You can do a lot of great work on yourself with a journal. If you want to try and work through a problem, or you want to start a journal but don’t know what to write about, this is an episode for you. It can also be really confusing as to what to talk about. Especially if nothing flows. 

The journal I use is this one:
https://amzn.to/3tV5Vc5

And to apply for the free chat session you can head here:
https://www.yaywithme.com/shop/apply-for-a-free-recorded-chat-session

This episode is sponsored by Better Help: online access to therapists, around the globe. If you want to support this show, use our code for 10% off your first month of therapy. Head to TryBetterHelp.com/HelpMeBeMe

Help Me Be Me

Ep 142: Self-Dialoguing - How to Do Self-Work in a Journal

I attached two JRF contact microphones inside the hollow of this wonderful old Oak tree to see if I could pick up any bug sounds. I was amazed to hear that it was completely full of Death Watch Beetle. They knock their heads on the tree to attract a mate.

You can now download this track and works by other recordists for free,  from the album 'a quiet position: wildeye edition":
http://engravedglass.bandcamp.com/album/a-quiet-position-wildeye-edition

This recording won the Coveted Wildlife Sound Recording Society's “Silver Fox” Trophy, the Non-Avian award and a first in class 2: Species in the 2012 WSRS competition. It also won first prize in the 'sounds of nature' category in the IWT/IARC/CIMES 2013 competition awarded by the International Federation of Sound Hunters.

DEATH WATCH BEETLE IN A LIVING OAK TREE

The book "PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia" is a conversation, not a dictation. It's an inquiry, not dogma. 

We're explorers in search of the ever-evolving truth, not authorities proclaiming doctrine from on high. We refuse to be salespeople intent on getting you to be like us or buy our ideas. In fact, let's look at the downsides of the perspectives we celebrate.

The first thing you should consider before leaping into a relationship with pronoia is that it is utterly at odds with conventional wisdom. The 19th-century poet John Keats said that if something is not beautiful, it is probably not true. But the vast majority of modern storytellers -- journalists, filmmakers, novelists, talk-show hosts, and poets -- assert the opposite: If something is not ugly, it is probably not true.

In a world that equates pessimism with acumen and regards stories about things falling apart as having the highest entertainment value, pronoia is deviant. It is a taboo so taboo that it's not even recognized as a taboo.

The average American child sees 20,000 simulated murders before reaching age 18. This is considered normal. There are thousands of films, television shows, and electronic games that depict people doing terrible things to each other. If you read newspapers and news sites on the Internet, you have every right to believe that Bad Nasty Things compose 90 percent of the human experience. The authors of thousands of books published this year will hope to lure you in through the glamour of killing, addiction, self-hatred, sexual pathology, shame, betrayal, extortion, robbery, cancer, arson, and torture.

But you will be hard-pressed to find more than a few novels, films, news stories, and TV shows that dare to depict life as a gift whose purpose is to enrich the human soul.

If you cultivate an affinity for pronoia, people you respect may wonder if you have lost your way. You might appear to them as naive, eccentric, unrealistic, misguided, or even stupid. Your reputation could suffer and your social status could decline.

But that may be relatively easy to deal with compared to your struggle to create a new relationship with yourself. For starters, you will have to acknowledge that what you previously considered a strong-willed faculty -- the ability to discern the weakness in everything -- might actually be a mark of cowardice and laziness. Far from being evidence of your power and uniqueness, your drive to produce hard-edged opinions stoked by hostility is likely a sign that you've been brainwashed by the pedestrian influences of pop nihilism.

Before the onset of pronoia, you may feel fine about the fact that you generate much of your dynamic energy through anger, agitation, discomfort, and judgmental scorn. But once the pronoia kicks in, you'll naturally want more positive feelings to be your high-octane fuel. That will require extensive retraining. The work could be arduous, delicate, and time-consuming.

Are you truly ready to shed the values and self-images that keep you locked into alignment with the dying civilization? Will you have the stamina and inspiration necessary to dream up bigger, better, more original sins and wilder, wetter, more interesting problems? Do you realize how demanding it will be to turn yourself into a wildly disciplined, radically curious, fiercely tender, ironically sincere, ingeniously loving, aggressively sensitive, blasphemously reverent, lustfully compassionate master of rowdy bliss?

