ou are always doing the best you can, based on your current belief system. Life has designed us with a built-in mechanism for survival. To repel from pain, and move towards feeling good. It's in all its creatures, big and small.

I think what trips us up is that it doesn't always APPEAR that way. I can hear it now, someone saying “you mean the person that slits their wrist is doing the best they can?” My answer is “Yes”. At that point in time, ending their life appeared to be the best way to end their pain. If they knew a better way, they would have taken it. It's only logical.

“At any moment each person is always doing the VERY BEST he can, based on his total conscious and non conscious prevailing awareness and which is within his capabilities, energy, time, and developed talents and abilities.”

- Sidney Madwed
 

How many times have we heard, “if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have acted any differently, based on what I knew at the time”? Precisely. Based on what you knew at the time.

There are reasons for the things we do. Most people have not investigated what those reasons are, but that doesn't mean they're not there. If you were to trace your thoughts from behavior back to belief, you would see a logical progression of reasons for each step you take.

Think of a person like a huge mainframe. You see the nice software interface, but be assured that there are millions of calculations taking place behind that pretty window. They're not necessarily subconscious, you can see them just like you can see code. The only way I've discovered to get to that code, is to identify those underlying ideas and beliefs.



 

“The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not.”
- Stephen Sondheim, from his song "Move On"

 

Self Defeating Beliefs
A belief is an idea which you consider to be true. There are many beliefs that discourage self acceptance.

Do you hold any of these beliefs?

• If I’m happy in my present situation, I won’t try and change it.

• No pain, no gain.

• If I'm happy with the way I am, I'll stop growing.

• If I accept myself the way I am, I’ll appear vain and insensitive to others.

• If I don't feel guilty, I'll continue to do "bad" things.

• Guilt is necessary to keep people honest.

• Everyone has to pay his dues.

• If I accept myself the way I am, I won’t change anything.

• There are certain ways we "should” be.

• If you hold any of these beliefs, you might benefit enormously from using the Option Method.

Does Guilt Work?
One day I was feeling particularly miserable and guilty about not working hard enough. I was so sick of feeling guilty I just wanted the feeling to go away.
 
It was in the summer of 1996 that I decided to put guilt to the test. I wanted to completely understand guilt. Why I felt it, why these feelings were encouraged by others, and what effect it was having on my life.
 
I do some of my best thinking when surrounded by nature so I put on my sneakers and went for a long walk. A 5 mile walk to be specific. I decided the best way to look at my guilt was to examine specific incidences where I felt guilty. As I made the turn down the street onto the gravel path, I went back to my earliest memory of guilt.
 
I chuckled as I remembered an early memory. I had gone outside in my bunny slippers when my mother had told me specifically not to. I remembered feeling "What kind of person was I to disobey? There must be something wrong with me. I must be a bad person." I didn't know it at the time, but I thought if I could feel bad enough, maybe it would make me act "right."
 
In college, I had an 8am Art History class across campus. I wasn't a morning person, the classes were in a dark room, and didn't feel like walking that far. After a month or so into the semester I started missing some classes. I felt guilty every time. I thought about how I was wasting my parent's money, how I was not disciplined enough, how if I was a "good" student, I would MAKE myself go. Consequently, I felt bad every time I skipped Art History.
 
So I thought of those experiences and every specific example I could remember from age seven on. The examples were numerous. After each example, I asked the following questions.

1)  Why did I feel guilty in that situation?

2)  What did I hope to accomplish by feeling guilty?

and

3)  Did feeling guilty help me accomplish what I wanted?
 

As I went down the list, the answers surprised me. The reason I felt guilt in ALL the situations could be narrowed down into three categories.
 

The most popular reason was to try and get myself to do something I thought I "should" be doing, or stop myself from doing something I didn't think I "should" be doing.. Now here's the clincher.


Did Guilt Change Me?
The answer was a resounding, NO. In all the cases I could remember, guilt hadn't motivated me to ever make any lasting changes in how I thought or behaved. In some cases I had changed in the short-term, but in all the examples I could think of, I inevitably went back to the behavior I was trying to stop. This made me ask, then why use guilt if it doesn't work? The only times I stopped behaviors was when I simply didn't want to do them anymore or changed my thoughts/beliefs about the situation..

Did I Have To Feel Guilt?
Was there some requirement that necessitated me feeling guilty? I couldn't think of one valid reason to feel guilt if it didn't work! If it wasn't functioning as a tool for change, then why use it? Why feel miserable if it serves no purpose?

Did Guilt Show My Caring To Others?
Unfortunately, sometimes yes. We belong to a culture that believes guilty feelings are a sign of a caring and thoughtful person. But most of the time it was difficult knowing what others were thinking. Most times they could care less what I was feeling. The ones who wanted to try and manipulate me to do what they wanted, liked the fact that I felt guilt. The ones who loved me, and wanted me to be happy tried to reassure me that there was no reason to feel bad. I decided I didn't want to spend time with people that supported me feeling guilty.

Take Your Own Walk
Don't trust my answers for your life. Take your own walk and examine your experiences. Put your guilt through the wringer. See what answers you find using the same questions I did. Look at the long-term results. The answers you reveal will have a profound effect on how you view guilt. And I suspect, like me, you'll discover just how useless the emotion of guilt really is.


