You Can Learn To Stop Over-Reacting

You'd be surprised how many people have feelings of inferiority. Some in one area, some in another. Some globally. Sooner or later you will hear stories of movie stars, championship athletes, and successful people from all walks of life who confess that they have always had feelings of inferiority.

You will feel relieved to know that others--even successful people--suffer from a sense of inferiority. But just knowing this won't do you any good. Besides, for every "successful" person there are dozens of people who are not being all they can be because of some trip that was layed on them when they were kids, or because of some suggestion they picked up and have never been able to shake.

You Can Learn to Not Be Upset

Are you stressed out? Have you noticed that when you are resentful, you become more sensitive to life’s little issues? When you are stressed at work, do you come home and easily lose patience with your kids? Do you get angry at slow traffic or slow grocery lines? Would terms like “exasperated, nervous, irritated, or impatient” describe you?

If so, you are probably over-reacting. And the worst reaction of all is that of resentment. It sets you up for becoming increasingly sensitive to what you might otherwise take in stride.

I know, times are tough. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said: “If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.” There are indeed outrageous things happening. There are things that good citizens should pay attention to. The problem is that most of us do not know how to pay attention without becoming upset by what we see. So we shut down. Early in life, we encountered unfairness and were dragged into bad situations, and we became upset. trouble is: now we don't know how to deal with injustice or mean people without being upset.

Here at the Center For Common Sense Counseling we help people learn to be aware without being upset. When you are aware, you will have understanding. And when you are not upset in the first place, you won’t become upset and irritable in the second place. You will be patient with your loved ones. Learn the secret of self control without painful repression and you will have it made in the shade.

Now how is it that we are upset all the time, even though we know we shouldn't? Two things.

First, being upset is a way of life for us. It supports our ego. If we didn't have something to be upset over, we would become bored and wouldn't even have motivation to do anything.

Most of us are motivated by upset, irritation, or pressure. We even use upset as a spur to activity. We then use the energy of resentment and anger to get a lot done.

And after we have been upset, and then fatigued and tense, we use it as an excuse to "unwind."

We look forward to our after-work drink, our marijuana, pleasure or party. We become thirstier and hungrier when we are upset. Pleasure feels better when it takes away pain.

But if you were not upset, nervous, or tense in the first place, you would not need relief. Unnecessary pleasure or releases would feel unnatural.

Billions of dollars a year a made on people's needs for pills, booze, drugs, vacations, and diversions. It's big business. Not to mention all the doctor bills and hospital bills when our excessive upsets and unnatural forms of relief catch up to us physically.

So now you know: for most people, being upset, nervous irritated and angry, after which they seek pleasure and relief, is the only life they know.

The second reason why we are upset all the time is this: Most of us think we have a right to be upset.

We think we have the right to judge and the right to resent. Upset adds an edge to our judgment and resentment. When you resent someone in line ahead of you for being slow, you can then "feel" that judgment as irritation. When your kids want something when you are trying to "unwind" after work, you resent their demands, become impatient, and then feel the resentment.

When your husband doesn't meet your needs, you can secretly resent him and judge his weaknesses. You can feel the upset (or the headache), and then get another round of ego boost by resenting him for "causing" your discomfort. Then your ego can get yet another ego high by feeling like a martyr, giving your service to an unappreciative good for nothing husband.

Since we think we have a right to resent and judge, and since we use our upset for our ego and for intensification of pleasure, most of us do not want to give it up. Our whole life is built on upset.

It is only when our upsets lead to health problems, headaches, ulcers, ruined relationships, or addictions, that we are stopped short in our tracks and then see the need to give it up.

Some people just won't give up what is killing them. They go on reveling in irritations and secret hostility, and then pay the piper.

But there are some, and perhaps you are one of them, who don't like the way they are. They don't like their secret judgments. They see their anger and don't like it. They yearn to be kind and patient. They yearn to live the good life. But after years of over-reacting, they don't know how to stop reacting and being upset.

