The Butterfly

Once upon a time, a man found a butterfly that was starting to hatch from its cocoon. He sat down and watched the butterfly for hours as it struggled to force itself through a tiny hole. Then, it suddenly stopped making progress and looked like it was stuck.

Therefore, the man decided to help the butterfly out. He took a pair of scissors and cut off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily, although it had a swollen body and small, shrivelled wings.

The man thought nothing of it, and he sat there waiting for the wings to enlarge to support the butterfly. However, that never happened. The butterfly spent the rest of its life unable to fly, crawling around with small wings and a swollen body.

Despite the man’s kind heart, he didn’t understand that the restricting cocoon and the struggle needed by the butterfly to get itself through the small hole were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings to prepare itself for flying once it was free.

Moral of the story: Our struggles in life help to develop our strengths. Without struggles, we never grow and get stronger, so it’s important for us to tackle challenges on our own, and not rely on help from others all the time.

The Obstacle in Our Path

In ancient times, a king had his men place a boulder on a roadway. He then hid in the bushes, and watched to see if anyone would move the boulder out of the way. Some of the king’s wealthiest merchants and courtiers passed by and simply walked around it.

Many people blamed the King for not keeping the roads clear, but none of them did anything about getting the stone removed.

One day, a peasant came along carrying vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and tried to push the stone out of the way. After much pushing and straining, he finally managed.

After the peasant went back to pick up his vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold coins and note from the King explain that the gold was for the person who removed the boulder from the road.

Moral of the story: Every obstacle that we come across gives us an opportunity to improve our circumstances, and while the lazy complain, others are creating opportunities through their kind hearts, generosity, and willingness to get things done.

A Pound of Butter

Once, there was a farmer who regularly sold butter to a baker. One day, the baker decided to weigh the butter to see if he was getting the exact amount that he asked for. He found out that he wasn’t, so he took the farmer to court.

The judge asked the farmer if he uses any measure to weigh the butter. The farmer replied, “Your Honor, I’m primitive. I don’t have a proper measure, but I do have a scale.”

The judge replied, “Then how do you weigh the butter?”

The farmer replied; “Your Honor, long before the baker started buying butter from me, I have been buying a pound loaf of bread from him. Every day, when the baker brings the bread, I put it on the scale and give him the same weight in butter. If anyone is to be blamed, it’s the baker.”

Moral of the story: In life, you get what you give. Don’t try to cheat others.

What is the meaning of True Love?

What is the meaning love? Love is what we experience in any moment that we are with someone without having or believing any judgements about that person (“good” or “bad”).

What Is The Meaning of Love – The 7 Inherent Qualities of Love

Love is complete acceptance: When we allow someone to be exactly as they are, without any belief that they aren’t good enough, without any belief that they would be “better” if they were different, this is love.

Love is completely unconditional: Love has no conditions. 

When we truly love someone, we can’t stop loving them, regardless of what they do or say. If our love is dependent upon the other person acting and speaking how we want, then this love is completely conditional. We often confuse this to be love, but this is just positive thoughts about someone. This is just loving what a person says or does, not loving them. Positive thoughts or the thought “I love you” isn’t necessary to love. Sometimes it even gets in the way.

Love is selfless: True love doesn’t want anything in return, because there is nothing it needs. We just love for the sake of love. When we love someone, we don’t look for them to fill our needs, love us back, and all those types of things. If that is what we are looking for, then we are just using the other person. What is the meaning of love? Love is completely selfless.

What Prevents Us From Loving

To understand what is the meaning of love, we really need to understand what prevents us from loving. When we believe our judgements about someone, we can feel anger, disappointment, or resentment, or we can just feel separate from that person. All of this blocks us or prevents us from loving the person we are with.

When we are with someone, and believing our judgements, commentary, or labels about them, this puts up a wall or a barrier between us. We aren’t connecting with them, loving them, and truly being with them. We are just experiencing our thoughts about them. For example, we might experience our thoughts about how they aren’t appreciative enough, aren’t in good enough shape, aren’t a good enough father etc. But these thoughts just get in the way of love.

Love Eliminates The Sense Of Separation or Loneliness

When we believe our judgements about people, it can seem as if we are alone or separate from others. This creates this longing for connection and love. All it takes to have this connection we yearn for is to just be with people without judgement. In the absence of judgement, love is what remains.

