Inna Shukshina

A cosy family evening… My husband sat buried in Twitter, gloomy and angry about his own problems, the children whined and asked for cartoons, it was hot and stuffy, and suddenly I discovered that everyone was irritating me terribly and I wanted to run away somewhere! That I was constantly trying either to do everything very, very fast, or could not get up at all, sitting there with no strength and no desire to do anything. My brain easily painted frightening pictures for no clear reason, inside there was a state of anxiety and tension, and I had no appetite. And I realised that at that moment I was not living joyfully and happily but merely surviving! And that something urgently had to change!

I sat down and started thinking. Could I really change everything around me simply by changing my own state? But it had happened before; I had observed this miracle many times: when, after a change in my inner state, the world around me changed as if by the wave of a magic wand. From angry and inhospitable it becomes friendly and bright. Apparently it is a matter of our coming closer to God or moving away from Him — in the light of His love everything is transfigured. Whereas our own negative perception paints the world in grey tones.

At last I found the very magic word that was able to change my state in an instant from nervous and unhappy to peaceful and happy. What this magic word is you will find out later on. Do not skip ahead! Let it be a surprise.

What is this state in which everything irritates you and you see only people’s faults? The state where you do not even need to be surviving, where everything is more or less fine, but inside there is tension, tightness, anxiety, a sense of looming danger? People who have found themselves in difficult life situations are often in exactly this state. But we know how to enter this state without any difficult situation at all. Let us call it the state of irritation.

Irritation

In the first state — irritation — there is too little of everything. Money, love, happiness. The people around you start making you angry, everything falls out of your hands, unpleasant situations are drawn to you, contracts and deals that were almost concluded fall through. Something hurts, the food is tasteless, the weather is bad! Your husband does everything wrong, your son does not listen, your parents lecture you about life. And in general the laws are bad and the country is bad. You want to change the world, remake it; you feel a rejection of it.

Your own inner state is ignored, the focus of attention is shifted to what is happening around you. And around you everything is happening in a way you do not want at all! The world refuses to obey us and does everything as if to spite us! And it is very hard to admit to yourself that it is not the world around you that is bad, but that the whole matter is in ourselves.

In such a state there is usually little money and no options at all; where could it even come from? A state of deadlock and hopelessness. If you are overweight, a feeling appears that it is impossible to shift it at all. If there are problems in a relationship, you feel a mixture of pain, hurt, anger, disappointment… Our dreams seem unattainable, the world around us grey and boring. In the body there is exhaustion and weariness, in the morning you do not want to get out of bed… The pies burn and the computer “glitches”!

Love

The second state — love — begins from within and is felt regardless of what is happening around you. And regardless of the initial amount of money, your looks, your health and your relationships. It feels as though you are in a protective field of love that nothing bad can penetrate. In this state there is exactly as much of everything as you need, neither too much nor too little. The body is relaxed, problems gradually dissolve — they are solved thanks to our calm actions, and not thanks to fuss and anxiety. Relationships improve, because you understand what to say and when, and people stop being irritating. Illnesses recede too — because in a relaxed body and with a calm mind it is far harder for them to take hold. Fewer unpleasant situations arise, because most often they come from unnecessary fuss. It becomes easier to understand what we are meant to learn in a particular unpleasant situation.

So, the magic word: acceptance

At that moment it was exactly this word that worked for me; apparently it was exactly what I was lacking for peace of soul. Your word may be different, but often what we lack is precisely acceptance of the world as it is.

I decided to accept my husband as he is and not to try to remake him. To accept the children inwardly as they are and not to pull them up every minute. To accept myself and come to terms with my weaknesses and shortcomings. To acknowledge, at last, that they exist and to calm down. To accept the whole world in the state it is in.

Does this mean that now you can throw all restraint to the winds and not change yourself and the world for the better? Not at all. It is simply time to admit that lectures and reproaches make you not want to change in the slightest. Remember someone who tried to change you or to out-argue you — that is exactly the sort of feelings that rejection of people and the world produces. In an atmosphere of love and acceptance people develop and grow far better! Acceptance is a deep permission for a person to have their own free will and a refusal of judgement and superiority. It is precisely what God asked of us in His commandments. It is the starting point from which there is any chance at all of beginning to change.

Which state are you in?

The whole secret of happiness lies in the fact that we ourselves can manage our states and move from one to the other while the external conditions stay the same!

In the state of irritation it is as if you are running an endless marathon that never finishes; you wait and wait for the finish line and it never comes. The chores never end, new problems arise, the dishes have to be washed again, the children need something again… The state of love and acceptance, however, is like a harmonious dance, where one event follows another. Sometimes it is a waltz, sometimes disco, sometimes rock, but the state of inner calm and joy does not change.

Right now, try to determine which state you are in. Do you feel tension in your body, do the people around you irritate you, are there anxious thoughts in your head? Or do you feel happiness, a relaxed body and a calm mind? If you have identified the first state in yourself — irritation — then it is within your power to move from it into the second.

How do you move from irritation to acceptance?

Once you have caught this state in yourself, the best thing is to give yourself a rest — both the body and the mind. Lie down, think. Step away from the computer. Leave your household alone. Try to shift the focus of your attention from the external world inwards, to your own state. Imagine: what you are doing right now, you can do with more joy, in a relaxed way; right now you can do something nice for yourself.

There are small techniques that make it easier to move into the second state:

• Take care of yourself;
• Start doing everything more slowly, concentrate on what you are doing at this moment;
• Ask yourself the question — how can I do everything I am doing with pleasure?
• First of all, realise that managing our state is within our power; it depends on us what it is like, and not on circumstances, living conditions or the hand we were dealt;
• Secondly, try consciously to catch the state of anxiety in yourself and to say something like: “Right now I am in a state of survival. But the world is abundant!”
• Thirdly, God has plenty of everything. He can lay a whole universe at our feet, and if He has “withheld” something from us — money, love, people — then it means that in such a state it would not have helped us.

Gradually I came to understand that the most important thing is our inner state, because in the first state we are further from God, while in the second we are able to receive His love. It does not matter what is happening around us; what matters is what is inside us, and the main effort must be directed precisely at feeling differently inside. Only, for some reason, these truths are so easily forgotten and so hard to realise on your own.

Inna Shukshina

This article of mine was written for the site Matrony.ru: http://www.matrony.ru/kogda-vsyo-razdrazhaet/#ixzz34hqVMFfw