If I had a prayer, it would be this: God, spare from the desire for love, approval and appreciation. Amen. – Byron Katie

Can we really earn someone else’s approval? Though most of us invest a great deal of our time and energy trying to obtain the approval of other people, we rarely pause to consider what it is that we are actually seeking. We want our boss to recognize the great job we did on a project, we expect our spouse to give us praise or show gratitude toward us, or we hope that a friend will notice how much we care because of the effort we make to please him or her. We all make choices in our lives in order to seek and obtain the gratitude, love, appreciation and approval of those around us, but the truth is that no matter what we say or do we can never truly affect how other people perceive us.

Since life is a purely internal experience, since my own perception is the only thing that I can ever truly control, then how would it be possible for me to control or even affect someone else’s perception? Sure, I can do or say things in an attempt to influence how other people feel about me, but it is ultimately their choice and their business. It has absolutely nothing to do with me. I know this because I have been a people pleaser for most of my life. For many years I found myself saying “yes” to the requests of friends and family, even when I would have preferred to say no. I consistently tried to do what other people expected of me just to make them happy, even if it took me out of my own integrity and away from the choices I needed to make to be the person that I wanted to be. If I “won” and they liked me or cared about me then (for awhile) I would feel good about myself, but if they still didn’t like me, no matter how hard I tried to please them, then I would feel resentful, frustrated, angry, confused and disappointed.

I eventually learned that if someone wants to dislike me then they can and will find a dozen reasons to support that belief, even if they have to invent them. The good news is that if someone wants to like me then they will also be able to find a dozen reasons to support that belief and that also has nothing to do with me, either. The realization that I can never affect someone else’s opinion of me has freed me from the vicious cycle of approval-seeking behavior that I have fallen into in the past and has allowed me to focus on my own needs, desires and beliefs. It has allowed me to recognize and embrace the fact that we are all responsible for our own thinking, and with only my own thinking to deal with I can let other people think what they think and want what they want- able to accept them completely as they are. I am free to focus my time and energy on my own thinking and stay within my integrity, offering an honest “yes” or “no” to a request from a place of love and kindness.

Love relationships are often the most difficult place to recognize and let go of our need for acceptance. When a person is engaged in the process of falling in love he or she tends to see only the qualities in the other person that “agree” with their story of whom their perfect mate should be. They believe the story that “this person is THE ONE, this person will heal my wounds and fill up all the empty places inside me, this person will ease my loneliness and make me feel complete.” Because they believe this projected fairy tale, they look for and find all the evidence that they need to support it. After awhile the story no longer works because, like everything else in life, true happiness and healing can only come from within, so there is no way to sustain this false belief. Eventually the euphoria of falling in love subsides and all that is left is two strangers disappointed with each other because they were unable to live up to the projected versions of who they were supposed to be, never really able to see the reality of each other at all. This is why divorce is so prevalent in our society today- because it is easier to blame someone else for your unhappiness and leave them than it is to take responsibility for your own happiness no matter where you are or who you are with.

If we can become conscious of our need to seek love, approval and appreciation from others and notice the behaviors that we use to try to obtain these emotional band-aids then we can begin to give ourselves the thing that we need most: a break. Take a break from pleasing others and watch what happens to your thinking. Accept the fact that nothing you can do or say will ultimately affect how other people perceive you. Be yourself and live from a place of personal integrity, let people think whatever they think about you and accept their perspective unconditionally. If your spouse thinks that you are selfish, understand that because he believes it, it is true for him. If your boss doesn’t recognize your efforts at work, accept that he might not see things the same way that you do.  Give yourself the internal experience of love, approval and appreciation and stop seeking it from an outside source. Free yourself from the exhausting efforts of approval-seeking and learn how to create happiness and love from within.

Most of us live our lives unconsciously. We make immediate decisions without thinking them through because we feel pressure to see results or resolve a situation, we rush from one activity to the next without taking a much needed break, or we find that we have reacted in a harsh or uncaring manner to the people closest to us simply because of our own frustration, anger, fear or worry. Why do we do this? We know that our knee-jerk responses usually cause greater stress or tension in our lives, yet we continue to live in a constant state of reaction to the world around us.

Perhaps it is because we are unaware to a great extent how much perception and projection play a role in our understanding of life. We believe that we need to “solve” or “fix” something, that we have no time to pause because we are rushed, or that the things other people say and do can create or influence our experience of life. The truth is that our experience of “life” is nothing more than a projection of our mind and thought, and because life is an internal experience it is impossible for it to be anything else. Therefore, things in the physical world exist only as our perception of them. Our perception of something is always just a story that we tell ourselves about the experience we’re having. Once we realize that our perception- our thoughts, labels and judgments- are just stories that our mind projects about what is occurring around us, we can come to see the reality that truly exists beyond our stories.