When we are not believing our judgements about someone, we are loving them, or in other words, we are being present with them (i.e. living in the moment with them). When we are present with someone, we automatically feel a closer connection to, and more intimacy with, the people around us. Our feeling of separateness from people disappears.

You Always Wanted To Love… Not To Be Loved

If you want to feel love, it is helpful to first understand what is the meaning of love. If someone else loves you, but you don’t care about that person, how much impact does that person’s love have on your level of happiness? You may have noticed, it has very little impact. If receiving love from someone else had the power to make us feel good, then anyone’s love would give us the same good feeling. But, clearly this isn’t how life works.

The reason is because fulfilment doesn’t come from receiving love; the feeling of happiness and completion we have always wanted comes from loving others. When we love someone without wanting or expecting anything in return, we feel free, open, and wonderful.

To read my full blog post all about how the feeling you want in life doesn’t come from being loved, but actually from giving love, please click here

To Live In The Moment Is To Love

Generally, we are seeking love from others to make us happy. When we are living in the moment, we are already happy because the thoughts that would normally make us unhappy aren’t there. Since we are naturally happy when we are living in the moment, there is nothing we need or want from others. We can stop looking for others to make us happy… whether that is looking to them to love us, or just fill our needs.  If there is nothing we want from others, then we are just free to love.

We don’t have to worry about whether other people will love us, leave us, or make us happy, because we are already happy. None of that matters when we are already content. We are free to purely love others, and we completely forget about the idea of seeking love.

It Is Helpful To First Understand What Love Is Not

Here are 7 things that many of us innocently mistake to be love. To read the full blog post of what love is not, with explanations of each misconception, please click here

1. When we look for someone to love us, we are looking for someone we can use to make us happy
2. If we are trying to change or improve our partner, in that moment, we are not loving them
3. Positive thoughts is not love
4. Excitement about our future with someone creates butterflies and nice feelings, but it isn’t based on love
5. If we require our partner to do things for us, in that moment, it’s not love
6. Loving how someone seems to make us feel isn’t love
7. The fear of getting hurt isn’t part of love

Love Has No Limits

We tend to think that the meaning of love is to love one person. But truly, what is the meaning of love? The beautiful thing about love is that we don’t have to limit our loving to just our romantic partner or our family. We can love everyone we encounter. When we are present, we have nothing to fear, so we don’t have to create any boundaries about who can receive our love. When we are with anyone without judging them in any way, we feel love for them. It doesn’t matter if this person is our spouse or our waiter in a restaurant.

Love you all!

Thank you so much my dear Friends.

God Bless !!

How to stop hating yourself

“Why do I hate myself?” and “How to stop hating yourself?”

I’m going to provide you with 9 different reasons and explanations to help show you why you hate yourself, and how to stop hating yourself is going to be embedded within that.

1) You don’t hate yourself in every moment

When you say “I hate myself”, it is said as if this is some permanent thing, as if this is some factual part of your existence. “I hate myself”—that’s true and factual—“I hate myself”. Let me ask you a question. Do you hate yourself in every moment? When you’re having fun, do you hate yourself? When you’re enjoying yourself: when you’re watching TV, when you’re playing video games, when you’re eating something you like, when you’re with friends and having fun with them, when you’re playing a sport, when you’re dancing, do you hate yourself in all of those moments? Probably not.

I’m sure there are some breaks in your life when you don’t hate yourself. When we say “I hate myself”, it seems really powerful and strong as if that’s some factual, consistent, steady, and stable part of our existence. But that’s not true.

When a thought arises that says “I hate myself” we feel hatred towards ourselves and shame. But, when that thought doesn’t pop up in our minds, there is no feeling of hating ourselves. It’s not as though hating ourselves is part of who we are, and therefore that’s going to be part of our life forever. Hatred comes and goes as thoughts come and go. The feeling of hatred stays exactly as long as the thought “I hate myself” keeps our attention. When that thought doesn’t show up in our minds, we are already fine with ourselves and life. In addition, in any moment that we’re distracted by from the thought that says “I hate myself”, we feel fine. There is no hatred at all.

