How can a man clean his Soul?
07.06.2025 06:03
• You cannot live life as a victim of your own actions and dragging others to your misery. Every single person is owner of his actions.
After we have done all of that homework, which ain’t easy and takes time, we jump in into the work of changing our perception and inner dialogue. We become much more aware of your conversation within ourselves and how this conversation is very important because it is extremely associated with our thoughts, emotions and actions. In psychology, we call it as a triangle — thoughts, emotions and actions. Considering that our thoughts comes first, then our emotions and finally our actions. A personal example:
An example of this formula can be that for so many years since I was 18 years old, working was a distress to me, and I ended up every day exhausted and looking forward to drink and party. Taking in consideration, first I had no goals, and secondly I needed to understand/question the reason of my fatigue. Working 8–10hrs in a row can be certainly exhausting, but when we allow our fatalist inner dialogue and our negative thoughts to govern our day, we will indeed finish much more exhausted that others — because what we think and how we relate ourselves to that way of thinking is considerably much more exhausting than the work itself. Why I had this feeling of fear talking to people? Why I had this behavior of not placing boundaries? Because I was low self steem and my way of thinking dragged me to distress and that distress, to substance usage as an avoidance or sedation technique. It was a titanic effort to me to answer calls, to have long conversations with clients, to deal with angry customers, to seek solutions and to work under pressure — because my self steem was low and I hadn’t took time to do the homework to really understand myself. I normalized myself as been shy, fearful, anxious — without questioning and being aware I could change that. Normalizing behaviors like these that usually have trauma within, will definitely drag you out from any goal you place in your life, as your sense of life will be blurred and out of focus — and you will normalize searching immediate gratifications that indeed, will also take you out of the map of a sense of life. Effectively, my formula had to be changed.
What was your most memorable experience catching a fraudulent car seller?
I like to think that there is no written sense of life — but it is up to ourselves to create it. No one ensures that your sense of life is the correct one, it is only up to your perception and experience that you create it. When a person was no goals or sense of life, the brain shatters; there are so many people swamped into depression when they aren’t really depressed — it’s only an empty life without goals to follow up and the persuasive attitude to seek immediate gratifications that will ain’t contribute to a self development.
I like to recall a very close family member that when he was alive, when he reached his 40s he decided to not work anymore isolate in his hoarding home full of clutter, along with alcohol and a devastating habit of not taking showers everyday, walking though clutter and having this grumpy, tramp and miserable image. People associated him to an angry and depressed person. He was indeed in both scenarios and could had a mental disorder that he never paid attention to — but beyond any behavior or mental disorder, what was govern him was the lack of sense of life. No goals, no illusions to run to, no dreams — just living day by day waiting for the final day to come. His day by day was waking up at anytime, eating whatever he had in his fridge, could be rotten food, watching TV, drinking and going back to bed. No healthy activities such as healthy diet, catching up vitamin D from the sun, exercise, socializing which is merely important as we are social creatures, nothing as well that could distract him healthier and take his mind to the future with enthusiasm and a positive outlook. I cannot imagine what he was feeding in his mind as this kept him evidently isolated and angry. He normalized this behavior as he was stuck in his way of thinking, thinking it was the only option to live as. Obviously he never took the time alive to do his homework and question nothing. Several things I learned from this person, who was my uncle, where the following:
• You cannot live life avoiding reality, this takes place with the responsibility of taking care of yourself mentally. Reality avoidance usually drags us to immediate gratifications — we will be no longer life in its fullest, but only determined into pleasure and pain. You need to do your personal homework.
Unfortunately, regardless any religion, some people come to this world with a different process. While some of us find our sense of life in the process of healing, others haven’t reached that process yet and they died before achieving it, because it was not part of their purpose. Again, unfortunately, so many people live their life enduring pain, they are so emotionally attached to pain because pain is the only emotion they have known. They perhaps say they know about peace as comparing it to pleasure, immediate gratifications, a wealthy income and lifestyle, or just been able to sit down watching TV without inner noise. Other people might relate peace to activities such as a religion, reiki, yoga, or even placing incense in their homes — but have they done the inner peace homework? Have they embraced their childhood and personal truth?
• You cannot live life without social interaction and isolated from the world. We are social creatures which need interactions, regardless a person is shy or introvert.
In order to reach inner peace, once healed, you will find that you will have to quit to several things that are no longer healthy in your life, such as habits, mindsets, and relationships — including jobs. You will have to face the fact that you need to change the formula for you to have a better understanding of life. Our formula is basically which thoughts, attitude, behaviors and emotions we are adding to our equation and how our life is the result of this math. Considering everything is associated to the Law of Cause and Effect.
