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What is "doing the work" and why it's so important to do it.
Doing the work? What does it mean?!
No, it doesn’t mean your 9-5 job that you do to pay the bills.
No, it doesn’t mean having a kale smoothie and some multivitamins every day so you can pretend you’re making up for the rest of your diet.
No, it doesn’t mean liking and sharing memes or motivational posts with some inspiring quotes and hashtags not implementing anything or changing. (Trust me!)
No “The work” can be done 7 days a week 365 days a year. Every waking moment is an opportunity to do the work.
Ok, great Daniel but what the hell is it?!
It’s going in.
It’s self-development.
It’s understanding, it’s learning and it’s growing.
It’s bringing awareness to how we think and why we think. How we act and why we act a certain way. It’s realising that we hold all the answers to all the questions if we just sit quietly long enough to discover them.
I believe it is a large part of why we are here in these human bodies. We are here for self-realization, not sense gratification.
Read that again.
We are here to know ourselves. Our true selves. Our true nature. To become both more than when we first arrived, but at the same time just as clear and present. This doesn’t happen by chasing senses, by instantly gratifying our needs.
Trust me I have tried. (I also keep trying and it’s not working!)
Doing the work isn’t pleasant. It can be painful, traumatic, hard work and man does it take a lot of time! Time to become as enlightened as we can, to live as loving superhumans that we have the potential to be.
This work is really important, let me tell you why:
Preventing Perpetuating Cycles
Do you ever find yourself in the same situation again and again?
Do you question why you’re attracting a similar type of person or lover into your life?
Do you wonder why you repeatedly find yourself struggling with money?
Or struggling with your diet and staying in shape?
Well, the likelihood is that you are attracting or manifesting this into your life. What we attract in our lives and what we encounter is often a reflection of what we are putting out into the world.
That can be either consciously or subconsciously.
So consciously. You may complain that you don’t earn enough money or you don’t have enough work. Yet maybe if you really sat and reflected on your actions you would be able to objectively understand why this may be the case.
It may be that you work inefficiently, you are sloppy, and your quality of work isn’t great. You tick down the time until you finish your workday so you can go home to do whatever is more important.
You might be blaming other people, colleagues, equipment or bad luck as to why this is happening but ultimately you are putting out negativity and low quality of work.
You, by your conscious actions, are ensuring you are constantly not earning enough money and not getting enough work. It’s not that the universe has a problem with you and it’s not bad luck.
It might just be that you’re not looking in the mirror and being honest with yourself. You’re not doing “the work!” and not doing the work is manifesting in your paid work being crappy and thus your income and lifestyle being affected.
An example of subconscious negative attraction may be that subconsciously you could be acting in a way that attracts relationships that are not serving you.
I’m sure you don’t go around thinking “what can I do now to continue having crappy relationships with people that aren’t good for me”! (Unless you are then just stop it you weirdo!)
The reality is that the common denominator is you. This reminds me of my friend who told me “There’s always a dickhead in the room. If you look around and can’t find him/her then it’s probably you!”
It’s stuck with me since.
Anyway. You get the picture. You’re attracting the person in your life and there will be a reason why. Such as it may be a familiar dysfunctional relationship that you are used to with a parent or family member.
You may deep down not feel worthy of a healthy relationship, so you subconsciously pick ones that you know are going to cause pain.
It may be that you are just attracted to certain qualities in a person which is a result of their unresolved trauma. This trauma then leads to other less desirable traits which result in a toxic partnership and painful breakups. (Guilty!)
See, the way to break these cycles is not to change the other person. It is to change yourself so that you start to attract people who are healthier and compliment you more. It is to change yourself so you break the cycle of poor pay and lack of work, lack of fulfilment in jobs, money problems, or whatever situations you keep finding yourself in,
The way you break these cycles is by doing the work.
Taking Responsibility and stopping the blame.
I often see a lot of blame and pointing the finger, especially on social media. The world is becoming more divided. People are setting up in their little tribal camps whether it be politics or dieting protocol (for example).
Then they sit and criticise anyone who opposes their beliefs. They fling shit blaming another group of people for all the problems in the world. Completely missing the fact that by their very actions they are increasing division, polarisation and negativity in the world.