Interview On Acceptance

Q: What do you mean when you say "accept yourself"?

A: I'm saying that it's very beneficial when you love yourself. Accepting something is kind a like awareness with love. Accepting yourself is giving your consent. It's an openness to receive. It's a very different feeling than resignation.

Q: How is acceptance different than resignation?

A: When I think of the times I've been resigned to something, it had a feeling of hopelessness and despair attached to it. Like I was powerless in my life to create what I wanted. Acceptance has a very different feeling. It's powerful and self affirming.

I'm not talking about giving lip service to the word "accept", but to really truly believe that the thing you're accepting is okay. That's different than resignation which is thinking something is bad, being unhappy about it, yet accepting it as reality you are powerless to change.

Q: Are you saying I should accept even the parts of me I KNOW are wrong?

A: I’m not saying you SHOULD do anything. I’m saying if you’d like to be happier, self acceptance is a step in that direction. “Accept” means to receive with consent. I don’t see how it’s possible for someone to be happy while loathing aspects of themselves. It’s difficult to experience happiness and hatred at the same time. In the very same moment of time.

And just because there are things about yourself you’d like to change, doesn’t necessarily mean that aspect of you is “wrong”. It’s just not what you want to be. There’s a difference.

Q: What’s the difference between saying “this is wrong” and “this is not what I want”?

A: The difference is in the intention. One is judgmental, the other is not. Saying “this is wrong” implies there is a “right” way to be before you can truly love yourself. If you judge something about yourself as wrong, you’re implying whether consciously or not, that you have to be a certain way before you can be loved. I don’t know of any “right” way to be. There is only you being you and what you want.

Q: Well society thinks there’s a right way to be.

A: I think you’ll find once you get clear about who you are, what your personal principles are, and truly accept ALL of yourself, that society isn’t all that interested in how you behave as you might think. Society has laws to curb behavior we’ve decided we don’t want, and you may have some implied social norms, but you’ll be surprised how little it cares about how you live your life.

Besides, society isn’t living your life, you are. In the end, your becoming more accepting of yourself will immediately cause you to be more accepting of others, which only enriches a community of individuals. When you focus on accepting, loving and being happy with yourself, that state of mind spreads to all those around you.

“Everybody says it is good to meditate, and so you feel bad if you don’t do so. The challenge of loving the self is to step aside from every thing you are told, and ask, “Does this fit me? Does this bring me joy? Do I feel good when I do it?” It is ultimately your own experience that counts.” - Orin

Q: Okay, well how do I go about accepting myself more?

A: I think it’s useful to know why you don’t accept yourself in the first place. Knowing your motivations can give you insight and sometimes eliminate any ill feelings you have towards those parts of yourself.

Q: What do you mean by motivation? Like why I want to accept myself?

A: No, I’m referring to why you DON’T accept yourself. There’s a reason, always a reason, for the things we do and feel. Each person will have a different reason for why they don’t accept themselves. I’ve found that most of the time though, it has to do with believing that if they were happy with themselves, they wouldn’t change, grow, or do anything.

Many people use unhappiness as a motivator to “get” themselves to do something. They believe it’s natural, or instinctive somehow. Which is not true. Most times all it does is make us feel uncomfortable, unloving, and unaccepting.

We use a myriad of uncomfortable emotions to motivate ourselves. Anger, frustration, guilt, depression, anxiety, all with the hope that it will motivate us to change.

Q: Well, isn’t that true though? Why would I change
something if I was happy or accepted that part of myself?

A: Just because you are loving, accepting and happy with that part of yourself, does not mean you stop WANTING. Wanting is a much more powerful tool to use than say, using guilt to get yourself to change. You can be perfectly happy with yourself, I mean really feeling great about who you are, and still want things, experiences, qualities, etc.

Q: Yeah but if I want to be different, I’m not going to be happy until I change.

A: Again, I think that’s simply using unhappiness as a motivation and it's not necessary. We use our unhappiness combined with our wanting, believing it will make our wanting more powerful or stronger. It actually weakens our ability to achieve. We don’t have to make ourselves miserable until we get what we want. We CAN be happy in the pursuit of what we want, and it doesn’t lessen our motivation one bit. I know this because I've done both, and being happy while pursuing what you want is sooooo much more powerful, you just wouldn't believe it! When you feel good you have lots of energy. Feeling bad depletes and saps your energy.

I've found that if our desires are coming from inside ourselves, and not from exterior elements (parents, friends, spouses, etc.), that you don’t need unhappiness to make your desire bigger or more important. Its simply a natural process of moving towards what you want. You don’t have to “get” yourself to watch TV, or enjoy close friends, or play. You naturally move towards those things. Its only those things we think we “should want” that we use unhappiness to get. The wants that come from happiness are easy to pursue.

Q: What do you mean by inside me or from exterior elements?

A: There are times we want to do certain things because we believe they will please someone else, or we’ll be more accepted if we do them, or we’ve been told we “should” want this, or that it’s the “right” thing to do. If you take on those outside influences, you’re wanting is not coming from inside you. Outside circumstances and or people are influencing what you say you want.

One way to find out what you really want verses the "shoulds" is to have an Option Method dialogue on it. I know I have been truly amazed by what I have come to learn about myself, my motivations, and my desires.