Karmic Muscle Group: Confidence and Mental Clarity
Today’s Exercise: Purge A Doubt
- Identify something in your life that disappoints you. It might be your job, your spouse, one of your children or even yourself. It needs to be something that was completely possible to have in your life, but did not turn out how you wanted it to.
- Spend 3 full minutes considering what it is about the object of your disappointment that has let you down.
- Spend another 3 minutes verbally identifying the ways in which this thing or event has disappointed you. Hear your own voice speak the elements of your disappointment. If you prefer, you can write the elements of your disappointment down on paper. The point is that these elements must come into the physical world as a sound or a written word.
- Notice how you are giving up being responsible for the thing that has disappointed you.
- Take a deep breath, exhale.
- Now notice you have quit on the object of your disappointment and that your disappointment is your excuse for not taking a stand for the person, event or thing that you wanted to have come into the world.[hr]
Training Note:
Most of us quit far before we fail. We expect certain things to happen or we expect people to behave a certain way and when reality does not meet our expectations we give up. What is quitting? Quitting is a declaration that you are now longer willing to be the causal force for something to exist in the world. It is an attempt to absolve yourself of the responsibility for causing things to turn out they way you would like them to turn out. It is a surrender of your power, but worse, it is abandonment of vision for the future. This might not always be a bad thing. There are many things worth quitting – cigarette smoking, for instance, is something that everyone should quit. But when we feel doubt and disappointment, we are blaming someone or something else for our lack of resolve. We use doubt and blame to justify are decision to abandon our stand. We almost never simply say, “I am not doing this anymore”. Instead, we say, “you are such a jerk, I am no longer required to stand by you.” In many cases this is dishonorable. Doubt is a mind killer. It cuts off our pursuit of possibility. It destroys innovation. It is the permission that we give ourselves to take the low road.[hr]
Karmic Benefits:
- Finding Our True Measure Of Tenacity: When we quit, the thing we were hoping for ceases to be possible. This can be useful if we are quitting something harmful to us like taking drugs. More often than not, however, we quit our dreams or we give up on people who could really use a friend. We even do this to our children. But what if we didn’t quit?
- Knowing The Power Of Failure: sometimes, despite our best efforts and the full application of our skill, we cannot make something happen. There is nothing lost by failing, even though you might not gain what you had hoped. But taking a stand for things being a certain way, even if they odds are against you, can be a reality-altering event. It is to say, “I may die here, but I cannot live without standing for this — even if I fail”. This is the skill of true resolve and most of us never get near it because we quit way before we fail.
- The Virtue Of Resolve: sometimes it does not matter whether you win or lose, but that you stand on one side or the other. If your child is losing a battle to drugs and eventually dies because of them, could you live with yourself knowing that you quit that fight while she was still alive? Wouldn’t it be better to lose that fight in a pitched battle for her life even if you lose in the end? Who are you serving when you quit? The person you are committed to or your own ego?
- The Truth Of Battle: contrary to what you have been told, you are not born to win every battle. Sometimes, what there is to do is lose or even die. But dying on your feet with your sword in your hand is a far better fate than slinking away having abandoned what you believe in. Losing does not negate who you are, but quitting most certainly does. It may be better to lose one’s own life than lose one’s faith or principles by which life finds its deepest meaning. [hr]
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It May Be Fiction, But It Is One Heck Of A Karmic Workout.
Read The Lotus Blossom, D. M. Kenyon’s fictional account of a teenage girl who turns off her cellphone and enters the very real, but mystical world of Budo warriors. Humorous, irreverent and heart-wrenching, The Lotus Blossom is an unforgettable tale of a Midwestern teenage girl’s transformation into a budo warrior in the midst of the turmoil of the Information Age. Available in all digital formats, paperback and soon to be released in hardcover.
Available at : Amazon.com Smashwords.com Barnes & Noble [hr_shadow]
Share Your Experience:
Leave a comment when you have completed the exercise.
