A wise proverb
goes "You can't keep misery from coming, but you don't have to
give it a chair to sit on." Continual negative thinking about
your trials and tribulations sets up a victim belief pattern in
the mind. To break a pattern of feeling sorry for yourself, literally
give your misery a chair to sit on! When you are unhappy about
something, why not revel in being unhappy until you get good and
tired of your miserable state.
To captivate
on your misery, designate a misery chair in your house. Choose
an uncomfortable chair that does not fit your body. Perhaps
you can find a wooden chair with no pillows that is too tall
or short for your body frame. Place your new acquisition, the
misery chair, in an out of the way place in your home that is
dull and boring. If you are going to be miserable, then you
might as well be as miserable as you can be!
Every time
you start to feel sorry for yourself, watch what is going on
in your mind. After a spell of observing how you pull yourself
down with depressing thoughts and anxiety, take yourself off
to the misery chair. Catch yourself in the act of becoming unhappy
and give yourself a choice--either stop the objectionable thoughts
at once or go sit in the misery chair. The key is to make a
commitment to make yourself go and sit if you don't stop on
the first warning. This challenge will be a test of whether
you really want to decrease the amount of time you spend with
depressive thoughts. If you really want to make changes in your
thinking patterns, then make the agreement with yourself to
sit in the misery chair as an exercise of self observation and
change.
Watch how
your mind plays tricks on you to keep you in your misery! Listen
to yourself and what you say and think as different events happen
during the day. Consciously monitor your verbal and nonverbal
reactions to get a better understanding of how you view the
world and yourself. If you find the victim in yourself as you
age with the aches and pains, beware--the victim in you will
define your existence to make sure that you live a life of misery.
Moving
out of victimhood is taking one's own personal power. Your life
will be sufficient and happy to the extent you deal with the
victim thoughts. Take data on your thought and speech patterns.
Be aware of the discomfort in your body when you say certain
things and act in certain ways that are not consistent with
who you really are. Our bodies provide marvelous feedback in
terms of feelings of embarrassment, anxiety and even physical
symptoms when what we say or do does not fit.
Paracelsus
said, "As man imagines himself to be, so shall he be, and he
is that which he imagines." As a woman thinketh, so she is.
Clean up your life by cleaning up your negative thinking and
language. Energy follows thought. You actually become what you
think. Say and think only what you want to become true in your
life. If you don't want something to happen don't give it energy
by thinking about it. Challenge yourself to use words which
promote acceptance and tolerance instead of those which promote
separation from your true self and from others. Learn to never
say things which limit you or another person.
For example
say " I made an error when I ..." rather than "I am bad, stupid,
etc." State undesirable characteristics about yourself as temporary
conditions or lessons to be learned rather than absolute facts.
The "I am ____ and that's it" type statements can be modified
to include a time frame that takes into account that you are
learning something new or the lack of effort that you are willing
to put into something to change it. In this framework, "I am
fat" could be changed to "I'm temporarily fat" Or "I'm food
choices challenged." "I'm no good in Math" could be changed
to "I'm just not willing to spend the time and effort to balance
my checkbook." When nagging, critical self-statements creep
into your thoughts, change them by making an immediate positive
affirmation.
Listen
to your language for words which limit you rather than affirm
and empower you. Words like "can't, never could, trying to,
hope or plan to" all suggest the possibility of failure. Don't
let your language limit you in any way. Positive statements
about yourself will be more powerful when put in a forthright
fashion in the present tense. "I am going to___" is a much stronger
statement than "I plan or hope to ____ or I'll try to___." The
affirmative phrases "I am ___" and "I will ___" are declarations
that have a hearty energy of accomplishment to them.
If you
can't bring your misery thoughts under control then it's off
to the misery chair for you. When you sit in the misery chair,
give yourself permission to be as miserable as you can be. Bring
your unhappy thoughts to your full conscious mind. Go to it
with a vengeance. No pleasant thoughts here! As you sit in the
chair, feel the physical discomfort of your body that matches
the mental discomfort of your mind. Set a time limit on how
long you want to be miserable. Beware what kind of thoughts
cause your mood to shift downward into anxiety and depression.
Allow yourself a set time--five minutes of misery per episode
should be a reasonable amount. You might even remain in the
misery chair a minute longer than you need, to get the full
effect of how you are choosing to victimize yourself.
After making
yourself good and miserable, you may decide that you have had
enough and go on about your business as usual. You might even
start charting how many minutes a day that you are sitting in
the chair. The idea is to beat your own record by spending less
and less every day. The challenge of this exercise is to clean
out your mental attic of cobwebs of victim thoughts and words.
If you
find yourself refusing to sit in the misery chair but remaining
in negative thinking, then you may not be ready to make the
decision to change yet. You may have decided on a subconscious
or conscious level that you need to punish yourself for a longer
period of time. With the frame of mind of staying as you are
in the status quo of negative thinking ask yourself, "How much
punishment do I need to engage in? How many times do I have
to beat myself up? How much gall do I need to drink?" If this
scenario happens, then do it and hurry up and suffer and get
it over with. Increase your suffering intensely so that you
can "give it up!"
The
Course In Miracles tells us "Teach only love, for that is
what you are." One dictate of our older years is to think and
say only loving things about ourselves and others and make corrections
in a gentle and loving way when we slip up by saying, "Do I
have a higher thought than that?"
Practice
the art of turning victim thought to higher thoughts. Affirm
daily to listen to your inner language as well as the words
that you express verbally. By listening with the heart and making
good choices about all types of expression, you can promote
harmony in your life as well as in those around you. The test
of a calm, contented life is to monitor your misery thoughts.
Remember, if you find misery coming to you just tell it, "I'm
not giving you a chair to sit on!"
Back to Angries Out
More For Grownups
