I don’t like someone. He’s a teacher of mine so I’m exposed to him a lot and I find myself continually judging and criticizing him. Which is extremely ironic as he’s often teaching about judgements and how important it is to let them go. Sigh.
This situation embarrasses me. To my knowledge, he is unaware of my feelings and therefore not affected, but I feel badly that I’m being like this — polluting my energy field with such negativity. It doesn’t feel good. In fact, it lowers my energy and isn’t very attractive.
Here’s how I turned it around:
- I started by making a DECISION that I was no longer doing to say negative things to myself about this man. I gave myself permission not to like him, but not to judge him.
- When I was in class with him, I used one of the Peter Sage’s changing perspective techniques and imagined myself in a helicopter, way above the situation — the distance that gave me was helpful.
- As my triggers began to settle down, I was able to explore what was tripping me up and realized that there was a real gift in this for me. The way the man operated felt really micro managing to me and I realized that I need to honour my own way of learning and trust my own way of doing things. That freed me up a lot.
- Lastly, I started scanning for what I could like about him. Surprisingly, I found several things.
Now I can be around him without running anything other than a bit of mild irritation from time to time. When I do feel triggered, I remind myself that this is about ME, not him. It’s my stuff as the saying goes. I remind myself that no one can make me angry or happy. I create those states all by myself by what I let myself think and feel. So it really doesn’t matter what he’s doing or not doing. He has the right to be exactly who he is…. my job isn’t to like him, but to accept him. As is!
I can finally say that I am now able to do that. And frankly, it fills me with relief. I’m back in the drivers seat of my feelings and emotions and that feels great.
That’s it for this week.
Your devoted coach, Karen.