Tag: competition

On Helping Others

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have grown a lot and worked on myself a great deal. I feel now when I look at people that I have a genuine desire to help them, but I find people do not seem to really want to change. What can I do to get through to them?

Sincerely,

Helping Handicapped

Dear HH,

You help someone where they are at. Not where you wish them to be.

If that one simple thing sinks into you, then helping others is not a complex endeavour. According to your capability and their willingness, you help them. What is so hard about that?

The issue right now is you see someone and see problems. You decide that you are the only one who can fix it. They must be fixed the way you see them. This is not coming from a place of compassion, but from a place of competitiveness. Your insecurity makes you want to be the one to “get through to them”.

I want you to sincerely look at where you are in your life right now. You claim to have grown a lot; this is fantastic! Now tell me, to get to this place now, how many stupid, idiotic, and problematic things did you do? Was your journey perfect?

What authority or experience do you have to decide what somebody’s potential is? Do you have any way of determining that what they are going through right now is good or bad for their growth?

If you are truly in the business of helping others, then whatever way people are, you will use it for their growth. It is that simple.

It’s so easy to say to someone “You must be like this. You must change in the way I see as best“. This puts you in a superior position and removes all accountability from you. They fail and you avoid the blame, they succeed and you take the credit. Good deal for you, isn’t it?

If you do not have the skill to help someone no matter what state they are in, then best to simply leave them to live their life. You just exist in such a way that people are better for having encountered you. Be an exuberant, joyful life. That alone will help, without you having to do anything specific.

You being critical of others and forcing your way on them is not going to help anyone, least of all you. People do not want to be told what to do. They want to get there by their own hand. To help someone is an art, a dance, and skill does not come simply because you have “grown more than them”.

So that’s the first bit – you. Your capability to help must be honed, or barring that, you must be a blessing to all you encounter. Without that, you have no business helping.

The second bit is their willingness, their receptivity. But still, this requires your keen perception.

Helping someone is not about forcing them to a realization or an action. Helping someone is planting a seed.

People come to you with all kinds of boundaries and excuses and barriers set up. They want a beautiful flower to grow, but they have paved over everything with concrete. Where to plant the seed?

You can grab a hammer and force the pavement open, plop the seed down, then leave. But this is a destructive approach, and what’s more, you do it without their consent. Even if the flower grows, they have no appreciation for it and will pave over it again, simply because it was born without their consent.

But if you just be with them, and guide them towards cracking their own pavement – breaking down their own excuses in other words – then the soil is exposed, but they were the ones to expose it. Do not underestimate the importance of their involvement.

Then, you can plant the seed. Even better if you give them the seed and they plant it themselves!

All of this is metaphor, but it also isn’t. Every conversation you have is functioning in this way, isn’t it? To help is just this very process of dissolving excuses and boundaries and exposing the soil. It is about freedom and growth.

When they are the ones to break down their own nonsense, their growth is much faster and lasts. They are capable of transformation. If you want to help,  you guide them through this, provide them with the tools, support them whatever way they need in that moment.

Every moment is different. Whether a person is making poor choices or good choices is irrelevant. No one can say for sure what can grow from the actions we take today. So deal with each person as they are in that moment.

Don’t see people the way you wish they were. You will be incapable of helping. Who knows what they will flower into! They may do something no one else has ever dreamed!

You want to help, then simply meet them where they are at. Drop this notion that they are not receptive. Something is always reachable and possible in each moment. You are the fool for acting as though you know best and it’s their issue.

Help or don’t help, either is fine. But if you must help, then help them as they are. That is the only way.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Jealousy

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I have a friend who doesn’t seem to have his life figured out. He has very little money, can never keep a steady job, isn’t married. He seems to have nothing really. Though he claims he is happy but I worry about his future. Why can’t he seem to figure out the basic things in life that the rest of have accepted and work so hard at?

Sincerely,

Friend in Need

Dear FIN,

He says he is happy. So what’s the issue?

Tell me, did you come to this planet with some sort of checklist – get a job, get money, get married, etc? Obviously not, and neither did he. On top of that, are you some kind of authority on life? Especially, are you some authority on HIS life?

You are playing a very dangerous game with yourself. You think that you know what’s best for someone else. Now, based on this inflated sense of self, you go on trying to tell someone else how to best live their own life.

The real question isn’t about him. Sure, maybe you genuinely care about him. But the reality is your worrying about him is not coming from a place of concern. It is coming because you feel threatened by his very way of being.

The real question is with you. Let’s say you have the job, the money, the spouse, all of it. But are you any happier? Did these things all guarantee your happiness? Nothing wrong with having those things. Nothing wrong not having them either.