That's where someone like me can help. I know what you need. You need two things. First, how to be still. That's what our stillness meditation is for. It teaches you how to become still and re-find your center of dignity. When you re-find your own center of dignity, you will be able to flow from within; instead of reacting to externals and becoming upset.

Secondly, you need some basic training about life. You probably learned to become upset and emotional over things when you were a child. Chances are---your mother was emotional and you picked it up from her. Most likely your dad was weak or a nonfactor. Dads are supposed to represent calmness and self control, and demonstrate how to live life with patience and courage without suppressing on the one hand or being angry on the other.

Few people nowadays are there to stand for calmness and composure. Mostly everyone encourages us to get excited, party, be ambitious, yell at sports events, and so on.

Maybe you had good parents, grandparents, a good teacher, coach, or minister who talked about self control, forgiveness, and taking things in stride. But you didn't listen. You got together with your friends and partyed.

But now, years later, and suffering from your excesses, you are ready to listen.

Listen to a free version of the meditation and, if you care to, begin to practice it. Visit our homepage and click on our various blogs and read some of the articles. If your intent is sincere and you are ready, the meditation and the principles I remind you of will make a world of difference in your life.

What Do I Do When I'm Worried About Money All the Time

Financial crisis does not have to lead to family crisis. Economic troubles don't have to result in relationship or health problems.

You can still be reasonably happy, healthy, loving, and cheerful in spite of external circumstances.

We all know this at some level. We have all heard that money can't buy you happiness. We've all seen families who have very little, but who have a lot of love. We've seen great men and women come out of poverty.

Many of us who are a bit older remember when we were young newlyweds, for example, and had nothing but a one room apartment, a lamp, and some boxes to sit on. We remember that we were happy, much happier than years later when we had many material possessions.

Some of us have experienced getting what we wanted, having our heart's desire and yet feeling miserable and unfulfilled.

So if you know this, why do you get upset, worried, distraught, and begin to have a churning stomach when you can't pay all your bills or lose your job?

The reason why is both simple and profound. First the simple sound byte version: you've permitted yourself to become upset over trivial issues. Thus you indulged emotions, and now when the bigger issues arrive, you are easily thrown out of control. How can you remain calm in big troubles when you allow yourself to get upset by the little ones?

The simple answer is this: start to exercise what character you have left. Have some discipline. Be a man. Be a woman. Set a good example for your kids. Don't indulge worry, doubts, and fears. Never take counsel of your fears, as a great general once said. Be patient. Remember: this to shall pass. Get busy, do something: go for a walk. Help someone. Look for work. Volunteer. Forget self.

Pay special attention to and beware of anger, which makes you wrong and guilty, and which conditions you to be reactive and out of control. See how judgment leads to anger. Let go of judgment.

Now the more profound reason why we permit external circumstance to affect our inner life, and by extension our relationship with others. We are egotistical and selfish. We lack faith, and we have always been taught to look to the outside for answers or into our intellect for answers. We are too externalized.

In other words, we look to the outside world for guidance. We look to the outside for support and comfort for our ego. And when we are not looking to others, we are looking into our intellect, hoping to dredge up some answer from there.

Where we should be looking is to intuition, what we ascertain wordlessly in the inner Light from God. But we avoid intuition, because having strayed from it, it now comes back as 20-20 hindsight. It feels like conscience, and it makes us feel bad. And as long as we don't want to be sorry and admit our mistakes, we avoid feeling bad and shun conscience.

Of course, that is what just about everyone else is doing to. Can you see the folly of looking to some expert for guidance: an expert who is a prideful intellectual and who is devoid of conscience because he or she avoids conscience too? It is truly a case of the blind leading the blind.

But as I said, it is not totally your fault. You could not help inheriting the nature that is prone to being prideful. Nor could you help believing what everyone told you to do: get an education, look to experts for knowledge, be ambitious, set goals, and so on. You may have had a suspicion that there was something wrong with the teachers, educators, professors and experts' advice, since most of their own personal lives ended in failure.

