Suggestions for Success

To help you get more out of the Self Mastery program here’s a suggestion:

1.    Don’t go for Perfection

This may sound strange but the assignments I give aren’t always things you can accomplish, at least not right away.

Some people think that session 4 is the hardest.  They just agree with people or disagree as an automatic reaction before realizing it.  The assignment is to refrain from doing this, but I’m not expecting success.  As a matter of fact more can be gained by failing.

If all you get out of this exercise is to realize that you don’t control the words coming out of your mouth, and that much of your behavior is on automatic pilot,,, then I’d say that’s enough for a start.  While it might seem like you’ve failed at the goal you’ve actually accomplished a lot in the process. You are now aware of this dynamic.  Your awareness has expanded.  You are now being self reflective and beginning to adopt a new perspective of being an observer. You also have an insight into how agreements/beliefs are made in subtle quick ways and how quickly we accept opinions as fact and truth.  It is this new perspective that is most important at this point.

You might not like what you notice, but that’s the inner judge starting to take over.   You’ve taken an important step towards change because you can’t change a behavior until you know about it.  Just noticing these types of things in the free sessions, even if you aren’t able to change them is the most important lesson.   The exercises in the paid sessions are more focused at successfully implementing change.  The exercise used to help you discover and become aware of behavior dynamics is not necessarily the one that will be useful for changing those dynamics.

If you come out from these exercises feeling like a failure or  pissed off at yourself for failing then you’ve had another self judgment.   Not necessarily good, and not my intent, but that’s the nature of a mind out of control at this point.  Exercises in Session 6 and later begin to address this.  These somewhat humbling realizations are a necessary part of the process.  They cause us to see things about our self, our emotions, and our belief system running automatically that was previously unconscious to us.  That’s part of the waking up process.  Listen to my January podcast on Conscious Awakening for more insights into this.

The Free sessions in the Self Mastery program are usually not enough to completely and permanently stop most major emotional reactions.   What the free sessions are intended to do is help you become aware of what is going on in your mind.  With that expanded skill of observation arises the intrinsic motivation to address the real issues of underlying beliefs.  Some people will realize this and get motivated to change their beliefs.  But you can’t really start addressing these beliefs until you see what they are and how the work.

Others will get caught up in the self judgment of their belief system that creates a feeling of failure.  If a person is not aware of the dynamic of their belief system and able to observe it as the problem, they will push the exercises away thinking it is making them feel worse.  It’s not the exercises that are the problem.  It’s the unrealistic expectations their mind makes and the self rejection based on that unconscious expectation that they are reacting to.  If this is happening, the problem with the sessions isn’t failure or even you.  The problem is with the belief system in the mind making unreasonable and unconscious expectations about success, and then automated self judgments

So do your best not to get tricked into your mind’s assumption that you need to do these practices perfectly before going forward.  Some people I’ve talked to stop listening to new sessions because they haven’t mastered the current one yet.  It’s a trap of a false expectation that stops progress.

For best results don’t try to do any of these exercises perfectly.  Just do them.  Even do them with little or no success.  It’s not the perfection of these practices that are important.  It’s the doing of them in whatever fashion you can that will make the difference.  Trying to do them perfectly plays into the hands of the way our mind does self judgment.  First an unrealistic expectation, and then a self rejection.  This becomes so painful emotionally that we stop the practice before we have a chance to get decent at it.

Some people will get success with an exercise in 10 minutes.  Some will get success in 10 hours of practice, and some in 10 weeks.   Don’t worry if you don’t get success with an exercise in a few weeks and you get tired of trying.  Give it up for a while and go on to the next one.  You don’t need to get proficient at any of them as prerequisites in order to have success at this process.  Later, after a couple weeks or months of practicing other exercises, come back to the ones you skipped and try them again.  You’ll be a different person by then, and you’ll likely notice different things about the exercise that you didn’t see the first time.

Some people might feel discouraged by the fact that they don’t get immediate results.  To  me the speed at which you make changes in your thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors is not as important as making these changes successfully.   After all,, if you are not successful,,, then then your efforts at going fast were wasted.