Mass Density

I don’t think we should just manage our anger.  I believe in eliminating anger.  Trying to control triggers, circumstances, and other people so we don’t become angry is too much work. It is much easier to identify and change the core beliefs causing our anger.  In this free audio podcast I outline what the process of managing and eliminating anger looks like when you do it with awareness.

Anger Management mp3 audio  39 min

If you want to eliminate anger, and the core beliefs that cause anger follow the step by step process outlined in the Self Mastery Course.

Procrastination…caused by the ego mind (continued from post on procrastination)

Do we get anything out of procrastination?   A little, but the ego gets most of it.  You remember that first part where we committed to doing something like meditating?  We imagined our self in a great role in our mental movie.  We were a wonderful character doing something good, spiritual, even serene.  When we believed that character in our mental micro movie was us, we felt good about our self for a short time.  We got a pleasant emotional feeling.  That’s an important part of the procrastination process because it keeps us trapped in it.  That pleasant feeling is something we want to feel.  So to get it we keep committing to stuff and projecting our self into these stories of good intentions.  In the moment we feel good as we imagine our self to be that positive character in our mental movie. But it is also a set up for a lot of self judgment.  We set up an image of expectation that we are later judged against.

The second part is where we don’t take action.  We let our busy ego mind that is in self preservation mode make our decisions for us.  It directs us to forget about what we committed to, distract us from it long enough for us to believe we failed.  Then it projects thoughts like, “I still haven’t done that, what’s the matter with me.  I can’t just seem to get things done.”  In each of those mental stories it projects us as the main character in a failure role.   This is a path of good intentions leading to emotional hell.

Procrastination is basically a function of our ego beliefs.  Our ego mind pulls us into making commitments that it then operates trying to get us NOT to follow through.  In this way we are tricked into believing in two false images of self, one of a successful self image and one of worthless failure self image.  When we fall for this procrastinate trick of the ego mind we end up identifying with both false images even though they are completely opposite of each other.

There’s more than one step to solving the procrastination problem.

When we notice this problem of having two opposing ego identities our tendency is to try to pick one.  Our mind will be confused by the fact that we can believe in two completely different versions of our self as both failure and success.  In order to alleviate this feeling of confusion it tries to have us accept one self image as true and dismiss the other.  The result is that we end up convincing our self for a little while that we are a worthless failure, or we spend time convincing our self that we a really are a good successful person.  Either way the ego wins when we identify with one of the self images.  We haven’t solved the real problem of false ego images, but in our state of conviction we have temporarily gotten rid of that confusion feeling.

Rarely does the mind come up with an alternative answer like, “Hey,,, those ideas the mind has of what I am,,, those are just ideas about me.  I’m neither of those images of the ego mind.  I’m not more a character in my mind than if someone showed me a home movie and said, the guy on the film was me.”

Am I Procrastinating?

I’m not avoiding, distracted from, or procrastinating on this issue of solving the issue of procrastination.  I’m taking some time to point out the various dead ends and distractions our mind will have us chase.  Procrastination is a problem, but it is also just a symptom of a deeper problem of our core beliefs.  Specifically, the core beliefs we have about our identity.  Solve the problem of false beliefs about your identity and procrastination dynamics go away on their own.

Without that false positive image character projecting commitments, we no longer say we are going to start meditating, or other so called good intentions.  We don’t express from that false projected image.  Instead we are more genuine and say what we mean.   We can even go deeper into action than this and skip much of the dialog of the ego mind.  We just envision what we want and we take action. We don’t need a projected self image in order to take action.

And if for some reasons our actions don’t attain our goals, (even Michael Jordan missed game winning shots) then we don’t fall into self judgment.  This is a lot easier to avoid when there is no false self image.   Without that negative false image we don’t identify with that failure character in the mind.  As we refrain from identifying with the false images of success and failure in our mental micro movies we are on the path towards humility.  We have less of that “unassuming nature.”

It’s important to understand that humility doesn’t mean meek.  Actually humble people can actually be very powerful.  We don’t usually notice their power because they tend to be quiet and listen more than they talk.  Their power takes the form of quiet resolve.  They don’t have a need to project one of their false images so they tend to listen more than talk.  They don’t expend their energy trying to get attention or having debates in their mind convincing themselves.  Since they don’t waste energy on these dynamics they have a lot more power to apply to what they really want.

