Guilty until proven innocent - we find ourselves

Following up on yesterday's post, somehwere around Kindergarten we're either perfectly happy and in loving peace with everyone and everything around us, or much less so.
When much less so, there must be a reason, or, as I said yesterday, a root cause. When we know the cause, we can find the cure - problem solved!

Not
We go look for a root cause, we unconsciously identify ourselves with one, and then knowingly try to overcompensate for that. Does it really matter what root cause that is? Does it have to be the exact right one? No. It really doesn't matter at all. You're just working on a solution looking for a problem

I compare it with proving yourself innocent of a crime that not only you didn't commit, but never even took place - good luck with that

Many people silently whisper "If only" every day and completely waste their and other people's time with that:

• If only I were rich
• If only I were loved
• If only I had friends
• If only I were valued
• If only I were appreciated more
• If only I were not alone
• If only I were in charge
• If only I had more power
• If only I were a girl in stead of a boy (or vv)
• If only I were famous
• If only I were fashionable
• If only I had more Twitter followers
• If only I had more people reading my blog
• If only I got more comments to my blog

Those last three are tongue-in-cheek but you'll catch my drift. If only: we wish, and make ourselves dependent. Because for all of the above, we rely on the judgment of others to tell us whether we made it


Yet, we try. We try to make money, to get friends, to get a girl- or boyfriend, to make it into the local newspaper

Does that help? No. It's not enough - as the feeling stays. People never say "Hey you now have friends! How cool". Or "Wow, you have money!" Even if they do so, we think "How would you know? You don't have any friends or money yourself, you loser".

So we try to make even more money, get more friends, promote our girl- or boyfriend to wife or husband, to make it into the national newspaper

Does that then...? No. We persist in our quest: we get money that doesn't belong to us, take other people's friends, get another husband or wife or a mistress or toyboy on the side, make headlines

The mind is strong, very strong, and blames lack of satisfaction when a goal is theoretically reached on others: the money isn't enough, the friends are too stupid or ugly or stubborn or smart, the girl or boy or soulmate is too little or too much [fill in the blanks], the newspaper article was too small or on page 12 or ...

All to no avail. Overcompensating for a perceived lack that is not the root cause for your problems, simply never works. It takes, time and energy, yes - but it only gets you more and more frustrated. We feel guilty and we'll never be able to prove ourselves innocent - because there was no crime committed

I believe we feel the disconnect because we vaguely remember being energy, and miss whatever came with that. It's a theory but there must be a reason why most people strongly adhere to one or more of the bullet points mentioned when they are at their unhappiest. Most people will pick a main one and aim to overcompensate for that, and will stubbornly persist in doing so for their entire life

I always speak about goals and means, and I frequently state that something isn't a goal, but a mere means. Well, for most people, the Game here has become the Goal: the self-picked Rules have just become Means that will distract them from their Goal.
The Real Goal, however, is to recognise the Game for what it is: a mental labyrinth you created yourself

Pick three types of situations that reoccur during your life and make you unhappy: you'll see that at those moments you'll strongly feel one of the bullet points above, and that your reaction is to find ways to make sure that next time, that feeling will have gone