Sometimes it’s hard to come back to Earth.
The mind just loops and loops on the same story over and over. And even when you do The Work, you may not notice much of a shift.
This is because the mind has gained a certain momentum. It has become a self-contained spinning machine and no evidence, no matter how good, will stop it.
It’s a case of the mind staying purposely out of touch with reality so that it can keep the story going.
The key for me is to stop working on fixing the problem. Just put it on hold for a while. That problem has become like a black hole, sucking into oblivion even my best attempts to stop the story.
The story is too big to stop when it’s spinning, isolated in space.
So I stop working on fixing the problem, and drop down to the level of everyday life. I ground myself with my day-to-day life and start doing The Work there instead. You can guarantee that the big story will show up there too. But it will show up in small manageable bits found in the context of living my daily life.
The Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet is not about solving my big problems. It’s about dealing with one little situation in my life at at time.
One moment in time… who just annoyed me? That’s a worksheet!
I can handle one moment in time. I can work with that. It’s doable. It’s concrete. And I’m not trying to solve my big issue. I’m just doing The Work.
That’s when The Work works best. And my experience is that as I deal with the little stressful incidents in a very concrete way, the big spinning problems tend to disappear all on their own.
I encourage you to walk through your day and let life show you the next time and place where you get triggered. Do a worksheet on that, whether it’s related to your big issues or not.
This keeps you grounded. And this is the most powerful way to do The Work in my opinion.
“The more you do The Work, the more uncensored you become and the pettier you like to get, because it becomes hard to find something that will upset you. Eventually, you can’t find a problem. That’s an experience I hear from thousands of people.”
We are not meant to live stressed lives. Learn how to address the root cause of your stress and find your freedom again. Otherwise, stress will keep accumulating. Learn how to break the cycle of stress here.
