Blog Series- Becoming an Effective Student

Day 106- I Just Go Crazy

Day 107- Getting Out of the Work

Day 108- Just Doing the Damn Work

Day 109- Fully Committing to Studies
Day 110- Fully Committing to My Studies (pt. 2)
Day 111- Fully Committing to my Studies (pt. 3)
Day 112- Fully Committing to my Studies (pt 4)

Day114- Fully Committing to my Studies (pt 6)
Day 113- Fully Committing to my Studies (pt 5)
Day 115- Fully Committing to my Studies (pt 7)
Day 116- Fully Committing to my Studies (pt 8)
Day117- Imagine School Were That Easy (Fully Committing to my Studies pt 9)
Day 118- Learning How To Learn
Day119- Equality as a Student
Day121- Calming the Waves of Frustration
Day 122- I Am No Match For ME

Day123- Controlling Self in the Face of Many Temptations

Day 124- Pursuing Likes and Avoiding Dislikes Is Not Really Living

Day 125- A Prisoner to Addiction

Day 126- Is Forcing Myself Abuse?

Day 127- From Slave to Master of Myself

 

 

Day 113- Fully Committing to my Studies (pt 5)

This blog is continued from a series of blogs where I am working through not taking any more bullshit from myself in terms of wavering within my studies. Am currently finishing a degree in political science, at a university level, and over the past two years I’ve had an extreme wake-up call in terms of dealing with my own self-created consequences in relation to my ability to learn, study and focus as a student (for context, read the blogs included in this series listed at the end of this blog).

This is not to say that the

education system itself is not in some ways responsible, as it teaches most students, throughout the elementary and high school years, to only memorize and regurgitate information, as well as to ‘produce’ work, rather than focusing on the actual learning processes unique to each individual student.

However, after taking the

time to learn the life skills of self-forgiveness, self-honesty, and self-corrective application, I am learning to train myself to focus and direct myself to be able to learn, through teaching myself, within any system I am confronted with. (To learn these tools for yourself, try this free course: lite.desteniiprocess.com/). Currently, and throughout my university degree, I have been at the top of most of my classes, which is noteworthy because previously, I had struggled to get by.

Throughout elementary school and high school, I felt I ‘slipped through the cracks’, but managed to ‘fake it’ using many techniques known to most students, wherein the information is usually lost shortly afterwards, and an actual understanding rarely occurs. Once I got into college, this technique no longer worked, and I actually believed I was simply unable to cope, and I failed most classes until I became too discouraged and finally quit.

The processes I went through to get to that point are the processes I’m dealing with now, wherein I am literally up against myself’ as who I had created myself as, including bad habits, giving up, self-judgment, fears and distractibility etc… Here I continue to do un-do these patterns, in order that I may re-create myself with awareness, within taking responsibility for myself within that which I commit myself to. In this way, my education has become my self-education, and although it has not been easy, I have proven one thing to myself: I will not give up.

Herein, I continue with my self-commitments and self-corrective statement which are derived from the self-forgiveness statement found here: Day 110- FullyCommitting to my Studies (pt 2).

I commit myself to, when and as I am faced with an obstacle with regards to my studies (whether it be a self-created obstacle such as the fear of failure causing me to not want to start an assignment, or an actual obstacle of not understanding the material, not having the right material, etc…) to direct myself to

seek out the appropriate resources, whether it be my teacher or TA, or looking something up online, or simply stopping and slowing down and re-reading the material, until the obstacle is effectively overcome and I have directed myself through it.