Changing the Ego that is engaged in Procrastination

Of course it is easy to say, “Hey, just drop those stories and those false images.”  This is the kind of commitment that an unaware person makes.  It then backfires on them.  This kind of commitment is doing the same pattern we are telling our selves to drop.  We project a false image of our self as successfully dropping these stories and false images.  When we tell our selves a story about what we should do, we are projecting a false image of our selves as a success.   Without awareness we are likely to falsely identify our self as the character in our story who successfully drops such stories.  In the mental movie moment of that good intention we are again being played by the ego.   The ego has again won over our attention for another moment.  Of course we might get a pleasant emotional moment of comfort with our hopeful story of positive change, but it is short lived.

It won’t be much longer and we will find out that our false projecting has continued.  We didn’t break the habit at all.  We only reinforced it when we believed the story about dropping false image projections.  When that realization of failure happens then the ego mind swings the other way and tells us that we failed. It projects a story with an image of us as the main character failing to make a change.  We feel like that character in the story of failure we identify through beliefs with that character.   This is the ego mind getting reinforced in two opposing directions.

This same kind of reinforcement of two opposing false images of the ego happen each time we make a commitment of “I’m going to stop Procrastinating.”  Can you see that this statement causes us to identify with a false image in a mental movie taking place in the future?  Can you see that this is a set up for believing that we are that failure image later?

Getting out of the procrastination thing, or any other ego thing might seem like a Catch 22 at this point.  Anytime you commit to change something you might just be reinforcing some part of the dynamic at a more fundamental level.  It’s not hopeless.  There are ways out of these patterns of procrastination, and false self images identification.

You can make these commitments to change, but they are usually only effective when done from another side of our personality, not just our ego.  When the commitment arises from a genuine desire to be happy we are filled with a quiet intent filled resolve.  From your resolve will be action.

At the Source of the Procrastination Problem

To successfully make these changes to procrastination we really have to look at the source of the problem and not just the symptoms.  At the core of the problem are the false self images that we believe are us.  When you no longer identify with those false images it is obvious that the good intentions the mind projects are just false ways to momentarily feel better.  When you are aware and really observe them, they take on the quality of watching a movie and immediately become less believable. When you aren’t aware you are in the movie that your mind writes for you and you can’t change the script.   That’s a big difference.

The good intentions might not seem like a big deal by itself, but it sets up the other half of the ego. The failure to execute by putting things off and that leads to self judgment, self rejection, and feelings of unworthiness and failure.

This problem is actually a lot of small dynamics all working together.  There are the two false images that the ego mind projects.  There are also the mental movies of distraction, deception, and denial layers that keep us busy so we don’t become aware of what is going on in our mind.  Then there are the illusions of solutions that we might fall for.  Those “commitments to change” where our ego takes us on another pleasant story in our imagination as a set up for another false self image identification and rejection.

So how does one dismantle such a web of illusions that are the cause of procrastination?   Do the lessons in the Self Mastery Course and you’ll see how you can regain control of your life and emotional state from the false beliefs and your ego mind.   It’s going to help you be aware of what goes on in your mind and how it can sabotage or lead you away from what you really want.

Procrastination – How it is driven by Ego and How to Stop.

How many times do we say we are going to do something, and then don’t to it?   How many times do we say we are going to do something, notice we don’t do it, and still don’t do it?  We are procrastinating.  Even when we are aware we are procrastinating, we still procrastinate.  It makes you wonder what is really going on with us. More importantly, how do we stop procrastinating?

I like the anecdote, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Procrastination is a pattern of good intentions.    As we dig deeper into the issue there is a natural follow up question, “If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then what is the road to heaven paved with?”   “Humility.”  Says James Garner in a line from the movie Ya Ya Sisterhood.  Humility, or a softening of our ego mind has a lot to do with eliminating procrastination.

What is humility?  I checked my Word processing program for synonyms and the one I like best is “unassuming nature.”  Let us take it to mean no ego nature; no mask of a false self-image.  Humility is being authentic and genuine.  It is what is left when you strip away all the layers of ego we carry around as a mask.  So what does this have to do with procrastination?   Procrastination is a product of the ego mind.  It is those false layers of self image that are the root cause of our bad habits.  When we strip away the ego mind we get rid of the root causes of our procrastination.

