The Seeing Sequence meets self-attacks on my happiness about good performance and good luck

Updated November 27, 2024; December 2, 2025; Feb.1/26

(Short version far below)

The Problem

Whenever I feel happy, I immediately find fault with it/second guess it/attack it/oppose it.

The Cause

Bitch and complain (also called “flow” or “flow-with”) the psr’s, often many times (instructions are in the examples below). The repetitions build a memory centre that pulls my focus into it. While there, I don’t oppose myself by finding fault with every thought that  forms my true response (my decision).  Instead, I simply externalize it.

Good to know:

1. While my mind can go blank more than a few times in a day, most of the time my mind produces a constant stream of thoughts and feelings. This stream causes many distractions, all day every day. In order to survive, (that means not die), I need to be good at ignoring them.
2. All loss, no matter how small, causes pain. That pain is the feeling called grief. Thus, loss causes grief.
3. Since failure causes loss of what I was trying to achieve, the loss caused  by failure causes grief. The most important failure in daily life is the failure to ignore the distractions that appear at the end of my thought that forms my true response, my decision. I call the grief triggered by my failing to ignore distractions,”the pain of failing to ignore”.
4. Everyone is born with a different intensity of the pain of failing to ignore.
5. If my pain of failing to ignore is strong, I am naturally afraid of it. The appearance in my mind of a decision triggers the need to ignore distractions. Failing to ignore them triggers my high pain of failing to ignore, which triggers my fear of that pain. As a result, I’m  afraid of making any decision. When my fear of making a decision appears, I’m compelled to solve the fear. So, I search for the cause of my fear. I find that the cause is problems – faults –  with the decision and solve those faults. Solving gets me the positive feeling of relief. Relief replaces my fear and so distracts me from the pain of failing to ignore. The result: I’m always editing (looking for and solving flaws), in other words, problem-solving, the thought that forms my decision. I edit in order to get relief from my normal fear of this abnormally high pain.
6. One of these edits/problem-solving responses (psr’s) to a decision is the fantasy that the feeling of relief will make me feel like acting, feel motivated to act, on my decision. (Here lieth the source of the world’s fruitless search for motivation.) But it doesn’t work. As soon as I solve one problem, a new one appears. In fact, solving signals my brain that I want to do more solving, so I can get more relief. So, it brings me more problems. Quickly, the problem solving gains momentum, and becomes out of my control until it becomes frightening and snaps me out of it. I call this constant line of psr’s “fear driven seeking of relief” or “second guessing” or “obsessing” or “bad momentum” about my decision. It’s the outcome of trying to feel like acting on my decision.
7. If my pain of failing to ignore is weak, I’m  not afraid of it. Therefore, my brain doesn’t produce anxiety – an abnormal fear of a normal situation, and other psr’s that mess around with my decision. I’m free to focus on externalizing it by matching my actions to the image of me acting -my action image,  that’s in my mind.
8. All emotions, including the grief caused by loss of anything, big or small, will keep coming back if opposed. To solve grief, including by avoiding it, is to oppose it. As a result, solving grief causes it to come back.
9. All my problems are caused by me trying to solve/oppose the pain of failing to ignore. Culture says I should fix this pain. My brain says I should feel it, that is, suffer it, and see how it won’t harm me if I do. This will make me ignore it by my moving my focus onward to seeing and externalizing my true response/my decision by matching my actions to the action image of my decision.

The Seeing Sequence is the sequence of  bitching and complaining /flow/deconstructing, psr’s in order to see my true response. It gets me to stop believing my psr’s which gets me to stop trying to solve the pain of failing to ignore. As a result, the pain, like all emotion, runs out by itself, most often in bits, not all at once.  A good and almost must-read:  Why the Seeing Sequence works.

(NB (nota bene, Latin for note well): words below, that are in brackets or separated by forward slashes, mean I can choose from several wordings, or the words are instructions, or blanks to fill in that fit my own experience.)

How to Bitch and Complain/Flow with/Deconstruct  Psr’s using the following Example List

1.  I’m happy I escaped.

2.  I’m racing/playing well.

3. I just got lucky.

Example 1

 I’m happy I escaped. 

I’m  walking to school. Males are ahead on the road. They will show me sexual attraction or ask me for sex, like they have before. Some have harassed me more. I sneak into the woods before they notice me and slip past them. I’m happy I made it. Now I’m thinking I’ll fail to get by them someday and bad things will happen to me.

Step 1

Pick the thought or feeling I think is a psr.  Optional: A useful guide: The Database of Psr’s

I’ll fail to get by them someday.

Classify my emotional response to the psr using three simple classes:

“good me” for feelings that are positive (pleasure) or for feelings that I imagine will solve things fast. ( For example: anger always comes with the fantasy that I can shake up the environment or even my own mind into changing from not going my way to going my way, Thus, the feeling this fantasy triggers is good. Thus, “good me, I’m angry”.

“bad me” for hurting or judging myself, by predicting failure or by presenting a problem to spoil my happiness.

“poor me”  for fear and for feeling sorry for myself.