But you did not grasp intuition (your hunch about such things) firmly enough. In your natural pridefulness, you wanted to get what you could out of life, and you went down the garden path that everyone else said was the way to go.

Without true faith, how could you argue with the material possessions, seeming pleasure, and monetary benefits others were getting from working the system?

Yet, perhaps you suspected that all was not what it was cut out to be. You may also have seen examples of people who were industrious but not ambitious, who were principled and honorable and who succeeded without copping out, lying, cheating or tricking people.

Now it is not your fault that the culture in which you live does everything in its power to convince you that the answer to your problems is out there somewhere. We are told education is the answer, that knowledge is the answer. We are told that romantic "love" is the answer. We are always looking to some person to make us happy, cure us, or give us some secret to getting rich. We are told the a house, a car, a bank account is the answer. We are told that financial security is the answer.

No, I'm not suggesting that we should endeavor to be poor or at the end of our rope. What I am saying is that "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Advertisers, and particularly the chemical pharmaceutical companies, spend billions to convince you that the answer to your problems lies in a pill.

We are treated like sheep, like children, even worse. We are treated as if we were animals: just chemicals, hormones, and stimulus response animals.

Until you fully grasp that you are a human being with a soul, and until you find the secret to the power of good available within to resolve problems, you will be at the mercy of those who want power over you.

Whenever we look to outside person, object, goal or substance for security, we become externalized and dependent. This leads to greater insecurity. Just think back to the last time you desperately wanted some outcome (even if it was making a putt on the golf course!). Your insecurity and anxiety increased.

The answer is within. The answer is in learning to become objective and aware, functioning from intuition, with faith, and the guiding of intuitive understanding, and the protection of God's inner Light. The answer is to trust more in your own God given intuition than in what others say.
So long as you look to the world for answers, for love, or for some sort of ego validation, you will remain tied to the world and dependent on it. You will become resentful when others betray you.
So long as you are externalized, when a change occurs, when the rain falls, the economy falters, or the customers aren't buying, you will become upset and frustrated.
Learn to go through life with equanimity. Do not become overly excited when things go well. Don't become crestfallen when they don't. Remember: man does not live by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of God.

Also remember that other people are lost too. Others are externalized. They have not found the answer. No one loved them enough to tell them the truth. No one had the understanding to share with them the inner path to God.

Therefore you must not hate other people. Many of us have grudges against our parents for not guiding us properly and for letting something bad happen to us. Just remember: they could not give you what they did not have themselves. Also know that hatred and resentment cuts you off from inner love.

Self reliance, composure, and independence is what you need. When you are totally dependent on your Creator within, then you will no longer be dependent on outside security or love. And when you no longer need love, you will be able to give love.

But lo and behold, when you no longer are desperate for love, security or anything else, then chances are that things will turn around. Good things will come your way, people will seek you out (and you won't drive them away with your clinging need). You will begin to relate to everything properly.

Begin by letting go of your resentments against others, beginning with those closest to you. Stop looking to the world for love and guidance. Stand back and observe. Listen to what people have to say without reacting emotionally for or against them. When you read, don't get absorbed. Instead scan lightly for clues.
. . . . . .visit our healing relationships blog

Spiritual Recovery in Prison

Hard times and dire circumstances have been a benefit to sincere people throughout history. When things are going well, we tend to get into a comfort zone. Don't get me wrong--I'm not opposed to comfort, routine, and leisure time. These can be a blessing to the sincere in heart, who use what they are given to grow, learn to be unselfish and help others.

What is good about hard times is that hard times tend to wake some people up.
.

Of course, difficult circumstance drive some people into psychotic states; for others it is such a huge distraction that they focus all their energy on face saving or getting out of their bind. Others misuse the difficulty to build their pride: they take pride in being hard done by, wallow in feelings of resentment over injustice, or wallow in hatred of others.
.

Yet, for some, hard times bring out the best in them. More importantly, the stress of suffering causes them to cry out for real answers.
.
There is an old saying that hard times brings out the best and the worst in people. During a natural disaster, for example, some vandalize, steal and loot. Others sober up and help others.

You see, the same circumstance can be used for good by one person and misused by another.

Being in jail, prison or in the system is definitely difficult circumstances. There is the stress of captivity; the stress of cruelty; the stress of other people and strange surroundings.

Yet down through history, some of our best thinking has been done in prison. Stalwart and noble souls rose above the circumstance and wrote and penned their thoughts for the benefit of others.

Here is a short quote from the Q and A on the Encarta website.
"Q: Which famous writers produced important work in prison?

A: Hundreds of famous writers wrote some of their best work in prison. For many, their confinement allowed them to devote long periods of time to concentrated, focused meditation and writing. . . . . . .
Prominent examples include Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote his masterpiece Don Quixote while in prison for tax-collecting violations; John Bunyan, who probably wrote at least part of The Pilgrim’s Progress while in jail for unlicensed preaching; and John Milton, who was briefly imprisoned for his political writings and beliefs during the period in which he produced most of Paradise Lost. One of the greatest Russian authors, Alexandre Solzhenitsyn, spent years as a political prisoner and drew on the experience for some of his most famous works, including One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago." http://encarta.msn.com/sidebar_701508518/Questions_and_Answers_About_Literature.html

While we are on the subject, let me mention my favorite prison writers.

My all time favorite prison writer is a lovely lady by the name of Madame Guyon. She was one of the great saints who lived in the 17th century. I first learned of her when I used to listen to Chaplain Ray on the radio.
.
Chaplain Ray had a prison ministry and a long running radio program. I used to listen to his daily 15 minute program on KFAX in San Francisco. It came on at 11:45 PM and I loved to hear his steady voice and positive message. Though it must be thirty years ago now, I remember him well. His radio presence made an impression on me. I was young at the time. I was not yet ready to start the trip to God, but he was one of the many people whose mere presence helped keep me from going off the deep end.

Anyway, one time he had a radio offer: for free or for a small donation, he would send a book called Experiencing God Through Prayer by Madame Guyon. I ordered it, and today she is one of my favorite writers. Incidentally, what was her crime? The powers that be found fault with her brand of religion. She taught people to become still and find God within instead of looking for Him in external rituals. For this she was persecuted and jailed.
.

Another famous Christian mystic is Michael Molinos, who wrote about the inner path to God, which the church powers did not take kindly to. I can't remember if he was imprisoned, or whether he was just persecuted, tried and sent into exile..

And who can forget Watchman Nee, the wonderful man who founded the house church movement in China. His reward: imprisonment. Sadly he died in prison. But I understand his faith did not waiver and he was cheerful to the end.

Can you see what Madame Guyon, Michael Molinos, Alexandre Solzhenitsyn, and Watchman Nee have in common? They were all persecuted unjustly. They experienced the stress of being falsely accused. Yet instead of becoming bitter, they became better.

Christ and the writers of the New Testament had much to say about being persecuted unfairly for righteousness sake. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ said: blessed are you when people revile you and say bad things about you for my sake.

So apparently suffering without hatred or resentment when being treated unfairly is the gold standard. I suppose that any true Christian (or good soul who does not know that he is a Christian) worth his salt will suffer such persecution. It is inevitable.

This morning I heard about a nice young lady who was her high school valedictorian (the top graduating student), who began to mention God in her valedictorian speech. The terrible and stupid principal pulled the plug on the microphone and would not let her speak (though the crowd was chanting to let her finish). And how about the lovely Miss California in the Miss America Pageant who was persecuted for her innocent and mild comments.

Even in most families, there is one person who still sees the phoniness and lies clearly. That person or child is usually persecuted, punished, abused, rejected, or drugged. What was the child's "crime?" Seeing or speaking the truth.

