Self-development reinforcing negative beliefs?

[Farnaby]

Hi!

A question has been on my mind lately and I would like to know your opinion and experience. Do you feel like self-development practices reinforce the belief and feeling that you're not good enough right now and that you won't be until you become some better version of yourself?

If so, does this mean you should stop self-development practices?

An example from my life: I have trouble expressing myself freely. I know this is based on past conditioning and trauma stored in my body. How can I work on this without reinforcing the belief that I'm not good enough right now with my trouble expressing myself freely? 

It seems like anything I do can easily become a trap. If I work on grounding myself and expressing my truth more freely, I attach to that ideal version of myself and and reject myself when I feel unable to live up to that. On the other hand, if I focus on accepting myself as I am right now, I attach to the ideal version of myself that can accept himself completely. 

I hope I'm making sense lol.

Thank you!

[gettoefl]

yes which is why development is best done hand in hand with spirituality

[Farnaby]

@gettoefl Hi! Could you elaborate on what you mean specifically? 

 

[Tim R]

6 hours ago, Farnaby said:

Do you feel like self-development practices reinforce the belief and feeling that you're not good enough right now and that you won't be until you become some better version of yourself?

@Farnaby That's one of the paradoxes of developing/improving yourself. Realizing that you are good enough is very important. But realizing that there's a lot more better to be had yet is also very important. 

The key to overcoming this paradox is by uniting the two: perfection + imperfection = Perfection 

Perfection with a capital P includes, but also transcends both perfection and imperfection. All your flaws are imperfections and you should work on overcoming them. However, you must also realize that all your imperfections are, seen from the absolute point of view, just a part of Perfection. 

You understand?

Leo made a video on that problem (only with dealing with a different topic).

[Farnaby]

@Tim R thanks for your answer. I think I have watched that video, but I may have to revisit it lol.

So, let's say I tend to feel insecure and I know that's not who I really am when I'm acting that way. How do I work on my confidence without reinforcing the belief that I am not confident yet? Also, how do I stop attaching to that ideal version of myself (confident, and so on) as to not reject myself when I'm not living up to that ideal?

[Loba]

This entire channel, not well known, is all about learning self love, on the physical, mental and spiritual levels - as being the most important part of spiritual practice.  I've posted some of her stuff below - she is about green/yellow and her videos are very informative for someone who needs help in this area.  Check out her channel if you have the time, she's quite "real", which is refreshing.  Good luck!

Notes:

