If we fall into the misunderstanding that our agitated feelings are caused by other people, then we’re more likely to experience resentment, hostility and have other relationship problems. Today I sit in awe when I see this happen because it’s one of the world’s greatest and believable lies we all fall in and out of all the time.

This is one of the biggest challenges that we live with as human beings.  “It’s always because of the person out there that I’m upset.”  How many times have you heard yourself complain and say,  “it’s her fault that I’m upset?” How many times have our friends and family said the same thing?  But I now know that there is a better and healthier way to live.

We don’t experience anything unless it goes through our thinking first

It’s simply our level of understanding or the lack thereof, that gets us to believe that we are experiencing life from the outside-in, i.e. that the outside world is responsible for how we feel. Now I know you may be thinking that  it doesn’t look that way but I invite you to at least reflect on the idea and the possibility, that in truth we don’t experience anything unless it goes through our thinking first.  This is what we call the inside-out approach.  It’s a much more healthy and peaceful way to live.

Taking 100% responsibility  for our feelings can be scary

This is a much better approach because it allows us to take 100% responsibility for what we are experiencing moment to moment.  But this can be scary because it might be easier in some ways to buy into the lie that our negative feelings are caused by other people, it allows us to shirk our own responsibility for our feelings by putting the blame on someone else.  It’s almost like we secretly want to fall into the misunderstanding of where our feelings are coming from so we can point the proverbial finger outwards, at someone else instead of inwards back to ourselves.

Our Ego that loves to point the finger at somebody else for our own thoughts of frustration

Imagine what happens when your partner tells you,  “when you leave that mess on the table, it upsets me.  When you start talking about the football, I feel left out.”  Now if my partner accuses me of this, doesn’t mean I should be insensitive to her feelings.  But if I’m aware of the outside-in experience she’s having, and the fact that she doesn’t yet understand the outside-in lie she is currently living in, I can at least be sympathetic and understanding if I’m not caught up in the same lie as well!  And even if I am caught up in my own self-righteous thinking,  I usually calm down pretty quickly when I realise that I was blaming her for my frustration when she accused me.  This  all happens because we have been temporarily blinded by our Ego that wants to point the finger at somebody else for our own thinking that might be bringing a temporary experience of frustration.

Getting Hoodwinked and the low state of mind

When we get are temporarily hoodwinked into thinking that something other than my thinking is causing my stress, we’re usually in a very low state of mind.  Our mind states are like the waves of the sea.  They’re always going up and down. Our mood is another way of referring to our state of mind.  When you’re in a rotten mood or low state of mind, life on the outside usually doesn’t look very nice.  When my kids don’t clean up after themselves, they better stay out of the way when I’m in a rotten mood because the “mess out there” is going to upset me.  (Again, I forgot that in truth nothing upsets me except for me).

I’m now in a low state of mind where I’ve been hit by the proverbial “outside-in” approach.   And when that happens, get out of my way because I’m going to start yelling and screaming at the kids to clean up their mess because they upset me, ‘they’ are the cause of my stress.  And it looks so real that my consciousness, my current understanding is skewed and limited to what I can see in this moment, which is not serving me very well because it’s like dealing with a closed book that is non-negotiable.  At this stage, I’m not willing to be open and see if there is anything that I can’t yet see.  Is there anything there that I don’t yet know?

Catching myself in the act is the beginning of the salvation

But once I’m onto myself and ‘catch myself in the act’; that begins the salvation from the lie I’ve been caught up in.  It’s an awareness that we are always dipping in and out of depending on where our state of mind is.  When we hold on to our heavy investments of our ideas without the realisation that there could be another way, there could be something out there that we still don’t know, we are just like the blind groping in the dark of our limited vision of the world.  And we spin out of control by ruminating over and over again at how unfair it all is.

Humility and lightness happen when we let go of our heavily invested thoughts

The magic happens when we get humble and drop our Ego of what we’re currently invested via our thinking.  The feeling is wonderful like having a heavy weight taken off us when we realise that we don’t always have the answers.  We then become a receptacle for something bigger, new and fresh thoughts begin to come to us.  I feel much lighter and happier inside. Sometimes I amaze myself by what I come up with in a state of clarity.

It’s like looking into infinity

It all happens when I’m willing to let go and look beyond my current thinking and awareness. The best way to describe is that it’s like looking into infinity and waiting to see what manifests in a tangible way.  It’s like watching something come from the formless into form.  That’s how it works with thought.  Let me make it very clear that it does, however, happen when I’m not trying.  I know that sounds counter intuitive but that is how it happens.  If you try to force it then it usually doesn’t happen.

The situation didn’t change but my thoughts changed

All of sudden the other person who was the cause of my problems becomes less significant. The situation doesn’t change but my feelings on it did and that just made it much more cope-able.  The other person who was the  original source of my problem doesn’t become such a problem anymore.  This is because I ‘woke up’ and remembered that 100% of my experience is coming via my thinking and not anyone else’s.  At this point, I just bought out of the lie of the outside-in approach and dipped right back into the inside-out paradigm of life.

The downs are more graceful and the highs are even higher

As my awareness of the principles grows, I find my downs are more graceful because I often wake up in the middle of my rage and realise, “hey, this too will pass.”  So I don’t get as angry anymore because I always know I have this innate health inside that will always show up when I’m open to it and it will give me the answers I need.  When my thinking calms down, I’m open to an insight – a sight from within which comes from beyond what I currently know.

Life is a like a Seesaw

You’re always going to get through it because you have the inner GPS that’s always sending out signals on how to cope and deal with any situation you’re put in.  When you let go and just relax without trying and doing,  that’s when you become open to something new.  You go from falling into the misunderstanding to falling out of it.  And life is like a Seesaw because you’re going to fall into it and fall out of it again and again.  Don’t beat yourself up when this happens because we all do it and that’s fine.  It’s called the human condition that we are all part of.

If you haven’t already please watch the video and I would love to see your comments and any views you have on this.