D Hak Advantages
When looking at the problems that exist in our lives, the tendency is to look outward. For example, when cataloging your difficulties, you may say, “My coworkers are unsupported and my husband just doesn’t understand.” These sorts of things may be true, but there is very little you can do about them. Trying to make your coworkers more supportive and trying to force your husband to understand will probably only make things worse.
Most people do the same thing with their emotions— they look outward to find the source. Even though you know that emotion actually comes from your brain, you probably say, “This makes me happy,” and, “That makes me mad.” In actuality, nothing makes you happy or angry. The emotions all come from within you. How you react emotionally is entirely dependent on the set of preconceptions and expectations that exist within you. While you may be able to empathize with others and they with you, ultimately your emotional experience is entirely unique to you.
I Lee Says for example, imagine that two drivers take the same highway home from a vacation on the same day. Both have been driving for ten years and have excellent driving records. One of the drivers says, “That road made me so nervous!” But the other says, “The twists and turns on that highway were exhilarating!” What is really the difference between their two experiences? Did the highway do something to make one driver confident and the other nervous? Of course not.
The difference exists in the internal world of each driver, in the self-reliance and expectation within each driver. More accurate comments about the highway might have been, “I made myself nervous when driving on that road,” and, “I looked at the highway as a positive challenge.” This is the same sort of choice we face in all of our emotional reactions.
When we look outside ourselves to find the source of our emotions, we essentially give up a great deal of personal power. By looking inside, we can concentrate on the things that we can truly change in a given situation—the part that we have contributed. Even if someone else is responsible for 99 percent of a given problem, the i percent that you have control over is the only part you can really affect.
Tags: Dahn Yoga, Ilchi Lee