This week in The Brain BS Blog and Podcast we are going to explore how to know when we are tearing down other people to feel better about ourselves and how it never energetically works in our favor. We will discuss how it lowers our vibration and point of attraction, thus manifesting results we do not desire. I will share a personal example to illustrate how tearing other people down to feel better about ourselves takes us out of alignment and how it is totally different than holding people accountable for unacceptable behavior. I will also share an easy way to get back into alignment when you fall off course.

Okay, let’s start by defining what I mean when I say tear people down. This pretty much includes anything that we say about another human that does not come from love and our higher self. There is no mistaking it when we are doing it because we can tell from the way we are feeling. We will always experience some sort of negative emotion. We think the bad feeling is coming from the other person’s behavior though, but really it is coming from within us because we are out of alignment with our higher self. Unfortunately, very few people have the awareness to understand that the way they are feeling has nothing to do with other people. They will rationalize and defend their position as if they are doing something noble or admirable and looking out for the rest of us, but really it has more to do with them than anything else.

This brings me to my next point which is that people criticize and judge other people frequently and publicly because it makes them feel better about themselves. Now I know that some might take offense to this but hear me out. If we truly love ourselves and our lives, we will never speak negative words about somebody else from a lower frequency, but that does not mean we will never say negative words at all. Does this make sense? We can point out what we believe other humans need to hear without judgement or self-righteousness, which creates a totally different vibration and frequency. For example, say I know a business owner is over charging a friend of mine for a service by more than 50%. I can point out to the friend that the service provider is over charging them, and they could find the service way cheaper somewhere else. I would be pointing it out to my friend in service of them and would not experience a negative feeling for doing that. However, if I started to add layers of judgment about the business owner and making up stories in my mind about his motives for charging what he does when talking to my friend, that good feeling is going to go sour quickly and lower my vibration. Basically, if we leave the ego out of it and stay in our higher self, we stay in alignment, and it will be beneficial to everybody involved.

What do I mean by that? Well, the Law of Attraction is a Universal Law that dictates what we put out there, is what comes back to us. I am not talking about behavior here, I am talking about the energy and intentions behind the behavior. So many times when I am working with clients, they think that how they act on the surface matters more than how they are feeling inside. They are proud of themselves when they act and pretend to be okay with somebody, while fuming with resentment below the surface. They think because they did not yell at the person or tell them what they were really thinking that they accomplished something good. While not being reactive has an upside, people-pleasing and being phony is never going to be beneficial to us in any way, shape, or form. There is no tricking the Universe when it comes to energy. The same holds true for if we decide to tear somebody else down in any way. If the reason we say we are doing it does not align with the energy behind it, The Universe is going to know and send more of that negative energy right back our way. From a collective standpoint, whatever vibration we put out there has a ripple effect and it is felt by all of us. Whenever we choose to stay in alignment and the energy that stems from that place, we are raising the vibration of the entire planet. Same holds true if we decide to give in to our egos and a lower frequency.

Alright, let’s look at scenario now that I experienced this past weekend. I am in a Facebook group of coaches who are all entrepreneurs trying to start their own business. Some are wildly successful from a financial standpoint, and others are struggling to get started. One of the coaches started a thread in the group to criticize successful coaches (who we will refer to as celebrities in the profession from now on) for removing posts from their groups that are not aligned with their own values and objectives. She accused them of being unethical and undermining the coaching industry as a whole. She claimed she was doing this on behalf of new coaches starting out who did not have their own voice and who were being fooled by these celebrity coaches. She even went so far as to say that if you supported the celebrity coaches, you were complicit in perpetuating this unacceptable behavior.

Well, as you can imagine, this thread started all kinds of conversations and generated some significant disagreement. It was my initial impression that the woman started the post as a means to tear down other humans, so she could feel better about herself and her business. I felt that there was too much judgement in the post for it to have come from her higher self and I posted as much in the group. This is where it gets tricky though, my intuition was telling me one thing but, she was saying something different. She was adamant that she was doing this in service of all the new coaches that do not have a voice. I am not doubting that she might have believed that at a conscious level, but I think her subconscious was immersed in Brain BS. Because of that belief, I did not let it go which is where I took a bit of a wrong turn and ended up in a place that did not sit well with me. I became so inspired to show her that she was up to her eyeballs in Brain BS, that I ended up in the same place!