There is much I could say on this topic, but for now let me just say this about suffering. There are two types of suffering: for what we deserve; and for what we don't deserve.

Most of us will have ample opportunity to suffer for what we do deserve. Our resentments, angers, selfishness, and wrong life styles bring health, financial, and relationship trouble upon us. But suffering for what we do deserve can and should be good for us.
.
When we learn to suffer without resenting and blame, we bear what we deserve gracefully. This suffering, if done properly, will chasten and humble us. It teaches us that there are consequences for wrong behavior, wrong eating, wrong anything. And our willingness to admit our own wrong means that we are open to the truth. And so, as we search sincerely for answers, our sincere search is answered by realizing and discovering the truth.
.
And then there is the suffering for what we don't deserve. This is the best kind of all. I know a nice man whose wife brought baggage into the marriage. She had been abused in the past and had a grudge against her dad. She transferred her hatred and judgment toward man to her husband. She also turned the daughters against him. He ended up all alone and rejected. Yet, somehow he never hated her back. His innocence and longsuffering was so beautiful and powerful that it worked a mysterious good in the lives of the daughters.
.
One day they saw that he was not such a bad guy, and they married wonderful, kind and decent men. I believe it was their dad's suffering in dignity and without resentment that ultimately helped them.

These topics are too broad to be dealt with in one article. Before I finish this blog about people who benefited from being imprisoned, may I recommend three of my books.

Becoming a Friend of God
The Best of Roland
My Daughter Does Not Want to Clean Her Room: A handbook for parents and kids

They are not about prison, but they are about refinding our center of dignity and becoming a friend of truth and a friend of God. Our free meditation and these books are a powerful antidote to the stress of curelty and confusion that keep us upset all the time and prevent us from finding the secret to self control and dignity.

Continuing with the topic. Another one of my heroes, who spent years in solitary confinement in the Hanoi Hilton, is Vice Admiral James Stockdale. He wrote a great book called A Viet Nam Experience: Ten Years of Reflection. He was beaten and tortured until near death. He's been there. His book is about the spiritual discoveries that he made in prison and upon reflection on his experiences there.
.
Speaking of his prison experience, he wrote: ..."there were many of us who were able to use the fire that was meant to destroy us as a saving fire, as a cauterizing agent, as temperer of what became our steel."
.
Finally, the words of Ann Frank who wrote her diary (The Diary of Anne Frank) while hiding in a little upstairs room above a shop from the Nazis during World War Two. This wonderful person missed out on the happy life that other girls her age were having. But though only a young girl, she had grace and character. She did not become bitter and here's the proof in her own words:

"It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart." ..

No, dear Anne, your ideals are not impractical. God created them and He loves them.
And, no, not all people are truly good at heart. But you are good at heart. And God is good at heart. And there are many people who, like you, are good at heart.
And your sterling example reminds them to love and to forgive.

My Husband Doesn't Communicate; My Wife is Confusing

Roland Trujillo, godcast1000 host and blogcatalog personality, has finally published his book about relationships. In this tell all book, you will discover how we are all more alike than we think. And we have similar issues in our relationships. In order to understand each other better and unblock love, we need to remember that we are spiritual beings. Of course, we are earthly too. But too much emphasis is placed on mechanics, and ego needs.

We need to dust off some of the old fashioned values and bring them up to date, because they still apply.

Therefore, it is refreshing when someone like Roland comes along and talks about Adam and Eve in a meaningful way. If understanding unblocks the reader from resentment, then many good things can come to pass.

More. . . . . . . . . . .

Did You End Up In Prison Because You Became Angry and Over-reacted?

People who become angry do dumb things and make mistakes. But a person who becomes angry and upset is not necessarily a bad person. In fact, he or she might be at heart a decent soul, but who just hated the hypocirsy, phoniness and cruelty he saw.

For example, a lot of teens are angry all the time.