I would like to focus this answer toward “healing”. What does healing means to you? Can be healing an illness, a behavior or a trauma that has kept you feeding wounds, unconciously. What do we expect in healing and how do we see ourselves once healed?
I’ve learned that a healing process takes time. It first starts once you have identified your thoughts and your inner dialogue. You will have to also review your personal history — where you came from, which traumas took you to your current behavior and current way of thinking. Usually when we have wounds such as rejection, we attempt our best to fit into society compromising our identity and ignoring our boundaries. When we have abandonment wounds, we try to control everyone in order to not let them go, such relationships or friendships. We become manipulative and have this extreme sense to control everyone. When we have humillation wounds, we as adults tend to victimize — because victimization was so common in childhood and despite the abuser is no longer in your life, we keep abusing ourselves in so many behaviors. When we have betrayal wound, we turn out to have no trust in people. And when we have injustice wound, we tend to compare ourselves to others, because we always have to be vigilant of others possessions that we lack of — and this evidently creates a low self steem.
Perception of life is the key of our way of living — is how we perceive our reality and take decisions along with our emotions.
Do you regret being married to your current wife?
• Material things are only things. It is our memories, hard work of acquaintance and attachment what makes them valuable to us. A cup of tea left by our grandmother makes it special due to the memories and attachment — at the end of the day the cup of tea is only a cup of tea designed to serve tea, and its usage will be the same for any person. It is like a painter that values his art through a high price because he has determined its quality and hard work, but that art might be only a canvas and colors. We need to stop attaching to things and become conscious that nothing will be taken with us after our death.
• You cannot live life only determined into immediate gratifications. Our brain will develop a behavior were it will only want dopamine, and excessive dopamine, takes you to pain. Pain and dopamine are friends as this is a normal chemical balance — it’s like when he have a dose of sugar, at first we have this sense of joy, but later on we have a sense of feeling down. When we go beyond dopamine, we are affecting the balance, therefore we get into pain later.
• Sleeping is one of the most important tools for anyone to reach inner peace. When you have a poor or extreme sleep, or better said, no sleeping schedule or good sleeping habits, you are disordering what is called “circadian rythm” — our natural biological clock that makes our body rest at night and be productive during the day. This disorder brings us not only fatigue, but mental exhaustion, depression, anxiety and even chronic illnesses. Think of sleep as an activity where we reset our nervous system and not sleeping properly will not benefit this activity.
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• You cannot live life thinking you have the ultimate word and the only way of thinking. There are infinites ways of thinking and living. You need to embrace the fact that there are many people who differ from you, in their way of thinking and that is were, if you ask me, one of the beauties of life — the fact that there are infinite possibilities and nothing is only black and white. Trying to control people’s behavior, attitude and reality perception with only bring you no satisfaction, frustration, pain and conflict. That is as well one of the principles of suffering in Buddhism — understanding that people will never be as you want them to be. Our judgments and beliefs are the result of our personal history and perception of life. You surely can’t change others behavior but you can change your behavior and acceptance towards them.
• You must take care of your body and image to the point you like what you see in the mirror — embracing your body. I’ve questioned for so many years why my home had few mirrors. The only two we had were in my room and a dusty, broken one in our living room. I associated this with the fact that my uncle never liked to see himself, not to mention he hated been photographed as well. Of course, his self image was something ain’t pretty to see — waking in his home in underwear, stinky, hairy, sweaty and dirty. He normalized and I did myself as well for so long walking like that due to the fact I was at my comfort and home. Ignoring the fact that even taking little habits such as dressing up nice even though if no one is watching you, can boost your confidence. I identified this behavior when started working at home, while every single workmate while doing Zoom meetings obviously took a bath, dressed up, I had my camera shut off because I wasn’t. This also influenced my confidence and productivity because I was shattered and low profile. I also adopted this behavior going to do my errands, to the point I preferred feeling comfortable rather than looking pretty. This decision made me do my errands in a rush because I was frightened if any person who knows me could see me. Self image is very important to healing, how you see yourself and how you treat yourself too. Once the healing process started, I began to use that expensive perfume or that special shirt; because every single day is special. No one has the right to take life for granted and say that a special pottery has to be packed when you ain’t know if tomorrow you’ll be alive. Use that special pottery, that dress, that perfume — your special day is today. And that’s where uncertainty comes, to embrace the fact that you don’t know if the day after you’ll still be here. Under the premise that nothing has value or is “special”.
• Apathetic people are usually unhappy and usually focused into their own needs and pain. Empathy is a strong tool that not only increases our development of relation to other people’s pain, but it also decreases the amount of pain we have within ourselves by handling it with a different attitude. I was swamped for 4 years into a chaotic job where I recriminated my body constantly of feeling exhausted and in pain — without been empathetic that I needed to have a work and life balance and a good sleep.