Four blind men were discussing exactly what they believed an elephant to be, since each had heard how strange the creature was, yet none had ever seen one before. So the blind men agreed to find an elephant and discover what the animal was really like. It didn’t take the blind men long to find an elephant at a nearby market. The first blind man approached the beast and felt the animal’s firm flat side. “It seems to me that the elephant is just like a wall,” he said to his friends. The second blind man reached out and touched one of the elephant’s tusks. “No, this is round and smooth and sharp – the elephant is like a spear.” Intrigued, the third blind man stepped up to the elephant and touched its trunk. “Well, I can’t agree with either of you; I feel a squirming writhing thing – surely the elephant is just like a snake.” The fourth blind man was of course by now quite puzzled. So he reached out, and felt the elephant’s leg. “You are all talking complete nonsense,” he said, “because clearly the elephant is just like a tree.” And all four blind men continued to argue, based on their own particular experiences, as to what they thought an elephant was like. Each man saw the elephant as something quite different, and while in part each blind man was right, none was wholly correct.

The parable of the blind men and the elephant is a wonderful reminder of how much perception plays a role in how we view the world around us. Various versions of this legend have appeared for thousands of years in different cultures, notably China, Africa and India. Some versions of the story feature three blind men, others five or six, but the wisdom of the message remains the same: we are all blind to the larger picture of reality, fooled by our own limited perception and the unexamined projected thoughts of our thinking mind.

Living consciously means taking responsibility for our own perception of the world. Reality is what it is; the thinking mind can only label it or judge it and ultimately make us blind to the truth of reality. If we believe the stories that our mind tells us then we have bought into our applied meaning and have lost sight of the true and unlabeled reality of life. By perceiving a situation, person or event to be negative, it becomes our truth simply because we believe it to be so. It is the unquestioned thoughts, judgments and stories of the thinking mind that create pain, stress, suffering and unhappiness in our lives.

I can never affect or influence how someone else views me, and thankfully, that is never my business. I can never change someone else’s opinion about something, and I am grateful that it is never my job. When I have a thought that someone is bad or wrong, I simply remember that I am the blind man with my hand on the elephant’s trunk, that I can only see the world through my own limited perspective and there is no way for me to ever know what is ultimately right or good. I can only question my own thoughts and opinions when they cause me pain or misery. I hold the key to my own peace of mind and I leave other people’s thinking to them. Cleaning up my thinking mind and managing my perception is always my job, and that leaves me with plenty to work on every day.

When we can witness and objectively observe the thoughts that enter and pass through our mind we can begin to challenge and question the truth of those thoughts as our mind thinks them. We can remain focused and centered in our lives, living from a place of conscious presence and awareness as we stand apart from the busyness of our thinking mind, able to take action in the moment instead of having to react blindly and from a place of fear or rushed anxiety.

Give yourself a moment to pause and reflect when you feel the need to make a decision, when you feel that you are in too much of a hurry to be present in the moment, or when you feel your emotions rising in reaction to something that someone else has said or done. Stop to question the stories that your mind tells you. Is it true that you need to “fix” this right now? Is it true that you are too rushed to notice the beauty of the sun shining and the peace of the present moment? Where are your feelings of anger, frustration and anxiety coming from, if not from a lack of conscious presence in your life at this moment? What is reality in this moment without your story to inform it? With no labels, with no applied meaning, what is reality right now? What could you do in this moment if you could clearly see and accept reality as it is?

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small unconscious ways. – Stephen Vincent Benet

We have all had the experience of going through our day on autopilot. We drive our car to work lost in the haze of our own thoughts, and when we arrive there we realize that we forgot to stop and drop off the dry cleaning. We take a call from a friend while we are checking email and, trying to do too many things at once, we realize that our automatic “uh huh” response didn’t quite answer the question that she asked when we weren’t listening. These common examples of how we lose awareness in the present moment are experiences that we can all relate to, but how do we learn to turn off our autopilot and become more present in the moment?

Whenever I catch myself cruising along on autopilot I usually stop and smile, reminded that the thinking mind can be a powerful thing when left unchecked. It loves to do its job- assess, sort, label, judge and evaluate information- just like the little computer that it is. My eyes see, my ears hear, my lungs breathe, and my mind thinks- all this without any effort on my part. I love that my mind does its job so well, that it can be trusted to work for me (along with the rest of my physical body) without my conscious acknowledgment or permission.

