Trying to squeeze blood from a turnip is a lot like being at war with reality.
What are the ways we use force against what is, in an attempt to make things the way we think (and thought is the key word here) they should be?
Does it ever really work? And at what price?
When we use force, do we even know that our sanity, our inner peace, our body, exists? Or do we only see the blood we want so desperately to come from the turnip, or whatever we are applying force to?
If we see clearly, we first begin to recognize that we are not getting the blood we want, despite all the effort. If we continue to look, we might be able to recognize that there's a turnip involved, a turnip that is quite innocent, being a turnip. It has no blood to give. It's just being squeezed, and squeezed some more, harder and harder. You (the one who is squeezing) keep getting more frustrated, but the turnip is not doing anything different. Surprise, surprise, it's still a turnip! Your squeezing, your effort, your frustration, your attempts, have done absolutely nothing to change that.
The turnip seems puzzled. It seems to ask, "Why are you angry at me for being a turnip? Why are you frustrated that there's no blood in me to give? You are getting everything you possibly can from me, because I am a turnip!"
If we look really deeply, we might then see that it's not the turnip who has the problem. We are, at some level, insane for being attached to an outcome that does not - cannot - exist. Until we see all of this clearly there is no way we will let go of our grip on the turnip. We will keep squeezing and squeezing, until our hand gives out or our frustration gets the better of us. The turnip won't yield any blood, and it probably won't even change shape. But what will we be left with? A sore hand, and a broken spirit. Time spent in useless frustration, curses thrown at the luck we were dealt. And no blood.
Not a very fulfilling way to pass the time. Or a very good way to use the strength in your hands.
Working with the body, I've noticed that there is power in the hand when it receives. When you align your entire body, placing your hand in a position where, when it simply receives the weight of your body, it carries the entire universe in its palm. There is no effort in that moment. There is intention and presence in positioning your body to be able to receive. But once those intentions and alignments are in place, the rest is effortless. There is No Force.
However, there is tremendous power. In the moment of No Force, there is space for the power to heal, to release, to discover, to transform. When we let go of force, we merge with reality. Reality is kind, if we allow it to show us what we need to see.
No Force is a way to practice kindness toward yourself. The beneficiaries of No Force will extend beyond you, but if you need a reason to begin, begin with what is kind to yourself.
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Have you ever thought about how you learned what love means? What moments in your life explicitly taught you how to love? What examples of love did you observe, and what did you unconsciously learn from them?
For most of my life, I have had a murky understanding of the words "love" and "compassion". They were abstract concepts, which I felt no bodily connection to. They were supposed to be good things that good people expressed and felt all of the time, but I had no clue what they felt like to me.
"I love you" was not something ever uttered in my household. As far as I know, the phrase doesn't exist in the Chinese language, at least as it applies to families.
For most of my life, "love" was a word used by my parents to rationalize their financial anxiety, anger, worry, asking for too much information, and criticizing. "If we didn't love you and care about you, we wouldn't bother to nag you so much," they'd say in defense of themselves.
Well, if love was such a great thing, and that was how love made me feel, then I didn't get why I should center my life around it. At all. It didn't feel good to me. It felt confining. It felt like a minefield, where I never knew if my next step would land me in a sudden explosion of admonishment, shame, and guilt about why the particular thing I just did was the wrong move to make.
I convinced myself that I didn't want my life to hurt. I created an association between love and hurt. So I did everything I could to make sure I was not dependent on love for anything vital in my life. Ha!
"Compassion" was an even more foreign concept. The images that come to mind when I think of "compassion" involve Mother Teresa, Sally Struthers and images of little kids with distended bellies and black flies on their eyelashes, and the Pope. I'm not sure why these people represent compassion, but it's interesting that I've never met any of them personally. (OK, I got within 25 feet of the Pope once, when I was eleven years old, but I was playing violin at the time and was delirious from sitting in St. Peter's Square for four hours in the hot sun of an Italian June.) My point is that "compassion" was an even more abstract term than "love", and I always thought it was reserved for saintly, selfless people who gave their lives to some grand, charitable cause. In other words, it was a luxury I could not afford to indulge in.
I've recently begun to learn that in order to experience the love and compassion I was seeking from everyone else in my life, I had to be willing to explore and discover what love and compassion feel like for me. I had to learn to demonstrate love and compassion toward myself first. This has involved identifying, questioning, and effectively unlearning many of the beliefs I had about love and compassion, which I held onto without knowing, and which were governing my behaviors without my knowing it.
