zapravo uopće trebali! Naše tijelo ima sposobnost samoiscjeljivanja. Svako istraživanje s placebo tabletama je to potvrdilo. U svakom istraživanju s placebo tabletama, obje skupine – i ona skupina koja je pila prave tablete i ona koje je pila placebo tablete izjavili su da su se osjećali bolje. Kako je to moguće? Jer TI SI PLACEBO! Tvoje misli, tvoja vjerovanja su placebo. Ako ZNAŠ da se možeš sam izliječiti – izliječiti ćeš se. Tvoje tijelo zna kako, ali živeći u ovom svijetu učinio si da ono to zaboravi.
Sve to nije iznenađujuće. Otkad smo bili djeca, to je poruka koja nam je davana. Tu su uvijek bila pravila postavljena od strane drugih koja smo trebali poštovati. Bez pitanja. Tu su uvijek bile želje naših roditelaj koje smo trebali ispunjavati. U suprotnom, učinili bi nas da se osjećamo krivo. Prošli sam tjedan pisala o krivnji i njezinim razarajućim posljedicama na naš razvoj. Svi standardi ‘dobro’, ‘loše’, ‘prekrasno’, ‘užasno’ dolazili su izvana. Nitko nas nikad nije pitao da postavimo svoje standarde. Nitko nas nije naučio da se povežemo sa samima sobom i dao nam slobodu da razumijemo što je najbolje za nas. Prirodno, jednom kad smo odrasli postali smo potpuno nepovezani sa sobom i nismo više znali čak ni stvari koje djeca intuitivno znaju.
Djeca posjeduju moći. Oni znaju da je posjeduju i da mogu postići sve što požele. Problem je što se kod djece te moći ne razvijaju već ih roditelji ubijaju kako djeca odrastaju.
Naši su roditelji također zaboravili njihove moći i prihvatili su ono što su ih njihovi roditelji naučili – da je snaga i moć izvan njih samih. Prirodno je da onda i oni tako vide svoju djecu – nemoćne i nesposobne da izaberu najbolje za sebe bez njih. Oni vide svoju djecu kao nerazvijena mala stvorenja koja nemaju znanja ni mudrosti te im treba biti rečeno što da rade. To je vrlo daleko od istine.
‘Past ćeš s tog stabla!’ vrišti prestravljena majka. Trči kao vjetrom gonjena vrištati na svog sina i posramljivati ga što se uopće usudio popeti. ‘Past ćeš! Slomiti ćeš ruku!’ nastavlja. ‘Dolje, smjesta!’, zahtjeva.
I što ako padne? Što ako i slomi tu ruku? Njegova će rana zacjeliti dok si rekao keks. Tako to funkcionira s našim malim fleksibilnim tijelima. Ono što ta majka ne razumije je da kad vrišti ‘Past ćeš! Slomiti ćeš ruku!’, ona zapravo govori ‘ ti ne znaš što je za tebe dobro, samo ja to znam i mene trebaš slušati’, ‘ti ne znaš kako paziti na svoju sigurnost’, ‘nije u redu igrati se i istraživati svijet oko sebe’, ‘svijet oko tebe nije siguran’.
S time što je spriječila dijetovu želju da se popne na stablo i posramila ga zbog nje, ona ubija ambiciju u njemu. Ovisno o tome koliki je šok ta epizoda izazvala, on se možda više nikad neće penjati. Neće se usuditi popesti na to drvo, niti se popeti igdje drugdje u životu, zapravo. Uvijek će biti prestrašen da napravi bilo koji korak. Bez obzira na to koliko strašno bi to želio, više se neće usuditi. Biti će paraliziran tim strahom koji si usadila u njega. Odličan posao, mama!
Ako ga pustiš da se penje, osloniti će se na svoju vlastitu inteligenciju i naučiti vlastite lekcije. Naučiti će da je OK biti ono što jest, i da je OK istraživati svijet. Naučiti će da može vjerovati svojoj vlastitoj procjeni, a ako se slučajno nešto dogodi, ima sigurno mjesto gdje ga čekaju roditelji koji će mu pomći da se oporavi. Biti će sretan istražujući jer se neće bojati neuspjeha, neće se bojati na svakom koraku hoće li razbiti ruku. Neće ni pomisliti na to. Vjerovala ili ne, njegove su šanse puno manje da se sam povrijedi nego što su sada kada si usadila u njegovu glavicu tu sliku razbijene ruke.
Ako malo razmisliš, nikad u životu nisi puno naučio iz onoga što su ti drugi govorili. Uvijek si to sam doživio. Dakle, nisu doista drugi ljudi koji su te naučili, već si to bio ti koji si to naučio koristići njihove lekcije kao alate. Zapamti to. Koristi svijet oko sebe kao alat, ali ne zaboravi da onaj tko to zapravo čini mogućim – si TI. Jedina stvar koju možemo naučiti od lekcija kojima nas na silu hrane je krivnja.