In my healing process, I noticed I was very obsessed with a fatalist inner dialogue. There was no room for positive things, it was all drama and tragic. This is due to a chaotic and dramatic childhood as distress was common and it became part of my personality. Anyways, once my fatalist thoughts started to swamp me, emotions such as distress and anxiety started to govern me. Therefore, all of my actions at any dimension where related to these emotions, could be avoiding people, having panic attacks at random places and making every single activity in a rush. We need to embrace that emotions are temporarily. And when we stuck into an emotion such as distress, anxiety, fear or anger, we extend this emotion, creating an attitude out of it.
• Problems do not exist. There is really no problem outside, it is our judgment, expectations, fears and perception of life that creates the problem and either overcomes it or gets swamped into it.
• Complain doesn’t provide anything but distress, limitations and pain. Complaining is our natural brain response of something that doesn’t feels well to our nervous system. In the other hand, complain might help to inner peace as it makes you identify where your vulnerabilities are and where to change. In most occasions, this can be changed simply by changing our point of view. When you start to complain, make sure you place a goal to change your situation and move forward. There is a lot of people that likes to complain but they won’t do the work to change their situation.
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• Your boundaries end where another person’s boundaries begin. In inner peace seeking, boundaries are extremely important as they provide us the ability to restrict what we know can be damaging to us. Example, if I know I am an emotional person that overcame addiction, I know that I’ll be vulnerable to dramatic people and an alcoholic environment, or even worse, in a group of people that are constantly complaining and drinking. We become conscious of our energy such as where and with whom we place it.
• Stress is mental. People associate stress to work, emotional demanding activities, paying bills, etc. This uncle never had a job as far as I remember, neither bills to pay because my mom was doing the house work and even though he had no concerns such as a normal person might have, this person was always stressed, nervous and distressed. Why? Because stress is mental. It is our response on how we react to our thoughts and emotions. Perhaps to him, as he fed so many negative thoughts in his mind, he had no inner peace, neither calmness. It was a panic to him to listen to noises outside his home when home alone — because precisely he related noises to a robbery or someone trying to damage him. And it could be as simple as someone or a dog passing by. He got stressed out I remember for things such as going outside for some beers, or a dinner, because most likely he related the event of going out from his home to a titanic effort of taking a shower, getting dressed up and having social interaction, beside of any other fear he didn’t work such as getting hit by a car, or any accident alike. He also had this sense of anger when I cooked at my neighbors and had to eventually take some ingredients out of the kitchen, and it could be a huge discussion, because first of all he was avoiding contact at its maximum and secondly because it was a distress for him to feel or to think he might ran out of food when evidently he didnt work or had any income to provide to the family. All of these are examples of how perception influences your thoughts, emotions and actions. For sure, it was a tragic and fatalist perception with so many wounds he dragged to his mid 60s. My empathy says that if I have learned all of this while he was alive, perhaps I could have helped. But certainly, I would haven’t been able to due to his strong disordered perception of life.
Anyway, I extended a lot there, and my mission has been to understand his pain throughout love and empathy, as a person who provided me so much pain, I have learned to let that person go, and forgive. Conscious that all of his actions were not personally to me and that he was never conscious of his wounds — this takes me back to the statement that his process of sense of life was completely different to mine.
Emotions. Emotions as I’ve said before, are temporarily. Inner peace doesn’t means you will have to live with happy emotions for the rest of your life. It means to embrace every single emotion, without fear and judgment. Many people have said that emotions are good. I differ to this thinking as I’ve learned that emotions are neutral — it’s our judgment which gives them a significance; could be either good or bad.
• You cannot live life distressed and thinking the worse can happen. A negative mindset will only increase your cortisol — the hormone of stress — and eventually make you ill. Yes, thoughts are also connected to our health. A distressed or angry person can develop chronic illnesses. Bad emotion management can do it as well.
• You cannot live life only focused in the past — neither in the great things you achieved or the pain you endured.
Gratifications in life are healthy, such as working hard during all day and finally go out for some dinner, beers, relaxation techniques or a vacation. Anything that provides you pleasure after effort, sacrifice or a sense of saying “I deserve this”. This pattern enhances a balance between “work hard, play hard.” But what happens when we search for these gratifications as immediate? We have a low self management of stress, we tend to procrastinate responsibilities, we develop a loss of valuing things, we avoid frustration and we can develop any addiction because we are only focused into the compensation, not into the effort. This is very important because if we have the behavior of seeking immediate gratifications, we will teach our brain to always focus into dopamine and pleasure — developing all of the factors I’ve mentioned and I like to mention that chemically there is indeed a balance in our brain between dopamine and pain. When we push dopamine, pain will come shortly after. A natural response of our brain to chemically find the correct balance. Immediate gratifications can be found in social media usage, addictions, pornography, sex, gambling, binge eating or even exercise, all of this taken to extreme measures.