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Today, I choose to share with you what I have learned, and also what I am unlearning. Each of the thoughts below are real beliefs I once had about love, and below them are the turnarounds that I am consciously choosing to practice, notice, and become more and more familiar with.
I could tell you that I am “letting go” of these thoughts, or that I have outgrown them.
But what actually feels more true for me is that I am developing a different relationship with these thoughts. By distancing myself from my thoughts enough to observe them, I have paradoxically become more intimate with them. I am able to look at them without avoiding them or pushing them away or labeling them as “wrong”. I can touch them, feel them, sense them, and know that they are within me, without loving myself less because of it.
I am willing to notice when I am believing one of these thoughts and acting on it and creating stress, and I am empowered to look directly at the source of the stress, without fear or less love of myself.
I am far from being perfect at this. It’s part of my practice to be willing to look at the imperfections long enough to choose something new and act without fear in that new direction. By acknowledging what has been painful for me and what I am growing through, I hope you can acknowledge some part of yourself that needs healing or more loving attention from the simple question, “Is it true?”
Love Lesson #1: The number of items I complete on my "To Do" list indicates my level of productivity, and therefore, my value in the world.
This may not seem to be about love, but it has been such a central belief in my entire life path, that I confront it every day. And every day I ask, “Is it true?” I am starting to get to answers that feel more true for me and set me free to do what’s truly important to me, not to anyone else. But with such a strong cultural message of achievement and productivity as the basis of human existence, this is a daily, moment-to-moment practice. I include it here because I've learned that true self-love is felt and demonstrated independent of how "productive" I am, and that becoming more productive does not help you learn how to love.
Turnaround: I am complete, as I am, in this moment. (notice that “what I do” is not part of the turnaround)
Love Lesson #2. What I am able to afford to buy indicates my level of freedom and status in the world.
This thought originated in my family’s struggle for survival and advancement and was reinforced by the strong consumerism in our culture. Without realizing it, I have created many outcomes in my life based on this belief. What I eventually realized was that ownership and accumulation of things do not equal greater freedom, and the only status that matters is the one you create from your inner world.
Turnaround: What I am able to LET GO of indicates my level of freedom and the status of my self-trust in the world I am creating.
Love Lesson #3. How I look and act in the workplace is more important than how I look and act at home.
This thought originated in so many examples I saw of “putting on a face” to play the game of work each day, and how starkly that outward face contrasted with the true self that emerged in the privacy of the home. It was confusing to me and I never understood the justification for sharing your best self with the outer world, and letting out all your stress and aggressions at home, with the people you claim to love the most.
Turnaround: I am creating a life based on authentic expression and generous sharing of my essential self. (I don’t see a necessary distinction between how I present myself “on the outside” and who I am at my essence)
Love Lesson #4. Love is an obligation and responsibility to another person.
Almost everything in my early life was framed as an obligation and responsibility. It seemed like the only reason to live a life was to be viewed as responsible and duty-bound in every possible way. Joy was not even in the equation of values. I still consider “desires” a luxury and have to practice consciously opening a valve in my mind to allow the flow of messages from my heart to enter into my awareness.
Turnaround: Love flows freely in the space between people. Love liberates.
Love Lesson #5. Loving someone means the right to criticize them in a "loving" way.
This was reinforced in every arena of my life from my family to my teachers to the higher academic training I received. I was trained to thrive on criticism. No matter how good a job I did, I wanted to know how to do better. We call this “drive” and “ambition” and hold it in great admiration in this culture. We aspire to “improve” ourselves in every way. The problem with this is we have no opposing muscle group or internal barometer to tell when “enough is enough”. We forget that by living our lives based on constant striving, we are training ourselves for imbalance and ultimate dissatisfaction, with no end in sight.
Turnaround: Love is truthful, accepting, calm, and peaceful. Love is filled with joy.
Love Lesson #6. Love means the right to hurt someone without having to apologize.
I remember the exact moment in a past relationship when I realized that this was my model of love, and the intense pain it caused me to see it in myself. But that moment of realization was also liberating, because I was able to see clearly where I was in the moment, and to consciously seek out another way to express love.
Turnaround: Love has no fear – neither of pain nor of apologizing.
Love Lesson #7. Love expects a return on its investment.