When we are humble, or without ego, we say what we mean, and we do what we say.  We don’t pretend to others, or to our self, that we are something we are not.  Notice that nowhere do I relate being humble to being meek, weak, timid, or small.  Real humility comes with a quiet confidence that is a source of power and resolve.

So how does humility help break the pattern of procrastination and get on with what we really want?  It all begins with awareness.

The ego and the false self images of the mind tricks us into procrastinating.  When you are aware of these tricks you can avoid falling for them.  To help develop this awareness we’ll start by looking at the your belief system and ego and see how they work.

Why Do We Procrastinate

Let’s first look at how and why the ego mind causes us to create procrastination.  The first noticeable action is that we make a declaration of a good intention for our self or someone else.  We’ll use the example of meditating.  We make a declaration, either in our thoughts or out loud to someone else, “I’m going to start meditating.”  In our imagination we create an image of our self sitting serenely.   We essentially make a movie in our mind with our self image as the main character.  We are doing something good, we are feeling good, and the most important thing is that we feel good about our self in our little mental movie.  Every time we think about meditating and say we are going to start we project that good self image in our little mental movie. It all happens in about 1.5 seconds.  Then it is done.  In our mind we have accomplished the task and we go on with the next thought the mind has.

What this imaginary movie does is satisfy the mind’s need for to control our attention for a little bit and give us a sense of identification with the character in our projection.  In the process we get a nice feeling as we identify with a positive self image in our mental movie.   It is the belief that we are the character in this mental movie that serves the ego and gives us a small emotional boost.

But the ego is not done yet.  It is a bit more complicated than just the singular image from one story.  We actually have many images or aspects from the ego mind that we identify with. One of the common mental movie stories we project is of failure.  Our mind projects a story of us failing or not measuring up in some way and casts a different self image in the starring role.  Sometimes this happens in 1.5 seconds also.   It happens when we think about failing, or other people judging us, or being told no.   In any imagined story like that we are again the main character but in this story we are a failure, or are rejected.  In these mental movies we identify with the failure image and believe that the projected self image in the mental movie is us.  When we are unaware and do not distinguish between our Self, and the image of our self in our mental movie out ego has effectively taken us for an emotional ride.  In this false identification we believe we are the character in our thoughts.   In fact, this is only a facet of the ego.

So far we have both a success image that is a facet of the ego and a failure image that is a facet of the ego.  In the procrastination scenario the ego’s success image gets reinforced by us telling our self we are going to meditate.  The failure image gets reinforced when we don’t meditate.

Each day we don’t meditate the mind projects an image of our selves failing.  Each time we imagine that we will meditating we identify with that positive self image.  Each time we think about meditating we project one of these two images and identify with the success image or the failure image, or both.  When we think about meditating and don’t do it but we reinforce both false images of the ego.  It is these false images of the ego that get served and become stronger.  The detrimental aspect of this is only seen when you are aware that the mental projection of self isn’t you at all.

The Ego Mind on it’s Own

The failure image of the ego mind actually needs you to NOT meditate.  If you actually started meditating regularly, the failure based self image would have no basis for being.  We would no longer identify with the failure image.  If I say I am going to meditate, and then I do it, I have no reason to judge my self as a failure.  Of course the ego mind is likely to adapt in other ways.  Our mind will project that we should be meditating more, longer, our posture should be better, our mind should be quieter, and we should be having blessed out Samadhi experiences by now.  Since this isn’t happening the first week or month the ego mind will project that we are failing, and that we are doing something wrong.  This is just the false images of the ego mind trying in various ways for reinforcement by false identification.

When we don’t reinforce the failure image in our mind it makes the ego very uncomfortable.  The ego self image begins to feel like it is dying.  We might think that if a negative image were dying that we would feel better about our self, but that is not the case.  The collapsing false image in the mind creates a feeling that is very uncomfortable.  We go through all sorts of emotions as the false image that we believe is our identity is threatened.

When this agitation happens the mind becomes very busy with various mechanisms of distraction, deception, and denial trying to get us to not meditate.  It directs us to forget for a while that we said we were going to do it.  Then reminds us at a much later date that we didn’t do it so it can reinforce the belief we are the failure character in our mental movie.