Hating ourselves only exists as a thought, not as a fact. This is why you don’t feel hatred when you are distracted from your thoughts through entertainment, food, or some other thing that you enjoy.

2) You are not the one who hates yourself

The second thing to understand about hating yourself is to be clear about who is the one hating. When you say “I hate myself”, there are two characters there. There is the “I” that hates, and the one that is being hated. So, which one are you? And which is the one that hates?

When a thought doesn’t show up in our minds, there is no hatred at all. When our full attention is on TV, music, or video games, there is no hatred. We are just here being as we are.

But, then thoughts pop up and say “I hate that I do this”, “I hate that I’m like”, “I hate that my life is like”. As soon as thoughts say “I hate”, hatred appears. You exist in every moment, but hatred only exists when a thought pops up to say “I hate”. Therefore, thoughts are hating here, not you. Because when those thoughts aren’t here, there’s no hate. When the thought is here, there is hate.

3) The thoughts that hate aren’t you or yours

Who is this one that hates? Thoughts. But are these thoughts yours? Well, did you pick the thought I hate myself? Did you look into a basket of potential thoughts and then pick the one that says “I hate myself” to put into your mind. No, of course not. It just showed up. Where did it come from? You have no idea. One second there’s no thought here, the next second there is.

The most important thing to you and every human being is to have peace and happiness. Therefore, you would never choose to have a thought show up in your mind that hates. Why would you? It creates suffering, not peace. Nobody wants to hate themselves.

Since you didn’t pick to have the thought “I hate myself”, it has nothing to do with you. That thought is not yours.

4) Thoughts hate because society teaches us million ideas of “good” and “bad”

Why thoughts show up to hate? It all comes from our conditioning. In other words, our unique set of experiences in life, our life history. When you were young, when you were two-years-old, did you hate yourself? No, almost certainly not. We’re all just going through life enjoying ourselves at: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 more-or-less. Just having fun, regardless of whether we’re fat or skinny, we’re just there being ourselves. If we’re overweight, we don’t feel ashamed about being overweight, we’re just whatever weight we are. If we’re shy, we don’t feel it’s bad that we’re shy, we’re just happy as we are.

But, then what happens is we get taught all of these ideas of “perfect”, all of these ideas of the way things “should be”, and the “right way”. We learn that skinny is “good”; but fat is “bad”. So, then, if we’re overweight, we say that “it’s bad I’m overweight”; and we learn to hate ourselves. We learn that “shy is bad” and “outgoing is good”. So, then, if we’re shy, we learn to feel ashamed and hate ourselves. We learn that being in a relationship is “perfect”, being single is “bad”. When we’re young, before we learn that, of course we’re happy. It doesn’t matter that we’re single. But then, once we learn this, we feel bad about being single.

When thoughts say “I hate myself that I’m like this”, “it’s bad that I’m like that”, “it’s not good enough that my life is like this”, all of that is just comparing our life to what our particular society and upbringing has taught is the “right”, “perfect”, and “good” way to be and live.

5) You can stop believing the thoughts that hate

If someone approached you on the street and said “There is going to be a big earthquake in 5 minutes”, how would you react? Well, if you believed them, you might feel afraid. But, if you didn’t believe them, you would feel nothing. The same is true with the words in your mind, when you believe the words in your mind, they create emotions. But, when you don’t believe those words, they don’t create emotions.

When a stranger approaches you and says something, you don’t just automatically believe them. You would evaluate whether they were trustworthy, and you would look for evidence to see if what they are saying is true. However, when it comes to the thoughts in your mind, you automatically just believe everything that is said. We need to approach thoughts with the same skepticism as we would the words of a stranger.

When a thought says “Something about me is bad” or “It is bad that I do this” or “It is bad that I live here” or “It is bad that I don’t have that”, you just believe that this must be true. It showed up in your mind, so it just must be true. But, how do you know it’s true? How do you know it’s bad to act like this, live like this etc? What is the evidence that it is bad? Where did that thought come from?

In order to see that this thought might not be true, you could ask yourself “Can I think of a few reasons or examples as to why the opposite could be true?” Or, you could ask yourself “Could somebody else think the opposite?” You might think something about you or your life is “bad” because the people around you also think it is “bad”. But, this is the case because you have all been trained in the same way, by the same media, culture, etc.