I believed that love was a transaction. I believed that I, as a person, was the investment of my parents’ love. I also believed that I owed a debt to them for providing this love, for withdrawing love from their bank accounts and depositing it into everything that I needed and wanted. As I saw the magnitude of their investment growing, I could not see a possible way to provide a reasonable return. So I kept setting the bar higher. Finally there were no more ladders to climb, and I had to come down to the realization that I am love, and that the returns on my love originate from within me and from my connection to the source of all love – not my parents but the universe.
Turnaround: Love is self-renewing, and expects nothing in return.
Love Lesson #8. Love means constant devotion, never relaxing or taking time for yourself. Love is the ultimate act of self-sacrifice.
I can’t tell you how many times I heard, “It’s because we love you…” or “If we didn’t love you, we wouldn’t…” as the justifications for overworking, overstressing, overdoing, overworrying. There was not one moment in my recollection that the major love figures in my life ever relaxed or took time for themselves. And they took pride in their self-sacrifice, since it demonstrated how responsible and duty-bound they were. It made love look very unappealing to me as a way of life.
Turnaround: Love comes from love. If you are not loving yourself, you cannot truly or fully love another person. Self-sacrifice is not loving.
Love Lesson #9. Love means living up to the expectations of those who love you (and sacrificed to give you your life).
This relates to the “return on investment” belief. I really saw myself as an asset of my family with certain expected returns. Every time I saw myself taking a step outside my “asset class”, behaving in a more high-risk (and high-return) way, I felt the weight of not having managed expectations, and having been at least slightly irresponsible. I had a nagging sense that I was never doing things the “right” way.
Turnaround: Love is free of all expectations about the future and exists fully in every present moment.
Love Lesson #10. Love needs to be earned.
So you might be noticing a theme here. I once believed that I had to earn love, live up to the expectations of those who loved me, pay back the investment of love that others put into me, and sacrifice myself in the name of love.
Turnaround: Love is the joy, freedom, and peace that exists within each of us when we are truly free.
I still don’t see myself using the word “love” a lot. Writing this post was a struggle, actually. I suppose I learned during the writing that I don’t have any obligation to use a word, like “love”, with so many old and convoluted (and false) beliefs attached to it. I prefer the words "peace", "joy", and "freedom", as a three-pronged cluster of words that captures the feelings I experience when I love myself. These carry a more important meaning for me right now - how they make me feel and how they free me to express who I am in every moment.
And it never hurts when I’m loving myself as I am right now.
Welcome to a weekly podcast where I’ll take physicians’ commonly held stressful beliefs and go through an inquiry process on each. I have recorded the questions so that you can listen and follow along, providing your own answers to the questions. It’s important to find YOUR OWN answers that feel true and genuine in your life. I’ve provided the recordings as a tool for slowing yourself down and taking the time to allow these questions to sit inside.
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*This process is based on The Work by Byron Katie. For more information, visit www.thework.com.
Today’s belief is “People need me to respond.”
The questions:
Is it true?
Can you know that it is absolutely, 100% true?
How do you react, and how do you behave, when you believe the thought, “People need me to respond”?
What is the payoff you get for believing the thought, “People need me to respond”?
What are you afraid might happen if you didn’t believe the thought, “People need me to respond”?
Who would you be, and how would you behave, if you didn’t believe the thought, “People need me to respond”?
Now turn the thought around, as I have done below. Find three genuine examples in your life for how each of these new thoughts is as true as the original thought.
Welcome to a weekly podcast where I'll take physicians' commonly held stressful beliefs and go through an inquiry process on each. I have recorded the questions so that you can listen and follow along, providing your own answers to the questions. It's important to find YOUR OWN answers that feel true and genuine in your life. I've provided the recordings as a tool for slowing yourself down and taking the time to allow these questions to sit inside.
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*This process is based on The Work by Byron Katie. For more information, visit www.thework.com.
Today's belief is "Patients demand my time."
The questions:
Is it true?
Can you know that it is absolutely, 100% true?
How do you react, and how do you behave, when you believe the thought, “Patients demand my time”?
What is the payoff you get for believing the thought, “Patients demand my time”?
What are you afraid might happen if you didn’t believe the thought, “Patients demand my time”?
Who would you be, and how would you behave, if you didn’t believe the thought, “Patients demand my time”?
Now turn the thought around, as I have done below. Find three genuine examples in your own life for how each of these turnarounds is as true as (or perhaps truer than) the original thought.
Welcome to a weekly podcast where I'll take physicians' commonly held stressful beliefs and go through an inquiry process on each. I have recorded the questions so that you can listen and follow along, providing your own answers to the questions. It's important to find YOUR OWN answers that feel true and genuine in your life. I've provided the recordings as a tool for slowing yourself down and taking the time to allow these questions to sit inside.