If you go on in life thinking that you can create happiness for yourself by gathering it from your external surroundings, it not only doesn’t work that way, but you are existing like a parasite, extracting it from everyone and everything. Would anyone want to be around someone like that?

Unhappy people who seek happiness from outside themselves are extremely dangerous to be around. They constantly drain those around them. Your friend seems to have found a way to be happy by his own nature. Just within himself, regardless of what he has or doesn’t have, he has figured this one thing out – that his happiness is determined by him, not by anyone else.

See, your friend may very well be a success. He just has measured it in a much more sensible way. You cannot measure success based on what others are doing. You can only measure success by comparison to your own journey.

So maybe your friend doesn’t have all that you have, but he has decided to be a success within himself. He wants to be established in who he is in, so that his happiness is his own making.

Deep down, you understand that it is not your job, your money, or your spouse, or any other damn thing you have accumulated that is making you happy. Maybe short term, it can bring some joy. But the reality is your happiness is manufactured within you only. Even if something external happens, the happiness is inside you! Nowhere else.

But for some reason, you have gone on trying to find something that is inside you somewhere else. Why would you try to find something that is right here somewhere else? It is ridiculous isn’t it?

Now, on top of you seeking your happiness like some pursuit – it is not a pursuit, it is an expression of who you are – you now feel you are the authority on everyone else’s happiness too. Please humble yourself and see the truth.

Your friend may be more successful than you when it comes to happiness. You may be more successful in material ways, but none of those things truly matter. If you cannot do those things joyfully, then you are simply enslaved by them.

You have only two choices when you see someone who is more successful than you: Either you can be jealous, or you can grow.

Because you are working so hard to be better, but doing it outside in approach, you only want other people to be happy if they do it your way too. But your way isn’t working. So now, your friend comes along, and not only is he happier than you, but he is not doing any of the things you are struggling so hard to do. How rude of him!

Your whole way you have done your life is now threatened by him. It’s time to stop compulsively being jealous and actively trying to drag him into your nonsense. It’s time to learn and grow.

If you see someone who is doing something better than you, if you are wise, you will grow. If you are compulsive and arrogant, you will become jealous and try to change them. People are not your business to change. Your business is with yourself.

Your friend says he is happy? But maybe you are still too skeptical and jealous to buy it. Well, maybe it’s time you sat down with him, and asked him to share with you why. Maybe it’s time to experience what has worked for him. If he truly is a failing life on all levels, then you will know only by being with him with an open mind, won’t you?

But if he truly is established within himself, then you have a tremendous possibility to grow and learn how to do the same. Either way, you will have options. The way you are trying to do things now, all that will happen is you will become more self-righteous and he will want to be around you less and less.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Success

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

How do I become more successful in life? For some people it seems so easy: money, relationships, career…they all have it figured out. What am I missing?

Sincerely,

Suck at Success

Dear SAS,

First of all, let’s get out of the comparison game. If you go on comparing yourself endlessly to those around you, you will always feel inadequate. This has nothing to do with how you are compared to someone else.

If we compared you to someone who had less, wouldn’t you seem a success in their eyes? Would they not give anything to be at your level of success even? So many people in this world are struggling far more than you.

But I’m not going to chastise you for not appreciating what you have already. That’s not a solution to your question. But it is important that you stop comparing and start appreciating what you have, for no other reason than your experience of life will be more profound.

Let us look at this issue of success not compared to anyone or anything else, but just that you have a desire to be more successful than you are.

When you say success, all you are saying is that you want your surroundings to be pleasant for your experience of life. You may give it so many different names, but essentially it is just that.

The only problem is, has anything external ever gone 100% the way you wanted? Have you ever had a plan in your head that went exactly 100% the way you imagined? Even one moment, out of all the moments in your life?

The issue with trying to fix the external is there are too many variables. You can never make the result happen 100% the way you want. You may get close from time to time, but you can never predict or prepare for everything.

That too, look at where your predictions and preparations are coming from – the information that you have gathered. Essentially, your memory. Can you recall even a single memory 100% accurately in it’s entirety?

So you are using your inaccurate memory to plan and prepare for external results which by their very nature can never go 100% your way. Seems a bit foolish, doesn’t it?

This is not to say I am against planning or preparing. I just want you to understand it’s limitations. There is a better way to go, if you’d only drop this fixation on what you define as success.

Right now, you see a specific result as success. You make a goal – I want to earn one million dollars. Then even if you go from earning forty thousand to fifty thousand, you will feel like a failure. On top of that, you have eliminated any possibility of you earning beyond one million.

