Struggle is good in game form. So you learn, so you get better. But competing for the best grades in class, then it already becomes separate. Then it becomes a competition in knowledge gathering. Like who has the most knowledge? The game The Smartest Man is such a battle.
But if you follow it through that everything becomes struggle and you get sick or something, you're going to struggle. But you do.
You are competing against yourself, so to speak. You can win or lose that battle. When you win, it also presupposes that there are losers. Of course, that never feels good. Winning feels good, of course, because you can say, "I won the battle against my illness."
But that also presupposes that people who don't win the battle against their disease are losers. Losers.
Accepting cancer is more manageable for after your treatment
I think that's crazy. To me, it doesn't add up. When you do something yourself, even a severe illness like cancer (it's not your fault, that's something else), it's a part of you in that moment. You then want to gain from something in yourself. That is also what all medical science is based on. The cancer attacks the healthy cells. Those are terms of struggle.
Now if we focus that the other way. On the contrary, if we are part of a whole, or if we are the whole (to make it all one), then you are that cancer, you are your liver, you are your cells, and you are the none that is attacking itself.
Then it's also crazy to have a battle in that if that's all you are.
It makes more sense then to go with the flow. This may sound very crazy. This is separate from the treatments. But, of course, accepting and going with it can just as easily mean chemotherapy.
Doctors then say, "We're going to fight it."
You won't take that suggestion then, but the chemotherapy will. You go with the flow of the treatment. I'm not a doctor, so mainly do what they tell you to do.
From that acceptance, you can look at how to do this. You don't know how and you don't know why. But you are going to change something that will also change the outcome.
This going along with the flow and seeing it less as a struggle also makes treatment less intense, making you less likely to develop PTSD after your healing[1]. This is a particular problem for women. Men and women are more likely to get PTSD when they also avoid thinking about having cancer. So acceptance of the disease is also important to prevent PTSD after treatment.
This doesn't mean you have to become apathetic. Hypnotherapy is used in cancer, for example, to reduce pain and anxiety and to ensure that patients take an active role in treatment. Doing things "differently for a different outcome" is thereby encouraged[2].
If you spend your whole life fighting to stay alive, what kind of life do you have? You're going to die sometime anyway, so what are you fighting against? You might as well move along for as long as you're here.
I think this is much harder, to move along like this, than to resist.
Resistance is easier because it is in our nature to hit back.
Even if you look at martial arts in the East, it is very much focused on yourself. On changing yourself, on moving along to enlightenment. That enlightenment is that there is no more struggle.
But in the West, that martial arts becomes a game. And in that game form, there is combat and we go to fight each other. It's also embedded in our culture that we want to win. We want to fight and win.
Some things are not to be gained from. Fighting some things is not at all helpful.
Love and struggle
Love, for example, has no struggle. The enlightened state has no struggle at all.
How can you go to battle against something that is love?
So that's crazy thinking.
In game form, it's fun. I also like to struggle and face resistance.
I also believe that fear is a bad counselor. The fear or resistance, you can fight that (whenever possible). You will then reap greater rewards when you overcome them.
On the other hand, you can think about whether this is always the case? If you're in a river and it goes rock hard in a certain direction, you can swim rock hard against it. Those currents are scary, of course. But you can also surrender to it and see where you end up. That river then unfolds.
Then you come to a place you probably should be.
You do see that a lot.
It's like that in life, too. For example, a friend of mine was in Australia and I was also there for a few weeks until fear crept in. After all, I had lost everything and suddenly I got the idea that there is something taking care of you. Then all kinds of coincidences unfolded.
We used to go out to dinner and things like that. I had no money at all, but I could go with someone or somewhere every time. It went well every time, until I got scared because it just didn't make sense. Then it stopped too.
This friend of mine continued for another 1.5 years with all the coincidences.
At one point he wanted to leave, penniless. So he went to the airport, there was someone there with a ticket who wasn't going anyway and he got the ticket to Singapore. So then just went there. At one point he had ended up in Barcelona. With only coincidences.
So he needed something for his studio and he just walked outside for a walk around and there was everything that someone had put out as bulk for a studio.
It worked for him, too, until he got scared, until he started thinking. Like: "You can't live like that, can you? You have to have a job and a family and things like that, right?" Now he has a job and a family and things like that.
The funny thing is that when you are in the flow you are completely absorbed with what you are doing and you are not concerned with yourself or thinking about how you function in the world[3]. You actually saw with us that as soon as we started doing that, the flow of coincidences that helped us move forward stopped.
We've talked about what it would be like to keep living like this anyway. And that it could just be. Zero struggles and only coincidences that move you forward at the right time because you are in the right place. Life unfolds as a wonderful thing.
But maybe you are very ambitious and need to find some kind of middle ground in this. For myself, fighting as a game is top notch, but fighting in your life? In your relationship or against your children, your parents or competitors that you are better or something. That makes no sense at all.
For most things, competing or fighting, wanting to win, is not useful in life. Useful as a game, but not in life.
Because when you accept something and a flow is created that way with all kinds of coincidences, then you start to see the wonder of how we all live here. Then it becomes a lot more interesting than the struggle.
Also listen to this podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/2644213-150-de-strijd-aangaan-of-juist-niet?play=true
Hypnosis to help you let go of the struggle
Do you also feel like everything is competition and you just get tired of it? Then it's time to let go of the struggle and get more in tune with the flow of your life. If you don't know how to let go of that struggle, hypnotherapy can help you get rid of it.
Complaints like feelings that
- You have to constantly prove yourself;
- You need to be better than family or other people around you;
- You are constantly being pushed to the defensive;
- You always have to do something;
- You have to fight to get your way.
All of whom are changeable with hypnosis. For right now you then have your focus very much on that many things in life are a struggle, and with hypnosis you get help to change that focus. For example, you can change the focus of struggle to the focus of love.
Following the idea that if someone else achieves something, that this is an example of what you can also achieve, but is not something that suddenly makes you a loser or anything like that.
Want to know how this works? Then come to a free online master class on hypnosis.
Or enroll in one of Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training courses. That's also great if you want to help other people go through life more relaxed.
Sources:
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/073993300245410
[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207140701338647
[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ejn.15014