Much like the ticker tape that scrolls along the bottom of the screen on CNN, the thinking mind, or our personal organic mainframe computer, runs a continuous commentary in the background while we go about the business of living; it follows us everywhere we go, never rests, and is completely self-sufficient. Like our sight or our sense of smell we rarely pause to detect its functioning. Increasing our awareness of the present moment begins with noticing the intricate machinery of the body as it performs its work; we must learn to listen as our ears hear, feel as our lungs breathe, watch as our eyes see, and notice the thoughts that come forward as our mind thinks them. By training ourselves to notice these physical sensations and feelings as we experience them we are able to become more present with our thoughts as they arise, thoughts that are nothing more than an automatic computer-generated response to the constant stimuli around us.

Because our thinking mind runs so efficiently without any effort on our part we tend to believe that everything we think is true. But is it? How often in life have we had a thought that we believed to be true, only later to discover that we were mistaken in our assumption? When we can stand apart from the busyness of the thinking mind and just notice the thoughts as they come forward, neither believing or disbelieving them, just noticing as they happen, we have tapped into conscious awareness in its purest form.

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly. – Buddha

The thinking mind is the autopilot of our lives. It loves to live in the past or the future, constantly revisiting our regrets, fears and worries, taking us away from what is occurring right in front of us in the moment. It loves to tell us stories about the world around us and then show us all the evidence it has to support that “belief.” It loves to plan, plot and strategize, constantly preparing itself for what is to come. It tells us that planning is the key to controlling the outcome and we believe it, even in circumstances where we have absolutely no control at all. Although the thinking mind is a powerful tool, it is not infallible. When you begin to notice your thoughts as they arise and the feelings that result from them, you can begin to question the validity of the mechanical responses and assumed beliefs of the thinking mind.

So next time you catch yourself living life on autopilot stop yourself and smile. Be grateful for the fact that your mind is doing its job so well without any effort on your part; be grateful that you were able to pause and become more aware of the present moment. Take a breath and come back to yourself. Feel the sensations of your physical body at work and notice the thoughts that you are having as they arise. Cultivate awareness by experiencing the present moment as you live it and give your autopilot a much needed vacation.

Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. – Helen Keller

With another hectic holiday season behind us we begin a new year, our eyes and ears open for change, all of us poised and ready to see what will be written on the clean slate of 2009. As a country we seem to be in a period of great transition, collectively focused on the economy, employment, the environment and many other pressing issues that are at hand.

If you have followed tradition, chances are that you have already taken that momentary pause before the New Year to assess your life and determine what changes need to be made in your personal world. Many people make New Year’s resolutions and create a short (or long) list of things that they hope to improve in the coming months, working at them diligently for a few weeks or perhaps even a month, until the effort becomes too tedious and the novelty of the whole thing has worn off. Why is it that New Year’s resolutions never seem to stick? Perhaps we really don’t want change as much as we tell ourselves that we do.

Change is a tricky thing. It often involves deep introspection and the retraining of long-standing negative habits. We tend to resist change because it feels uncomfortable and pushes us outside of our cozy little comfort zone. We like feeling comfortable and in control, and even though we may realize that a habit or a person or a job may not be the best thing for us, we still prefer it to the unknown because it is recognizable, familiar and safe.

Creating profound change in our lives takes courage and perseverance. These large-scale changes usually take an enormous amount of effort and a great deal of time to implement successfully, such as quitting smoking, or starting an exercise program or a diet to lose weight. Because our habits are often intertwined with our identity, we feel scared or nervous about who we will be once we have let them go. These habits have become coping skills, even useful little crutches for us to lean on, and though we know that they are not best for us, they still bring us comfort when times get tough or when we feel stressed or unhappy.

Resistance is a natural part of the process of change. An important thing to remember about resistance is that it exists entirely in the mind.

We tell ourselves stories about why we need our comfortable yet negative habits, about how they serve a purpose or fulfill a need in our lives. We shudder at the thought of giving up pizza or exercising everyday or having to say no to that beer we want when we are out with our friends. Change scares us. Period.

One of the beautiful things about life is that change can happen in an instant. We can realize that we want to do something differently and then, in that crucial deciding moment, we can recognize our resistance and make a different choice. When we begin to understand that life is lived in each moment as it occurs, not in the future, then we only have the present moment to deal with. Resistance just becomes a thought we have as we are making a choice, a thought that we can face and question and ultimately overrule.

Challenge yourself this year as you work toward achieving your resolutions for 2009. Allow your awareness of the present moment to open you up to a new direction or an unfamiliar path without fear or resistance to change. Take a risk. Choose something new. Do something differently today than you did yesterday. Don’t be afraid to live life moment by moment and see where it takes you. Life can be either a “daring adventure” or a repetitive routine meant to keep you safe and cozy in your comfort zone. Creating or embracing change is really only about one thing- what you choose in each moment. The good news is it’s all up to you.