We are constantly trying to figure out what needs to be done to get out of a failure.
But in reality, it is better to phrase the question differently: how can we make sure we don’t fail in the first place?
At the marathon “Return of Strength,” which we held in November — December 2024, the key point was not to increase your strength, but to stop draining and giving it away. The same applies here.
Find out what will help you avoid falling into the negative.
Five tips to avoid falling into the negative
1. Make a list of your triggers
You know the red buttons that make you fail, what has to happen for you to go into a tailspin.
When you have a ready-made list, you can anticipate the situation and, when it comes to awareness, you can instantly cross out several items from it. For example, stop discussing certain topics specifically with this person.
When you have observed yourself and compiled a complete list of what throws you off, you already know for sure that if this person says a certain thing or does this or that, you will go into the negative.
The depth of elaboration is great when you know where to dig, but here it’s not even about that, but about transparency and clarity for ourselves.
I used to say that it is important to understand your motives behind words and actions, but here we are talking about triggers, red buttons, which each of us has quite a lot of. The only difference is whether you understand that these are your red buttons or not.
See also: The Creator’s Level of Responsibility. How to deal with triggers and how to keep focus on the higher reality
2. Manipulations of children and loved ones. Determine what you are falling for
Question: “Don’t give in, stop communicating. But what if it’s my child who is manipulating, what should I do then?”
Take the course “Dance with the Shadow,” and you will stop reacting to it.
It’s not about the manipulating child; it’s about why you are falling for all of this.
You probably have a bunch of internal beliefs about your own worthlessness. If you pull all that out and integrate the shadow aspect, life will become much simpler.
If a person is manipulating, they will continue to manipulate; it just won’t have an effect on you. Whatever another person does, it only affects you in one case: when you fall for it.
And you fall for it because there is a part inside you that agrees with all these things. From a vibrational standpoint, there is a vibration at a level that gladly responds to it.
For example, there is a gossipy person who slings mud at everyone, or someone who is always dissatisfied. You, seemingly so beautiful, radiant, entering in a white coat, and they start pouring all of this onto you.
The more you listen to them, the more some residual phenomena inside you get triggered, and eventually some little cog finds itself: “Oh, great, we haven’t had this in a while!” And it starts!
And seemingly, after so many years of work and practice, you are already in the negative. Because these parts are sitting inside.
Uniting different facets. Analogy with cream soup
It’s like cream soup. You blend it with a mixer, everything seems the same, but some pieces still remain. And those pieces have remained inside you.
The question is in what quantity? But they will be there anyway, until we unite them.
I love creamy mushroom soup — when I taste it, does it remain mushroom or cease to be one? When I take a spoonful of soup, I taste the mushroom, but visually it’s a homogeneous mass.
Likewise, inside we find a single whole in opposing facets. And when this process is complete, you will no longer fall for every little thing. But this process is extensive, painstaking, and long-term, because things keep surfacing again and again.
When something surfaces, rejoice, because once you have integrated it, fewer of those parts remain inside that would fall for panic, hot news, or provocations.
3. Write down what you discover in yourself
Writing is a principle of self-knowledge.
With each time, you get to know yourself better, build a relationship with yourself: this is my strength, this I considered a weakness, this I never accepted, perhaps something I hated.
When you gather different puzzle pieces, you begin to understand yourself more deeply, and accordingly, you more quickly reach a balanced, harmonious state; gradually many things dissolve because you have started to become aware of them.
All of this works automatically, subconsciously: someone presses your red button, and you’re out cold. Or someone presses a man’s red button, and he’s enraged. The reasons don’t matter; what matters is that there is someone pressing that button.
Or like a shadow. I interact with a person, but in reality I see myself and don’t realize it’s me. And all their words are about me, not about how awful they are and so on.
When you start to see these mechanisms, you stop falling for them. Reality becomes completely different. It’s as if blinders have fallen off.
And if you also clean up your mental distortions, you will find yourself in an entirely different reality. Although nothing changed, what changed is how you perceive and interpret what happens to you.
See also The Rubicon Crossed: How to Maintain a Resourceful State in a New Space
4. Don’t Get Involved in the Dramas of Loved Ones
Question: “How not to get involved in the drama of loved ones?”
Many years ago, there was a serious scandal, a conflict between parents, and I suddenly realized that I was on the stage of a theater I cannot stand.
It was a real drama: And she does this now! And now this! And like this! And all of it was so cliché, heard so many times, performed so masterfully.
That’s where the theaters are! At home in the kitchens, when they are hashing things out. That’s where the rapture of playing one’s role is!
As soon as you start to feel that people are playing a role they themselves chose, playing with such rapture that no actor could match, putting their whole soul into it, after that you not only don’t get drawn in, you don’t take them seriously at all.
But that’s how it clicked for me; for you, it might click differently.
In general, to avoid getting drawn in, maintain the position of an observer.
5. “Properly” Start Your Day
The start of the day is very important.
Many people, when they wake up, the first thing they do is dig into their phone, read something, watch something. For me, that’s like death, especially if there are all sorts of videos that create a noise effect, people chattering.
For me, for example, I need to be in my own space, not open anything. I can dive straight into work — that’s okay, because websites are my thing. What posts to put up, send something somewhere, go check something, or immediately sit down to record a little live stream, unload thoughts from myself.
But the most important thing is to be in your own space when there is no powerful flow of external input, even if it is a beloved husband who wants to share his plans with you.
And yet how many people immediately grab their phones and scroll through all that nonsense. None of that is yours, it is someone else’s. And you immediately download all of it into yourself.
You are responsible for your mood, no matter what state you wake up in. We have learned to pull ourselves back, just like that Baron Munchausen pulling himself out of the swamp by his own pigtail.
Imagine that you do not pull yourself back and remain in that state all day.
Question: “What if every morning after waking up there is a feeling of deep decline and resistance, and this happens every day, no matter what state I fell asleep in?”
What happens when you wake up? You return to this reality, to this body. The question is in your assessment of what you do with it.
It is no coincidence that in the course “Dance with the Shadow” I made the first practice “Breath of Acceptance”.
Many people wake up in the morning and first do gymnastics or some physical exercises to return to the body.
I would ask myself a question about what in your life causes such a decline, what is its reason.
See also How a proper start to the day can help change your life
What methods help you avoid sinking into negativity?
The article is based on the broadcast #21 Ask KM