This is how it played out. I posted my initial opinion from my higher self and felt good about it. I said what I believed to be true and was holding her accountable for making a post that I thought was negative and all about creating drama. In her defense, she was quite gracious in the way she received my negative take of her behavior but apparently that was not enough for me. While I consciously planned to move on and not engage in any of the drama I knew was coming, my subconscious must have had other plans. I started to see all these other people chiming in on the thread and it triggered a desire to be included in the conversation. When other people posted that she was just being a drama queen, I would reply yep, and I noticed that many people were reacting with a laughing emoji. This should have been a red flag to me that I was getting into territory where I did not want to be. I was not trying to be funny in the least bit, however, comments and opinions can get easily misconstrued on a platform like social media which is why I do not believe it is the appropriate place to have a meaningful discussion about anything. That did not hold my ego back or keep me from me from continuing to pipe in with my opinions in an effort to get the author of the post and other people who were disagreeing with me to see my point of view. I am not sure exactly when it was, but at some point, I felt a little sick to my stomach about the whole thread and realized I was no longer in alignment (we always know because of the way we are feeling!). So while I started out sharing my thoughts from my higher self, that is not where I ended up thank you very much ego. Once I realized that, I stepped away from the conversation and reflected on how and why it started to make me so uncomfortable.

Well, the short answer is that I felt bad because I was out of alignment and driven by my ego. I am going to offer more than that though so we can see how we can evaluate our behavior in any situation and assess if we liked the way we showed up, if we did not, and what we might do differently in the future (thank you Stacey Boehman). The truth is I did not like much about my behavior in this situation. When I look back, accusing the author of tearing down people could be perceived as extreme wording even though that was not my intent. I was also judging her and not giving her the benefit of a doubt, which is what I was accusing her of doing with the celebrity coaches. Hello! That darn ego shows up in the most inopportune places, LOL! If I had a do-over, I would not even comment on the thread. I would just mind my own business and continue to stay in alignment and maintain a higher frequency on this planet. Since that is not possible though, the next best thing was to get back into alignment. I wasn’t’ totally sure how to do that just yet. I noticed that whenever I got notified about a comment in the thread, it made me cringe and I wanted to avoid it. There was one woman in particular that I found was aggressively disagreeing with me, and I really wanted to steer clear of her. It took me about 24 hours to figure out how to get back into alignment.

After thinking about it, I posted in the group that I felt bad about the controversial thread and that I felt some of my comments were misunderstood and that I did not like how I showed up to the situation. I took accountability for my behavior and admitted that I had fallen out of alignment. I shared that it made me feel really bad and that I was sorry for my behavior. I also pointed out that while I did not like the author’s post and still disagreed with it, I am sure the author is probably a wonderful human and I did not mean to imply otherwise in any way. Whew! I felt instant relief. I knew I was back in alignment because I did not even care how my comment would be received because I again loved the way I was showing up to my life. I was taking responsibility for my behavior without beating myself up or dwelling in negative emotions. I totally had my own back and completely forgave myself for veering off my path for a short period of time and boy is that empowering. Sure, it would be great to be perfect, but that ain’t gonna happen as long as I have a brain The best part of the whole story though? The woman who I thought was aggressively coming at me, actually sent me a friend request as a result of my post! See how this works folks? I could have just ignored the way I was feeling, and all of the negative energy would have been trapped in my subconscious, becoming my point of attraction by default. Instead, I managed my mind and created a totally different result that led to friendship instead.

In conclusion, the only way we know if we are holding people accountable vs tearing them down to feel better about ourselves, is by the way we are feeling. If we experience an uncomfortable emotion at all when we do it, we can be sure that we are leaving the place of alignment. I shared with you a personal example of how we can start in alignment, fall out of it, and get back into it if we manage our minds and take responsibility for our behavior. One of the best ways to do that is to evaluate how we are behaving frequently, so that we can make adjustments to the way we are thinking and create different results that are more desirable. Join me in The Brain BS Podcast to discuss this further.