Let’s start with how we screw up measuring progress on our journey towards peace, love, and happiness. I’ll inform you of three ways we unnecessarily believe self-judgments about our process and how to avoid them. In another article, I’ll share a better system of metrics to use for your growth and changes.

Measuring progress for personal change is tricky, and we usually get it wrong. And when I say “we,” I mean our mind automatically measures and tells us how poorly we are progressing. You’ll notice it’s often fixated on the negative. Here is the system of beliefs that put us down and what to do to avoid the traps.

Three Bad Beliefs Combine

Here is the cocktail of assumptions and expectations why those voices in our heads give us failure narratives and complain about things not working—it’s because the mind is using the wrong belief system as a measuring stick.

1. The mind wants all emotions to change
2. The mind wants immediate results, which is unrealistic.
3. When that doesn’t happen, it reacts with frustration, disappointment, sadness, and feelings of failure.
4. These feelings can activate past traumas of unmet needs and reinforce spirals of negative emotions.

One: In the Beginning, Your Emotions Don’t Indicate Progress

We want to feel better. We want a quiet and peaceful mind and we want gratitude, joy, happiness, and love. And we want it right away. We want to get rid of feelings of fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, anger, and sadness.

Emotions are the important metrics we want to change. The judge and the victim will try to measure progress based on them. That’s fine, but not in the beginning. Early on, other metrics are more important than emotions to be aware of.

Unfortunately, the emotional shift—the final outcome we desire—doesn’t happen with the early steps. We have to change our perspective and beliefs first.

 

Two: Beware of Expecting Immediate Results

If you know someone who got profound changes in a short time that lasted through later challenges, please let me know. I’d love to interview them and find out how.

You didn’t get into these emotional patterns in one week. They have likely been part of your subconscious for many years. Rewiring your brain takes more than a few weeks.

The victim’s voice is our emotional pain, and it wants immediate attention and healing. It doesn’t have time to learn something new, to practice, or the repetitions necessary for deep learning and developing new neural pathways and emotional patterns.

It’s okay for the victim’s voice to want immediate results, but you also need to have the perspective of wisdom and not expect results to happen as the victim wants. When you expect them without doing the work of building new emotional pathways, you set yourself up for disappointment, frustration, and feeling like a failure, because you are using the wrong measuring devices.

Notice that there are two different perspectives happening. Your wise self will know that it will take some weeks and likely months to see deep change. At the same time, the victim part of the mind wants immediate results.

There are intensives that can produce fast results, but these changes still won’t be in line with the “victim beliefs” mindset. See below for information about upcoming intensives.

The voices of the Judge and Victim don’t understand the value of time or the practice it takes to build a new dream and emotional foundation. You must listen to sources of wisdom and insight on this other than your mental chatter to learn and know it to be true.

 

Three: Don’t Believe the Judge and Victim Narratives

When you have the two elements above, you set your mind in the direction of self-judgment and feeling like a failure.

We start the journey when we are emotionally challenged and trigger our fears, emotions of failure, feelings of being stuck, and hopelessness. These voices are the loudest. When they measure your progress with this criteria, your thoughts sound like these…

• This isn’t working.
• I can’t do this.
• I’m never going to get better.
• I’m so stuck no one will be able to help me.
• This is hopeless.

The judge character is the other strong voice in the beginning, tag-teaming with the victim narratives. It’s more authoritative, talking at you—or rather, at the victim—telling it that it is a hopeless failure. Why it says these terrible things is a topic for elsewhere. For now, just notice that it isn’t your authentic voice, and it’s awful at measuring progress, particularly in the first year. It will sound something like this:

• You are doing this wrong.
• Nobody can help you.
• You are always going to be like this.
• This is a waste of money.
• This is a waste of time.

If these judge and victim narratives sound familiar in the early stages, then you are not alone. Most people feel the desire for immediate change and distort it into an expectation. We are looking at the right metric of emotions to feel better, but our timing is wrong. It’s too early for emotions to change. We first need to change perspective, move to an observer, and change layers of beliefs before emotions change.

Initially, we are the most vulnerable to these self-judgments about our progress. We are unaware that the judge and the victim’s voices are not telling us the truth. We probably identify with them; inside their story, it feels like these narratives are real. We feel emotions that seem congruent with the narratives and mistake them for reality or truth.

 

This sets up one of the early challenges: You must decide and commit to, I’M NOT GOING TO BELIEVE these narratives of the judge and victim about my progress.

You might fall for them periodically, but you must regularly swear them off and push them away. Eventually, you will see them for what they are: your most dangerous adversaries to progress.

as an alternative that can speed things up

 

… the immersive experience of an in-person live event

 

Join us for our upcoming in-person retreat set in the stunning landscapes of Zion National Park.

 

Zion National Park Retreat:    Nature – Power – Spirit – Self ?

 

Six intensive days of shedding old patterns and false beliefs while embracing the beauty, Spirit, and love within.

 

You will be guided in:

Shamanic practices of gathering personal power

Dreaming Journeys to break false beliefs and fears
Ceremony and meditation to build a Self-based in Integrity and Love

April 20-25th
Investment $875
Does not include meals or lodging.

 

Details for joining this Journey of the Spirit and Zion and reserving a room are available here. ?

 

OR

 

Spiritual Journey to ?

the Pyramids of Teotihuacan, Mexico?

November 15-22nd?

 

We go back to the old ways practiced for thousands of years using the methods of:

• Gathering Personal Power
• Ceremony
• Shamanic Dreaming
• Breathwork
• Invocation

For your personal transformation

 

Teotihuacan translates as “the place where humans awaken from their dream and realize their divinity.”

 

Peace be with you,

Gary van Warmerdam