Archive for the ‘Inner Voices’ Category

Can we really change a person?

Posted by Ewan Nicholson on 17 May 2010 under Articles, Inner Voices, Letting Go, Personal Awareness, Personal Growth, Relationships as mirrors, Self-Love, Trying to Change people | 0 Comments

There comes a point when writing articles about relationships and personal development where I get stuck. It’s hard not to feel that you just end up writing different version of  the same topics. The truth is this is the case but it’s more of a honest reflection of the way life and relationship themselves unfold. Often we are dealing with the same things over and over, the same themes, the same issues, the same conflicts, the same dilemmas. Each time we go through a cycle we hope for a better understanding or more insight and awareness of what’s happening .

If only they called more…..

Life ends up feeling like a spiral more than a  straight line. One of the themes I have talked about before is how relationships are our mirrors to ourselves, how we view others, tells us more about ourselves than the people we are judging or forming opinions on. This is almost an instinctual habit in us that it’s hard at times to really gain distance from, due to how frequently we go about this. In psychic readings the most common occurrence of this is when a person wants other person to be another way in order to make them feel more safe, secure or reassured. For instance someone we are in love with or involved with, becomes emotionally distant and stops communicating. This can then trigger a anxiety or feeling of unease that compels the person to want the other person to go back to the way they were before, to keep loving them or keep giving them the feeling that made them feel so good before. It  is within the midst of these moments we have a golden opportunity to shift our perceptive, to bring to ourselves more happiness and more contentment.

Its our “thoughts” not the other person that is the problem..

The thought “They should call more often” when we are faced with a reality that they don’t and it appears they are not going to, creates a high level of stress and frustration .We put our focus into hoping and wishing they would do what we want. We want our internal discomfort to ease by an external reality that we have no say or no control over. We set ourselves up to feel stressed and unhappy just by the thought “They should call more often” which really translate “They should do what I want ,to make me feel what I want”. If we are able to examine this thought and put our focus not shifting reality but shifting the thought.

There is a voice is my head that says I “should do”…should I?

Posted by Ewan Nicholson on 05 Apr 2010 under Articles, Communication, Denial, Feeling Negative, Inner Voices, My should-do bird, Overcoming Obstacles, Personal Awareness, Personal Growth, Self-awareness | 1 Comment

I have an imaginary bird that sits on my shoulder that I call the “should-do bird”. Like my crazy monkey of crystal meth, it is one of the other voices in my head. Before you shout “crazy person” I remind you that we all have voices in our heads, that we commonly refer to as thoughts. A persistent and repetitive pattern of thoughts, I choose to call a voice and give that voice a name. It’s not exactly a psychological breakthrough, as the use of, or analogy of our “internal voices” is common in certain approaches of psychology. I personally find it helps to indentify these voices with names and clear understanding of what they have to say and contribute to my life.

The endless commands of my “should do” bird

As the various voices I live with go the “should do bird” is one I end up listening to a lot. It’s been there perched on my shoulder for as long as I can remember. Its role and function in my life is pretty simple and straight forward. It reminds me of all the things I should be doing, saying, thinking , choosing or taking action on. It’s the indefatigable and unwavering voice that write and re writes endless lists of what I should be doing. The should do bird honestly never, ever shuts up. Its orders range from basic house hold duties such as emptying the bins, to work related task like sending an email, moving on to creative objective such as writing an Oscar winning screenplay, next relationship issue concerning being more direct in how I communicate, then on to amendments to my personality like being more organised, to wider more global issue such as making a difference in the world, then the spiritual dimension has to be covered with is have a direct experience of the oneness of the whole universe and these are the ones that have been chirped out before I,m out of bed.

It’s orders never stop..

In addition to ordering me to do these things , the “should do bird’ also has the duty of reminding me of when I haven’t and lets me know overall how bad that is. As you can imagine my “should do bird” is pretty much ticked off at me most of the time as I rarely get to achieve all of what’s on my daily list of things to “do” and “be”. We also have to be clear, its not the should do birds job to praise or acknowledge when I have accomplished things. Its job is to tell me what to do or be and then remind me when I haven’t. Even when I am having a break or trying to take it easy , the “should do bird” is there telling me I should try and relax, thank you should do bird for that reminder.