So you think you’re boring, but somebody might think you’re fun. In some cultures, they consider it to be “good” to have more fat or weight in certain areas, and think it is “bad” to be skinny. In some societies in Asia, they consider to be “bad” to have darker skin, whereas in America, everyone wants to get a tan and think it is “bad” to be pale skinned. Some cultures decide it is best to get married in low 20s, some think in late 30s. Some cultures think it is “best” to become wealthy and successful, while others decide that this is selfish and “bad” way to live. Some people want a shy and introspective romantic partner, some want an outgoing one.

No belief about what is “good” and “bad” are true and real. They are all perspectives based on where and how you were raised. It’s all just beliefs. Just beliefs of what we were taught. The thoughts just come from society, from the media, from parents, and everything else we were exposed to in our life. There is nothing about you or your life that is actually “bad”.

6) You’re not to blame for your thoughts because you don’t pick them

Since these thoughts come from what we’re taught; we don’t control them. They’re not our fault. You didn’t decide to be brought up with the parents you had. You didn’t decide to be brought up in the place, or in the society that you had. You didn’t decide what the TV shows and movies taught you. You didn’t decide any of that. Therefore, you don’t control the thoughts that arise in your mind. If every person, movie, and magazine didn’t teach you that skinny was good , fat is bad; shy is bad, outgoing is good; big houses mean you’re successful, small houses means you’re a failure; married is best, single is bad; then you wouldn’t have any of these thoughts/beliefs.  The same is true with every single idea your mind has about what is a “bad” way to look, act, speak, and interact… what types of jobs, living situations, and marital status are “bad”.

But if you didn’t get a choice in what beliefs you were taught, then you didn’t pick what thoughts show up in your mind. You don’t control the thoughts that come up. And that means something. Do you know what that means? That means it’s not your fault that you seem to hate yourself.

It’s not your fault that all of these negative thoughts are going on in your mind. It has nothing to do with you. So you can let yourself off of the hook. It doesn’t mean that you’re stupid that you hate yourself. It doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you, that you hate yourself. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s not personal. You were just brought up in a society that taught you a million ideas about what is “bad”.

7) The hated qualities don’t exist in reality

The fifth thing to look at with hating ourselves is to investigate the qualities that we hate. First of all, where do these qualities exist? So we think “I am shy”, where does that exist in this moment? Shyness. Can you see it? Can you touch it? “I am shy”. It’s only a thought, it’s not real. “I am unlikable”. Where does unlikable exist? Show me it, find it. “I am unlikable”. Does it exist as a fact? Is it real? “I am boring”. Where does boring exist? How do you know? Where does failure exist? You think, “I am a failure.” Show me failure. Does it exist in reality? Is it tangible? Is it factual? Show me. Where is it? Can you find it? Locate it. It’s just a thought, it’s not real. All these qualities that we think are factually who we are truly only exist in our imagination.

The strange thing about this is that the qualities we hate aren’t even qualities at all. They’re just thoughts, that come sometimes, and then go. If the only time “I am boring” exists is when a thought shows up, then that can’t be who you are. If the only time “I am a failure” exists is when a thought says it, then it can’t be who you are. Your hand continues to exist whether or not you’re thinking about it because it is a real thing. It is not a figment of your imagination.

8) The qualities that are hated are not who you are

To approach this from a different angle, you are always you. You have always been you. When you were born, were you you? When you were five, were you you? When you were ten, were you you? Of course, you were always you. Throughout changes to your body, feelings, thoughts, actions, and everything you were always there. There was something that never changed, the fundamental you. You have always been there. Therefore, if something comes and goes, while you remain, then that thing can’t be you.

For example, you may think “I am shy. That is who I am”. But, take a moment to ask yourself the following questions: “Am I always shy? Or sometimes am I outgoing with some people, and then I’m shy with others? Am I outgoing in some situations? At some ages was I not shy?” If shyness is here sometimes, and not here at all during other times, then that can’t be a part of who you are. You have always been you. So, you can’t BE shy, you can’t BE boring because you weren’t that in every moment. In some moments there is shyness and other moments outgoingness, but that isn’t who you are.