+

Try saying this aloud: "I die daily." It's one of our favorite formulas for success. Is it right for you? Say it again, using a different tone of voice this time. "I die daily." Chant it in a fake foreign accent. Sing it to the tune of the nursery rhyme "Frere Jacques." Play with it in the voice of the cartoon character you loved best as a child. Repeat it 10 times, or try other vocal experiments. Then muse on the following questions.

What do you need to kill off in yourself in order to tune in to the beauty that's hidden from you? What worn-out shticks are blinding you to the blessings that life is conspiring to give you? Which of your acerbic theories may have been useful and even brilliant in the past but are now keeping you from becoming aware of the ever-fresh creation that unfolds before you?

"I die daily" means that it's not enough to terminate your stale mental habits just once. The price of admission into pronoia is a commitment to continual dying. You'll have to ask yourself rude questions and kick your own ass again and again. Today's versions of beauty, truth, love, goodness, justice, and liberation will pass away. To keep abreast of the latest developments -- to cultivate tomorrow's versions of pronoia -- you will have to immerse yourself regularly in the waters of chaos. Your relationship with pronoia will have to be a never-ending improvisation.

The dream of a steady-state utopia is anathema to Beauty and Truth Lab researchers. We're allergic to any paradise that resembles a spotless shopping mall within the walls of a gated community in heaven.

+

Pronoia is fueled by a drive to cultivate happiness and a determination to practice an aggressive form of gratitude that systematically identifies the things that are working well. But it is not a soothing diversion meant for timid Pollyannas strung out on optimistic delusions. It's not a feel-good New Age fantasy used to deny the harsh facts about existence. Those of us who perceive the world pronoiacally refuse to be polite shills for sentimental hopefulness.

On the contrary, we build our optimism not through a repression of difficulty, but rather a vigorous engagement with it. We understand that the best way to attract blessings is to grapple with the knottiest enigmas.

Each fresh puzzle is a potential source of future bliss -- an exciting teaching that may usher us to our next breakthrough.

Do you want to be a pronoiac player? Blend anarchistic rebelliousness with open-hearted exuberance. Root your insurrectionary fervor in expansive joy instead of withering hatred. Enjoy saying "no!" but don't make it the wellspring of your vitality. Be fueled by blood-red yeses that rip against the grain of comfortable ugliness. 

+

"A Spell to Commit Pronoia," by psychotherapist Jennifer Welwood:

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I am given unimaginable gifts;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.

Each condition I flee from pursues me.
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed
Into its radiant jewel-like essence.

I bow to the one who has made it so,
Who has crafted this Master Game;
To play it is pure delight,
To honor it is true devotion.

+

This is a piece from the soundtrack for my book, 
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronoia-Antidote-Paranoia-Revised-Expanded/dp/1556438184/ref=ed_oe_p"><i>PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia</i></a>.

Pronoia Is a Dangerous Taboo

Rishi Kumar(https://farmerrishi.com), a former software engineer, is a gardening evangelist who uses gardening for personal, social, and ecological healing. We talk a lot about regeneration: how it is not just a set of techniques, but an orientation, a way of seeing, and a way of relating to the earth. We humans don't have to be outsiders to nature; we too are an organ of Gaia and can join the gift circle of life. I hope our conversation gives whomever listens a little extra encouragement to begin or to deepen their gardening, and to look at the nonprofit Rishi works with, Kiss the Ground (https://kisstheground.com).

New & Ancient Story

Farmer Rishi: The Gift Circle of Life(E46)

Farmer Rishi: The Gift Circle of Life (E46)

When there is a collective crisis, usually the fragmentation and the polarization in the cultural stream become much stronger. We need to learn not to become part of it. We can go beyond it and see what actually creates the polarization, which is only a symptom. Being a social witness means staying in a state of presence, that is bigger than the polarization.

trauma healing workshop

Overcoming Polarization - Thomas Hübl

Valentine

One of the hardest things to do is give up or accept a loss, even if we are unhappy and have been for a really long time. This is for anyone stuck in ambivalence over a decision to create a change in their life. 
Sometimes this happens when you are in a long relationship and you feel you can’t leave it – even though you are not happy and you don’t feel in love. Another common scenario is when you are in a field you don’t love but you have been to school for x number of years so you feel like you can’t leave now. It’s so scary to trust the feelings you have when you know they can sometimes change – especially when weighing this against something that is valuable in the eyes of the world. 