When and as I see that I am creating resistances towards doing the assignment within me by holding on to the fear that trying/applying myself is a risk because it may only lead to proving I will not be able to do the work, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to self-direction within the understanding that, in participating within/as this fear I am only creating a new obstacle for myself, without first simply applying myself to find out if any actual obstacles exist. I see/realize and understand that if I do in fact meet an actually obstacle, that it does not mean I have failed or will never understand, it only means that I will have to take the extra necessary steps to direct myself through the obstacle as efficiently/effectively as possible, so as to resume the work at hand. Therefore, I see, realize and understand that working through obstacles is actually a component of learning and will be present throughout my life, thus, I direct myself to place one foot in front of the other, so to speak, as I take on the obstacles that will inevitably come up within my studies/life ,to give myself the time, patienc and awareness to work at them until I am through and satisfied (for school, specifically: by either asking for assistance/support from my TA or teacher, or re-reading the assignment more closely, more slowly, re-reading the question or taking a short break and looking at it again with a ‘fresh; eye).

I commit myself to develop the self-trust necessary to face the obstacles that will inevitably arise in my life/studies, by reminding myself that I have thus far gotten through everything necessary, and that there is always ‘a way’, even if it means taking a different way: I will not give up.

When and as I see that I am participating within/as self-doubt, I stop, and I breathe. I replace that self-doubt with self-trust by reminding myself that I create self-doubt by bringing up memories of past struggles and project them into the future, whereas I could just as easily remind myself that, although I have indeed struggled, that I have gotten this far by doing the actual work, thus I have proven to myself that I will do the actual work, even if it involves some struggling.
Within this:

I commit myself to continue taking this process one step at a time, and to continue to push myself through school, even though at times it feels really difficult because I’m not used to it, I’m used to the easy life of giving up and giving in, so actually trying/applying myself ‘seems’ hard and difficult, but it is simply doing things a new way.

When and as I see that I am creating and manifesting the fear of failure within and as me, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to presence and awareness by reminding myself that failure is not the end of the world, but rather a miss-take, wherein I would have done something in a way that is not acceptable to the prof, and thus must simply correct it, and do a re-take, by either speaking to the prof, explaining my misunderstanding, and re-doing the assignment, or applying the new method within the next assignment. Within this, I see/realize/understand that in this sense, failure does not exist, because the only way I can truly fail at this endeavor is if I quit, which I will not do.

 

I commit myself to let go of the ‘self’ I had created myself as I unawareness, the ‘old self’ that gives up, the old habits and patterns of defeat, in order that I may re-script a new self, one that I can live with.

I commit myself to letting go of the comfort and security of old patterns and habits, in order to create new one that actually serve me.

I commit myself to walk out of old patterns and habits and into the unknown of the new without fear.

When and as I see that I am fearing letting go of ‘parts of me’/my old self/past self-definitions because it feels like I am ‘losing’ something, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to self-honesty by reminding myself that I am simply letting go of that which did not serve me: keeping what works and letting go of that which limits me- and doing so as a self-directed and specific daily action and practice of Who I am as a self-directed decision.

For entire series:

Day 106- I Just Go Crazy

Day 107- Getting Out of the Work

Day 108- Just Doing the Damn Work

Day 109- Fully Committing to Studies

Day 110- Fully Committing to My Studies (pt. 2)

Day 111- Fully Committing to my Studies (pt. 3)

Day 112- Fully Committing to my Studies (pt 4) 

Desteni I Process LITE --FREE course for life skills: http://lite.desteniiprocess.com/

 

 

Day 107- Getting Out of the Work

I am using the tool of

self-forgiveness to work through the following experience:

“I’ve gotten to the point where I am able to move myself to go and actually set time for something and sit down to start it, but then, as I’m doing it, I “just start going crazy” within myself. I don’t know how many times I’ve said that. But I get super uncomfortable and distractible and preoccupied which I accept and allow to pull me away from the task at hand and prolong the time it takes to do it, instead of sitting down, focusing and working through it comfortably.”

In my previous blog I identified the tendency I have to make this an all-consuming experience, affecting many different dimensions of my beingness/awareness/ability to move myself. Thus it is a character I become, as ‘all of me’ is engaged in the experience. The character I identified in my previous blog was what I called the ‘underestimating character’, but upon further looking into it, I see that it’s more of a ‘getting out of work’ character, wherein, I will leave the assignment to last minute because I don’t ‘want’ to do the work.