You exist right now, therefore anything that doesn’t exist right now isn’t real or you. So, where is hated quality right now?

9) Separating the facts from your thoughts about the facts

To show you the difference between facts and thoughts, please take a moment to look at my nose in the video above. Now tell me, is it an attractive nose or an ugly nose? The truth is that attractive and ugly don’t exist as part of the facts. If you think it is ugly, ugly doesn’t exist as part of the nose. The nose is located in NY (most of the time), but “ugly” is located in your mind wherever you are. “Ugly” is not part of the nose, the facts, or reality. “Ugly” is a thought about a fact. It is a concept.

When we say that we are suffering because something about our life or who we are is “bad”, we are saying that the facts have made me unhappy. But, the facts haven’t made you unhappy. You have confused the facts with your thoughts about the facts. “Bad” doesn’t exist as part of the facts. That is a strong about the facts. We superimpose “bad” (or “ugly”) onto the facts and claim it is actually part of what we are seeing.

The facts themselves are completely neutral. There’s nothing to hate about yourself because you’re just here being. Who are you? We’re just here, being; nothing else. There is nothing “bad” about you in reality. “Bad” only exists as a thought about something.

I hope this post about how to stop hating yourself was helpful
So why we hate ourselves is because we follow the thoughts in our mind and believe that they’re true. But it has nothing to do with us because we didn’t pick the thoughts, we didn’t put them in our minds, and we didn’t control the teachers (formal and informal) that told us what is good and bad.

Now, come back to this moment. You’re just here; nothing “bad”, nothing to hate my dear Friends.

God Bless !!

Love Yourself

How To Love Yourself

When we love ourselves, we are going to be happy, regardless of our situation or what others think of us. When we don’t love ourselves, we are going to be unhappy, regardless of our situation or what others think of us. Therefore, loving ourselves is quite important. In this blog post, I am going to explain how to love yourself.

The Most Popular Tactics To Love Yourself Don’t Work

Before we get into exactly how to love yourself, I think it is important to address why the most popular and most common tactics for how to love yourself can’t give you the results that you want.

The 2 most commons tactics that I hear for how to love yourself are:

1)      Positive affirmations

2)      Treating yourself to something physically nice

Both of these tactics are fine. There is nothing wrong with doing either of these. But, if we look at these tactics closely, we can discover why they don’t have the ability give us the love that we are looking to have for ourselves.

If I think I am unlovable, then there is a reason why I believe that. If I just tell myself over and over again that I am lovable, it is very unlikely to make me fully believe that I am lovable because this statement doesn’t address the original reason for why I believed I was unlovable.

How To Love Yourself: Why Doing Something Nice For Yourself Won’t Make You Love Yourself
The only reason why we don’t love ourselves is because we believe negative thoughts about ourselves or our situation. These negatives thoughts are what create our shame and sense of unworthiness or insufficiency. When we treat ourselves to something nice externally (spa, vacation, dessert etc.), we are basically saying “I deserve this”, “it is nice that I get to experience this”, “this is something I should give myself because I am worth it”. And that is completely fine. There is no problem with this at all. It can feel enjoyable to do these things. If you enjoy it, continue doing it.

Now that we see why the 2 most common tactics for how to love yourself don’t really work, let’s examine how to truly experience love for ourselves.

The first question you have to ask yourself is “Why do I not love myself?”, “What do I not like myself?”, “Why do I feel unlovable?”, “What do I not like about my situation?”

We are generally so busy entertaining ourselves and distracting ourselves from our thoughts that we don’t allow ourselves to just be with our thoughts. And if we don’t see what thoughts are making us feel unlovable, then we certainly can’t address these thoughts.

Since negative thoughts about yourself and your life are what make you not love yourself, the answer to the question “How to love yourself?” is to address the thoughts that make you not love yourself. In order to love yourself, you need to eliminate the thoughts that make you feel unlovable.

What Thoughts Are Making You Not Love Yourself?

It may seem scary to look at why you truly don’t love love yourself. But, if you don’t look at these thoughts, if you don’t identify the reason why you don’t love yourself, you will just keep feeling the way that you do and going through life trying to make everyone else love you in order to help you love yourself. And that creates a lot of suffering.

