you attract what irritates you

[moonrambler]

Here's another one. Last week I went to a store where the parking lot is almost always nearly full. Some idiot had parked his big fat SUV over a parking line, effectively taking up 1-1/4 spaces. This was hugely annoying to me, and I knew I could "get" this person, because I have a small car and I'm a small person, and could deal with that 3/4 space without bothering the people with the car on the other side. I parked real close to the SUV, slid over to the passenger side, and got out, thinking "HA!" because now the SUV driver would have a heck of a time getting his door open.

By the time I got to the store, I realized this is the way I typically deal with these sort of situations. I get all bent out of shape and confrontational. I want to get a bunch of cards printed up that I can stick on drivers' windshields that read, "Did you park this way for a reason or are you just an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥?" After my experience with "you attract what you fear," I was realizing this is probably not a good way to deal with situations. I was kind of wondering what the repercussions of this would be, but dismissed it.

So in the store I wanted to look at magazines, but some woman was standing in front of the rack with her cart blocking the entire shelf, and then at a certain book area, another woman was standing in front of the rack with her cart blocking the entire shelf, and it seemed every aisle I went into had somebody in my way, and at first I was getting really annoyed but then it struck me that this was happening because of how I reacted to the SUV in my way in the parking lot, and then it got funny.

This went on here and there all day long. By the time I went to the supermarket on my way home and the same thing was happening, I was wondering how long it would take for the energy to dissipate.

Well, it's a week later, and it has continued. It got so dramatic that one afternoon I was driving down a very narrow residential street and discovered I was driving straight toward a police stake-out and they had the entire area blocked off with about 12 squad cars, and the SWAT team had been called in. Good grief - LOL (I looked it up in the news later -- nobody got hurt)

The cop at that intersection would not let me get past; I had to figure out a way to turn around on that very narrow street, which wasn't the easiest thing to pull off, but I did it and got out of there!

Again, I'm getting so much clarity now. This is another thing I need to deal with, to be able to function more effectively and calmly out there in the world. I can't be getting all flipped out just because somebody parked in a stupid way or because somebody's so engrossed in reading a magazine that she probably doesn't even realize her cart is blocking other people. After all, what's the point of getting so riled up over stuff like this? It certainly doesn't solve anything!

[Angela]

I know what you're talking about.... those outraged feelings are addictive. You can really go on a bender with them, and then you end up with an outrage hangover. It's definitely not feeling good on purpose!

I notice that both your examples are about someone taking up more than their fair share of space, and crowding you. Do you think you might have some old pain still hanging around about being unjustly crowded, or around feeling "small" (in a self-recriminatory way, I mean). Do you ever have habitual negative thought patterns that relate to being small (nothing, worthless, insignificant, stuff like that)?

I ask because it sounds familiar to me. My old "I am second-rate" pain gets reactivated when I'm walking and a group or pair will walk in the opposite direction, not even attempting to stay on the right so that I can pass, but just barreling straight through so that I must step around into the dirt or street. Oh, I get so reactivated! (I live in a tourist town, so it happens a lot.) Lately I have declared to myself that unless the person is old or infirm or there are babies involved, I will be like Wonder Woman and stride through, straight and sure, taking up all the space I need. It's like a chicky-run. Sometimes I have to just stop and look people boldly in the eye and wait for them to flow around me. Sometimes I cave in. It's a stupid little thing, isn't it, but it's the stupid little things that reactivate our old pain.

Aren't we lucky that we get to be confronted by our old pain?

[moonrambler]

Good point. It might very well be that these situations yank me back to junior high when I felt invisible. I do that same thing sometimes with rude people on the sidewalks as you do sometimes. I suppose at some point long ago, I got well and truly tired of being pushed aside. It is like we talked about elsewhere -- about gunk. I haven't thought about this for a bazillion years but I can remember now being 18 and my pronouncement became, "I don't take crap from anybody." That's the 'tude I kick into at moments like the parking lot or people taking up all the space with their shopping cart.

[Angela]

Yeah, and it's not too hard to see that "I don't take crap from anybody" just ensures that more crap keeps coming at you for you not to take, right? You resist it and it only breeds. How about generating something that's more inspiring for you than "I'm invisible" and "I don't take crap from anybody" -- something that actually has you feeling powerful and masterful, rather than simply coping?

I will be thinking about this for myself today, too. Too bad it's not the weekend, when I'm usually confronted by the chicky-run syndrome.

[wellbeing]

Originally Posted by Angela

... when I'm walking and a group or pair will walk in the opposite direction, not even attempting to stay on the right so that I can pass, but just barreling straight through so that I must step around into the dirt or street. Oh, I get so reactivated! (I live in a tourist town, so it happens a lot.) Lately I have declared to myself that unless the person is old or infirm or there are babies involved, I will be like Wonder Woman and stride through, straight and sure, taking up all the space I need. It's like a chicky-run. Sometimes I have to just stop and look people boldly in the eye and wait for them to flow around me.

