When asking why is a waste of time

I love writing.  Always have done.  So why is it hard to hit publish on this blog?

The answer is that I’m scared.  Too scared to put my writing in the public domain.

Yesterday, an email I subscribe to arrived in my inbox from Neale Donald Walsh, the author of “Conversations with God”.  Neale says that asking “why?” is usually a waste of time and instead we should ask “what?”

As in “what action can I take on my dreams right now?”.  He says that “why is this happening?” is the most useless question in the universe.

And this has been my experience.  I’ve spent too much time trying to work out in my mind why certain events happened.  Why? why? why?

Sometimes an answer comes and I’m overjoyed.  There was the time that I discovered why I get crushes on men (and sometimes women come to think of it) when I don’t want to have a relationship with them.  The Enneagram helped me discover that this was probably because they have qualities that I would like to emulate.  Like confidence, charisma and creativity.

I don’t know why the qualities I want to emulate all begin with ‘C’.

But, discovering this facet of my personality was a huge aha moment for me.  I was convinced that it was the answer to all my problems.  Well not all of them, but it was big.

Having this information alone didn’t change anything though.  It wasn’t until I started to be  aware of my behaviour when it was actually happening, that things began to change. Noticing that I blushed when I saw one of the objects of my admiration and felt upset if they ignored me.  The antidote was to stay in the moment and “feel the feelings”.  That way the feelings feel heard, and pass through more quickly.

Try it, you’ll see.

And not try to escape from the feelings by thinking of something else, running away or ordering a large G & T.

I realised that it was just a false fixation that served no purpose.  And that made all the difference.  I could just drop it.

It took a while, but eventually I noticed a difference in my behaviour in the company of these people.  I was a lot more natural and relaxed.  I still admired them perhaps, but also “saw the light” and wondered why my feelings had been so intense.

So just knowing “why” is not the key to freedom.  You can choose to stop asking “why?” and take action on your dreams.