I've been working with a client recently, who's gradually coming out from beneath a long-standing dark cloud.
They emailed me the other day and said something that stopped me in my tracks – something that hit the nail on the head so squarely, I asked if I could share it, and they said yes.
(Thank you 🥰)
We'd been talking about the outside-in illusion—how it looks like ‘in order to’ experience happiness and contentment we need to change our circumstances to be ‘just so’—and they fessed up that,
“I've been living this way for a long long time … change this in order to be ok and feel alright”
Yeah, me too. I'd had 46 years of smashing myself up against life, trying to wrestle happiness out of it, until someone pointed out to me that actually it was already within me.
😳
And you know what? I'm human, so I get seduced by my own thinking with alarming regularity, still. They went on:
“I don't feel alright, quite a bit.”
And again, ditto. I bet a lot of us ‘don't feel alright quite a bit’ too (dear reader, you are not alone). But there's a hidden reason for some of that, and this is what my client hit on, so pointedly, when they detailed exactly how they were gradually coming out from beneath their long-standing dark cloud:
“I notice that when I do feel alright, I notice this much more and in a way don’t allow myself to get upset that I am feeling OK, as if I don’t deserve to.”
Oh my word, that's it! There it is!
🙌🏻
Patterns of thinking
We are creatures of habit. I remember reading something by the neuroscientist Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett about how we’ve evolved for energy conservation, and that means finding a way of doing something mentally, and then sticking with it. Thinking differently is costly!
So if we have little scripts running, like ‘I need x, y or z to be like this in order to feel ok’, then the pattern-loving mind is going to hold these effortless-looking superstitions in place. Because the prospect of working hard to overcome them is too much for it.
(Which is why I think a lot of people get put off properly exploring the Innate Health understanding – because it can look like it’s another philosophy to take on board, or a wellbeing system that they have to sign up to, or it’s going to involve committing to a regular practice. It’s really not!)
Not ok to feel ok
Another of those sneaky little patterns that get embedded by our conditioning is the ‘It’s not ok to feel ok‘ superstition, which is where my client had been at, “for a long long time.”
When we’re surrounded by messages telling us we have to work hard at feeling good (the entire premise of the ‘Personal Development’ industry), then feeling good without effort feels… wrong.
Add in to that a lifetime’s trying to do the ‘right thing’ by our parents and our teachers, or storing up old experiences of having been shamed by said guardians… and you’ve got yourself a cast iron formula for not feeling good. For a long long time!
🤷🏻
It reminds me of a fantastic bit of Jack Pranky’s book Modello, that details what happened when the Innate Health understanding was brought into a severely deprived, inner-city community.
One of the residents, Rosie, thought it was a load of baloney, until she realised this same, devastatingly simple fact:
Talking about working with Dr Roger Mills, the Innate health practitioner who was running things, she said,
“At first it didn’t make a lot of sense because to be happy, you’ve been programmed to think that’s hard work; it’s not something that’s natural. But he proved me wrong! It’s not hard work. I don’t have to beat myself in the head when I get happy!”
😆
I mean it sounds a bit silly when you type it out, but all of us are guilty of doing this, one way or another. It’s subtly-undermining, societally-conditioned superstitious thinking.
But it’s a trick of the mind that you can see through, allowing yourself to actually experience your god-given right: to be happy!
In the book, Rosie concluded:
“I don’t get upset any more when I get happy, because there are people who always say that if you get too happy, something is going to happen. So you be so happy and you’re wondering, ‘Why am I feeling so good today? God, something is going to happen! I got to hurry up and get myself in a bad mood, because something is going to happen!’”
(I’ve listened to that bit of the audiobook a few times, and I laugh out loud every time – it’s brilliant! 😂)
Unlearning can take time
The fact that I write to you about the Innate Health understanding several times a week, and that this website is dedicated to examining it from every. possible. angle, can give the impression that there’s a lot to learn or understand.
But that’s just a function of how damned sticky the outside-in illusion is, when in reality the whole thing pretty much boils down to this:
Now, if the mind’s been very noisy for a long long time, then feeling good—unconditionally—is going to feel really frickin’ alien at first. It’s going to feel spectacularly wrong!
Which is why it can take some time to unlearn the (mind’s) ‘need’ to be unhappy, or bothered, or stressed.
It might even take a bit of practice.
Not the effortful kind.
The noticing kind.
Which is why I show up for you in your inbox several times a week, and will continue to do so for as long as I can.
💝
Giles
p.s. Big love and big thanks to my glorious client, who sparked this whole train of thought with their honesty and openness – you rock! 😍
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