By becoming obsessed with a particular result, you take 10,000 open doors and shut them, leaving only one.

Life has set no upper limit to your potential. Why are you doing such stupid things? If you are willing and intensely involved, you can accomplish things people have never done before!

Is not each human being uniquely qualified to do something no one else has ever done? You may not be able to do what your neighbour can do, but that is not that point. For sure, your potential is boundless.

Instead of being results fixated, be devoted absolutely to the process. The goal is just a target. Use it to motivate you if you wish, but it is not an end in and of itself. If you are willing to learn, to grow, to involve yourself in each step of the process, guaranteed results will happen, just maybe not the results your limited imagination conjured.

Right now the issue is, you want the fruit but you don’t want to grow the tree. Life doesn’t work that way. You look at other people and see them enjoying the fruits of their labour, but you ignore the huge tree they spent years growing to yield the fruit.

You want success? Success is the fruit. You grow the tree. You work on your intensity, your involvement, your joy, your growing, your gratitude…Why? Because that is all that is in your control.

The external is never in your control 100%. But how you are, no matter what life gives you, that is entirely up to you. That is the tree.

So along the way to getting your fruit of success, you must plant seeds, you must water them, nourish them, give them sunlight, help them grow, and most importantly, you must wait. When the time is right, fruit is a natural consequence of your effort.

Who knows, you might even get flowers along with the fruit! But the fruit and flowers aren’t even the whole story. The joy of taking care of that sapling, the pride of watching it bloom, the shade that it provides you…There is so much also to be reaped in the journey.

You see, success isn’t about what you pursue. It is about your experience of pursuing it. Life is about expression, not pursuit. Devote yourself entirely to the process, and you will see every moment of your life is the fruit of success. What a shame to miss out on it.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Harmony

~ SE ~ 1 Comment

Dear True Self,

How can I live a more harmonious life? Be more in harmony with others?

Sincerely,

One Part Harmony

Dear OPH,

Words like “harmony” get thrown around a lot. There are so many buzzwords that people use when they are working on their spirituality. Even spirituality is a sort of buzzword!

Why I am saying this is because I want you to take whatever definition you have about harmony and throw it away. I don’t care if the definition is correct even, I want you to just drop it entirely.

Did you drop it? Are you willing to just be open, and hear what harmony actually means?

It is important that you are open, because if you are not receptive, then you cannot receive. I don’t want you to even compare your definition to what I am about to tell you and say “See, I was right!” or “Yeah, my definition was similar!”. I don’t want you to compare it all. Just fresh, as if you have never heard about it before, experience it.

Harmony is a certain arrangement. Music has harmony. And music is just sound. If the sound isn’t arranged properly, then we experience it as noise. But if we arrange sounds in a certain way, we call it music. If those sounds are arranged in a mathematically perfect way, we call that harmony.

In many ways, the harmony you are looking for in your life – it’s just a certain arrangement of your energy with other energies. It’s like making music. It’s how you are compatible with the life around you. Do you compliment it or are you creating dissonance?

It could be the people you know, the environment, the work you do, whatever. But if you are living in harmony, then you find a way to arrange your energy so that you are working with others, not against.

When I say energy, I don’t want you to start imagining all kinds of fanciful things. I’m not talking about some big secret divine cosmic energy. Just simply put, all things are energy, are they not? All matter is just energy, at it’s fundamental form. And all that energy is just manifesting as patterns.

Over here, there is energy in the pattern of a rock. Over there, it’s in the pattern of a bee. Over there, it’s you or me or your cat. But it’s all essentially just energy.

Now you do not have the skill or the ability to reshape your energies and suddenly become something else. But all the processes that are happening within you are energy based.

Your body, your thoughts, your emotions – these are the three dimensions of life for sure you can say you have experienced. You might talk about soul or spirit or something but the truth is you cannot ever prove that. So let’s just stick to those three.

Those three dimensions also are just energy arranged in a certain way. What I mean by this is your thoughts, your feelings, your words, your actions – these are the musical notes. They must all be singing the same song, or all you will have is noise.

When someone sings a harmony, they are a supporting role, you know? The singer is doing the main melody, but you come in and enrich it all by supporting. Like this you can make harmony, supporting others with all that you are.

In every thought, word, deed, you must strive to make life a more beautiful and peaceful experience. This universe is not at some big struggle, so why are you?

Everything is happening following the path of least resistance. Like this too, you must move through life, joyfully, easily, gratefully. That is harmony.

But you have been conditioned to do the opposite. Since you were a child you were taught to compete with everyone and everything. You measured your worth only by someone else being less than you. You had to be first at everything to feel value.