For some of us, we might not love ourselves because we believe “I am unattractive”,  “my personality isn’t good enough”, “I am a failure”, “I am not successful enough”, “I am a bad parent”, “I am not fun enough”, or “I am not outgoing enough”. For other people, there is often no specific trait that we don’t like about ourselves. Rather, there might just be an underlying sense of unworthiness or unlovability.

You can have a look right now to see if you can find your reason. You can ask yourself any of the following questions: “Why do I not love myself?”, “What do I not like myself?”, “Why do I feel unlovable?”, “What do I not like about my situation?”

The answers might be very obvious to you, but it also might be very difficult to identify the reason or thought as to why you don’t love yourself. If you don’t want to do it right now, try to give some time toward this discovery process later on. And be patient with yourself. You can’t force it.

How to love yourself: Whatever thoughts are making you feel unlovable or unworthy, these thoughts pop up out of nowhere. You didn’t pick these thoughts. You didn’t choose them. They are not under your control. If you controlled your thoughts, you quite obviously would choose to never think negative thoughts about yourself. So this is not personal issue. Therefore, you can be gentle with yourself.

How to love yourself in this world

An Exercise To Discover That There Is Nothing Wrong With You

We tend to think that we feel insufficient because we ARE insufficient. We tend to think that we feel unlovable because we ARE unlovable. We tend to think that we feel lacking in our life because there IS something wrong with us.

But I would like to help you see how these assumptions could not be further from the truth. This will be the key in seeing how to love yourself. In order to help you do this, I would like to ask you to ask yourself the following questions:

1) Can I Escape My Unwanted Feeling When I Am Being Distracted From Thoughts?

How do I feel when I am being entertained? How do I feel when I am engaging in my favourite hobby? Do I feel lacking, do I feel unworthy, do I feel insufficient, do I not love myself in these moments? In the moments that we are having fun, we don’t feel unlovable or unworthy. In other words, when we are not thinking about ourselves (when we are distracted from thoughts), we don’t feel unlovable, unworthy, lacking, or insufficient.

If your feeling of unlovability was caused by you being unlovable, then you would continue to experience this feeling when you are simply distracted by thoughts. If your feeling of insufficiency was created by you being insufficient, then you wouldn’t be able to escape this feeling simply by distracting yourself from thoughts. If your feeling of lack was created by there being something wrong with you, then would still have this feeling even while you were being entertained.

If all it takes to eliminate your feelings of not loving yourself is to simply distract yourself from thoughts, then it must mean that your feeling of not loving yourself isn’t created by anything about yourself… but only created by thoughts about yourself.

What is the way for how to love yourself

2) Is There Factually Something “Wrong” With Me, Or Does This Idea Only Exist As A Thought About A Fact?

Take a moment and ask yourself “What are the negative things that I think about myself?” Then, ask yourself: Does this exact as fact? Am I factually unworthy of love? Am I factually unattractive? Is my situation factually bad? Is there factually something wrong with me?

Can I touch these concepts? Can I see them? Can I hold them? Can I grasp them and show them to others? If it is a fact, is this something that can be seen by everyone? Where does unlovability exist? Where is my “bad” trait? Am I not good enough factually, or does that idea only exist as a thought? What are the facts, and what are thoughts about the facts?

It is not that you ARE unlovable or unworthy. It is not as though there is something wrong with you or you are insufficient. It is not as though you have any “bad” personality traits or “bad” physical characteristics.  “Bad” can’t exist as a fact. “Bad”, “not good enough”, “unlovable”, and “unworthy” can only exist as a thought about a fact.

Therefore, your experience of being insufficient, not loving yourself, or feeling like there is something wrong with you can’t be created by the facts of who you are, what you look like, how you act or what your situation is. These feelings can only be created by thoughts in your mind. So it is not as though you ARE unlovable, it is just that you sometimes feel this way when certain thoughts pop up in your mind and you believe them.

An Exercise To Discover That Your Thoughts About Yourself Aren’t True

When you discover that your feelings of not loving yourself aren’t created by something about YOU, that can weaken the strength of these feelings, and possibly even free you from them.

But, in addition, once you see what thoughts are keeping you from loving yourself, then you can begin to question whether these thoughts are actually true. And when you stop believing a negative thought about yourself, it stops creating the emotion.