They completely miss the point.
This might begin by addressing our outlook on life. Once we understand that our reality is of our own making then we have the power to change the reality we see. Once we understand that creating our reality and our lifestyle is completely up to us then we are in a position to drastically improve our lives.
It starts with the filter in which we view life. Is it full of abundance, joy and positivity? Or is it unfair and full of austerity and negativity?
On a subconscious level, our whole outlook on life could be one that is more negative. So if we are negative and we always see the negative in everything then we are likely to attract negative things. That is just the lens that we view the world through.
It’s kind of like rose-tinted glasses but instead of rose-tinted, they are shit tinted. You’re viewing the world in shit tinted glasses!
Alternatively, we can view the world in rose-tinted glasses which look for the best in all situations and see things with a positive spin. This is a much healthier way to see the world. Looking at the positives in situations, the opportunities and lessons to be learnt.
We all know good and bad things happen, however if we can approach everything with more acceptance and love instead of hate and resentment, then we are going to be better off for it.
Side note. If you claim to be a “Realist” when in actual fact you're just a pessimist with shit tinted glasses on…..I have news for you. You create your own reality and your sombre “real’ outlook on life is just you being a party pooper!
Our realities are all different so you can be a “realist” whether you are pessimistic or optimistic. This just depends on what glasses you have on. The beauty of it is that you can choose.
This means it is up to us, it is your responsibility to change your glasses, to change your Mindset. Read my blog on Mindset and how it impacts your life to understand why we focus on that when it comes to “doing the work”.
Are you going to start viewing the world in a better light?
Are you going to see all the wonderful ways that the world can be working in your favour?
Are you going to find the reasons to be grateful and the opportunities waiting for you to seize?
Nobody is going to wave a wand and change our lives for us. Sorry, it’s up to us to do the work!
Making the world and how we view it more positive.
Unless we take time to go in and start to unpick learnt behaviours that do not serve us, our family or our communities, then we are going to continue the trajectory of where the world is going
There is so much division in the world, so much polarisation, judgement, anger and hate. If we all understood that change comes from within. That in order for the world to be a better place we have to address our inner world too.
Does talk of “our inner world” sound too hippy for you? Well, let me put it into more familiar terms.
When you have an absolute banging headache, how is engaging with the outer world? Painful right? Unpleasant? You may get irritable? It’s certainly not enjoyable and it makes it hard to notice all the beauty in the world right? You may not be as pleasant to other people as normal. You may hide from unnecessary social engagements and rush through things in order to retreat back to your bed.
Well, that’s similar to when you have unresolved emotional issues and conditioned behaviour patterns that work against you. It’s harder to engage in the world, it’s harder to be present and it’s certainly much harder to enjoy all the nuances that make the world so vibrant and enjoyable.
Your core settings have a virus, the virus is warping your perception of reality. The virus has covered your glasses in shit. Good old shit goggles! We don’t want shit goggles now do we? (I really like that analogy!)
Doing the work helps us start to address this, it helps us start to break things down. It helps shine a light on the shadows that we’ve been avoiding addressing.
What has this got to do with making the world a better place!?
Well once we are in a better place internally we are able to better present ourselves to the world. We have a greater grasp of what may trigger us and therefore avoid those situations or be less likely to react.
Instead of reacting to triggers, getting angry and blaming someone for triggering us, we understand that the issue is ours. The trigger is our issue that we can resolve and the work is to be done by us.
This way we can be more understanding, more tolerant and turn up to the world with compassion and kindness. We understand that other peoples shitty behaviour are just the products of them not doing the work.
We understand that other peoples problems have no bearing on us and our worth. We understand if people are criticising, nasty and jealous…..guess what?! That’s their shit.
It should have no bearing on what we think of ourselves and it sure as hell often doesn’t warrant a response.
Eckhart Tolle says that the conscious should not argue with the unconscious. As you can not pull them into consciousness….you both become unconscious.
Does this make sense?
Basically, we cannot drag someone up to our level of awareness, by arguing or conversing with someone who hasn’t done the work or is not self-aware we risk dropping to the lower state of awareness.
In layman's terms. You can’t argue with stupid or more accurately, you can argue with stupid but if you do, you become stupid too. In fact, being the more aware one technically we should know better and that makes us the dummies.
