What we tell ourselves shapes our life, even if what we are telling ourselves is not really true!
Then our life flows into miracles, or disasters, or…boredom.
How are you shaping and guiding your life with your Yum and Yuck story?
Do you ever hear an inner voice that says things like, “What will everyone think if I/you do that?” This voice can stop you from being happy. This voice makes it hard to even know what we think. It keeps us from feeling what is really true for us inside.
Knowing what is really true for us is the only way to make choices that will generate happiness. In this article you will learn a simple, completely reliable way to know what is right for you, that by-passes your worrying mind.
First some background on getting seduced by a yuck story.
Here is a great example, reported by Canadian blogger Geoff Olson. It makes a great illustration of how we can take on a constricted belief and shape our lives with it, unconsciously.
Sometimes we need reminding how much our expectations drive what we experience. Sci-fi author Michael Crichton supplies an amusing example in his 1988 memoir Travels.In the early seventies, flush with success from spinning his novel The Andromeda Strain into a critically and commercially acclaimed film, he bought a home in the hills of Los Angeles.
A friend asked him if he was afraid of the snakes. “What snakes?” the author asked. The rattlesnakes, of course, which his friend told him, come out in force during the dry season.
Crichton returned to his magnificent new home in a complete funk and didn’t have any fun at all. He just looked for snakes.
“I worried that snakes were sneaking into my bedroom, so I locked all the doors every night to keep the snakes out. I thought snakes might come to the swimming pool to drink the water, so I avoided the swimming pool, particularly in the heat of the day, because the snakes were probably sunning on my deck. I never walked around my property, because I was sure there were snakes in the bushes. I walked only on the little path on the side of the house, and I peered around every corner before I turned it. But, increasingly, I didn’t like to go outside at all. I became a prisoner in my own house. I had altered my entire behaviour and my emotional state purely on the basis of something I had been told. I still hadn’t seen any snakes. But I was now afraid.”
One day he saw his gardener tramping fearlessly around the property. The author asked if there were any rattlers in the area. Sure, his gardener replied, especially in the dry season. Wasn’t he worried? The gardener shrugged and said he’d only seen a rattler once in over six years. He simply went and got a shovel and killed it. Only one snake in six years? Crichton’s mood brightened. In rational terms, there was really nothing to be worried about. He sat by the pool for the rest of the day.
As the gardener was leaving, he told the author he could be sure there were no snakes on the property, because Crichton had so many gophers.
Gophers! The very critters that the recent homeowner had spent weeks setting traps for, trying to poison, and taking potshots at with his air rifle. All to no effect whatever. “Each morning fresh gopher burrows crisscrossed my lawn. It was extremely frustrating. My house looked like National Gopher Park.”
Crichton began to rethink how to deal with the tunneling terrors, and eventually the gophers’ mortal enemies came to mind. “Was there anything I could do to attract rattlesnakes to my house? Put out some favourite rattlesnake food, or some dishes of water?”
Thinking back on his conceptual gymnastics over pest problems, Crichton realized he went through a whole series of changes without ever actually seeing a snake. “I felt different only because I had shifted perspectives,” he noted, at one moment hating gophers, the next fearing snakes, the next hating gophers even more and wishing for more snakes. “Each shift in perspective was accompanied by a total change in my attitudes, the physiology, my behaviour, my emotions. I was immediately and wholly modified by each new perspective that I adopted.”
If a person can change their mind-body state that radically over something as mundane as snakes and gophers, imagine what choosing between a friendly or unfriendly universe might mean to their state of being.
Another example, this one from my own experience.
Like many of us, Chandra had the idea that if she was not perfect she was useless and unworthy. She said she knew that “perfect” was not a good word, or even a good expectation of her self, maybe “successful” was better? I asked how she would know when she was successful.
“When I am being responsible, taking care of myself, doing what I need to do, being independent,” she said. I was hearing the echoes of a lot of implied “should’s” in there, so I pushed her gently.
“What lets you know that you are being responsible and doing what you need to do?” I asked.
“When everyone is pleased with me,” she said. (Hmmm…speaking of should’s…)
What Will People Think?
Chandra and I talked about what an unreliable measure the opinion of “everyone” was, and how trying all the time to meet Everyone’s expectations creates a huge level of stress.
We all have a sort of unspecified “everyone” inside who seems to have a lot of effect on the choices we make. This is the other inner voice that speaks up when there is something that you want to do. It says things like, “What would people think if I did that?”
To learn more about your own “Everyone,” or to invite your clients into a deeper understanding of what may be blocking their intuition, try answering these questions:
People judge me because…
Everyone loves it when I…
Everybody always tells me to…
The answers to these questions make great EFT set up statements! Just add “Even though…”
It is easy to know what Everyone wants of us. We have heard that all our lives.