The book I referenced by Dan Ariely is here:
https://amzn.to/2DwW9bl

 
This episode is brought to you by Better Help: online therapy with licensed counselors, available around the globe. If you want to help out this podcast, use our code and get 10% off your first month of therapy, visit TryBetterHelp.com/HelpMeBeMe

Ep 133: Stuck + Ambivalent: When You Can’t Make a Decision or Let Go

This is for anyone who has escaped a relationship with a narcissist and they reach out to you, out of the blue – and how to navigate that situation. So if you were manipulated, taken advantage of, and could not find your way out of a relationship that left you feeling like the shell of a human – you were likely with a narcissist. Getting out of this kind of relationship is extremely difficult – so the eventual reach-out from this person might leave you feeling sick to your stomach. I send you my love and please stay strong!

The two previous episodes I have done on this topic are here:
https://soundcloud.com/helpmebeme/episode-50-how-to-break-away-from-a-narcissist-relationship
https://soundcloud.com/helpmebeme/ep-111-how-to-tell-if-youre-dating-a-narcissist

The book I mentioned that I like on this topic is here:
https://amzn.to/3iFhYEC

This episode is brought to you by Better Help: online access to therapists, around the globe. If you want to support this show, use our code for 10% off your first month of therapy. Head to TryBetterHelp.com/HelpMeBeMe

When the Narcissist Contacts You Out of the Blue

If you have insecurities that come up and cause you to push your partner away or cling too closely, this is for you. Maybe you find that you are acting out in petty ways – like, starting fights. Or maybe it comes out in jealousy. When you get insecure, you are taken out of the present joy of a relationship, something that can make you feel haunted or like you are going crazy. The worst part of insecurities is you unfriend yourself in the process. You don’t feel you SHOULD feel the way you do, so it makes you feel shitty about yourself FOR feeling shitty about yourself. Often what we do in these situations is pretend it isn’t happening. So if this sounds true for you – this is an episode for you!
As with all my episodes, there are 3 parts – the what, why, and how the tools. 

This episode is sponsored by Better Help: online therapy with licensed counselors, available around the globe. If you feel stuck in life or something is blocking you from the change you want to make, try Better Help – simply fill out a survey and they will match you with a counselor within 48 hours. And if you want to help out this podcast, use our code and get 10% off your first month of therapy: visit TryBetterHelp.com/HelpMeBeMe

Ep 134: How to Stop Insecurities From Hurting Your Relationship

This is a power-up (shorter) episode for anyone who has been living in a purely reactive state where they are going through the motions/dealing with thousands of to-do’s. It’s really easy to forget what is good and fun in your life and with that, we start expecting/seeing only the serious and dire around us. It’s also easy to forget what makes you You, and what makes that self-awesome. This is a little energy-setting reminder. 

This episode is sponsored by Better Help: online access to therapists, around the globe. If you want to support this show, use our code for 10% off your first month of therapy. Head to TryBetterHelp.com/HelpMeBeMe

Don’t Forget Yourself: Keeping Lightness in Your Life

In this podcast David discusses Shraddha or Faith as a powerful but hard won ally that helps you to remain committed to a daily practice.

Faith means belief in and commitment to the invisible spiritual dimension of your life.  You cultivate faith one practice at a time by coming to your mat each day equal in times of plenty or challenge.  You build a strong faith through trust in your self, your practice, and in dharma (cosmic justice) and also through loyalty to inner work, longing for sacred connection, approving of your highest visions of life, and being sincerely curious about how to open yourself up to the dawning of consciousness within your own body.   To have a strong faith requires tremendous effort and devotion on your part but if you are able to catch this worthy prize you become a yogi, a powerful force for good in this life.

Catching the Prize of Faith

Help Me Be Me is an emotional toolkit for creating positive change in yourself. I like to think of it as self-help for people who hate self-help. I'm Sarah May, coach/mom/all-around happy person, and these are the tools that work for me in my life. For all of my offerings you can check out YayWithMe.com What I share is my personal opinion. It's not a diagnosis for treatment or a substitute for professional help. If you're suffering, please reach out to your local emergency services or call 9-1-1. Music theme created by www.BookerHillMusic.com

Ep 134: How to Stop Insecurities From Hurting Your Relationship

Help Me Be Me

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