Everyone has heard this statement, but do you know how to work with it, to stop doing the same things, to stop behaving like an insane person?
Which gets me to the problem with inspirational quotes.
They sound great and they feel good for about 20 seconds, but the challenge is, to what extent are we putting that inspirational quote into practice right now!
As Adyashanti so wisely says, “A great insight is only as good as the surrender it engenders.”
You might therefore ask yourself the question, “In what ways am I behaving insanely right now, in this very moment?”
Stress
Perhaps you are feeling stressed and under pressure with too much to do in too little time.
Your day is filled with meetings and an inbox that is overflowing and you have projects not done or needing your attention.
One of the things that we are repeatedly doing (meaning doing the same thing) is wishing that the pressure would go away and resenting and resisting it.
So the first way to stop going insane is to let go of the wishing and the resistance. Now most of us know that this is what we need to do but we haven’t explored deeply enough why we need to do it and in addition it is much easier to just wish and resist.
This is one of the key pieces of insanity.
We do what is easier rather than what is difficult. We have neural pathways which reflect doing things ‘the easy way’ rather than the difficult way.
There is a lovely article by The Mind Unleashed in which they describe neural pathways being like superhighways that transmit messages. The more you travel that pathway the more solid and entrenched it becomes.
Neural Pathways
My observation of myself and just about everybody I’ve ever worked with, tells me that the biggest, most ultra, super duper neural highway is to follow the line of least resistance, to do what easy rather than what’s difficult.
I therefore suggest that you set an intention to shift a particular neural pathway that really is insane for you and that has been repeated over and over again and begin to shift it.
What’s really, important is to set a strong intention and to keep repeating it!
The best way that I know of to do this is to use Dr. John Demartini’s Hierarchy of Values technique. What he’s saying is that we all are hierarchy of values, which is not about ethics or morality, but is about what is most important to us.
We Are All Lazy!
We are all focused and energised and committed to what is most important to us and least energised, focused and committed to what is unimportant to us. Which means that all of us are lazy for what is at the bottom of our hierarchy.
When a mother calls her son lazy, because he doesn’t study, all that she is saying is that he doesn’t consider studying to be as important as she does. He’s interested in sex and music and parties and girls and sex…and not studying!
She yells at him, calling him lazy because he’s not interested in studying but he is incredibly focused and organised around girls and sex! That’s at the top of his hierarchy of values.
In essence all conflict is about people trying to change each other’s Hierarchy of Values.
What most people are therefore focused on is wishing things were different and having resistance to the way things are. This is really at the top of our Hierarchy of Values.
What you need to do is write down all of the benefits – and you need at least 30 or more of them – for taking wishing and resistance down your hierarchy. If you don’t take it down your hierarchy you are not going to stop doing it.
In addition, you want to link each benefit to the eight areas of life, to really deepen the process. These eight areas are Mental, Emotional, Spiritual, Career, Finance, Family, Social, Physical.
Example
Let me give you an example of how to do this. If you look at the benefits of lowering your resistance to your partner’s selfishness, you might say, “It will benefit me emotionally by making me calmer, which will in turn make me more loving toward them, which is likely to make them more loving toward me, which is likely to make me feel better about myself in the relationship. This will also make me feel better about my work life and on and on you need to go.
You need to keep doing this until you feel completely inspired to do what is not easy to do. It is only when your inspiration is great, that then your resistance to the difficulties will subside.
We need to specify how the benefits cascade downwards and outwards into all areas of life in order to truly ignite the sense of inspiration.
The really tricky thing is that most people don’t want to do the work, they don’t want to sit down and write down all of the benefits of dropping wishing and resistance down their hierarchy. Which means what you might need to do, is write down the benefits, of doing the benefits!
With the example of wishing and resistance you want to drop them down hierarchy.
With something like exercise you would need to write down all the benefits in all eight areas in order to raise it up the hierarchy
Bottom line, it’s easier to be insane and to do the same things over and over again.
Or to put it another way, the route to sanity is a tough and rocky road!
If you would like to meet face to face or via Skype for a consultation around these issues, drop me a mail at realmark@icon.co.za
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