Today I got to go deeper in the shoulds.
I actually saw that every single thing that causes you, causes Man to be miserable, is a should in one form or another.
What lead me on is this:
I woke up, as planned, at 3 am.
But I didn't immediately get up. I wanted to measure if my healing client has maintained the healing I worked so hard last night on.
She didn't. So I grieved a little... and then fell asleep. Next time I woke up it was 4:30. I heard in my head: I should have gotten up when I woke up.
And then I started to look at what emotion is rising when I say that.
Regret.
And then I looked. Regret, remorse, resentment, shame, guilt... and I could continue this list. bad bad bad emotions, all from one little dinky should.
OK, time to research... Let's see what others have to say about negative emotions.
Some use the usual 'scientific' criteria: but don't look deep, is stuck on the surface. Ugh.
Terror: Fear, Apprehension
Rage: Anger, Annoyance
Loathing: Disgust, Boredom
Grief: Sadness, Pensiveness
On this site I found lists 159 negative emotions. Some of them are not emotions, they are feelings...
What feelings and emotions share is that they both feel in some way...
The difference between a feeling and an emotion is that a feeling doesn't need words... it is part of the internal guidance system to keep the living thing alive. Like disgust... makes you avoid that which disgusts you. Or boredom... makes you go for stimulation.
The way to use this long list is to put the words 'I feel' in front of every word on the list, I feel afraid, I feel agitation, I feel agony, etc. Or alternatively say: I have fear, I have agitation, I have agony...
The common way to say these is removing the ownership... and saying: I am afraid, I am agitated, I agonize... And lose all power.
Truth be told, most people don't know their feelings, and misidentify them...
People who live in their heads more than 70% of the time, which is all the eight billion, can't tell their ass from a hole in the ground. For them everything is the same as everything else.
And if I weren't an empath, and diligently expanding my feeling vocabulary, I might have been one of the eight billion.
But the point is that many of those feelings are really emotions and they come from a should or shouldn't.
If you pay attention, if you are intellectually able, all should and shouldn't is a comparison.
Comparing one thing that you deem ideal with another thing you deem less ideal.
Ultimately, given that all humans want the world to be the way they want the world to be. They want themselves to be the way they want themselves to be...
...the comparison between that utopian state, where eight billion people each get what they want... a world the way they each want it to be.
The less you have revised those two statements the lower you are in your evolution and emotional age.
A age 3
Ba age 1
Ba age 1
Bo age 1
J age 1
P age 3
M age 5
Alex Hormozi age 10
Me age 40
The higher you go, the more adult capacities are available to you.
And if you look and understand what I am saying, to the degree that you can accept that the world cannot be the way you want it to be, and likely you won't be exactly the way you want yourself to be, to the same degree your emotional and intellectual age rises...
The younger you are in that regard, the more miserable you are.
As the participants in the Reality Challenge do the work of seeing their should and shouldn't emotions, they have plenty of opportunities to see that their 'wanting the world to be the way they want the world to be' desire is what says all those shoulds.
And if they are intellectually advanced enough, they eventually can discover that allowing the world to be the way the world is is a better way to live.
You did what you did. And that is exactly what you did. You also want what you want, but the world is not obligated to live by your wants.
Even YOU are NOT obligated to live by your wants, your whim, your every thought.
Your shoulds make you miserable, nothing else.
What is the main difference between someone whose emotional intelligence is an infant, a kindergartner, a gradeschooler, or a PhD?
It is the DNA capacity of responsibility.
The more aspects of life, the more aspects of your behavior you take responsibility for, the higher than age number gets.
Age 10 makes you a rare specimen. I will call you a one thousand... so rare.
The lower that age number is, the more you'll misdirect your actions. You'll consider yourself the authority on everything, and will take no guidance, even if on the surface you ask for it.
What is unique about M age 5 is that he managed to grow from age 1 to age 5 in 23 days in the Reality Challenge. How? He, for the first time in his life, tuned into the idea of 'we'.
And he experienced it. It was the experience of flow. Flow back and forth... and it was warming, and oh so very good.
He experienced it with me. We can call it trust.
Trust had been his soul correction's biggest issue, and with that idea it started to melt away. Permanently? Temporarily? We shall see.
And for those 23 days he started to live in that not-alone, not just for him, not just 'desire to receive for the self alone' space. In this new space he is conscious of and cares that everything he does effects at least another person: me.
It is true for everyone that whatever they do effects at least another person too... but they don't give a rat's ass, if you get my French.
And now, maybe, you get why the emotional/intellectual age is a good indicator: the child doesn't even know about the consequences of his action on others, or on the world. Unable to grasp... and when reminded, at most: they show fake remorse...