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*This process is based on The Work by Byron Katie. For more information, visit www.thework.com.
Today's belief is "I am surrounded by illness and suffering."
The questions:
Is it true?
Can you know that it is absolutely, 100% true?
How do you react, and how do you behave, when you believe the thought, “I am surrounded by illness and suffering”?
What is the payoff you get for believing the thought, “I am surrounded by illness and suffering”?
What are you afraid might happen if you didn’t believe the thought, “I am surrounded by illness and suffering”?
Who would you be, and how would you behave, if you didn’t believe the thought, “I am surrounded by illness and suffering"?
Now turn the thought around, as I have done below. Find three genuine examples in your life for how each of these new thoughts is as true as the original thought.
I am not surrounded by illness and suffering.
My patients are surrounded by illness and suffering.
My thoughts surround me with illness and suffering.
“Life begins when you put down the knife that you’ve been holding to your own neck.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love
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Elizabeth was addressing the crowd gathered for O Magazine’s 10th Anniversary bash in New York City, using her signature blend of truth, humor, and self-compassion to remind us that in our quest to “live our best lives”, we can easily fall prey to perfectionism, trying to fix everything that we find broken, and holding ourselves hostage to our own ideal images of who we believe we should be.
It’s a challenge in our culture of extremes to find what feels like balance for YOU. We’re being told by a lot of people what balance “should” be, and given formulas for how to achieve it. Go to a retreat center. Get a massage. Hire a life coach. Read this book. Watch this video. Join this community. Listen to this teacher. It’s enough to make you feel so overwhelmed that keeping the status quo seems a whole lot easier than trying to do something about it.
Right now, I’m in a deep practice of rethinking my thoughts, observing how my responses to situations are governed by a few deeply rooted beliefs that I never had an awareness of until my own experience with burnout led me to my training as a life coach. For me, I have noticed that by believing three main thoughts, I experience most of my feelings of stress, overwhelm, and resistance to what life brings my way.
“It’s never enough.”
"There’s not enough time.”
"I am responsible for other people’s pain and suffering.”
As I write them and look at them now, they still cause me twinges of pain. They are the three different knives I’ve been holding to my own neck, to borrow Elizabeth Gilbert’s image. Maybe you can imagine similar thoughts that you’ve had, and how they land in your body as sensations – a knot in your stomach, a crook in your neck, a clenching in your jaw. When taken to the extreme, any one of these thoughts feels like the threat of my imminent demise. It can cause me to freeze up, become silent, and wonder why I bother to say anything at all.
When I first started to notice these thoughts, the first thing I did was disbelieve how powerful they were as forces in shaping my life. “It’s only a thought,” I thought to myself. I blew it off as no big deal. I tried to take big, bold actions to show how free I was of these limiting beliefs. Limits, me? No way! And what happened? The same thoughts came back in different situations, causing me to behave in similar ways and feel similarly to the way I did in previous situations.
The second thing I did was to be a very dutiful student of the process, coming up with “perfect” turnarounds that showed how skillful I was at mastering the tool. To the first statement, I said, “It’s always enough.” I basked briefly in a moment of triumph for stepping into such power with an abundance-filled affirmation about how the universe always provides, etcetera. But, as my coach pointed out, that is a bunch of baloney if you don’t genuinely believe what you’re saying. Until you look for the evidence in your own life that shows how a turnaround is true, it’s only words on a page.
Busted!
I found this other turnaround to be just as true for me: “I’m never enough for me (my own standards).” Yet another proverbial knife to the neck that I’ve been holding. I can find the truth that I’m never enough for my own standards, and my mind proves that true by preventing me from taking the risk of stating what I really want. If I never set that lofty goal, then I’ll always have a reason to say I haven’t met it. I’ll never be enough for me, as long as that’s what my mind still believes.
For me, the hardest challenge - the thing I think I cannot do - is doing less. And being OK with that being enough for now. Not taking responsibility for other people's feelings or fixing them. Doing my best in each moment, and trying to learn. Now I see that every time I say, "This is enough!", I am one step closer to believing that I can be enough for me. Each time I say, "This is enough!", I am closer to putting down the knife. And it ain't easy!
Who would you be without these thoughts?
