Contents
Step 49: “Keeping up with disapproval requires more effort than making a thousand judgments”
The 88 rungs of happy people
In this chapter of “The 88 steps of happy people” I teach you to differentiate between the friendly environment and the enemy environment
There is a group of people of whom our conscious part tells us “I want more” – more time, more closeness, more reciprocity. And there is another one that tells us “I want less.” We move away from the second, and we get closer to the first. However, there are many of us who walk away directly without the conscious part telling us anything, since by not being conscious, it cannot know what it wants and what it does not want. In these cases, the subconscious is the one that makes the decision to put distance without our permission, since most of the decisions we do not make with the conscious part, but with the non-conscious one.
We walk away from them, but we don’t know why. How to find out? Simply by stopping and asking these kinds of questions: are there people that I subconsciously avoid? Who are the people who stress me the most when I’m in their presence? Why do they have this effect on me? And by answering these types of questions, we are making a transfer from the unconscious to the conscious part. When this process is carried out properly, this conclusion is reached: the mere presence of the people towards whom we gravitate the most represents a field of flowers, and those towards whom we gravitate the least represents a minefield.
What do means this?
Field of flowers means friendly environment. You know that you can let yourself fall on him and surrender to him with the certainty that he will envelop you and welcome you, giving you the feeling that “you are safe here.” It’s nice, enjoyable, it gives you confidence to be free and to be who you are, and as a result you feel embraced and accepted. The bottom line about the flower field is that it is safe ground.
Minefield means enemy environment. You perceive rejection of who you are, and therefore, their presence generates tension. You do not feel protection to act freely and consequently, your behavior is articulated not from spontaneity, but from fear. The conclusion about the minefield is that it is hostile terrain, that is, unsafe ground.
The surprising thing about this environment is that it is usually more prevalent among the people who love you the most, since mines are bombs that they detonate so that you do not step on certain places that they consider a danger, without realizing that their mine ends up being more dangerous than your terrain. They seek to protect you, but in reality they manage to push you away.
Now comes the important thing. All the differences between the people who represent the field of flowers and those who represent the minefield can be reduced to a single word. I still remember the day I discovered that that word contained the key that opened the gate to one field or the other, since it is what determines whether someone has a friendly or hostile presence. That day my awareness of her and, therefore, my learning soared. And since then I have carried a metal detector inside me, but instead of detecting metal, it detects its presence. The word is … disapproval.
Someone says something to you and you are distracted. “I’m talking to the walls,” he snaps at you. Disapproval.
A relative recommends you wear a jacket to go to the party tonight. You don’t, and the next day your throat hurts.
“You never listen to any advice,” he reproaches you. Disapproval. You’re having a crazy day, and you finally get a friend’s call back. “I called you three times” is the first thing he says to you. The annoying and reproachful tone behind it is subtle, but you both know it’s there. Disapproval.
You feel that your behavior is disapproving, and feeling disapproval is synonymous with feeling in a certain way a rejection, sometimes great, sometimes tiny, but always perceptible.
Get ready for the final brick. Perhaps you have thought that the purpose of this Step was to see how many people in your life represent one field or another. Sorry to let you down. Its purpose was not to see how many times you find yourself in a field of flowers, but how many times you are a minefield. Since this book is not about the Inner Success of others, but about yours, the kind of field that the presence of others represents is their responsibility. This book focuses on introspection, on how to improve the outer universe simply by improving the interior. Therefore, I invite you to raise your level of consciousness by activating your metal detector from this moment, only that, instead of the alert being triggered by detonating an external alarm before the metal, it is triggered by detonating an internal alarm before your disapproval.
Just by being aware of it, you will deactivate more mines and plant more flowers.
The88StepsofHappyPeople
@Angel