Choosing where to give my attention

Since my last blog, there are a lot of things happening in my life.

Just want to share one of the things I have learned in the past few months and what I am trying to practice:

I realized something in this period:

Whenever something unpleasant happens (when someone does/say something to irritate me, to upset me, or some situation happens where I feel angry) every time I have a choice:

Whether to focus on the person/situation which made me feel this way

or focus on why I felt this way.

I used to focus on the person/situation which made me feel that way. The whole energy used to go into justifying how the act of a person/situation is the reason behind how I am feeling.

But when I look at this habit, in hindsight it was not helping me.

The same situations always come, if not one person then another.

And if every time, something like this happens and I feel that same feeling of unpleasantness. Then how am I growing emotionally?

If I still feel irritated/upset at the same kind of things today which I felt irritated/upset about a year or two ago. Then what's the point?

So the question came, how to grow emotionally in this particular area so that I don't feel upset about the same things again and again.

After thinking of options, the only solution I could think of is to find a reason behind my unpleasant feeling and work on that.

I used to do that before as well, but I always found that the reason behind me feeling this way is because that XYZ person did this or because of this situation. Basically, justifying my feelings through someone else's actions (blaming).

But now I think the reason is not the person/situation.

It's something else.

So I started asking questions like why I feel irritated, angry or upset without focusing on what is wrong with that person/situation.

And this little change, have changed a lot of things within me.

I still get upset & irritated a lot of times but after this realisation, I can give up that feeling of upset easily. I don't feel negative towards the person or the situation which made me upset as I know that it has nothing to do with how am I feeling. They are just a medium for something to trigger inside me, which I have to work on.

So now, when someone hurts my ego or makes me angry, upset or irritated or even make me cry, it's not them where I have to give my attention to.

They didn't make me feel anything. I did.

Let me share a recent example of this practice that I am doing:

I was working on a project recently, where I had to shoot a video with approx 100 employees. We planned everything before, came one day before and marked everything so that we don't waste employees' time. But somehow that day, the shoot was not going as expected. Someone came and said that you guys should have prepared properly. This is wasting our time. Do it some other day with proper preparation.

My first reaction inside me was anger followed by upset and hatred for the person who told me. For some time, I was upset (didn't show it to anyone but inside I knew what is going on). I started thinking of all the justification of why it's not our mistake. (Eg. People didn't do what they said they will do etc.)

Then after like 30 mins or so, I remember what I had to practise. So I questioned myself, why did I feel the hurt? It was definitely not that person's fault to make me feel this way. He was just the medium to trigger something inside me. Then I realised that I got hurt because of my ego. That guy didn't say anything wrong, and if I didn't have my ego as a barrier, I could have seen what I could have done to prevent what happened. But it is much easier for me to blame someone else than to look inside me.

After this, I didn't have any negative feelings for that person, although I was feeling grateful for him to show me something where I can work on.

So yeah, this is what I am practising for the last few months.

Trying to remind me and asking myself, where do I want to give my attention?

Do I want to focus on the person/situation which made me feel this way

or focus on why I felt this way?

Thank you for reading,

Love, Prem