I do the same thing! What I find helps me not to "cave" (which is important for my "I have a right to my place in this world" work) is, when I catch their eye, to smile broadly and warmly and sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can even remind myself that these people have chosen to visit my city. (But I'm still working on making that a more frequent shift. )

Originally Posted by Angela

Aren't we lucky that we get to be confronted by our old pain?

And lucky that we have one another to learn these lessons as they arise for us. Thank you, Angela!

[StarieEyed]

I have combated this with road rage! It started a few years ago before I even started reading up on metiphysics but now that you mention this I connected it. I was pregnant with my daughter and decided I needed to "calm down" on my commute too and from work, relax and not try to "get ahead" in my sports car. I just started letting ppl in, LOOKING for people that need to get in before they push their way or make me mad in some way and OMG this changed my life in many ways. Now when I ride with my family driving and I see how stressed out and angry they get, I am so relived that I am a helpful driver now and no one is trying to push thier way into my space and I also get the same treatment, ppl always let me in. Now I msut admit sometimes I fall back into my evil ways usually after driving around or with my sister but for the most part, its pure bliss.

[pj567]

I totally know what you're talking about. And I don't think we just attract what makes us irritable, I think we can also attract what makes us sad, frustrated, depressed or cranky. It just depends on what kind of energy we give off towards any one thing-we can keep getting more of that energy if we don't use any positive statements to turn it around.

I do think that regardless of our intentions, it's not enough just to let an energy dissipate, because creating new energy is like stirring up water in a jug-when you stir it one way, it flows so much that way that it's harder to stir it the other way (and believe me, I've tried to let negative behavior dissipate before, and it just ended up getting worse lol). But I think, once you stop and make a verbal intention in your head of "I want it to stir this way," then you start to execute the actions to make it turn that way and within a short time, it reverses direction and you get the "flow" you want.

What we have to do is say how we want the flow to go and say it with all positive words (no "do not"s, "don't"s, "will not"s or "won't"s). So, as in the original poster's example, instead of saying "I won't see any more people blocking my path today," she might want to say something like: "All my roads, grocery isles, and parking stalls are clear and I ride into them peacefully and at ease, happy to have all the elbow room in the world." Of course, you may not believe this to be true at first, because all your past experience says the opposite, but if you take a few minutes out of the day to visualize it, or look at youtube videos showing free open spaces of parking lots, you might just give your mind enough of a mental picture to make it come true in physical reality.

[mercuryrising]

I think the title of this thread would make a great title for a book. I'd buy it.

[Wax Frog]

Originally Posted by mercuryrising

I think the title of this thread would make a great title for a book. I'd buy it.

Did we just attract you?

[cylon]

Wow I just had a whole cycle right now, regarding my boss and politics and favoritism. Felt myself getting REALLY irritated, then reminded myself I'm on a new path, then found this thread.

For certain doors to open, other doors have to close.

Without ego it is so much damn EASIER! Sheesh.

[moonrambler]

I figure I started noticing this stuff more so I could notice my own behavior also, which like Angela pointed out can be a reaction to really old gunk, and it also can be a reaction to more ongoing things. Like, since I'm driving around all the time and sometimes in places I don't know real well, I sometimes find myself in the wrong lane and needing to get in a different lane and sitting there with the turn signal on while everybody just keeps whooshing by and not letting me in, and eventually somebody pulls up behind me and HONKS. Man.

Yesterday I was at an intersection with four traffic lights and the person at the front of the left lane had turned the wheels to the right and had the right signal on. There was a car next to it on the right, and I was behind on the right. I was thinking along the lines of, "oh you poor slob, you'll never get to make that right turn, nobody is going to let you in." Then a car pulled up behind me, and a couple cars behind the one on the left, and I was thinking, "Yep, now you're really done. You can't sit there and signal to go right while cars are sitting behind you, they're going to start honking, I know, I've been there happens to me all the time . . . " and about then, I suddenly realized that I had all the power in the world to let this person turn right! It was so weird that for about 30 seconds all I did was sit there and think about how that car would never get to turn right, when all I had to do was allow them to do it!

Then at my next stop, the supermarket, I got the most awesome rock star parking space right in front of the entrance I like best, even though it was a Saturday afternoon and there were about 200 million people shopping there.

[selfimprovement]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

Here's another one. Last week I went to a store where the parking lot is almost always nearly full. Some idiot had parked his big fat SUV over a parking line, effectively taking up 1-1/4 spaces. This was hugely annoying to me, and I knew I could "get" this person, because I have a small car and I'm a small person, and could deal with that 3/4 space without bothering the people with the car on the other side. I parked real close to the SUV, slid over to the passenger side, and got out, thinking "HA!" because now the SUV driver would have a heck of a time getting his door open.