• Why self-love and nourishing who you are today (learning how to show up for yourself, internal self love) is the foundation for everything:
• You must learn how to become your own safe place.
• Everything is built on top of self-love and it will be very hard to fix yourself and change your habits if you do not love yourself - but with this tool everything else will naturally come.
• We don't need to force ourselves to become something and it does not work.
• Go slow on this path, this is the fastest route.  Embrace it.
• Your subconscious has been programmed for a certain action and it can unlearn it and learn a new skill.
• There is a reason for why we do what we do and none of it is that we are bad or wrong or stupid, incapable or self sabotaging or self hating - every reason comes down to this is what we learned in childhood, and if we want something different then figuring out what we need to do instead and get the body and brain on board with the new thing is difficult.
• If you just do this one thing - making yourself your own safe place, everything you are capable of; progress comes from this.  Without doing this, your nervous system will not let you do the other things.  
• Results will not be quick.  It will be the same thing over and over again.  Deal with your guilt and shame before working on other skills because if you try to fix yourself without this foundation then the other tools will not work.
• If we don't understand where the lack of self love came from and if we have confusion on what is good for us, where if we do things in the moment that feel good that have bad outcomes, if we do not understand why this is happening then none of this will make sense and will look somewhere else thinking that it is just a bad part of you.
• Everyone thinks they are an exception to the rule and the horrible thing inside of them must be fixed because of the negative outcomes, however this is not the case.
• There is no quick solution and you are not the exception.  This applies to everyone because although we are all different, we are not all that different.  So listen up!
• In our childhoods we are in a temporary reality, a codependent reality where we are not capable of understanding or meeting our needs and are completely dependent on our caregivers to meet them for us.
• That which is supporting our growth leads to pleasure.  That which does not support our growth causes pain - all living things share this in common, we want to grow and humans are very complex and so is life - it wants to express its potential and live.
• In order to live, we must be continually growing.  In order to be continually growing, we have to be taking in new information; feedback loops, cause and effect.  We are all evolving here on Earth.  This is the fundamental element of pain and pleasure.
• When we are children we are being programmed about how reality works.
• Children have a good connection to their instincts - pain and pleasure - because they have not been programmed yet, so their connection is stronger, but they are not more knowledgeable. 
• Caregivers are meant to teach their children how reality works, and to show us how to meet, to understand our needs.  We only have control over our expression of pain and pleasure in this lifetime.
• Our caregiver's approval means survival for us so from day one we are programmed not to pay attention to what our bodies are saying to us - when caregivers "go away", I don't get my needs met.  Needs get met from someone understanding me and meeting my needs.  When I am rejected I am at risk.  That is our first program.  Approval.
• What should happen in a healthy environment, we start to develop autonomy, we are given tools by our caregivers for understanding when we are in pain that a need is not being met, and to identify why there is pain and to be able to change it - pain and pleasure experienced in a neutral way.
• When we experience true pleasure there is no negative backlash, this is the different between real and fake pleasure.
• What actually happens is because humanity doesn't understand itself or how reality works - struggling to survive - and creating systems based on misunderstanding on how to survive, this complex web has created a consensus reality, which is "this is how you have to be, what you have to do, good, bad, ect. and through our growth process we begin to experience something called guilt, shame, abandonment and rejection.
• So as we are expressing ourselves, as we are growing and going through the learning process, we did things where we expressed and were told we were bad.  Or we were in pain and were abandoned or rescued and did not learn why we got hurt.
• This triggers the nervous system, "I am not going to get my needs met, I am rejected, so what do I need to do to to get back in their good graces?"  So now we don't know what the original pain was in the first place.
• "Who do I need to be, what do I need to do to alter my behaviour so that I am approved of again?"
• So now we are two layers removed from real reality.  An appropriate response, "I still love you, you are still loved and safe, how does it feel to have hit the other child for the toy?"  Children would tell you that it does not feel good and would learn that hitting and taking the toy is a negative action.  "You hit because that was your instinct."  Then you can teach them to share once they learn the source of the bad feeling, if it is not covered up by shame, fear, guilt, ect - their nervous systems can learn to enjoy sharing.
• This is real learning, the child then becomes more complex through that interaction.  Most interactions do not go this way - this takes away the empathy because all they feel is fear from the situation and freeze.
• What looks like self sabotage in adulthood is actually your body doing what it learned in childhood over and over again, now as an adult.  Most of us as adults do not learn to be autonomous and to meet our own needs, with or without acceptance or approval of others.  We take the codependent approach and think others hold the keys to what we need.
• So rather than becoming an adult and communicating and understanding our needs we become codependent with everyone around us, and when we are in pain because we learned in our childhoods that pain is wrong and bad, we connect to consensus reality, which is made up of stories and fantasies.
• "We are wrong or reality is wrong."  That is how we learn to interact with pain.
• The shame and guilt always comes from "I am in pain because I am bad and did something wrong."  Why do we do that?  Because in childhood we only have control over our behaviour and nothing else, so if something goes wrong we assume it is our behaviour that caused it.
• So we all collectively move and act from the false assumption that pain makes us bad and wrong and so we project it onto ourselves or others.
• Self help, spirituality and self-improvement come into play with this because they are riding on the idea that the pain is your fault.  Something broken and wrong about you because you are in pain - it all plays on your insecurities.  We want to believe it is true because it makes it simple.  "If I just do this, just fix this, then everything will be better."
• There is no questioning of the system.  "You are deficient and here is the fix."  And that feels good because it is familiar conditioning.  Adaptation.
• This creates a learning trauma.
• Real reality is: it's either supporting your growth or it is not, and some of the things we are doing to cope are because we exist in a system that doesn't work for people, the rat race does not align with who most people really are.
• We are disconnected from our true selves.  Being.  Instincts.  Pain and pleasure.  We don't have the tools to learn what we need to learn from the instincts we are born with.  We were trained to disconnect from the instinct to fit in, so people will meet your needs, so you feel safer.  It becomes a loop of trying to fit in. 
• The internet creates echo chambers where people who only interact with those who have ideas like theirs because we are so afraid, we don't want new information, we don't want to believe that the way we are seeing things is wrong because if we are wrong then we are bad and this is shameful and we don't know how to learn from that because we then have to learn to change and our bodies don't want that so we join echo chambers, and the world just keeps getting more divided because we are all stuck in nervous system trauma.
• The more we operate from, "How do I show up for myself right now?" and "What do I need to feel safe?" and "Why am I doing what I am doing?" and assume innocence and a good reason and it is not always my fault. 
• Most of humanity is taught the wrong way.  Pain = shame.  Half the people = I am bad.  Codependent.  Half the people = you are bad/at fault. 
• Pain really means something is out of alignment and what do I need to do to get into alignment.
• This is a long process to learn what these things mean to you.  Reprogramming base nervous system programming from childhood takes a lot of time and it is hard to do, and is the foundation on which you have built ALL your other behaviours.
• Everything that you resist comes from not questioning your reality.
• If you were to accept yourself as who you are right now as loveable and good enough, that is what takes your nervous system out of fear and then you can start the process of learning from your experience.
• When we don't have this foundation, all the tools do nothing because we are triggered into a state of fear that forces us to do the same thing over and over and over again.
• This is why becoming your own "safe space" is so essential.  It is not one and done.  It is a continual practice of learning to show up for yourself when in pain, pleasure and be in the moment and as, "What do I need right now?"
• Start with self compassion.  This gets rid of fight or flight, and then we can learn but it takes time to learn to stop abandoning yourself when you are in pain, so be patient.
• Investigate.  See that you don't die.  Be there for yourself.  Do it again and again.  Investigate, investigate, investigate.  Assume innocence within yourself. 
• If a program is stimulating your nervous system and disconnecting you from yourself, it is not for you - esp. if it is based on "There is something wrong with you."
• "What did you learn?" "Why am I in pain?"  "Take as much responsibility for myself as I can."
• Self help can keep you stuck in a state of self-obsession, so try and use your time to contribute towards better things.
• You feel safe when you feel loved, so love yourself.
• It is a lot of work.  But it all comes down to showing up for yourself with compassion and curiosity and assuming innocence.  This is all you need.

[Tim R]

58 minutes ago, Farnaby said:

How do I work on my confidence without reinforcing the belief that I am not confident yet?

@Farnaby If you know that it's just a belief, you're already on the right track. Because then you know that it's not true and so it can't be reinforced unconsciously anymore. 

All beliefs lose (a lot) of their power once they're recognized to be just beliefs. 

Keep working on your confidence. But don't say "I am not confident and I need to become confident", say "I am confident and I will become more confident". Because confidence is not a black and white thing, it's not "either you are confident or not". Like so many things, confidence comes in degrees. You are already confident, and now you're simply working on becoming more confident. 

By becoming better at something you will inevitably highlight that before, you were not as good as you are now. That's simply how this works. 

But let me illustrate how silly this whole situation actually is:

If I'm sitting in a plane on the runway and look out the window at the ground and say "well, we want to go up very high with this plane because it's not very nice down here on the ground. But how do we get to high up without reinforcing the fact that we're down on the ground?"

The answer is of course: you can't. The higher you ascend with the plane, the more evident it will become how low you were before. Is this a bad thing? Of course not! 

Or if I'm studying for mathematics, I might say to myself "how do I become better at maths without reinforcing the belief that I'm bad at maths?" 

You see what a nonsensical situation this is?

Just do the work and you will become better at whatever it is that you want to improve at. 

Because action triumphs over belief. You can believe all you want. At the end of the day, you will see actual results.

[gettoefl]

3 hours ago, Farnaby said:

@gettoefl Hi! Could you elaborate on what you mean specifically? 

 

development is i am nothing special while spirituality is i am the most important person alive ... spiritual practice is how the two meet

namely meditation self inquiry yoga reading spiritual masters ... all the stuff that leo teaches

[soos_mite_ah]

9 hours ago, Farnaby said:

A question has been on my mind lately and I would like to know your opinion and experience. Do you feel like self-development practices reinforce the belief and feeling that you're not good enough right now and that you won't be until you become some better version of yourself?

It can especially if you are misdiagnosing the problem. That can really double down on your self hatred because constantly telling yourself to improve yourself can mean that you aren't good enough as you are and that you need "fixing." Yes, we all need to learn and grow but there are a lot of things that aren't broken or problems in the first place and further tinkering with those things can really come into conflict with your sense of self acceptance. And a lack of self acceptance can really stunt your self-development practices.

If so, does this mean you should stop self-development practices?

I wouldn't say stop but I would say that sometimes taking breaks and stepping back from your issue can help you see it in a different light. Also, if you find yourself feeling like your self development isn't making you feel better, it can be beneficial to reevaluate your goals and question whether or not it's coming from a healthy place or if it's the right goal to aim for in the first place. 

An example from my life: I have trouble expressing myself freely. I know this is based on past conditioning and trauma stored in my body. How can I work on this without reinforcing the belief that I'm not good enough right now with my trouble expressing myself freely? 

Deal with the trauma and seek health for it. Don't focus on how you're having trouble expressing yourself. Focus on healing from the trauma and once that goal is achieved, the expressing yourself piece will come automatically as a side effect.

The worst thing you can do here is the opposite where you're so hyper focused on improving the way you express yourself to where you ignore the trauma. That would further reinforce this notion of something is wrong with you (which is a problem that the trauma is causing anyway) and it won't address the initial block and instead will double down on your block. 

 

[Farnaby]

@soos_mite_ah thank you, that's exactly how I'm starting to think about this. Working on my trauma without turning it into another unhealthy coping strategy is really tricky though. 

I guess I need to stop trying to control my feelings and just relax into them and accept them fully, even if they go against my idea of my goal (i.e confidence). 

Could you maybe give a practical tip on what to do (or stop doing) when I'm feeling insecure?