Using our Divine Compass- Shortcuts to Clarity

Posted by Ewan Nicholson on 20 Mar 2010 under Finding Clarity, Finding Happiness, Inner Voices, Overcoming Obstacles, Personal Awareness, Personal Growth, Self-awareness | 0 Comments

Finding clarity in life can be a daunting task at times. We live in a world where our attention and focus is being vied for constantly. We are bombarded with information that tells us what we should want, how we should feel and where we should be in our lives. Not so long ago in human history our only  benchmark were the people surrounding us in villages. Now I have over six billion to compare my lot with. I don’t see this as good or bad, I guess it is just what it is.

The issue I face day to day is how all this choice and information impacts the quality of my day and how I see myself in relation to the world I live. We are swimming in sea of choice (or maybe drowning would be a better metaphor) from which I am meant to be making choices that by and large make me happier, work choices, relationship choices, purchase choices , lifestyle choices. The assumption is, if I want to be happy I make choices that move me closer to that happiness. So my compass is pointed towards happiness and my choices are meant to guide me in that direction .Simply put, good choices bring me happiness, bad choices unhappiness.

How do I determine what is going to give me happiness via my choices? I am lucky enough to have numerous companies, religions, organisations, people, family friends and any old Joe Blo willing to give me there take on what are good choices. Yet I find in the midst of all this choice and opinion at times I find it difficult to get a strong sense of what is best or right for me. I find I end up moving and swaying, bending and turning, this way and that way, gravitating to one direction and then pull away from another. All the time trying to work out what works and what doesn’t, what is true and what is false. In all of this whole process is easy to feel overwhelmed to a point of just shutting off and just going along or alternatively anxiously grabbing and grasping in the hope it’s right. The vacillation between these two becomes my Modus operandi and can end up being the sum of my day, week, month year or lifetime.

Crazy monkey on crystal meth and other aspects of my mind :)

Posted by Ewan Nicholson on 01 Feb 2010 under Articles, Inner Voices, Overcoming Obstacles, Personal Awareness, Personal Growth, Self-awareness | 2 Comments

A film I would recommend any one to rent on DVD is “The Choir”. It’s a French, feel good film about a caring teacher who starts a choir in a French boarding school for delinquent boys. Throughout the film, the somewhat mean principal ,has a philosophy to discipline that is repeated with gusto “ action, reaction!”Meaning that every naughty deed committed by one of the boys must be responded to, hence “action, reaction”.

In a funny way this a metaphor for how many of us, including myself, deal with life. Stuff happens, then we react. Often the way we react is not conscious, like Pavlov dogs the bells ring and we salivate. We seem programmed to react to certain stimuli in pre-defined way. Not many of us can be on the receiving end of insults and stinging criticism from a person we care about and remain detached and indifferent. We will find those comments hurtful and cutting. We feel justified and warranted in that feeling of being hurt. We could write accurate and long lists formula that say, if A happened I would do this B, if X happen I would probably react with Z.

All this is well and good, but often our reactions do not contribute to the life and relationships we actually want. As an example, someone I care about emotionally distances themselves from me. My reaction is to feel insecure and needy. As they see this reaction they pull away furthering my insecurities. So my reaction has brought the very things I was most afraid of happening. So the question is, how can I react less and respond more? How can I transcend my conditioned reaction and response to feelings, situations and people in way that is more centred, genuine and harmonious.

A start is first just knowing it is possible. One of the most exciting things to understand is our inherent capacity to change and transform. It may not be easy or straightforward but it is definitely possible. So once we know it is possible we then move to the question of how. From my own experience the thing I have found most powerful in limiting my reaction is to become more detached from the part of me that is doing the reacting.

I was speaking to a client the other day about picturing that you have monkey sitting on your shoulder throughout your day. This monkey is demanding, moody, sulking self pitying. It’s like a self-centred ,adolescent, crazy chimp on crystal meth, endlessly barking out should and shouldn’t to you all day. Always wanting more, never happy, never fulfilled, except of course when it gets what it wants, and then it is only ever momentarily This monkey is what is “reacting” part in you.