Do you remember the last time you were upset?
Did you enjoy it? I don’t think you would. No one in their right mind would.
Anger can make us feel powerful, but it’s just not a pleasant feeling, right? Being upset always has a cost physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Either you talk and discuss and about it, or think about it endlessly, feel some unpleasant emotions, and sometimes all of the above.
It takes your focus away from the task at hand and prevents you from being present and creative.
Today I would be showing you how you can change your relationship with an upset, and thus to have more peace and harmony with the people around you.
And to do that, let’s do a little exercise.
I’m going to ask you to recall the last time you were upset. Could you remember what actually happened, the words said? There’s usually something or someone on the other side that is a trigger, right?
Now, see if you can recall the sensations in your body when you felt upset.
Can you remember the last time you experience this feeling or sensation before this one?
You may remember something from some time earlier, a few months or a few years back, when you were in college, or when you were much younger.
Because the cause of the upset is not actually what happened in the present time.
We’re triggered because the brain and the body remember the same experience that happened before, usually repeatedly.
And what happened now is touching that unhealed wound again.
So an upset is a setup.
And what I mean by that is the upset will be not resolved in the now just by talking it out, discussing it, by trying to change the person or the situation.
If the original wound has not been healed or released, you’ll feel upset again by the same person or by the same situation.
In any relationship, either romantically or with the original family, you experience this. You’re upset by one person, then you try to talk it out, forgive each other, but when the person does the same thing, you’re hurt or disappointed all over again.
Any of you ever experience this?
Many relationships become stale and lackluster because they try to resolve an upset by trying to change the other person.
We look at the obvious, try to fix the effect, and seldom look at the cause.
I want to share with you one of Nasruddin's stories. Nasruddin is the wise fool often quoted in spiritual teaching stories.
One day his brother saw him looking around for something under the light.
His brother asked him, “What are you looking for?”
“I’m looking for my key”, Nasruddin said.
“Where did you lose it?”, his brother asked perplexed.
“In the backyard”, countered Nasruddin.
“Why aren’t you looking for it there?”, asked his brother again.
“Because it’s dark there”, said Nasruddin
Trying to solve an upset by fixing the issue in the present time is like Nasruddin looking for his key under the lamp when it’s actually lost somewhere else.
It won’t work.
So next time you find you’re upset about something, or anything at all, remember that your upset is a setup, to help you resolve it once and forever.
And if you don’t want to lose sleep, energy, or time over your upset, and want to get your peace back as quickly as possible, don’t react to your upset.
That is STOP, just stop everything.
Don’t talk back, don’t argue, don’t waste time mulling over it.
Instead, focus on yourself, and NOT on what you perceive as the cause of your upset.
Then say to yourself:
“I am upset now.”
“What am I really upset about?”
“What is happening inside my body? What am I feeling?”
“When was the last time I feel like this?”
Or you can say, “When was the first time I feel like this?”
If you could already find an earlier occasion where you feel the same body sensations and feelings, you’re already getting closer to the cause of your upset.
And…. You’ll find that the next time something that used to upset you in the past happen, your body, your brain, and your emotion just won’t react to it.
It’s like a brain memory has been miraculously deleted, once and for all.
Byron Katie, the author of The Work said:
“As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there”—as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering—the situation is hopeless.
It means that you’re forever in the role of victim, that you’re suffering in paradise”
So who do you choose to be, a victim forever imprisoned by your past,
or someone who’s free to author their reality?
