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Do you want to better yourself?
Self Improvement
Many times I have heard people wonder, and I have often asked
myself the same question, why so many people, even after years and even decades
of working on self-improvement, do not achieve significant and visible results?
Perhaps you can remember an experience when you expected a lot
from certain techniques and participated with great enthusiasm in workshops,
only to notice that after a few months your enthusiasm weakened, your
expectations diminished and after a few years you came to the conclusion that
you did not truly receive any benefit from the course and started searching for
some new and more powerful method which would give you the results you wanted.
Maybe you know people who pride themselves on their long years of
self-improvement work, although their behavior sometimes seems even less mature
than that of the 'average' people on the street. What is the cause of this?
Everyday Spirituality
Neale Donald Walsch in 'Conversations with God' asks a similar
question and gives the following answer: 'You say you have been 'at this
spiritual game' for 20 years, yet you have barely touched the edges of it. (…)
Let's be clear that 'spirituality means dedicating your whole mind, your whole
body, your whole soul to the process… It is a day-to-day, hour-to-hour,
moment-to-moment act of supreme consciousness. It is making choices again and
again at every instant. It is an ongoing process of creation… through awareness
and purified intention. How long have you been at it?'
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Kosjenka and I worked together for a while using Skype.
She was WONDERFUL!!! I really enjoyed working with her.
F.R., New York
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Even the most motivated people in time usually relax and
devote half an hour a day to work on personal change, whilst the rest of the
time they act and think in the same way as before.
In my opinion, controlling one's thoughts by itself is
definitely not enough. Some authors, including Walsch, claim that we simply
should not pay any attention to 'negative' thoughts and emotions and that they
will be transformed through positive energy. My experience tells me that even if
this were true in theory, it is an endlessly slow path compared to bringing
'negativity' to the surface and working with it directly.
Emotions
Besides, it is important to consciously face our emotions
because most of us suppress our negative emotions even when this is not our
conscious intention. Trying to avoid unpleasant emotions leads to even more
suppression; this requires a lot of effort and causes guilt, since these
emotions are a powerful energy which is searching for a way to fulfill its own
motivation.
The motivation behind unpleasant emotions is basically
positive: they are parts of us which we created as a 'healthy reaction to
unhealthy circumstances' (Martyn Carruthers), and which try to serve us in a way
they 'find justifiable' considering the negative convictions they are bound to.
One of my favorite idioms is 'being true to oneself'. By this
I don't mean coercion and self-criticism, but rather an attitude of deep
acceptance and readiness to face the emotions which are the hardest to accept
and feel. The motivation required is the need to move forward out of love for
oneself and the desire for happiness and not because of forced perfectionism.
Barriers
It is very difficult to recognize consciously which parts of
us hinder us the most in moving forward. Moreover, those barriers and emotions
we are aware of, probably are not the crucial ones - precisely because we are
aware of them, which means we do not feel them as dangerous enough to suppress.
In order to discover the most important barriers, the resolution of which would
bring the fastest benefits, a longer period of time is necessary in which to
observe our emotions and behavior in real life, as well as the circumstances we
attract.
It's important to learn to recognize those emotions that
appear in our consciousness just for a moment, and then are almost as suddenly
suppressed. The motivation for such quick suppression is either the strong
unpleasant feeling we experience by the very consciousness of the emotion, or
the consciousness of its complete irrationality and destructiveness, which is
accompanied by guilt or fear of bringing this destructiveness to the surface.
Holding Back
I believe that the key reasons we are not true enough to
ourselves are dogmatism, functioning out of mental, emotional or 'spiritual' ego
and basically a deeply suppressed hatred of oneself which prevents the person
from looking deep within his destructive emotions without exceptionally strong
feelings of guilt and the devastation of his carefully built self-image. In such
circumstances we try to be 'superhuman' - to prove our value through painfully
exaggerated demands on ourselves, not allowing ourselves to be real, natural
human beings.
No systematic approach to self-improvement on its own is
sufficient to motivate us to be ready to look within the most hidden parts of
ourselves. It is not enough to learn a technique; the intention and
determination to be true and to truly change have to be conscious and include
our whole being. If this does not exist, if the technique is used to achieve
superficial goals, or even to transfer the responsibility for our success on the
technique. or as an escape from real life and our emotions… then the result at
best can be stagnation.
Destructive Urges
It is crucial to admit to oneself those most destructive urges
which usually damage our image of who we want to be. Pay special attention to
those emotions which are, in real situations, the most difficult to bear. Also
notice every situation when you try to draw your attention away from your
feelings through smoking, food, watching TV, books, computers, and many other
creative ways. Notice which situations in life you spontaneously avoid because
you are afraid to face them. Explore which emotions you expect would come to
surface in those circumstances.
Observe Yourself
It is important to learn to carefully observe yourself in
order to recognize the spontaneous and unconscious suppression of emotions. In
time you will learn to recognize this and allow your consciousness to receive
emotional impulses which are hard for you to accept. Some such examples are
irrational anger, envy, selfishness, unwarranted negative emotions toward
others, blaming others, the need to be better than others, playing the victim,
shame…
In the beginning, your strengthened consciousness toward these
emotions may cause you to doubt yourself, questioning whether you really are the
person you thought you were, with many emotions that you have been suppressing
coming to the surface.
Nonetheless, when you let go of your own criteria and
expectations you may come to know a deeper level of feelings under your armor of
negativity and find your true identity, at the same time recognizing the deep,
subtle, exceptionally pleasant feelings and internal experiences, which you
could not recognize before because you suppressed them, and which are often a
completely new and beautiful experience.
Coaching with Kosjenka
© Kosjenka Muk, 2005
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