But how are we supposed to know what WE want?
I asked Chandra this question, and she was nonplussed (Thesaurus entry for “nonplussed”: “stunned, dumbfounded, confounded, taken aback, disconcerted, thrown, thrown off balance; puzzled, perplexed, mystified, baffled, bemused, bewildered; informal fazed, flummoxed, stumped, bamboozled, discombobulated.”)
We have the best possible guide to what is best for us right here in our own bodies. Our bodies are intuition, personified.
I led Chandra through an exercise that has become central to the health and well-being of my own intuition. I call it Yum and Yuck, and I teach it to many of the people I work with.
Find Yum and Yuck in Your Body
1. First, find your Yuck
Begin by sitting quietly for just a moment, with your eyes closed.
Notice what happens inside when you say, “The world is an unfriendly place.”
Pay attention to thoughts, images that come up, and especially pay attention to how your body feels. Do you get tense? Where specifically in your body do you feel this question? What happens to your breathing?
Think of some of the experiences that irritate you or leave a bad taste in your mouth. (Don’t do major traumas here, just small irritating events.) Again, notice where and how you experience these very different states of being in your body.
Say the word NO, and feel it inside.
Notice where and how you experience this word in your body.
Now shake yourself, shift your position, let go of that Yuck, and take some deep breaths.
2. Find your Yum
Say inside, “The world is a friendly place.” Again, notice thoughts, images, and especially notice, very specifically, what happens in your body. Where do you feel this statement? What happens to your breathing?
Think of some of your very favorite or peak experiences. They can be big or little, it doesn’t matter. What counts is noticing how you felt at the time, in your body.
Say the word YES and feel it inside.
Notice where and how you experience this word in your body.
Take a moment to gather all the impressions that your body has given you. Sort them into Yum and Yuck.
3. Now you have a fail-safe way to make choices about what is right for you from the inside out.
Any time you have a choice to make, hold it in your awareness, and notice whether you get a YUM, or a YUCK response from your body.
4. Learn when you should NOT trust your instincts!
Your Yum and Yuck may be reversed.
I have found that, for many people, the only way that they have known how to say YES to themselves is by saying NO to what was in their environment. So when they first try this exercise, the feeling for “yes” is actually the feeling for “no.” This can be very confusing.
Pay close attention to your inner experience when you do this exercise. Make sure you recognize this reversal, and get a real actual bona fide YES in your body.
Chandra’s Yuck Feelings
When Chandra did this exercise, her Yuck feelings were:
a piercing in my heart, a pain, feeling socked in the stomach, a feeling of recoiling, I stop breathing, the muscles in my shoulders and stomach get tight.
I asked her to think of the things she did routinely in her life that brought a Yuck feeling.
It was no surprise that they were some of the activities she did for the approval of some particular “Everyone:”
helping my son with his homework, getting over-involved with anything, feeling too responsible, making dinner, doing housework, feeling like “If I don’t do this task (job, project, volunteer activity, saving the world…) no one else will and it won’t get done”
What Made Chandra Feel Yum?
Her Yum feelings were:
I relax, all over, I breathe easy, I feel an expansion in my chest, I feel an opening in my whole being. It is an “at ease” feeling.
Now, I asked Chandra to tell me when she felt Yum in her daily life?
When someone understands
When I have “drive time,” or any time I can be all by myself
The closeness I feel when I tuck my kids in bed at night
When I am recognized for doing something
When I am outside, feeling the breeze and the sun
Chandra was surprised to see that she had choices about what to do, and how to respond, and that she had a way to evaluate possibilities based on what felt truly important to her: in other words, Yum.
All she had to do was to check inside. There her intuition was, on the job in her body with reliable Yum and Yuck responses.
Interestingly, I got this email from her a couple of weeks after this Yum and Yuck session:
I wanted to share with you what happened after our last session. I like to write in my journal after our sessions so I can look back later and remember what we talked about. I’m usually in the habit of drawing a Grace Card (Deck of 50 cards put out by Cheryl Richardson) before I write in my journal, just to get divine guidance. I then record which card I drew at the start of my journal entry.
This time I wanted to get my own thoughts down in my journal first though. So I wrote about it and ended the journal entry with, “It’s all about choices.”
I then decided to draw my Grace card. Guess what card I drew??? I drew the “Choice” card, which reads, “For every action there is a reaction. Choose wisely.” How cool is that??!! I believe it was a real sign for me.
With my love and blessing and lots of YUM to you!
Rue
“Yuck” ID 9559504 © Marcela Sipova | Dreamstime.com
“Yum” ID 25269026 © Zoyalipets | Dreamstime.com Find the whole article by Geoff Olson here:
http://geoffolson.com/page5/page11/page34/page34.html
