This graph can be very helpful when it comes to recognising the understanding that other people have in these areas of life. 

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If you regularly struggle with a person's behaviour, see if you can get a sense of their state of mind using the graph. This will show you what it happening in their understanding and give you the reasons for why they act the way they do. 

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Gaining a clearer appreciation of what is happening in their unconscious understanding will reduce your judgement towards them and this will reduce your suffering when you are around them.

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Common Red Flags for Harmful Understanding

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The only reason that we suffer from the same issues year on year is because we are holding unconscious beliefs in our unhealthy understanding of life. If these unknown beliefs don't become clear to us, we never get the information we need to change our understanding and the situation.

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I keep a list of red flags that signal I am experiencing unhealthy understanding. Some of these red flags have been very surprising to me as many of them are my core values.

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Unhealthy Ed Red Flags:

• Wanting to get all my urgent tasks done so that I can relax

• Believing that I have problems

• Believing that I need a holiday

• Wanting to be mentally healthy or get out of a bad mood

• Predicting how certain things will go in the future

• Wanting financial stability

• Wanting more professional success - ambition

• Feeling like I have no time

• Over-analysing the health of my body

• Needing my girlfriend to be happy for me to be happy

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This is only a brief selection - there is regularly a lot of Unhealthy Ed understanding generated. However, once it becomes clear that my reality is full of this content, I see that I've lost sight of the fact that I fundamentally know nothing.

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One thing that has become very clear to me since I started doing this is that the values I created have caused huge amounts of psychological suffering. 

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One exercise that can really help show you where your unconscious issues are is taking a look at what your unhealthy understanding needs before it allows an experience of relief, wellbeing and rest to occur. ​

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All our unhealthy understandings have set invisible benchmarks on how life has to be before we can rest and experience relief and wellbeing. However, if we destroy the belief in these unconscious benchmarks through realising that they are just old thoughts that were never fundamentally true, we can then experience relief and rest regularly through normal day-to-day life.

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RELIEF TASK

Grab a pen and paper and consider how your life would have to be for you to experience long term relief, fulfillment, peace and freedom by answering the following questions. This will give you a clear sense of what your unhealthy understanding believes it needs before can experience peace and wellbeing. 

 

If we want to regain our wellbeing, we don't want to satisfy our unhealthy understanding, we want to destroy its hold over us. To do this, we have to get a clearer sense of what we are unconsciously believing in,

 

Much of our unhealthy understanding is made of thoughts that we are not conscious of. We are making unconscious thought all the time as a human being and even though it's invisible to us, it still has a huge impact on how we see ourselves and the world around us. As we said earlier, it's likely that 90% of the thinking that we are doing in this moment is unconscious thinking.

 

Unconscious beliefs are the root of all psychological suffering and stress. Once these beliefs start to become clear to us, we can take a closer look at them and then realise that they are simply thoughts that aren't solid, fixed, true or real. This destroys their ability to control how we experience reality or how we feel. This means that we are no longer lost in distorted, unhealthy understanding. We are back to feeling ourselves again and feeling free, whole and settled.

 

Question 1: Financial Health

• How much money do you require for you to gain a sense of long-term relief?

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Question 2: Other People - Relationships & Friendships​?​​

• If you are in a relationship, how do you need your partner to act in order to feel long-term relief? 

• If you are not in a relationship, do you feel you need one?

• Do you have anybody who is completely emotionally safe (someone that you can talk to about anything) in your life? 

• Where do you believe love comes from?​

• Do you need other people to happy in order for you to feel happy?

• Do you need a certain number of friends to feel relief? 

• Do you need a certain amount of time with your friends in order to feel relief? 

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Question 3: Time

• On an average day, how do you need to be spending your time in order to have a sense of long-term, lasting relief? 

• According to your belief system, what constitutes a waste of time? 

• Does the prospect of free time (as opposed to a busy calendar) bring you a sense of relief? 

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Question 4: To-Do Lists

• Do you need to get to the end of your to-do list in order to feel a sense of relief?

• What is your criteria for deciding when a task becomes urgent? Is it when you become aware of it, or just before it's due?

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Question 5: Health

• What state of health does your body need to be in for you to experience long-term relief?

• Who else in your life needs to be healthy for you to experience long-term relief?

• What state does your mental health need to be in for you to experience long-term relief?

• Who else in your life needs to be mentally healthy for you to experience long-term relief?

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Question 6: Imagining The Future

• Do certain future outcomes need to be guaranteed for you to experience long-term relief? If so, what are they?

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Question 7: Imagining The Past

• Is there any event in the past that hurt you so badly that you felt like you stopped feeling alive and started just getting though each day?

• Do you believe that events in your past have caused so much damage to you that you cannot experience long-term relief? 

• Do you experience guilt or shame regarding past events? If so, which ones and why?

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Question 8: Holidays

• When do you generally experience a sense of relief on holiday? Do you experience relief at all? 

• Is it when you get on the plane or in the car? Is it 3 days in?

• When does low level stress start to creep back into your life? Is 3 days before you come home? When you walk back into your house?

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Question 9: You and Social Situations

• What does your personality need to be like for you to experience long-term relief?

• What do you need to look like to experience long-term relief?

• How do you need to be perceived by other people for you to experience relief with them?

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Once you've completed these questions, you will have a much better sense of the beliefs that you have been unconsciously making regularly. 

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Take a closer look at them. Consider when you started making these beliefs? Did anyone in your family or your past have the same beliefs? This will give you an appreciation of how your unhealthy understanding developed. 

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Fundamentally, we want to appreciate that none of these beliefs are anything more than thoughts that got made at some point. They cannot come to life, they are just passing pieces of energy and nothing more. Once this is truly seen, they will never bother you again. 

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KEY CONCEPT SUMMARY:

• Regaining an experience of mental wellbeing requires us to not believe any of our thought content to be solid, fixed, true or real

• As we have grown, we have innocently and unknowingly started to believe in lots of ideas unconsciously. We have built an unhealthy understanding that has lots of benchmarks that have to be met before we get to experience a sense of relief and wellbeing

• Once we recognise what these are, we will start to realise that these thoughts are not fundamentally true - at all times, we know nothing