By the time I got to the store, I realized this is the way I typically deal with these sort of situations. I get all bent out of shape and confrontational. I want to get a bunch of cards printed up that I can stick on drivers' windshields that read, "Did you park this way for a reason or are you just an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥?" After my experience with "you attract what you fear," I was realizing this is probably not a good way to deal with situations. I was kind of wondering what the repercussions of this would be, but dismissed it.

So in the store I wanted to look at magazines, but some woman was standing in front of the rack with her cart blocking the entire shelf, and then at a certain book area, another woman was standing in front of the rack with her cart blocking the entire shelf, and it seemed every aisle I went into had somebody in my way, and at first I was getting really annoyed but then it struck me that this was happening because of how I reacted to the SUV in my way in the parking lot, and then it got funny.

This went on here and there all day long. By the time I went to the supermarket on my way home and the same thing was happening, I was wondering how long it would take for the energy to dissipate.

Well, it's a week later, and it has continued. It got so dramatic that one afternoon I was driving down a very narrow residential street and discovered I was driving straight toward a police stake-out and they had the entire area blocked off with about 12 squad cars, and the SWAT team had been called in. Good grief - LOL (I looked it up in the news later -- nobody got hurt)

The cop at that intersection would not let me get past; I had to figure out a way to turn around on that very narrow street, which wasn't the easiest thing to pull off, but I did it and got out of there!

Again, I'm getting so much clarity now. This is another thing I need to deal with, to be able to function more effectively and calmly out there in the world. I can't be getting all flipped out just because somebody parked in a stupid way or because somebody's so engrossed in reading a magazine that she probably doesn't even realize her cart is blocking other people. After all, what's the point of getting so riled up over stuff like this? It certainly doesn't solve anything!

You attract what irritates you because it is you replaying the same conditional belief over and over again until you replace it with an unconditional belief. What is happening is that whenever there is a situation that you have an emotional reaction to, it is really something inside you coming to the surface that you are judging about yourself. So for instance, the driver w/ the SUV who parked inconsiderately... What is it that you judge about yourself that you may feel you are inconsiderate? That was the theme of the whole day, the two women with the shopping carts and I'm sure other events that you didn't mention. You were giving yourself huge opportunities for you to see that you are SEVERELY judging yourself where you feel you are being inconsiderate.

Just think, if you had gone to the store 10 minutes earlier, or 10 minutes later, the situation would have been totally different, but you picked the exact time to get at least 3 opportunities to turn that around. You do really want to turn that around to have given yourself so many opportunities.

So what do I mean by turn that around? Whenever you have an emotional reaction to something, you are allowing a conditional thought/belief to surface. You have a choice to either put that condition thought back into yourself, or you can replace it with an unconditional thought. If you put the conditional thought back into yourself, you are destined to repeat the same type of situation over and over again until you finally replace it with an unconditional thought. That is why you kept experiencing the same type of situation over and over again that day... You kept putting the conditional thought back into your psyche.

So how do you replace it with an unconditional thought? Here is an experiment. The next time you experience anything that causes you an emotional upset keep repeating to yourself "it is what it is, it is what it is" over and over and over until you don't feel the emotion again. Even if you have to repeat it 100 times, do so until the emotion completely dissipates. The more you do this, the less you will get upset at these types of events.

There are actually 12 different keys that you can use that will allow you to replace your conditional thoughts with unconditional ones, and you should use the one that you feel most connected to in the moment. You can read about the 12 Keys in my blog post.

Hope this helps

[Nneka]

I've found Byron Katie's Work most useful in dissipating these irate, annoyed feelings. It's like a lighter on cobweb.

It's really simple. You get all your angst out on paper, then you put each statement up against inquiry. Pretty soon you see that it's all an illusion and you can make it whatever you want it to be. You also encourage the situation so that you have the opportunity to diffuse it again and prove again to your brain that it's really making this stuff up.

[selfimprovement]

Originally Posted by Nneka

I've found Byron Katie's Work most useful in dissipating these irate, annoyed feelings. It's like a lighter on cobweb.

It's really simple. You get all your angst out on paper, then you put each statement up against inquiry. Pretty soon you see that it's all an illusion and you can make it whatever you want it to be. You also encourage the situation so that you have the opportunity to diffuse it again and prove again to your brain that it's really making this stuff up.

I have heard of her work and it has helped quite a few people... the thing is that you only have 60 seconds to dissipate an emotion before you end up replacing it back into your subconscious. If you are out somewhere or driving and the traffic is really upsetting you, it's handy to have a few phrases that you have memorized and repeat them over and over again so you can instantly replace the conditional thought with something unconditional. Then there is no need to repeat that particular situation again because your subconscious is no longer holding onto it.