If you find yourself judging yourself or others, before reacting it might first be worth checking in with yourself to find out why you really feel this way and in doing so give yourself the chance to make a better informed decision.

As I sat in my room one morning, I looked around at all that I owned in that space and realised much of what was there had been given to me. I personally had not bought the majority of it.

I realised that if what was ‘not mine’ was taken away I would have very little to show for all the years I had been on earth.

For a moment it depressed me. What had I been doing all this time? What had I got to show for the years I’ve been working?

It’s very easy if we continue into this line of thought and to become very low. To feel hopeless. To compare ourselves with others who seem to have acquired so much more and who on first look appear to be so much more successful and often at a much younger age!

It’s very easy for relationships, work, how much money we have in the bank or on our payslip, what jobs we have, where we live, whether we rent or have managed to buy and so forth, to insidiously create an idea of ‘who we are’ like iron filings to a magnet.

Our sense of self – our identities – are forged inside of ‘what I do’ and ‘what I have’. We are judged on this, not just by others but more importantly by ourselves which can often be detrimental to our development despite the idea that a pursuit for more and better is often hailed as the driving force behind success.

As I found myself slipping into self-judgment I allowed myself to investigate what was the underlying emotion that was attracting this narrative and feeling of failure.

It’s often hard not to get caught up in the story we are telling ourselves and to be able to look at what we are feeling objectively as a silent observer, because often we can’t actually articulate what is is or why we feel this way.

Over the years I have found several ways to do this, and when I am experiencing moments of self-flagellating emotional attacks, I often stop and simply symbolise the emotion. I look at where it sits, its shape, colour and movement patterns. I investigate its temperature and density and weight in my hands.

And after each investigation I look again and see how with each enquiry it changes its characteristics, and as these change, so does how I feel and reflect on what I am experiencing.

I uncover the real meaning rather than the story I’m using to cover up a deeper underlying truth meaning with.

I looked at what was sitting in the pit of my stomach and I found ‘A ball’.

At first it seemed solid and heavy but on closer inspection it was hollow and black, like one of those children’s ‘plastic pool balls’ but not at all colourful.

Then as the story continued, I watched it being stamped on and crushed. It was still there, but now all that remained was the crumpled husk of plastic that was once the ball.

This is what I got. Not a new idea but perhaps a different way of describing it.

When we identify ourselves with our jobs, houses, relationships, money, the car we drive and the friends we have become like plastic balls, which from the outside look solid but are in fact are very vulnerable to collapse in seconds. A life we judge ourselves by, for better or for worse, is just a hollow inflated illusion of ‘who we are’

We all hold on to an idea of ‘making it’ or even of having made it, where life is perfect and we are safe and if we haven’t, we can sink into regular moments of often deep depression because we don’t think we hold up to an ideal of who or where we should be at this moment of time.

But as many of us know, this is not the case and unless we are continually cultivating our lives, what we call ‘our lives’ can be removed in the blink of an eye.

But this is not news and not the main point of my enquiry.

For me what I found more profound was this idea.

Inside of the ball is space. Nothingness. Outside the ball is nothingness. Space.

The only thing that allows us to be crushed is the plastic shell what we call ‘the ball’. All the things we acquire or who we say we are actually separates us from everything else.

The question I am still pondering from this is ‘Does a sense of identity separate us from the whole?

Is it Symbolic of a larger problem?

Does the formation of identity actually segregate us from self?

Does it actually create a Prejudice of self?

And, being this is the ball we live in, do we project that out into our world?

If we take away the shell of the ball all we are left with space. With nothingness.

The shell is the only thing that makes the space namely the ‘inside’ or ‘outside’. Them and us. You and me.

With no shell there is no inside or outside or any other name you wish to give nothingness.

Inside of nothingness is everything. A whole.

If we don’t build shells, can we potentially be more?

By not identifying with what we have and do, do we invite the opportunity to have and be everything?

Can it be done or is that called enlightenment?

By taking away our shells, do we connect automatically with the rest of the world? The human collective?

But this is all very nice and perhaps just a philosophical debate, but how do we use this today?

Right now I don’t know, or that it’s even possible to remove our shells.

However by just being aware of how we contain ourselves inside of what we have and what we do, we can shift our focus to perhaps making better or less limiting choices. To understand we are not all so different and that we all have the same stuff going on. That its not so much ‘them and us’ but more of a collective ‘us’.

Just like me sitting in my room, outside of self-awareness and the willingness to enquire what’s really going on when we are faced with emotional episodes, I could have spent the day consumed in self-pity and blame or escaping into any of the many ways we find to remove ourselves from negative pain that hold no long term potential for growth.

Connected pondering’s to reflect on.

I am not my identity or the stuff I am.

As soon as I identify myself with things I enclose me. I trapped myself in a virtual but illusionary bubble of safety. That identity can either drive me or it can hold me back. But at any time who I  am relying on being can be removed.

My identity makes me feel I belong but really it separates me from the whole. Its limiting.

Only inside of my ‘plastic ball’ can I be crushed and destroyed. (Try stamping on a plastic ball. When you are done try crushing the air around you with your foot. See how you get on!)

My mother used to have a picture that said – ‘I do not seek to follow in the footsteps of men of old, I seek the things they sought.’

When I have these thoughts and days later hear people like Dan Siegal talking about mindfulness and his brief loss of identity because of a horse accident and the consequences of that I think Im on the right path. To where I don’t know but interesting all the same.

Its going from ‘what to do’ to ‘how to do’ that is where the work takes place Intellectually understanding it is not enough!