For many years, due to childhood trauma and alcoholism, I was an egocentric adult with no goals in life and just working pretty hard to fulfill his immediate gratifications, because I taught my brain to search for dopamine everytime I could. This extreme sense of dopamine took me do distress and discomfort at a certain time of life — we can’t live our lives only with binge drinking, binge eating and avoiding our reality.
• If you feeling depressed, check out your daily habits, what you are feeding your brain and make sure you review your current life. You’re perhaps not depressed — only having an empty life.
What thing happened to you as a child that you haven’t let go of to this day?
Have you ever thought why there is angry people that gets angry for any reason or they walk in life offending and insulting everyone? Because this people, apart they haven’t done their inner homework, they have been stuck in the anger emotion for so much time, they have normalized it to be part of their lives. Angry people are usually only frustrated and angry with themselves and their personal history. And in a certain way they have this hermetic ego which makes them believe his lifestyle is the only lifestyle they can live. That was healing also does — it provides you an open perspective that there are infinite ways of living and that you’re the only one you can decide which way fits you the best.
• When you don’t have a sense of gratitude, try to develop it focusing in things that makes you feel happy or in comfort. As for example, it might be difficult to people to be grateful for things we might take for granted such as grateful for a house, a job, food — so it is much easier to develop this grateful attitude when we focus in things that had a journey of effort in our lives. In my experience, I started been grateful for a comfortable and clean bed where to rest comfortably, instead of feeling grateful for the bed itself I’ve been having all my life. Grateful for a colorful dish I cooked by my own with ingredients and food that demanded me an effort of purchasing, instead of grateful of food itself I know at a certain point I won’t starve. Grateful for a dog or a cat that provides me calmness. Grateful for having a cozy and safe homes. If you cannot focus in gratitude in full, try to add adjectives to the things you are taking for granted. A loving mother, a comfortable home, a good income job, a delicious lunch. With this practice you will enhance your sense of gratitude and for sure will start learning to be grateful for everything, even things you took for granted and was not at the naked eye.
Embracing uncertainty provides you a sense of letting go and stop trying to control everything you cannot control. In Buddhism, this is one of the principles of suffering — pain is found in trying to control what you cannot control. Embracing life living day by day, conscious that life is ephemeral and no second nor minute after are taken for granted.
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• Life ain’t perfect. And living is an uncomfortable journey where we require talent, hard working, sacrifice, patience and discomfort. However the good work is done when we learn to overcome this, consciously that discomfort can take us to success if we have our goals and aspirations set up in our mind.
Embracing our personal truth, our personal history, bringing our inner dialogue to a positive level, enjoying the present day by day, placing boundaries, getting to know our emotions and our nervous system, been kind, empathetic, resilient, understanding that life can’t be taken for granted, that we cannot control every setting, and that life is aimed to be enjoyed, not to be endured, to me are the most significant steps to reach inner peace. We can’t live all of our life distressed, trying to control things, thinking the worse, living with bad habits — our nervous system doesn’t works efficiently. And if you ask me, the nervous system can be an enemy or a friend to your peace. Up to you how you relate with it.
• You cannot live life in an hoarding environment as it robs you energy and emotional resources. This is such a circle that can lead you to depression and depression leads you to clutter. We have to be mindful that hoarding is a mental disorder but if you are always able to heal.
• You cannot live life with an extreme sense of guilt. Guilt is the worse emotion to endure as first of all, is the emotion with the lowest vibration. And secondly, guilt doesn’t contributes to anything. Making yourself responsible does. When we have the domain of recalling memories without guilt, we have the power of healing. It is up to us to focus on our mistakes with sense of guilt which only isolates us, makes our confidence and self esteem tremble or to take responsibility and learn from our mistakes. Memories without guilt is empowerment. Learning that perhaps the mistakes you did where because of the lack of a tool or an information.
Once we have identified our wounds, we start to identify our behavior. And we start to question relationships, jobs you have accepted and endured, reactions you have experienced and mostly important, we identify our perception of life.
Once we get to go the point to understand “healing” and communicate better with our inner dialogue, we can begin searching for inner peace. Inner peace ain’t an emotion such as joy or happiness — it’s the ability to overcome adversities in your life with calmness and grace, embracing two things: uncertainty and emotions.
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One of the most challenging, overwhelming but most beautiful journeys a man can do. My following experience is not attached to any religion.
• People can develop a relationship or romance with pain as pain is the only emotion they have dealt within their lives and as it makes them feel “alive”.