Take a moment to think of your answer to the question “What are the negative things that I think about myself?” Then, based on your answer, you can ask yourself the following:

Can I think of any reasons or examples as to why the opposite might be true? If the opposite could be true, can I be sure that my thought about myself is true?

Could someone else have the opposite perspective? Could someone think that I am attractive, enjoyable to be around, and completely worthy of love? If other people could have a positive opinion about what I think is “bad”, can I be sure that my perspective is true?

Does the “bad” quality about myself exist in every moment? Does it describe how I act or how I am in every moment? Am I always me? If I am always me, but yet this quality or characteristic doesn’t exist in every moment, then am I sure that it describes who I am?

Next Steps for How To Love Yourself:

The next time you begin to feel unworthy or not loving yourself, instead of pushing away or denying this feeling, instead of distracting yourself from this feeling, instead of telling yourself something positive and trying to convince yourself that you are great, look to see what thoughts are creating these feelings, look to see what stories are being told in your mind in that moment. And then question whether these thoughts or stories are true.

Once you see that these thoughts aren’t true, or that they aren’t real and tangible, or that these thoughts don’t mean anything about you, then you are free.

You won’t have a thought that says “I love myself” or “I am wonderful”. But you don’t need these thoughts to love yourself, you don’t need these thoughts to feel wonderful. Loving yourself is simply the absence of negative thoughts about yourself my dear Friends :-)

God Bless !!

Why Positive Thinking Doesn't Work

Why positive thoughts aren’t fulfilling?

In this blog post I’m going to talk about why positive thoughts aren’t enough to give you the happiness and fulfilment that you want. The happiness created by positive thoughts is definitely enjoyable and makes us happy. However, positive-thought happiness isn’t very strong or very fulfilling.

An exercise to help you see what feelings positive thoughts create

In order to help you see for yourself that positive thought happiness isn’t very fulfilling, I would like to ask you to engage with the following exercise.

1) Please take a moment to think back to a time when you achieved something you had really wanted for a long time. This could be the moment when you got a job offer, a promotion, learned that you had passed an important exam, won a championship title, got proposed to, or anything else. Try to remember how happy you were in the first moment when you got what you wanted. Remember how that felt. Think about the all encompassing and intense happiness that you had in that moment. It was pretty great, right?

2) Now, I would like you to think to yourself, “I am in my dream job”, “I am a licensed lawyer”, “I am a champion”, “I am married”, or “I am… whatever else it was that you achieved. How happy does it make you feel when you tell yourself this?

3) Lastly, please tell yourself the story of the moment when you achieved your goal. How does this memory make you feel right now?

Directly discovering how positive thoughts don’t create a fulfilling happiness
Was the quality of your happiness the same in each of these three scenarios? For the vast majority of us, the first few moments after we achieve a goal, we are fulfilled and overtaken with happiness.

On the other hand, when you think about the achievement now, how happy does it make you feel? It generally provides a pleasant feeling, but this feeling isn’t particularly strong. And, it is completely incomparable to the all-encompassing and intense happiness we experienced in the initial few moments when we got what we wanted.

The reason that our experiences of happiness are so different between the moment we got what we wanted, and the moments when we think about it, is simply because they are created by two very different causes. The first few moments of happiness when we get what want are created by the absence of thoughts, while our happiness later on is created by positive thoughts about the present or the past.

The happiness of getting what we want

If we manage to get anything in our life to match our definition of “perfect”, when we get what we want, we often immediately experience happiness. Despite how it seems, this immediate happiness is not created by the new circumstance itself or by positive thoughts. This happiness is actually the direct result of losing the thoughts that were creating our suffering.

If we have a goal, we almost always believe the following 3 thoughts:

1)      “The way things are right now isn’t “good enough”. This creates a feeling of sadness, lack, and insufficiency in our life.

2)      “I (someone else) is to blame for the current “bad” circumstances”. This creates a feeling of shame or anger.

3)      “It would be “bad” if I never achieve my goal.” This thought creates anxiety and fear.

