YOUR FIRST REACTION IS NOT A PROBLEM

AND THE THING YOU REACTED TO IS NO PROBLEM EITHER

Photo of a duck taking flight out of water.

Do you ever react to something that looks like it’s gone wrong and then instantly react to your reaction? You feel bad about not having some zen response or about not being unflappable?

No, please, flap away.

You will anyway, so you may as well have your own permission up front to do so. You will react again. You will be reactive sometimes. Something will throw you off faster than you can take a breath and be master of your response. (That’s being triggered. BAM, reaction got set off before you knew what was happening.)

So can that be okay? Because it is. It’s part of life. It’s part of our healing & evolution.

Repeat: It’s part of our healing & evolution. It is NOT evidence we’re off our path or not getting it fast enough or doing well enough.

It’s also part of life that things go wrong. They do! The dog lunges and the leash slips out of your hand, the child runs toward the road, the thing drops and breaks—maybe right when you thought it was the last possible moment to go out the door to get somewhere on time. You missed the stupid rule and got in trouble; you thought you hit SEND but you didn’t; the thing that went wrong got fixed wrong and it’s still not working despite the money & time you spent.

And this: Another human being, in their pain and confusion, says just the thing that pushes a button so old you don’t have even one second to stop your inner 5-year-old from screaming (or heading for the hills, or going still & speechless, or getting all cute and sweet) in response. (Yes, fight, flight, freeze, fawn—4 typical trauma responses.) You react, perhaps in some way you disapprove of.

Please let it be okay. Release the disapproval.

Please get real and get okay with the whole picture: Things will go wrong, and you will sometimes react. If you don’t accept this, you’ll suffer more. You’ll be, as Byron Katie says, in an argument with reality. And when you argue with reality (she loves to add), you lose—but only 100 percent of the time.

But shouldn’t things be going right now since [I’ve healed so much, I’ve grown so much, I’m doing so well, I’ve stopped blah blah blah]?

I noticed long ago that I had an interesting belief about when or under what circumstances things were supposed to go right. Sometimes my clients say things that show me they’re thinking that way too—and thus creating needless suffering. (We’re taught that life works in certain ways and, um, NO, IT DOES NOT.)

Here’s how that interesting belief went: If I was doing well or feeling present or having a cool insight or working with a tool or experiment that I felt great about—or even that I had some lovely sense of discovery or epiphany about (ESPECIALLY then)--then that meant things should go well.

Kind of like a cosmic reward system. Or evidence that yep, you’re on track. See? EVERYTHING is going swimmingly, that’s how you know you’re on track. NOTHING is going to go wrong now.

Great idea. Except it’s not real. It’s a great example of magical thinking.

So in that old belief, when things didn’t go well, I also believed there was a PROBLEM. Something had gone very wrong. Or I had done something wrong. Or I was a FOOL to believe that it was possible to feel good and to have deepening understanding and come into new ways of being. OBVIOUSLY, now that this thing had gone wrong (that shouldn’t have), things would just forevermore keep going wrong and the idea of actually healing or evolving was a pipe dream. Or something was terribly wrong with me and I was unfixable. Or probably all of the above, fuckety-fuck-fuck.

What if you took OUT of the equation all requirements for things going well, smoothly, or in your way (according to your preference) (not costing you anything, not creating discomfort, not triggering some reactivity or taking you out of your zen state)?

What if you simply accepted that, on planet Earth, shit happens. Not a measure of how you’re doing. And when shit happens, you might react.

There was an era when I was seeking to get this new concept wired in. So anytime I got frustrated or distressed or had a flash of a reaction, I would instantly say to myself, Oh, Jaya, you're thinking there's a problem! What if there's no problem?

I did this very kindly. I did it constantly. I rinsed and repeated until it just got worked into my being.

Playing with this, I didn’t have time to judge my reactivity. Or if I was already judging it, the judgment got soothed right along with the soothing of reminding myself that

1. I was simply believing there was a problem, and
2. there really was no problem

Instead of getting caught up in my reaction (and then needing to judge it or defend it or hyperfocus on the conditions that called it forth), I used my reaction as temple bell, or a call to notice that I’m believing something has gone wrong and that, in fact, nothing has gone wrong.

This was more deeply healing than I understood it to be at the time I was playing with this and rewiring my psyche. I was healing old family trauma in which everything imperfect was jumped on, reacted to, punished. In our family system, everything that went wrong gave my parents permission to yell, curse, hit, make their kids wrong. They were wounded human beings who didn’t, at the time, see that they had access to any other way. We are all wounded. And we have access to so many other ways—easier access now than ever.

It’s a good equation to play with. Reaction = Call to notice you’re believing there’s a problem, and to remind yourself there's actually no problem.

I like the way Abraham-Hicks uses the language of contrasting experiences. This unwanted thing is a contrasting experience. And there will always be contrast. Nothing's going wrong when it comes. YOU ARE NOT OFF YOUR PATH WHEN THE CONTRAST COMES. You simply get to meet yourself here and now, and be reminded of what you like better, and consciously SOOTHE YOURSELF, then head that way—toward what you like better.

Let’s all get real with reality and create less pointless suffering. It’s all right. You’re doing all right. This is planet Earth, so … Shit happens.

Love & blessings, Jaya