I got really irritated the other day by the behavior of a colleague. As the morning progressed, I was feeling worse and worse every time I thought about our conversation over coffee. She wanted me to sympathize with her, and I was not ready to do that, I saw that if that’s the way she acted with her partner, he would be just as triggered as I was now.
Then I caught myself: I was feeling irritated, I was me, not the irritation! First big shift.
Next shift: it happened more than an hour ago, so why was I bringing it into the present moment?
The conversation had been all about her, how badly treated she felt, how things never worked out the way she wanted – total victim consciousness. But it had nothing to do with me. And if I felt triggered, I was now in victim mode! Huge realization and third big shift.
I was letting someone’s problem affect me, I was doing it to myself – and the more I looked at my own irritation and tried to find it in myself, give it a shape, a color, I even tried to spell the letters out – the more it became elusive, intangible, I couldn’t see it, hear it, touch it, it simply wasn’t there, and I laughed out loud. At myself!
She looked at me from across the room, her face still unhappy, and said: “What’s so funny?” I could see that just as I had been making myself miserable by my thoughts, she was doing the same thing to herself.
Thoughts are not things, they become things if we hold on to them and give them energy by attention. I had been able to let go of my thoughts, so they stopped being things and just dissolved. I could help her do the same if she was willing – but she had to do it, it couldn’t be done for her.
So I said: “The funny thing is, I just realized I was creating my feelings through my thoughts. And thoughts may not be true- they could be imagination. Remember what we just talked about over coffee?” And she said yes, I’m still so upset about it all.
“Is all you said actually true?” I went on. “Really true, not your idea about it? Because there was not much I heard that was a fact, and even that could have many interpretations.”
There was a long silence and I could see she was really thinking. “Well,” she said, “I don’t know if it’s true – but it could be, and I am really upset about it.”
Why do we hold on to thoughts that make us feel bad, sad, or angry when we don’t know if they are true? Why not put the best interpretation we can come up with on a situation – since it’s all in our imagination anyway! – and make that scenario become our reality by giving energy to that thought? And why say “I am really upset” when who you are is always in joy, peace, love and harmony, and your personality feelings that come and go, have nothing to do with who you really are?