When we think that we are going to sit down and meditate the mind senses the death of the failure image and comes up with numerous other things we could and should be doing.  Yes we got busy and the house is clean, laundry is done, bills paid, and the yard is looking pretty good.  Now there is no time to meditate, or we are too tired to meditate.  In this strategy the ego mind has won the game of distractions until we run out of time, energy, or both.  Then it waits an hour or a day, or a week, and reminds us that we failed to do what we said we were going to do.  It uses the situation to project a mental movie with us as the main character that failed.  If we identify with that failure character in our mind then the ego mind is not challenged and is comfortable again.  Yes we feel like an unworthy loser that has failed, but the ego mind is comfortable with that because it doesn’t feel like it is going to die.  Such is the challenge of not identifying with the images of your ego mind.

This article continued at Causes of Procrastination II

You can find practices and exercises for changing the core beliefs causing procrastination
in The Self Mastery Course on this site.

Overcoming Resistance

“I can’t see this working he said.” He said it with a tone and inflection both of inquiry, and hopelessness.   That’s what resistance will sound like sometimes.

“Neither could I when I started,”  I replied.   “You can’t see how it is going to happen. If you could, you would know what the change and experience was. You can’t see what the view from the mountain top will be while you are still standing in the valley.  You can’t see all the steps you will take and the turns you will make before you make them.”    He heard me and then he changed the topic….. more resistance.

Answering his questions didn’t make the resistance go away. Nor did it spur him to action. Maybe the question wasn’t the issue.    Maybe the questions were part of the problem.  So maybe we have to look at that part of our mind that asks the question or makes the statement of doubt.

“I don’t see how this will work.” It was a loaded statement. It was filled with an attitude of hopelessness and like beliefs. “This won’t work.  I’ll be just as unhappy after trying this as I am now so why even try.” The emotions were hopelessness, depressed, defeated, and that was before trying anything.    It’s like his attitude of hopelessness was in charge of his, questions, his decision making, and steering him away from any actions that would help.   It’s going to be a challenge when your belief state of hopelessness is determining your steps towards happiness.  The answers to the questions didn’t cure the attitude.

It wasn’t that the man didn’t have faith. He had a ton of faith. It’s just that it was invested in the conviction that the whole effort to change his emotional state was useless. That’s a lot of personal power spent convincing our self that we are powerless.

He got this. He understood what he was doing as I pointed these things out to him, but that didn’t stop him from changing the subject and continuing to do it. Resistance is like that. We ask useless questions that run a convincing internal dialog in our head while avoiding any action. The result of all that circling dialog is nothing. We end up where we started.

The important piece to acknowledge about resistance is that it results in staying where you are emotionally.    The questions about where the path leads, what turns will there be, how long will it take, etc are all keeping us from a step on our path.  Those endless intellectual questions keep us stuck.   Some of the smartest people with PhD’s are the best at getting stuck because they can ask endless questions.

What made a difference that day is when I asked  him how he felt. “What emotions are you feeling right now?” Are you miserable, unhappy, tormented by anxiety, fears, anger, jealousy, or other emotional reactions? Just look at how you feel. How long do you want to keep feeling that way?  “NO,  I don’t wan to keep feeling this way” he said.   “What do I got to do to change it?” Noticing how you feel is an action.  Taking the time to really feel it is an action.   With those clear perceptions, the motivation to change happened all by itself.    When we are in the midst of unhappiness we ask lousy questions.  Sometimes, the help we need, is just some guidance in asking better questions.

All I knew when I started taking my first steps was that I no longer wanted to be unhappy. I didn’t have a clue about how I would do it, what would work and what wouldn’t.  I just knew that I couldn’t stay in the emotional cycles I was living in.

I didn’t know how long it would take, what the path would be, or even if it would work. The only thing I knew was that I couldn’t keep living in the emotional drama I was doing. So that’s when I decided to take action.

If you find your self asking a lot of questions about a process that you can’t know until you do it for a while you are probably asking the wrong questions.   You are stuck.  The unhappy part of your mind is asking the questions it doesn’t know the right questions to ask.  Instead take a look at the emotions you feel and how often you do those same emotional cycles. Then ask your self how long you want to keep doing that. If that doesn’t motivate you to take action then you don’t need to go around in circles with questions.  Or maybe get with someone who is skilled at asking better questions and will cause you to find better answers.

No matter what you do to overcome your resistance, you can be sure it will be a different action.

You’ll find numerous actions to take in the Self Mastery Course and The Relationship Course that will help you break the patterns of unhappiness.