On Being "Good" (and Suffering Because of It)
In this episode of the Get the F*ck Off Podcast, I talk about an experience I had recently where my attachment to being a “good person” actually caused me quite a bit of suffering.
These experiences have been enlightening in the respect that they have helped me examine my relationship to myself, my ego, and my insistence to attach myself to being “good.”
These have also coincided with my listening to Wayne Dyer’s Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao on my morning runs.
To see oneself as “good” is really walking a fine line, because that opens up the door to see others as “bad,” thus causing separation between yourself and mentioned others.
Once there is a perceived separation, we often experience conflict.
I also talked about attachment to outcome in this episode, and how we often act with the expectation that others will behave a certain way. When they don’t, we allow ourselves to feel upset.
That upset is created by us and can be yet another cause of our suffering.
Last, I talk about how emoting, and EMOTIONS are part of the human experience, yet we are taught from young that any emotions that are seen as “negative” should be pushed away.
I use an example of crying recently, and about three people trying to “make it better.” (What we tend to do when someone is showing upset.)
Emoting is part of the human experience. It isn’t bad or wrong. It’s just part of it.
Repressing emotions is often the early beginnings of things like “overeating” or “alcohol abuse,” because we are taught unfairly to repress any emotion that is unpleasant, rather than to experience it. Eventually, the leftover behaviors are all we actually see of those repressed emotions and unresolved issues.
This is kind of advanced stuff- and it is a bit of an introduction to the deeper work that I do with my clients.
If you think you’re ready and want to work through some stuff, I’d love to have a conversation with you.
You can email me andee@getthefuckoff.com and we’ll set up a time to talk.