Everywhere they go, they are pressured: pressured at home; in the schoolyard; in class. And they make the mistake of becoming resentful and hostile. But once you become hostile, it washes away reason.

And like I tell parents all the time: kids can deal with a lot of issues if their parents are there for them, especially dad.

When dad is a victim, it makes the kids angry at the world. No one wants to see his dad a victim.

When dad is angry when he comes home and takes out his frustrations at home, it tempts the kids to hate him. Or hate the world.

When dad is weak, and doesn't stand for what is right in a right way, it tempts us to have contempt for him. But who wants to resent or have contempt for their own dad? No one. It is painful and it makes us angry.

So a lot of teens get involved with drugs or alcohol. Why, because they resent their parents. And when we resent, we are cut off from our own good and feel confolict. Many people turn to peers, drugs, or alcohol to take a way the pain for hating their parents.

So what is needed is

1. To learn how to be calmer and less reactive. To see injustice and not become resentful over it.

We must learn the art of seeing wrong without becoming upset or angry. This does not mean liking wrong or going along with it. It means clearly seeing the wrong, standing in opposition to it, but without resentment

2. We must learn to drop our resentment against our parents.

What we do here at the Center For Common Sense Counseling is help people work through relationship and stress issues by teaching them how to become centered and flow from intuition.

Most of us are suppressed and inhibited because we are reactive, and thus outer directed. We react to situations and people, and then say or do the wrong thing. We become afraid of expressing our pent-up hostility, and we dread another round of error and failure.

So we hide ourselves from others so as not to be embarrassed or make mistakes. We put on a phony facade to keep people at a distance. Our secret hostility and resentment make us feel empty and needy.

But instead of finding an inner rapport and wholeness, we reach out to the world.
(article continues below)
____________________
announcement
Roland's new book is now available at CafePress. Becoming a Friend of God: Finding Peace of Mind and Courage in an Age of Anxiety is the culmination of 20 years of teaching and mentoring.
Find out more. . . . . . . .
___________________

Feeling unworthy and yet needy, we clumsily claw for love, often settling for the most lowly and loathsome love offerings. When we can't bear the pain of reaching for love anymore, we settle for the comfort and false love of drugs, alcohol, and pills, or we stuff ourselves with food. All because in our distant past someone upset us or pulled on our heart strings, tempting us to step away from our center of dignity and love.

Some of us continue to yearn for the good we have never known. But reaching out to worldly spiritual or religious organizations has brought us betrayal or led to cynicism. We love truth and goodness, but we haven't found the real thing. Those we trusted either betrayed us, used us, or revealed their own lack of understanding.

What we need is to refind the inner intuitive way of living and moving and having our being. We need the original perspective, the one we had before we were upset and sidetracked by authorities who themselves had been tempted away from reason and inner love.
Fortunately we can find the love and understanding we have always been searching for by learning to become still.

We can refind the original perspective, and then moving unemotionally from this clear perspective, we will see our way back to a sensible, calm, inner directed way of life. A special simple meditation or centering exercise teaches us how to stand back from thought and emotion. It is not difficult or complicated. Perhaps the most difficult part of it is setting aside the intellectual analysis and second guessing, and just practicing the meditation in its sheer simplicity.

Calming down and beginning to see clearly, we begin to see things and people, including ourselves, as we really are. Going out into the world, we learn to be less reactive. We learn to be patient with people. We learn not to look to them for love, because once having found the inner light in which to see, wordless guidance by which to act, and inner warmth and rapport to seal us off from outer entanglements, we are free to express truth and be patient with others.

Family, relationship, work, and health issues begin to resolve themselves. When we have love instead of seeking love, and when we have patience instead of impatience, we develop a healthy disinterest concern for others, instead of needing something from them.

Spiritual and physical health is the natural state of the body and soul. By learning to give up the resentment, emotionality, and a misguided lifestyle that interferes with health, we recover in the Light.

Find out more........................