Then, instead of having left myself enough time to do it, I will have to rush at the last minute and do it all at once. Eventually I ‘get into it’, but it takes a lot, and then I have to really skim and make it look like I had spent a lot of time doing it.

This was a ‘skill’ that got me through elementary and high school, but when I got into college, I could not get away with it, and I dropped out for this reason, among many others. Now, in university, it is impossible to pull this trick. This had made my university experience quite a reality check. Even when I got to the point of sitting down to do it, ,I would try to get out of it, manipulating myself and falling in the face of many resistances. It’s like, if I didn’t have that ‘last minute’ stress pushing me, I simply could not move myself to do the work. If I had two weeks to do it, I would complete it at the very end of that two weeks, if I had one day, I would get it done at the end of that day, and if I had six months, I wouldn’t look at it for five months.

Now I am doing my classes online, so I have to rely on myself completely to manage my time. I have done pretty well with writing about this and pushing myself, but I have still not gotten to the point of simply sitting down and moving myself, breath by breath, through the work. Trying to ‘get out’ of the work had become so ingrained in me as a survival technique throughout my entire academic career, that when it came to a time where I actually wanted to learn and do the work well, I simply did not have the tools such as discipline, focus, time-management and self-movement to do so. So here I am taking on the ‘getting out of the work’ character, because enough is enough, I can no longer accept nor allow this behavior to continue.

So, herein, I will be looking at all the dimensions of a ‘character’, which are the thought, fear, imagination, reaction and physical dimensions, beginning with thought:

Getting Out of Work; Thought Dimension:

1) A picture of me sitting at my desk in front of an assignment drawing a complete blank.

2) The thought that there’s a whole big action packed world ‘out there’ that I’m missing out on, and that the work I have to do is so slow and boring and pointless.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create and manifest this thought of sitting in front of an assignment and drawing a blank, as a form of self-sabotage, based on past memories of being a student in elementary, high school and college, wherein I would daydream and doodle all day long in class, ‘enduring’ class, so that when I got homework and assignments to do at home, I literally had no idea what I was supposed to do, and would sit in front of it and feel as though it were an impossible task, and give up, or just do some bare minimum work and hope for the best, in which case I would get a bad grade. Within this:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not see, realize and understand that I now DO pay attention in class, and I do know what’s going on, and instead of applying what I learned in class and have read in the material, I go into the ‘getting out of work’ character as a survival mechanism, within the assumption that I am incapable of doing the work, and going into the ‘getting out of the work’ character as a survival mode technique, creating and manifesting stress and anxiety within me, wherein I can’t focus and end up easily distracted and unable to absorb and synthesize all the information, thus creating the exact thing I’m trying to avoid, which is: sitting in front of my work, drawing a blank.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to validate and perpetuate the ‘getting out of the work’ character, by conjuring up thoughts that CONvince me that I’m only going to draw blanks, which I then believe and follow by participating in them through giving them my attention and energy, thus actually making it real in fact.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing the thought of ‘me sitting down at my desk in front of an assignment drawing a blank’ to exist within and as me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to further sabotage my application of myself by thinking that there’s a whole big action packed world out there that I’m missing out on, and that the work I’m directing myself to do is so slow and boring and pointless, which triggers the ‘getting out of work’ character in which I will put it off and then try to do quickly all at once right before the deadline.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to try to read through material really quickly, looking for key words, and then only reading the parts that I think are relevant to the questions I have to answer or the part I need to research. I understand that there is a certain amount of skimming I have to do, but self-directed skimming where I am grasping concepts and strategically focusing more on some parts and not others is different from frantically trying to get through it as fast as possible and ‘find the answer’ immediately in an attempt to ‘get it over with’, which is NOT acceptable.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to read frantically through my texts in an attempt to get through it as fast as possible and ‘find the answer’ in an attempt to get it over with, instead of slowing myself down and reading with patience and focus, allowing myself to absorb the concepts the author is trying to convey, in order to integrate the information into my understanding in such a way that I can convey it in my own words.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participating in the thought of there being ‘a whole action packed world out there’ filling me with an energetic pull or desire to go ‘out there’ and see it, while at the same time, participating in the thought that my work is so boring and slow and pointless, instead of stopping the thought as it comes by instead taking a breath and continuing to read.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to place judgments on the work at hand, such as work being ‘bad and boring’ and not working being ‘good and fun’, wherein I create all sorts of energies within me, instead of stopping my judgments and moving myself to do that which I decide I am going to do in a given moment, and simply moving myself to do it as the directive decision of what I am going to occupy my time with in that given moment. No judgment is necessary to do this, in fact, the judgments placed upon the work create unnecessary relationships that cause me to become frustrated and easily distracted within myself.