But, in the moment that we achieve our goal (i.e. make things “perfect”), there will be no more thoughts about how this particular circumstance is “bad”, no more thoughts about who is to blame for the “bad” circumstance, and no more thoughts about the possible “bad” outcome of not getting what we want. These negative thoughts created our sadness, anger, and anxiety about this specific circumstance. Therefore, when these negative thoughts leave, we are left with happiness. Happiness is what remains when there are no thoughts to create our suffering. This is the experience of the present moment.

If, in the moment that you got your achievement, the happiness was created by positive thoughts, then you would have the same experience in this moment when you tell yourself the same positive thoughts about achieving your goal (i.e. “I am a champion”). But, yet it doesn’t. The happiness is very different because they are created by 2 very different things.

There are a few reasons why our positive thoughts aren’t very fulfilling and don’t create the all-pervasive happiness that we experience when we get what we want.

In the midst of positive thoughts there are still negative thoughts

By nature, when we think some aspect of our lives is “great”, we also still believe that other aspects are “bad”. Therefore, when we think a positive thought, our happiness is generally being held back by the attention, whether conscious or not, that we’re giving to some negative thoughts in the background.

In other words, when you tell yourself a positive thought about something, that one thing is not your whole life. For example, if you say “I am successful”, “I am a lawyer”, or “I’m married”, it doesn’t eliminate all the other thoughts about how “I’m not good enough at this”, “he is not good enough at that”, “It would be bad if that happened”, or “It would be bad if they thought that about me”. These thoughts are still creating lack, disappointment, anger, anxiety, and worry underneath the surface when a positive thought/story is being told in your mind.

Positive thoughts are not stable or real

When we have a positive thought about something, it is usually easy (or at least possible) for that thought to change so that it becomes “worse”. Therefore, when we rely on positive thoughts to make us happy, there is almost always a constant subtle anxiety that our positive thought might change and we might lose our happiness.

For example, if you think about yourself, “I am attractive”, this would give you a little pleasure. Since you like this pleasure, of course you would not want this thought to change to “I am unattractive”. Obviously, it doesn’t feel nice to think “I am unattractive”. But, once you unconsciously decide that it would be “bad” to think “I am unattractive”, you start to feel a subtle anxiety about the possibility of that thought changing to “I am unattractive”. It’s not as though attractiveness is a real and stable thing, just “I am attractive” end of story. No, this thought can be affected of many different things such as gaining weight, skin problems, ageing, or anything else. In order to maintain your thought “I am attractive”, you may frequently worry about whether your face, clothes, and body meet your definition of “attractive”.

If others were to tell you that you are unattractive, or if you get rejected or broken up with, it would be harder to continue to believe, “I am attractive”. Therefore, you would naturally begin to worry about what others think.

Because positive thoughts aren’t real and tangible, they are not stable. Since they can be relatively easily lessened, worsened, eliminated, there is always at least a subtle worry of losing the positive thought. But, most often, it is a very apparent worry.

Memories are tinged with discontent about this moment

Generally, the most common time we go to memories is when we’re not content in this moment. When we are enjoying ourselves, we usually have no reason to start telling stories of the past. But, when we don’t like where we are, we go to our memories to provide us with a little enjoyable escape.

Therefore, even while we are telling the nice story from our past (the memory), if the memory doesn’t take our full 100% attention, a small portion of our attention is still given to our negative thoughts about this moment. These negative thoughts in the background create a sense of lack, and prevent us from fully experiencing the happiness of our memory (a positive thought). In addition, memories are also often tinged with the anxiety of knowing that we have to come back to this “worse” moment or from thinking that we may never have such a “good” moment again.

For example, if you think about your wonderful vacation on the beach last month, this will give you some pleasure, and maybe put a smile on your face. However, telling yourself this great story will also at least create subtle thoughts about how where you are right now isn’t as “good” as where you were, which creates the feeling that you are lacking something. We usually aren’t aware that the anxiety or negative thoughts are present when we are giving attention to our positive memory, but this is part of the reason why positive-memory happiness is a much less peaceful and satisfying experience than present-moment happiness.

Positive thoughts are pleasurable, but not enough

In conclusion, positive thoughts give us pleasure, but if you really want to be fulfilled, if you really want lasting peace in your life, you need to go beyond positive thoughts. And I welcome you to do it. I invite you to do it.

Thank you so much my dear Friends :-)

God Bless !!