I can see in my life that there have been times that I have been unwilling to be with what I am feeling, be that anxiety, anger, fear, worry and the thoughts I am thinking, especially if they are negative. I can see that I am usually looking for ways to distract or get away from these thoughts or feelings through working, exercising, traveling, eating, drinking etc. However the reality is that no matter how much I do these activities, I can never seem to escape myself.
The truth is that we can go to the most distant countries, be with the most beautiful lovers, have the greatest jobs and have the most fancy of houses, however we can never escape who we really are. We always bring ourselves to every experience by the thoughts we think and the feelings we are feeling.
We are brainwashed by the media…
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Ars, Arte et Labore 
Yes we do have the power to change, but your question is important. Why do we dislike something in our selves? The firat thing that springs to mind is the notion that we have usually formed some judgement on certain aspects of our personality, quite often because others don’t approve, and this can be for many reasons.
Some of the things that were suggested when I was studying this, blew my mind. For example, a bright child who was interested in learning may have been frowned upon by other members of a family and although they may deeply want to further their education, things might turn otherwise. This child then buries their love of learning and the associated resentment, which then turns into an aspect of their shadow, whereby they resent other educated people. They may secretly still wish to learn, but by this time they have started to believe the conditioning that learning is a waste of time, and consider it a weakness they have.
I was taught that the way to approach this is to consider aspects of other people’s personality and behaviour that we dislike, especially those aspects we feel strongest about. When we ask ourselves why we dislike that behaviour so much, we find we have usually formed some kind of judgement about it, and associate it with the negative attributes attached to that trait. Is it something we could be “accused” of? If it is, we then ask what the positive attributes of that behaviour could be, in other conditions. If we can see both positive and negative ‘applications’, it makes it easier for us to accept, “well actually, I’m a bit like that too”.
It’s difficult to explain without giving examples, so I’ll give one that I learned about myself.
I can’t stand it when people are late! I sit and huff and get myself worked up, thinking “How rude!” or “why can’t they let me know they’ll be late” etc. and I start resenting them. It stopped me inviting certain friends over because I never knew just HOW late they would be, or if they’d cancel at the last minute. Yes, it is rude, but other people don’t go to the extremes of cutting such friends out of their life. So why did it effect me so much? I have in-built high standards of punctuality. I realised that I was judging others by my own standards, and if I wanted to get around this, and to still see one of these friends, I could adapt. So I make sure if I am seeing that friend, that I have a back up plan if they cancelled, and I never invite them to eat anymore as their concept of time keeping is much looser than mine.
But when I was thinking about my ‘judgement’ and about appointments and time, I also realised that I am a procrastinator! Largely because of this in-built high standard of doing things on time! I put things off all the time, until I can ‘fit them in’, whereas other people do as much as they can possibly fit in to their day, regardless of if they are “on time” for all of it. I can ADMIRE how much they actually complete, as opposed to my just intending but not quite doing!
I now give people more leeway, because we all have different attitudes to how we fit things into our day.
I hope that wasn’t too much of a ramble to read! 🙂
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If we dislike something in ourselves, why? Is it to please another? We have the power to change most things, including what we dislike.
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