Self-commitment and self-corrective application statements to follow…

Day 69- Postponement Character Reactions

This is a continuation of my previous blogs:

Day 63- http://kimsjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/08/day-63-postponement-character.html

Day 64- http://kimsjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/08/day-64-postponement-character-self.html

Day 65- http://kimsjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/08/thisis-continuation-from-my-previous.html

Day 66- http://kimsjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/08/day-66-postponement-character-self.html

Day 67- http://kimsjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/08/day-67-postponement-character-reactions.html

and

Day 68- http://kimsjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2012/08/day-68-postponement-character-reactions_17.html

          One of the things I have the tendency to do it to do a quick ‘scan’ of my life, and think of all the big decisions I have to make, along with the ‘what if’s’ and possible play outs and the desires and fears associated with that. And then within this ‘scan’ I also think of the multitude of little details I have to take care of that are nagging at me, that I probably put off as a result of not effectively looking at/dealing with myself as the ‘postponement character’. This creates anxiety within me, usually right at the moment where I am applying myself at a task- that split second where I am making the decision to commit to the task- it is on that moment that my mind does the ‘quick scan’ which, when I allow, results in me becoming anxious and distracted and then I proceed as a less effective being doing a less-than-effective job, thus creating more loose ends, let-downs and lack of self-trust/self-movement.
          “It’s the little things that make it huge” (a quote from the movie Vanilla Sky). I remind myself of this quote because it is very true. One split second at just the right time can effectively sabotage me in a specific way over and over again and create difficult consequences in my life which- if I were to push through that split second of a moment (over and over as it happens often) if I were to just push through it and chose to fully commit to the task, my whole Life would change. I’m not saying this is the only thing that requires to be changed in my life (as is demonstrated in the MANY points I bring up in all my blogs), I’m saying that the little things that can be changed over time, create a huge change in one’s life over time.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, in a split second, do a ‘quick scan’ of my life and, while I’m physically trying/attempting to apply myself towards something, my mind is subtly finding all the ‘loose ends’ in my life that I have not yet dealt with, and bringing them to the fore, wherein I become distracted and anxious and unable to fully commit all of me to the task at hand.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to distract myself in times of application, where I am effectively sabotaging myself within/as my mind, as I am physically attempting to push myself to apply myself and change the habits/peatterns within/as me that have ‘plagued’ me for so long. I see/realize/understand that this resistance is a resistance to change, and as I slow down within myself/my mind, I see/understand how it works and thus how to stop it, as follows:

When and as I see that I am beginning a task that pushes me to test my limits, I stop and I breathe. I remind myself that I have the tendency to sabotage myself in these moments through doing a ‘quick scan’ of my life and bringing to the fore all the things I have left undone. I bring myself back to presence and awareness within the understanding that, in this moment I Am Able to remain focused, and if I push through this moment, I Will get through and be able to focus in full presence and awareness on the task at hand. I see/realize/understand that when/as I apply myself in this way, I will develop the actual self-trust and self-application that I require to live a life wherein I deal with the ‘loose ends’ as they arise, and eventually effectively prevent them from occurring in the first place. I commit myself to push myself to be diligent within my application of remaining Here while I work, within the understanding/realization that this is a new sensation and application of myself, thus it is a moment of uncertainty where I have thus far accepted/allowed my mind to take directive principle. Thus I commit myself to take back my power and Stand as the Decision to Be the Directive Principle of Myself, wherein I Decide, I take the wheel in my Life and I take the reins in every moment, knowing that at any sign of ‘weakness’ or uncertainty, my mind will be waiting to take it back as the comfort of old habits and patterns lingers as a CONvincing illusion of peace and rest. I know and am fully aware that abdicating Self to the mind in this way results in the opposite of peace and rest, but is rather and experience of prison, wherein Self has No Say in Who Self is or What Self Does in this Life, but rather sits back and drifts along as the consequences accumulate and slow self-destruction takes place daily. I say No.

Day 66- Postponement Character (Self-commitments)

What follows is a series of self-commitment statements and self-corrective applications to assist and support me to stop participating within and as the characterization of ‘postponement.’ This is a character which I describe Here, and self-forgive Here and Here. Postponement has become a force to reckon with within my life, as I’m sure many can relate. The characters we play all stem from a single fear. Once I have forgiven this character, written a self-corrective script, and committed to my self-change, I will identify the singular fear from which I created this entire character. That information is still however, hidden deep beneath the layers I am now pulling up. So, when I have cleared myself, I will reveal the fear so that I may forgive it too, and face it.

Backchat (self-talk)

I commit myself to identify all backchat when and as it comes up, call it out and breathe through the reactions it creates within and as me.

When and as I see that I am back-chatting in my mind I stop, and I breathe. I call myself out on the backchat within the understanding that I am talking myself out of doing a task, which is an automated program I have accepted and allowed myself to design and live out for most of my life, which I no longer accept or allow to exist within and as me. I thus push myself to walk through the discomfort by becoming one with it and equal to the discomfort of pushing myself and changing as it to finally end it and live instead from breath to breath with no reactions.

Creating a resistance:

I commit myself to observe and eventually stop myself from charging thoughts of the task at hand with negative energy because of and through the back chat I participate within and as in relation to the task which I am resisting doing.

I commit myself to see myself, and the reality of myself and what I am doing to myself when I live within and as unawareness wherein I simply just react and allow myself to be directed by my reactions and how I feel inside, instead of investigating why it is that I actually feel that way, and seeing, realizing and understanding the simplicity of being able to STOP within that self-understanding.

When and as I see that I am charging thoughts of performing a task with negative energy, thus building resistance, I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to awareness and the simplicity of breath by understanding that I am busy making something harder than it actually is, and that so long as I see what I am doing, I can stop in one moment, before it gets too hard, and before I create a mountain out of a molehill.

I commit myself to stop participating in back chat to the point of allowing it to affect and direct me.

I commit myself to see through back chat and take my power back by stopping my participation within and as back chat, or walking through the manifested consequence when and as I let myself go too far.

When and as I see that I have accepted and allowed myself to go too far into the mind by following, feeding and participating within and as backchat until I have manifested myself as the actual experience of my thoughts I stop, and I breathe. I allow myself to embrace myself as the experience completely, within reminding myself that I can stop, and that there is another way and that I am committed to stopping the thoughts and backchat that limit, suppress and sabotage me so that I can walk breath by breath, one and equal, self-directive Here.

The polarity of Good and Evil:

I commit myself to stop myself from participating within and as positive and negative polarities wherein I have split the world into ‘likes’ and dislikes’ wherein I spend half the time pursuing the ‘good’ and the other half avoiding the ‘bad’ thus spending the entire time not directing myself according to what actually needs to get done or what is actually beneficial to me and best for all.

