When you have negative or narcissistic-type people in your life, sooner or later, you’re going to have a negative, tense, difficult interaction with them.
Maybe they blame you for something that was their fault, or project their ‘stuff’ onto you, or try to drag you into a shout-y insult contest, or just fling disrespectful, filthy language your way.
It’s natural to want to avoid people and situations that might go in that direction, but avoidance isn’t always a solution. Often, it can make things worse.
Maybe you need to confront that person or tell them a truth they don’t want to hear.
Or maybe, for the time being you live with them and need to get through another day.
Whatever the case, the Ultimate Spiritual Super-Power is being able to let go of the negative interaction, and cleanse yourself of all that negative energy as soon as it’s over.
The most powerful way of developing that super-power is to recognise a small but critical distinction between the event and the meanings you make up in your mind about the event.
Let’s imagine a family member gets angry and says something insulting to you. You politely correct them and leave the room. It would be natural to automatically create a bunch of meanings in your mind about the event.
You might say to yourself… “What a jerk! I can’t believe they just said that. They must not respect me at all. They must think I’m a complete pushover if they think they can just say that and I’ll take it. I ought to give them a piece of my mind… I told them I’d be coming in late and I’d handle the situation later, so why are they having a go at me – it’s their bloody phone addiction – all that “news” is driving them mad…!!”
The more you leave the inner-talk playing, the chances are, the more upset and angry you’ll become.
That inner-talk is made up of meanings, assumptions, and judgements about what you think is going on.
The important point here is that it doesn’t matter if your meanings, assumptions and judgements are right or wrong. (We always tend to think we’re right!)
The important thing is that the moment you catch yourself and draw a clear distinction about the EVENT (the person looked angry and said something insulting) and the MEANINGS (all that inner-talk about them), you’re suddenly free.
The moment the distinction between Event and Meaning becomes apparent, you instantly, automatically drop the inner-talk… and along with it, you’re instantly free from all the negative feelings that came with it.
Obviously, this doesn’t mean you should tolerate or put up with bad behaviour.
It does mean you can experience total mental, emotional, psychological freedom and peace, despite having interacted with someone who displayed bad behaviour towards you.
The moment you experience that freedom and peace, your quiet-minded inner-wisdom will kick in and let you know what action, if any, is required to address the person and/or external problem.
If you’d like to experience this insight for yourself and bring all your psychological suffering to an abrupt end, you’ll probably quite enjoy the next Nafs Mastery Program training module called:
“The Prophetic Approach To Dealing With Negative People”.
To get access to it, join The Nafs Mastery Program by this Friday 4th September at 11:59pm:
