Archive for the ‘Anger’ Category
3 Personal Development Questions That Will Change Your Life
Thursday, March 11th, 2010 by Reeta Luthra
Although we know that we need to make a change in our lives, often we remain stuck because we can’t get a fix on just what it is that we have to do.
Action is what makes change happen – but action for action’s sake could leave you no better off than you are now.
To build habits that align us with the life we want to live, we need to be comfortable enough with ourselves to explore not only our core inner potentials, hopes and desires but also the darker areas that we try not to think about too much.
Because our personal hopes and ambitions can become buried, or at least hidden, under the combination of day-to-day living and other people’s expectations, we need a way of checking in with ourselves regularly in order to fan the flame of our own commitment to our own life.
This set of questions – incorporated into your daily thinking – will provide insights to support new habits that change your life.
1. What does happiness look like?
So often, we pursue happiness without appreciating that it is a process and not a “thing” – you already know this of course, but that doesn’t stop many of us from hoping that one day we’ll find this thing called happiness.
Define what happiness means to you – in all the various aspects of your life.
Think about your interpretation of happiness in terms that pull you towards the feeling, as opposed to focusing on the feelings that tell you that you’re not happy.
As you start to think regularly about the happiness feeling, you’ll train yourself into taking more of the decisions that invite this feeling into your life naturally.
2. What are you doing with your relationships?
The relationships we have with our friends, families and colleagues can tell us a lot about the way we view, treat and sabotage ourselves.
Are you nourishing your relationships? Are you shaping them into perhaps becoming subserviant or controlling? Are you allowing them to become fragmented, draining or stagnant? Examine your reasons for this.
It is said that you become a reflection of the 5 people you are closest to and spend most of your time with. Is this true for you? And is this reflection the one that you want to see in yourself?
3. Who do you need to forgive?
Forgiveness is the opposite of anger. These two powerful forces at opposite ends of the same spectrum are separated by ugly obstacles lying between them. Things you don’t want to go near so you stay put in the “safety” of your anger.
In my experience, forgiveness is not about accepting what happened. It’s about learning and personal growth and inner peace. When you speak to people who are dying, generally they don’t want to hold on to past hurts. They’ve experienced a paradigm shift making them realise that the wrongs are simply not important anymore.
You can chip away at the obstacles lying between you and forgiveness by taking a look at what these obstacles are made of. Is it your ego or your pride? Is it shame or failure? Is it other people’s expectations? Is it a sense of injustice? Being able to face these questions, together with the thoughts that arise from them, guides you to experiencing a paradigm shift of your own.
Working at these questions will give you a great headway into transforming the quality of your life.
They’re not the only questions of course and they always need to be backed with acting on what you learn.
What questions, thoughts or experiences have helped you make a profound change in your life?
Forgiving Your Way to Personal Development and Better Health
Friday, January 29th, 2010 by Reeta Luthra
When I ask a client if there is anyone they need to forgive, often the immediate answer is no.
However, when we start our work together and I delve deeper into their symptoms, there is almost always some resentment, anger, blame and even hate lying underneath. It’s not always unexpected – they already know that they have these feelings. But people often don’t relate these feelings to the need for forgiveness.
Conflict
Forgiveness has a sense of religious and spiritual unattainability that can put us off even thinking about it. We’re brought up with this ideal that says we MUST forgive others because it’s the moral thing to do.
And then comes the guilt. Are we a bad person because we don’t want to forgive? Are we evil because we want retribution for how we were treated? Are we self-centred because we want the other person to acknowledge how they hurt us? What does it say about our pain if we trivialise it by saying “ah, ok I forgive you, just don’t do it again.”
How can we consider forgiveness when there is so much conflict to address?
The Reason To Forgive
Take a moment to think about the meaning of these words:
ANGER
HATE
BLAME
RESENTMENT
Did they make you feel bad just reading them? Perhaps you felt your tummy tighten as you braced yourself against what they stand for. And that’s just from reading these words.
Now imagine what’s happening to your body as you carry these feelings around with you every single day.
It’s no coincidence that getting rid of these feelings improves confidence, self-esteem and your over-all sense of well-being. It’s no coincidence that actual physical pain, illness and disease start to reduce as you stop these feelings from gnawing away at your health from inside.
The key to this is forgiveness. The kind of forgiveness that comes from deep inside you. And this is a tremendously difficult thing to do when you’ve been badly hurt, neglected or abused.
But you already know – without me having to say it – that carrying these feelings around is hurting you and it’s doing nothing to make the other person repent for what they’ve done.
Forgiveness is not about morality. It’s about your good health.
Simone’s story
Simone (not her real name) came to me for help with her confidence soon after she’d started a new business. After working through the top layer of her issue, we eventually arrived at the core of what was keeping her stuck. Simone’s world and self-identity had been destroyed after having been sexually abused by her stepfather as a child.
She told me straight up that there was no way she was going to forgive this man for what he had done to her. And I never tried to make her.
Instead, I helped Simone find her own strategy for removing the impact of her stepfather. The day Simone found her strategy, her tears were unstoppable as she grieved for her lost childhood and all the opportunities that had slipped by her.
Now, when she thought about her stepfather, she felt no pain or hatred. Instead, she felt pity for the way he had behaved but saw it as his weakness, unrelated to her. She never said she’d forgiven him, but his impact on her life was gone. Her confidence was back and she seemed all lit up from inside – radiant and glowing.
Simone shows that forgiveness is a process by which we remove the negative impact of someone else’s behaviour from our spirit.
What kind of conflicts come up for you when you think about forgiveness?
Your Comments
- Mike: Reeta, my first visit here and I would just like to say I love your post. I have always...
- Julie Walraven | Resume Services: Hi Reeta, I haven’t been around much lately since I...
- Adamskib: A good point well made. I generally find other people find my comfort zone quite...
- Yael Brisker: Good to have you back! This post has hit the mark, and truly I need to give the...
- yael brisker: Hi Reetha! When I saw the title of your post the first thing I did was close the...
- Jim Connolly: Excellent post Reeta, I see myself as a poor multi-tasker, so I ensure that I...
- Yael Brisker: Reetha dear It Worked! There you go! number one is true! In admiration .-= Yael...
- Yael Brisker: Reetha Thank you so much, this post and your mention was the best moment of my...