So we need to raise our level of awareness, do the work and help make the world a better place by reducing conflict and leading by example. Do the work and show up in the world as kind and compassionate humans.
Giving the next generation a better chance
So not only do we repeat the cycles of pain and trauma that we do not resolve and do the work on our own lives. If we have kids we pass them on to the next generation.
You and your issues don’t end with you. The likelihood is that if we haven’t done the work then we are going to pass on some if not all of your unresolved shit and its manifestations onto our kids.
My mentor tells me that when we are born we are handed two invisible buckets. One from each of our parents. The buckets hang from a bar across our backs. What’s in the buckets?
Shit! They are full of shit. The unresolved shit of our parents. Bad traits, traumas, unhealthy coping mechanisms, addictions, learnt behaviours. You name it, it’s in there.
We then spend our lives walking about, the buckets swinging and guess what? The shit spills everywhere, it starts to taint our surroundings. Sometimes we lose some of the shit but then we fill them with our own shit and trauma.
Oh Shit! Right?! Yes so much. Everywhere!
We owe it to our children to do the work. Do you have bad traits you know of? Great then work on them. Understand why you do them?! Do the work. This will reduce the chances of your children having them and at the very least, you will be able to help them work and manage them too.
As conscious responsible parents, we should be able to teach our children much about life. Wouldn’t it be great to help them mature emotionally with a great deal of self-awareness?
To understand their talents and their strengths as well as their less desirable traits but be able to accept and love themselves regardless. We could help them navigate the world in a kind and compassionate way and create a life for themselves that they enjoy.
Instead of fumbling through life not being able to understand why they feel or act certain ways. Completely unaware of learnt behaviours and passed down negative traits only to discover them later and run the risk of holding onto resentment towards us. The parents, the adults, the previous generation who failed to turn up and do the damn work!
Then there is also our ability to actually parent. Unless we work on our shit, our ability to raise well rounded self-aware children is hugely limited. Not to mention healthy kids who are respectful and do good things like pick up their own litter!
As an obese child/teen and suffering from various by-products of being obese. Such as being bullied, poor body image, confidence and a lifelong struggle relationship with food…..nothing f*cks me off more than seeing obese parents with obese children.
It’s one thing not sorting our own health out but it’s another thing inflicting potentially a life long sentence of poor health to another generation.
This is about doing the work. In this case, we can use mirrors both metaphorically and in the literal sense, as reflections of ourselves and poor traits.
Look into the mirror. Are you overweight? Obese? Unfit? Drink too much? Eat too much? Don’t exercise? Smoke? Have outbursts of anger? Are you nasty and spiteful? Do you blame everyone else for you life?
Ask yourself if you are happy with your children having the same health issues, the same coping strategies?
If the answer is yes and you answered yes to more than one of the above questions then slap yourself and think some more until you realise it’s not a kind way to raise your children.
As a parent, actually, as an adult in this world, we have a responsibility to the next generation to do the work so that we can be better role models for them. So we can be better educators. So that we can be better stewards of the land in order for them to have an earth that’s inhabitable!
That starts with having a cold hard look at ourselves. Our lifestyles, our habits, vices, how we engage with the world, how we communicate.
It starts with getting really bloody honest.
Final thoughts
Quite frankly, many of us are failing miserably at the moment, myself included. We just have to look at the world, to look at social media and see people engage and interact.
To see what crap is shared without thought and to see how conversations degrade into abuse and name-calling even among so-called “friends” and “adults”.
The problem isn’t with the world. We cannot point the finger at everyone else demanding they change when we are ignoring our own flaws. When we are not showing up and doing the work.
We cannot expect others to change if we ourselves are not willing to go inside, delve into the depths of our minds, look into the shadows and do the work.
We need to do it. To live and feel better. To reach our potential. To make the world a better place and to give the next generation a fighting chance.
Let’s do better, be better, feel better and love better!
Let’s get to work!
If you need help then get in touch and we can discuss how I may be able to help coach you through the process.
The next blog post will be tips on where to start!
Until then look after yourselves, mind and body and reach out to someone if you need help.
Love First. Always Make Ready.
Daniel x