When you are in a state of fear and upset, you lose both your ability to see clearly and your ability to see what works. You close down and get tunnel vision. All you can do is to fight, resist, hang on, or withdraw. Almost any action you take in a state of upset is guaranteed to make your situation worse. Upsets are very destructive.
We think that upsets are caused by what happens, but this is an illusion. Upsets are not caused by what happens. Upsets are caused by our fighting and resisting what happens.
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To see this in your life, select a recent upset. Notice that something happened and notice how irrelevant your feelings were about it. No matter how upset you were, your circumstances still happened.
We create our upsets
Now notice what would happen to the upset if, somehow, you were totally at peace with what happened. There would be no upset. There would be no upset, because the upset wasn't caused by what happened. The upset was caused by fighting and resisting what happened.
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The moment you take away the fighting and resisting, the upset disappears. You restore both your peace of mind and your effectiveness.
Now notice what would happen if someone spilled a large glass of water on you. You would be wet and you would be wet no matter how you felt about it. Being wet is like the circumstances of your life. Your feelings are totally irrelevant.
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If you are at peace with being wet, there would be no upset. You would see clearly and be very effective in handing your situation. If you fought being wet, you would be upset, and the more you fought being wet, the more upset you would be.
You can be at peace with being wet or you can be upset, but no matter what your feelings are, you are still wet. Your state of mind has nothing to do with your circumstances. Your state of mind is the result of how you relate to your circumstances.
Upsets are very destructive and can only exist if you are fighting the truth of what happens. The moment you stop fighting the truth, the upset disappears. You see your situation clearly and can see what needs to be done. You make peace with the truth through a process called letting go. We'll talk more about this later.
Why do we fight the truth?
We fight the truth because the truth hurts. It strikes a nerve. This is why different people get upset at different things. Each person has a different set of nerves that get triggered.
This is also why the same type of upsets and the same self-sabotaging behavior keep showing up in your life. They keep showing up because the same nerve keeps getting triggered.
Ultimately, these nerves are the suppressed childhood hurt of feeling worthless, not good enough, not worth loving, failure, or some other form of feeling not okay. It’s not the truth that you are this way. It’s just an old suppressed hurt, but it’s a hurt that keeps life from working.
Every self-sabotaging behavior pattern, every upset, and every area of life that isn’t working can be traced directly to the automatic, subconscious avoidance of this hurt. Finding and healing this hurt is one of the most important things you can ever do