Can you possibly ever be at ease with life if you are always at odds with it? If you are endlessly competing and comparing yourself to everyone and everything, there is no hope for the path of least resistance. Harmony will never come. It will always elude you.

So I’ve talked about your energies and now you might think you can go sit and imagine your energies flowing out like a fountain or something. That’s all fine if it makes you feel better, but I want you to understand that the fastest way for you to achieve harmony is not through some psychological fantasy. It is through experiential reality.

Psychological things have no basis in reality. They only happen in your head. Put your attention to how you are and how that affects the life around you.

Okay, so how to do that? Well, you cannot practice making your energy more harmonious. What you can do however, is drop this compulsive nature you have towards competition. This is the real poison in your system. You must remove this poison so the energy can move freely.

The energy of your life or this universe doesn’t need your assistance in order to find harmony. That is the basic principle of energy, is that it always will settle to where it is at ease. It will always naturally find harmony. All it needs is for you to stop interfering with it. For most, that means when they die!

While you are alive you must learn how to live harmoniously. So that means stop competing. Stop basing the value of your life only in comparison to another. Just be happy and grateful for your own life.

You are lucky to be here, as you. In all the history of the universe and the unwritten history to come, there will never be another you. Only you can live your life. It is unique, and it is yours. It is better to be a bumbling version of yourself than a perfect version of someone else.

Harmony is just how you are working to support others, not how everyone else is supposed to help you.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Being Considerate

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

Why does it matter how I treat others? Isn’t everyone supposed to be responsible for themselves? If you are on this spiritual path, shouldn’t your own self growth be the most important thing? As I grow more and more I feel like I don’t have time to be babysitting everyone’s reactions.

Sincerely,

Adventures in Babysitting

Dear AIB,

You are right.

Does that surprise you, that I agree with you?

I cannot argue with your logic. Everyone is responsible for themselves. It is not your place to take credit or blame for another’s actions anymore than they should for yours.

There is nothing stopping you from acting this way, with only your own self improvement as the singular focus. If you have to hurt or harm others to get there even I cannot argue with you. Life itself is like this, with one being feeding off another to live. It happens all the time.

You see, you can do whatever you feel you must do. It’s not an issue of morality or ethics, if you are truly committed to your own self growth you should have that sort of focus. Nothing will stop you from reaching it and you will do anything – this kind of commitment is paramount.

Instead of arguing with you I simply want you to understand something.

Let’s say all your dreams come true. After all your struggle and all the people you’ve hurt either through action or inaction along the way, you end up where you desire. At oneness, enlightenment, at your ultimate potential, god, whatever you wish to call it – you will realize that all that pain you caused was totally unnecessary.

You see, existence is hiding nothing from you. If you wish to explore the full depth of being human, there are no rules and regulations. All the rules you have made up are exactly that – you made them up.

If you decide you must hurt people to get where you need to, that will be your reality. It’s your choice. That’s your freedom. I am only asking why you would choose to add to the suffering of an already deeply troubled world.

To be one with this existence does not require anything. You have a lot of your own bullshit in the way, so you think it requires you dropping all that bullshit at any cost.

Along the way to dropping all your nonsense, you may do a lot of things, and justify much of it. But in the end, if you make it to that zenith, you will see you could have done all of this in a way that was more beautiful for yourself and everyone else and still got there.

I want you to imagine you are climbing a mountain. Now every once in a while, the mountain has some other mountaineers on it. They are going to slow, too clumsily, essentially they are slowing you down. Now you can either help them up, go around them, or cut their chords and then they are no longer an issue.

So what do you do? Do you start cutting all their chords, racing to the top? Tell me, what is the point of being one with existence if you are taking people out along the way as if they aren’t a part of this oneness? Do you really think that when you feel that oneness you won’t suddenly be flooded with the weight of all that harm you caused?

Anyway you will make it to the top of the mountain, but was it really necessary to hurt those people who were struggling just like you? They are your brothers and sisters in this journey, not your obstacle.

Similarly, does it serve you to go up the mountain as a basketcase? Stressed out, looking for a fight, ready to cause harm? Will that make the journey enjoyable for you or anyone else? It is already a difficult journey, why add to it’s difficulty? This is a surefire way to never make it to the top.

You could go up the mountain peacefully, calmly, joyfully! You could do anything you want with the other mountaineers, but at the very least you can leave them alone – this costs you nothing.

I am not talking about suddenly becoming some altruist. I am not talking about doing the right thing and helping everyone along the way. You do not need to do any such thing.

What I am saying is that this is about simply being considerate.

I want you to consider that every action has a consequence. You can never avoid this simple truth. Sometimes in life it may be necessary to take actions that aren’t so pretty. But what’s most important is how you are when you take said actions.

