I just have to say that sometimes I am much better at following the four agreements than others. It seems that most of the time I am impeccable with my word, I do not take things personally, I seek clarification and don’t make assumptions and work to always do my best. Then there are those moments, whether it is because of a super moon, a total eclipse of the sun or that we are in some planetary retrograde. There are those moments when, for whatever reason, I forget and take something personally.
When this happens I know I am not upset with the person who said or did whatever, I am upset with myself because I allowed myself to take it personally. Now, it has triggered something deep within me and I am the one who will have to sort it through, stalk it down, pull it out, and heal the wound it was hiding in so that I can move on with my life. While I know what to do when this happens, this self-inquiry process is not easy and not one I look forward to going through.
Sometimes the words said are true and sometimes they are not, however, when they trigger something deep inside me, then I have to spend time searching it out, staying focused on it like a jaguar after a specific prey. I would really like to be angry with the person who delivered the words, but I can’t be angry at them for my feelings. I may not want to be around them while I am on this internal search, however, at the same time they have just saved me hours of time with a therapist I cannot afford. So here I am doing work I didn’t even know I needed to do so that I can get to the bottom of all this and not let it happen again.
It would be easier to blame whomever on my issues, but they are mine. The truth is that when I am going through something I am the one who has to work on my relationship with my mind. I am the one who has to figure out why in this situation I am allowing my mind to control me instead of me controlling my mind. I have to figure out what it was about what was said that made me give up control and what do I need to do to take control of my mind again. When I take Byron Katie’s four questions and work through them, then I ultimately come to see what I need to do for me or stop doing to me to help me turn things around in my head.
So after, I do this emotional rant to get it all out of my system, I ask myself this question is it true? My friends would probably laugh because my idea of a rant is different than most people’s (lol). Most of the time, I know it is not true, at least if I am being honest with myself. But sometimes, I need to really think a little deeper because there is a part of me that wants what I am feeling to be true. So then I have to ask myself that second question. Can you absolutely know that it’s true. Then the voice in the back of my head, or maybe the front of my head, says keep it simple Sharon – yes or no; this is no time for in-depth explanations and excuses; no time to find a way to make it true, just answer yes or no. Then I wind up admitting, albeit reluctantly sometimes, that there is no truth to what I am feeling about a person or situation. So then I move on to the third question which challenges me to think about how I react and what happens when I believe that what I just admitted is not true is true. That is about when I start to go hmm. I feel like crap and feel sad, hurt, angry, etc. Right about that time, I generally am asking myself why would I choose to allow myself to feel this way about something that isn’t true and have to laugh at myself and go seriously Jacobson what are you thinking. Then I ask myself the fourth question, which is who would I be without this thought and the answer is always that I would be a much happier person. Duh! Then I take myself through this process of realizing that I was causing myself to suffer over something which was not true, and did not exist, other than within me. Now I get to do something about it because it is mine to fix and I can’t blame it on somebody else or the alignment of the planets or the moon. I just have to do the work on me and fix it, so that I am back in control of my mind again and it is no longer controlling me.
http://www.thework.com/thework-4questions.php