When you’ve been walking around holding a knife to your own throat, you don’t just drop it when someone tells you to do so. You may recognize that you don’t like the sensation, but you also don’t know another way. You’ve grown accustomed to “living on the edge”, motivated by the fear of never being enough, running out of time, or being responsible for other people’s opinions of you. These thoughts have gotten you to a certain point in terms of getting a certain job, the approval of family, the image of success, or the apparent ingredients of happiness. To question them may feel like something you might not survive.
Well, you’re right. Part of you – the ego identities associated with those beliefs – will die. But if you’re willing to go through the “death” of disbelieving your painful thoughts, what’s left is the clean, clear mind that gives rise to peace, no matter what circumstances you find yourself in.
So it’s not a new set of instructions, rules, or formulas to follow that will give you what your soul wants. It’s not another idol to worship, or a teacher to please, or a parent to plead for love from. The soul’s nature is to be free and at peace. All you need to do is clear the obstacles.
And put down the knife.
Photo credit (used under a Creative Commons license): Pierre Vignau
If you have behaved yourself into a situation, you must behave yourself out of it!
The behavior in this case is the behavior of the mind. As a physician, you went through systematic training of the mind to get you to believe certain thoughts. When was the last time you questioned one of these thoughts?
Learning that the mind's natural tendency is to attach to certain thoughts and believe them; and observing that the root of all painful, stressful feelings is believing certain thoughts, was revolutionary for me. I uncovered a system of thoughts that I believed without question, and realized that I already had all the freedom I was longing for. I simply had to question my thoughts.
To show you how this process works, it's best to use real examples.
Each week I’m going to take a stressful thought that is central to the physician’s belief system, and question it. Follow along, and even listen in on the audio podcast as you do your own work on the same thought.
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*This process is based on The Work of Byron Katie. For more information, visit www.thework.com.
A list of physicians’ common stressful thoughts:
“I need to take care of patients.”
“I am surrounded by illness, suffering, and death.”
“Patients demand my time.”
“People need me to respond.”
“I need to fill out paperwork.”
“There is too much paperwork.”
“My job is stressful.”
“Medicine is a stressful profession.”
“I don’t have enough time.”
“I have too many patients.”
“I am responsible for my patients.”
“I am responsible for keeping my patients healthy.”
“I am responsible for alleviating my patients’ pain and suffering.”
“I can’t make a mistake.”
“I need to do the right thing.”
“I work too many hours.”
“I don’t get paid enough.”
“I don’t get enough respect.”
“I need to be more efficient.”
“I already paid my dues.”
“I sacrificed myself to become a doctor.”
“I’m dealing with life or death issues.”
“This is more than just a job.”
“I need to find meaning in my job.”
“I’m too busy.”
“It’s not worth it.”
“I trained all those years to be able to do my job.”
“I’ve worked so hard already.”
“I can’t give up my job.”
“I need to put my training to good use.”
“I need to put the patient first.”
“My needs are secondary to the patient’s.”
“The system needs an overhaul.”
“I am a doctor.”
Can you come up with any more, based on your own experience?
Make your own list, and follow along as I question each of these thoughts.
Today's thought: "I need to take care of my patients."
The questions:
Is it true?
Can you know that it is absolutely, 100% true?
How do you react, and how do you behave, when you believe the thought, "I need to take care of my patients"?
What is the payoff you get for believing the thought, "I need to take care of my patients"?
What are you afraid might happen if you didn't believe the thought, "I need to take care of my patients"?
Who would you be, and how would you behave, if you didn't believe the thought, "I need to take care of my patients"?
Now turn the thought around, as I have done below. Find three genuine examples in your life for how each of these new thoughts is as true as the original thought.
"I don't need to take care of my patients."
Examples:
Some common complaints and illnesses (upper respiratory infections) resolve themselves on their own.
There are some issues impacting a patient's health that cannot be solved by a doctor's intervention.
I can choose not to be a doctor practicing clinical medicine and taking care of patients.
"My patients need to take care of themselves."
Behavior changes such as exercise, smoking cessation, and diet are examples of how patients can take care of themselves.
Giving patients the tools and information to take better care of themselves is a recognized need in improving health care.
Patients can improve communication with their doctors by being more informed and asking the right questions.
"I need to take care of myself."
As a doctor, I am a model of health to my patients.
If I am tired and depleted, I have limited capacity to take care of another person.
The way I lead my life sends a powerful message to my patients, to my family, and to other doctors.
Take the time to find examples that feel genuine to you, and that come from your own life.
Notice where you are facing resistance to this process, and when your mind wants to "speed up" rather than find the examples.