Is it not in your best interest to make life as beautiful for yourself and others as possible? Is it not in your best interest to leave this world better than you found it?

Do you somehow think that a part of you doesn’t go into everything you affect? Every time you interact with anything in your experience, a part of you is now gone, is it not?

Your very life energies are constantly exuding from you, and become reborn within everything they touch! Nothing is ever destroyed or lost, only transferred, transformed, transmuted.

So how you are when you act in this world truly matters. Everything you interact with is your legacy. If you can feel this deeply within you, you would never waste a moment harming anything any more than you already have. You would only harm when it is absolutely necessary.

Sometimes in life we are presented with people who challenge us. You act according to the situation. That is fine. That is the smart thing to do. But that should never be your focus.

You be considerate at the very least. If you are wise, you will be kind to all, making your legacy that everything that every came into your experience was better off for meeting you.

Understand that your actions affect everything around you and act in consideration of that affect. This is not because you owe anyone anything, it is simply because anyway your actions have that affect, this way you get to consciously make that affect best for all.

And when you act in a considerate way towards others, it goes both ways. So too do you become a considerate being.

In other words, as you give it you receive it.

Take this advice or leave it, I cannot say that your way will not work. It very well may work. But I can guarantee this:

In the end, you will know deeply that your responsibility was always to walk this life with the utmost consideration for all.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise

On Competitiveness

~ SE ~ Leave a comment

Dear True Self,

I am a highly competitive person. I often push myself to win in any game or sport I am in, or in my job I am always striving to be the top performer.

However, whenever I fail at my goals, or someone else wins, I get very moody and upset. I take it so personally. I’m not really interested in being less competitive, I thrive on it! But how can I do better? I don’t want to get upset every time I lose, but I also want to lose less. How can I achieve this?

Sincerely,

The Winner Takes All

Dear TWTA,

Who are you being competitive with?

I want you to look at this question sincerely. At work, is it your coworkers? In a sport is it the other team? In a game is it your opponents?

First let’s take a look at what it means to be the best.

It is true that there are people who are the best at what they do. Usain Bolt is the fastest man alive, that we know of, or at least have measured.Who do you think he was being competitive with? The current record holder?

You need to really understand what makes someone the best. It has nothing to do with the task they are performing. It is obviously impressive to see someone become the fastest man alive. But we are not impressed by the fact he can move his legs back and forth. We are impressed by the amount of work, consistency, and commitment it takes to earn that title.

Now let me ask you: Will Usain Bolt always be the fastest man alive? Obviously, the answer is no. In fact, even in his lifetime someone may beat his records and he can never reclaim the title. Should he feel upset or moody about this?

If you go your whole life comparing yourself to others, and that is your only barometer of success, you will find there is always someone better than you. The reality is, you have not put in anywhere near the same amount of dedication to mastering any one thing as someone like a Usain Bolt has done.

Here and there, in different avenues in your life, you are picking and choosing to be competitive. The worst part is, it’s rarely conscious. It’s a reaction to seeing someone outperform you.

My friend, you are being pulled by your envy. This is not competitiveness. Time to stop lying to yourself and call it what it is. Competitiveness is just the mask you use to hide your envy.

People who aim to become the best at something and succeed, they understand something that most others don’t. They are never competing with the people around them. It doesn’t matter who is better or who is winning in the moment. They have learned that in order to push past their limitations and indeed achieve something no other human has ever done, they need to see every moment as a learning opportunity.

You are so caught up in chasing the outcome that you ignore the journey. With envy in your eyes you look at what someone else has, and rather than see them as your teacher you see them as an opponent. When you win, you gloat. When you lose, you pout.

So I will ask you again: Who are you being competitive with?

The answer is of course your own limitations.

A person who judges their success by comparing themselves to others is not competitive. They are envious. A person who strives to make each moment an opportunity to break past their current limitations is competitive.

So this isn’t about striking a balance between being better and being a graceful loser. Unmask all this and see the envy under it all. When that happens, no one will have to tell you to lose gracefully. You won’t even see loss as a bad thing. You will be grateful, learning and pushing yourself even more, thrilled to be moving towards your potential.

Point your focus inward. Become competitive with the only thing that matters, your own barriers. Break them down, pushing forward each time. You’ll see the outside world will respond. Even to just witness someone striving towards their potential is an amazing thing.

Look outward and all you will have is your envy. Turn inward, and something truly tremendous will blossom within you.

With gratitude,

Your True Self

Click here if you have a question to ask Your True Self. All questions are anonymous and may be published unless specified otherwise.