Contents
Step 18: «Don’t make the mistake I made. Open yourself to new ways of thinking »
The 88 rungs of happy people
In this chapter of “The 88 Steps of Happy People” I explain why giving up sometimes is the beginning of a new success
The point of inner success growth it takes place when you become aware of the mechanism that constitutes it. Knowing this mechanism and implementing it does not imply the immediate exit of the well, but it does stop digging. This mechanism, primarily responsible for causing a change for the better in your life, is called surrender.
The opposite of being in surrender state is to be obtuse, «hyper-mega-convinced» that «what I believe is the absolute truth», that «you don’t come to tell me the opposite now» and that «ten years believing what I believe cannot be ten years of being wrong.
Do not do that. Don’t make the mistake that I did. Open yourself to new ways of thinking. A part of our beliefs is always wrong, and to rise from the Belt in our Inner Success is to be open to admit mistakes, to show ourselves vulnerable what, I need help with this, I recognize that it costs me …) and leave rigid positioning behind and inflexible typical of people in lower Belts.
When you have been defending an idea, a way of acting or a belief your whole life, breaking with it means giving up. It involves saying, “I wasn’t right” (or at least “I’m open to not being right”). But to pronounce those three words, even if you pronounce them only in your mind, requires a tool that weak people do not have. It is the tool of humility. Releasing the ballast of previous beliefs is one of the most difficult tasks for the ego. Only when humility is achieved can you make the enormous sacrifice of uttering that “I’m not right” and having enough power to open yourself up to the possibility of perhaps changing a wrong pattern perpetuated for years. The ego loves to be right. When you give advice to someone, he doesn’t follow it and it ends up going badly and you say: “I already told you!”; Have you ever stopped to think why you get so much pleasure from telling them? It’s because your ego just got a shot of gasoline. To deprive the ego of that pleasure of being right, of saying “I am right and you are not,” of defending your opinion or belief against those of others, is to cut off the gasoline that fuels it. Only when someone is in a position to do something like that will they be in a position to evolve. That’s when the point of growth occurs, surrender; when you go from digging into sinking to climbing into the light.
I’m going to give you an example.
When on Step 11 I spoke of my mistaken belief in unconditional love for years, when someone spoke to me about the importance of emitting love without judgment, I would relentlessly refute that position, victim of rigidity. I’ve been defending this position all my life. You will not convince me otherwise. If someone hurts my family, for example, it would make no sense to give him my love or wish him well, “I affirmed emphatically. There was not enough surrender or humility on my part to open the door to any kind of doubt or questioning my previous belief. The ego gets a lot of juice from firmness, from the absolute, therefore doubt is its enemy. Being open (Belt high) is more difficult than being closed (Belt low). But doubt opens the door to growth, since it questions the above to make way for the next.
The ego suffers when the door to doubt opens, since doubt, far from enlarging it, shrinks it. Every time I vehemently refuted any argument contrary to mine, not only did I not get close to the position that I consider true today, that is, to get out of my hole, but also I moved further away from it, that is, no stopped digging. Only when I was humble enough to open the door to doubt did surrender occur. What if what they are telling me is valid? I said to myself. What if the one who was wrong all these years was me?. Ouch! That hurts a lot … the ego.
But to enter there is to give way to the point of growth. And not to enter is to perpetuate stagnation. During the period when the growing point blooms there is a lot of instability. “Right now I don’t know what I believe or what not,” you say. Those kinds of phrases are indicative of progress. You are on the right track. Instability indicates openness, and only when you are open to changing direction can you find the right course.
– Anxo, what if I am questioning something that was already true?
Remember that only the ego is bothered by questioning. To the essence, no. Questioning always benefits you. If you question a belief that was already correct, you will end up with the same conclusion. And if you end up changing it, it will be because needed to be changed. The important thing is not what you think, but how willing you are to improve it.
Do you remember the movie Karate Kid? Daniel just wanted to learn karate. And what did Professor Miyagi do? Tell him that to get it he had to “wax” and “polish wax.” Daniel (actually, his ego) rebelled furiously without seeing any sense in that teaching. Professor Miyagi waited patiently until he got Daniel to surrender to her. What he wanted was to break his ego, his SURRENDER. And only after achieving it, could there be … its starting point of growth.
# 88StepsPeopleHappy
Only iron that surrenders to fire becomes a vessel.
@Angel