When and as I see that I have charged/am charging a task with negative energy (thus creating a resistance and not wanting to do it), I stop, and I breathe. I bring myself back to stability by becoming one with and equal to the energetic experience I created so that, instead of resisting and trying/attempting to avoid it, I embrace it and face it and move myself to stand up from within it. Ideally I will stop this experience before it starts, but I see that I am still accepting and allowing myself to create this experience for myself and thus within this self-corrective application I direct myself to move from within the experience I created so that it no longer directs and controls me.

Day 65- Postponement Character (Self-forgiveness continued)

This is a continuation from my previous blogs: Day 63- Postponement Character, where I describe the character I play, and the effect it has on me and in my life., as postponement, procrastination and the internal battles and resistance it creates. And Day 64- Postponement Character (self-forgiveness). Here I continue writing out self-forgiveness statements in order to rid myself of this pattern using the Desteni writing tools. They are effective and they work and that is why I continue with this process.

Self-Forgiveness on the 'voice in the head' that I allow to create postponement

(quick review)

Step 1) Idetifying the thoughts:

" the thoughts I have noticed with regards to becoming possessed by the postponement character, are things such as little flashes of, for example, Hotmail or facebook, like I should really go on those sites right away! Or I’ll see flashed of people I want to hear from, along with how they make me feel. I’ve seen myself do a ‘quick scan’ of my life, to remind myself of all the loose ends that need to be tended to, and then they all of a sudden become pressing issues. "

Step 2) Back Chat/inner voice

The inner voice associated with these thoughts, I can identify as: “I have so much to keep up on online” (overwhelmed), “this is such boring work, I’d rather be on facebook/Hotmail reading interesting/relevant things instead” (big waves of irritation/boredom/impatience). “I need to find a better job/I should do laundry/sign up for classes/decide where I’m going to live...” (anxiety). Within all this, I become easily distracted and lose my focus.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create backchat from the initial thought(s) I participate within and as when I’m about to begin a project which I use to sabotage myself and talk myself out of doing the project.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing backchat such as “this is boring” “I should be doing something else more important” “this can wait till later” I’d rather be doing something else” “I have so many other pressing things to do right now” “this is soo much/too much” and “I have too much to keep up on” to exist within and as me, which I use to sabotage myself and talk myself out of standing up and taking actual steps towards completion of a task.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to charge the task at hand with negative energy, wherein when I think about it I create a resistance within and as me. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to charge activities within which I push myself, or activities that help me expand, grow and/or change with particularly strong negative energy, wherein I experience a very strong resistance to the task. Within this,

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to seek the polarity opposite experience-positivity- which I, as my mind, connects to all the other things I suddenly define as ‘pressing’ ‘urgent’ and more important matters’ than the task I originally set out to do, wherein I experience myself as positive, fearful and excited when I bail on the task, because I feel like I ‘dodged a bullet’ or ‘got out of work’ somehow, without considering the fact that I’m actually only screwing myself, cheating/tricking/fooling myself with energetic experiences that I accept and allow to direct me instead of me directing myself Here.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate within and as positive/negative feeling experiences, by accepting and allowing myself to charge the thoughts of the tasks at hand with positive/negative energy in my mind, instead of simply using my mind as only a practical tool to organize what I have to do and when, and not adding all sorts of un-needed dimensions of relationships and reactions to that which I intend on doing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create backchat in my mind about a task, to believe the backchat and participate within and as it until I become the actual manifestation of the backchat, and effectively postpone the task I set out to do.

The truth is- if I did everything right away or when I planned on doing it, I would have time to do all this stuff that stresses me out and preoccupies me. This postponement character perpetuates itself, because when I have a task to do, it is easier to trigger this character because of all the other stuff in life that I have put off. It all comes rushing to the fore, strategically and conveniently as the mind switches over from motivated to ‘lock-down’ where all I want to do is other things instead of the one thing I have set myself up to do

Self-commitment statements to come....