As soon as clients start getting good at becoming instantly present at will and at using the “Inner Salam Method”, some variation of the following question almost always comes up:
“I can’t seem to stay present when [insert mean relative’s name] is in the room and starts saying things like [insert mean comment]…”
And that should come as no surprise.
Now, the simplest solution to this is obviously logistical. If there’s a mean person around, it’s usually a good idea to be somewhere else and not interact with them at all.
However, a lot of the time, we can’t implement that logistical solution, especially when the mean person is a relative or a work colleague that you literally cannot avoid.
And the truth is, if that’s the case, it means that Allah put them on your path for a reason.
And the reason is, so that they become a means for you to raise your level of consciousness.
How do you do that?
It’s actually quite simple. When you have to face a difficult person, there are 3 distinct phases:
- There’s the time before you’re going to walk into the room and meet them. Often, this is where you’re dreading the potential confrontation.
- Then there’s the actual interaction with them. This is where all the terrible things might happen.
- And finally, there’s the time after the interaction where you might be replaying what happened and wondering if there was a better way you could have responded.
What most people don’t realize is the very fact that they’ve noticed that they fall out of Presence when dealing with a situation like this means that they’re actually growing in awareness and consciousness.
How so?
Because the fact that you’re bringing this to a coaching session with me means that, at a minimum, after the interaction you did wake up and return to presence… which is why you now realize that you fell out of presence during the interaction.
Our only task now is to see if we can increase your level of awareness before and during the interaction… and ‘return to presence’ a lot quicker after the interaction.
And that’s where the “Shields Up” technique comes in.
I don’t know if you’re a weird sci-fi enthusiast like myself, but one of the cool things about the old Star Trek TV shows is that they introduced all kinds of awesome technology that seemed like a distant future impossibility… and that we now all use and take for granted: like Video Calls!
And one of the coolest sci-fi inventions featured in Star Trek is the invisible forcefield “shield” that can go around a ship when it’s being attacked.
While I have not yet developed a way to have a literal invisible force field around you, I do have a way that you can feel as though there’s a psychological, emotional force field that protects you from any mean, negative thing that another person says or does.
It involves doing specific things before, during and immediately after an interaction with a difficult person.
And in the next Nafs Mastery Session, which I’ll be teaching live tomorrow, I’m going to share that with you along with the “Inner Salam Method” that we use to let go of negative emotions – because the two go together like fish n chips.
To check it all out and join, go to this page and read all the details – especially the structure, format can all the important ‘policies’ of The Nafs Mastery Program:
