One Layer Deeper

You’ve already advanced quite far into this course, so I believe you’re ready for some more advanced stuff! In this exercise, you are invited to go a layer deeper and the starting point is a recurring problem in your life.

When we repeatedly experience the same kind of conflict, the same kind of problem, the same kind of suffering in our lives, this contains an important hint. It suggests that it’s not some random misfortune that keeps visiting us. Rather, we’re somehow having a hand in making the same problem appear on repeat.

Let’s examine this and see how we might dissolve it.

Exercise

• Write down one “problem on repeat” you experience in your life.

Next, walk through 3 steps that you are already familiar with:

• Describe an example of how this problem plays out - what happens, objectively?
• How does it make you feel?
• What stories do you tell yourself about it?

Now, let’s go one layer deeper:

• How does this serve you?
• What are you protecting yourself from, by repeatedly having this problem?
• What does this problem help you avoid?
• What’s great about having this problem?
• What would be difficult or scary about NOT having this problem anymore?