But really they don't see it, and they don't care.
And as much as I'd like to be justifiably angry, I can't.
They don't know.
The client who has spent to date 60 healing units to just remain as sick as she was when we started, doesn't care that I am working for free.
Cannot care. It's like a baby doesn't care that its parents can't sleep.
Ugh. It is what it is. I can't get water from a rock.
PS: Here is the link to the negative feelings/emotions list.
The ones I marked with a hyphen ( - ) are emotions... so there is a should or shouldn't underneath. Or said in another way a comparison between how you want things to be and how they are... making you miserable, angry, frustrated, whatever.
PPS: So how do you grow your emotional/intellectual age?
Your first job is to 'own' that
- your should is not universal. It is yours, and it is a desire to receive for the self alone.
- That your should came from your addled mind, where things are supposed to be different than they are.
The ones with age 1 haven't owned that yet. Haven't seen that yet. Haven't caught it. And you can't catch what you can't see.
One of the most annoying questions you can ask yourself:
Would things be better had I done what I said I should do?
And another question you may want to contemplate: if everyone in the world would be like me, the way I am, what would the world be like?
I looked to answer that question some 30 years ago. I saw that the world would be a disaster area, more than it is today if everyone were like I was. It snapped me out of my self-righteousness...
The person with age 3 did that same looking some time ago... Did it snap her out of her self-righteousness? the answer is yes/no... not quite, but she became more flexible. This is why her emotional age is not 1 year old.
If that question doesn't snap you out of your bubble, then you are really not looking.
And god help you if you are not even willing to look.
It's taken me 12 whole years of working feverishly to see why people live in quiet or not so quiet desperation.
I've lead a hundred or so workshops, wrote around six thousand articles, had hundreds of one-on-one sessions with people.
But not until I got deep into the Reality Challenge that I managed to see that ultimately all the desperation comes from comparison.
Comparing the ideal, the perfect, with what is... reality.
Misery is just one price to pay. The heftier price, in my opinion, is that when you interact with should-be-reality, you are wholly and totally ineffective.
Your actions have no power.
- When you should know... you can't learn.
- When you should be able to... you can't do.
- And when you should be different... then you can't just be... anything.
And when you can't just be, you are ineffective. Also unhappy.
You cannot leave things alone... and just be in the flow. You can't be doing what you are doing. Some should interferes.
Here are a few examples from M age 5.
-I should go dance now
-(while writing a poem) I should make this line match the last one in terms of length
-I should correct/improve the author's formatting (but it's not my job…)
-I should finish what I planned to eat
-I can't/shouldn't have tea
-I shouldn't use the 'we' pronoun in action paragraphs (I once read somewhere it's unprofessional)
-I shouldn't have music on when I'm translating
-I should translate everything in chronological order
Unease. No freedom. No flow. All the shoulds are like boulders popping up in the river of flow.
Why? Because
choice is selecting freely, after consideration...
instead the possible choices and impossible choices jerking you around.
You can choose to have tea, or you can choose to not have tea. Really. And when you selected freely, after consideration, you are at peace. No boulder... no disruption, no unease.
But here is the punchline: given that M age 5 has created a 'we' with me, he may take this article as guidance... and at least attempt to choose some of the time. And the more he succeeds in choosing, the higher his age number goes, and the happier, more effective he becomes in his life.
Guaranteed.
I taught reality in every course I have ever taught. Reality that you run from. Reality that you ignore. Reality that you call wrong.
But not so long ago I taught it differently. I taught it through the racket: the machine that is the essence of the human condition.
To the degree your racket gives you your actions, to the same degree you are ineffective and unhappy.
But if we look, all the moves of the racket are coming from shoulds...
The comparison between YOUR ideal world and reality.
To the degree you consider your shoulds aka your emotions reality, to the same degree you are an infant, your growth, emotionally and intellectually, is stunted.
And if your reaction to this is that you should be further ahead, or not that, then you have just proved my point.
What causes your ineffectiveness is the gap between reality and should.
Unless you can look at how it is, how you are, where you are at with sober eyes... meaning accept it, you'll be doing what the should-reality suggests... the should reality that is an illusion.
So your life is a Don Quixote life... fighting windmills, considering barmaids royalty... and yourself a knight in shining armor.
Every should is the visible part of that delusion.
The faster you see it for what it is, the faster you can become who you are: real. And then you can grow. But only then.
This answers the question many clients have asked: why am I not learning anything? Why isn't my life changing?
Those shoulds: you never considered them lies. And that is as simple as I can put it for you.
Oh, just one more thing. If you now think that you should be able to do that, or should be able to do all that without day to day guidance: you are more delusional even than that.