(NB. I decide on how many psr’s I want to b and c. It could be just one, or I could do all of them until they stop coming. The more I practice, the closer I get to one, then a ghost of one, then none. The number of practices is like learning to walk, or to play a musical instrument, or to play a sport well or to cook food well, or do anything well. It’s a large number. )

Like this:

I’ll fail to get by them someday. Poor me.

Bad me, predicting failure (PF6 in the database of PSR’s).

Bad things will happen to me. Bad me, jumping to a worst case scenario. (PF3 in the Database of Psr’s).

Poor me, now I’m afraid.

Step 2

The reversal: (find the cause of the psr’s, not by asking why, but by imagining what I would see if I didn’t do psr’s to myself.)

Because poor me if I didn’t (scare myself by jumping to a worst-case scenario),

I’m afraid I’ll see I’m in the pain of failing to ignore distractions, (which occur at the end of my thought that forms my true response; that wording is coming below)

namely, the delay in the pleasure of getting over the grief from the loss

of momentum caused by the end of what I was just doing:

(which was) __________

(

I fill this in using one of five possible “endings”. If I don’t know which one to choose, I can guess.

Endings

1) “the end of what I was just doing, (which was): imagining my action image if I see all the parts of it, or previewing my action image if I see a quick glimpse before I work out the parts”.  (

Examples:

All parts – doing something I’ve practised many times.

Quick glimpse: I see myself putting down a chopping knife just before I come to the end of using it, but my work surface is crowded and I haven’t yet looked for a place to put it.

2) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): trying and failing to match my action to my action image“.

Example: My failing to look at an object all the way to my reaching for it and grasping it.

3) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): feeling my happiness/satisfaction about my success (at forming and externalizing my true response, in other words, “at matching my action to my action image)”

Example: I look where I’m reaching for an object that’s not easy to hold onto, like twigs to start a cooking fire.

Or “feeling happy/satisfied/content about what just came into my mind without me trying”. This happiness is more passive than me matching my true response. It’s just experiencing, that is, enjoying, receiving/observing-not-solving, not editing, not perfecting, not putting my mark on, what the environment  or my mind gives me that fits me and therefore triggers pleasure.

Example 1: something beautiful coming into my view. For this the wording is “the end of what I was just doing: enjoying seeing beauty, or feeling lucky (seeing beauty”.

Example 2: While observing a situation, usually a real problem, I get a bright idea about how to understand it or how to solve it, or both.  I use this wording: “the end of what I was just doing: feeling happy that a bright idea popped into my mind.”

4) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): experiencing or observing a problem (or something that is different from what fits me), that I can’t solve now or have no business solving even if I could, or both.”

(Four Examples from an endless list:)

a) observing your lazy consideration (about what you know I need you to consider). (Example: your anger at me for being independent of you.)

b) observing your disapproval. Example: my shun of your lazy consideration.

c) observing your fear of making the transition on your own from awake to falling asleep; and your attempts to get me to fix that fear for you.

d) experiencing a coincidence that doesn’t fit me (bad luck, such as an accident, or anything I have no interest in, like most distractions): This ending is similar to 2) above in that the end is a failure. But the difference is that it’s a failure of the environment to go my way, while 2) is my failure to make myself go my way.

5)  the end of what I was just doing (which was): being in a blank, (a state of no thought or feeling).”

A blank occurs when:

a) I don’t know or can’t remember what to think when I need to find an answer. This could be before I’ve tried to figure it out or after I’ve run out of ideas. Example: a math equation.

b) I finish a feeling, say happiness, that isn’t a psr. Or I finish matching my action to my action image, and I haven’t decided what to do next.

Example: A common sequence in me: a blank; then the psr “predicting failure” predicts the blank will fail to be brief; that causes fear which is another psr;  then a third psr: fix the fear in the quickest way I can think of – repeat what I just finished thinking or saying. Thus, I often repeat myself to fill in blanks.

)

(End of endings, now continuing with bnc)

I choose: ____________) feeling my happiness/satisfaction about my success: celebrating my success/riding the wave of happiness I felt about my escape.

At the end of my thought that forms my true response:

I’m already dead inside about this act of ignoring. (Dead inside means I don’t at all feel like ignoring)

But I have to ignore anyway (if I want to get to my true response out there, which is to get back to savouring/relishing/flowing with my enjoyment of my success).

So start ignoring the delay by  moving my focus on to

(ignoring is done by focusing on something other than the thing I want to ignore)(I want to ignore the delay in getting over grief, so I focus on something – matching the action image of my decision with action  – other than the delay in getting over grief)

mechanically (which means without feeling like it/without motivation)

(externalizing my true response/decision by matching my external action to the action image of my decision/true response)

______.”(I describe the action image of my true response)

going with the next wave of happiness my success created.

Step 3

Wait to see what comes into my mind.

If another psr, repeat Steps 1 and 2 until:  psr’s stop, or I decide to stop, or I run out of time and have to do something else.

If my true response, I naturally (in first-party observing self/unselfconsciously/without stepping outside myself/without thinking) externalize my true response/decision by matching my action to my action image.

I celebrate with a private fist pump, a small smile, a sigh of relief, and go on to school.

Short version:

psrs: bad me, predicting failure to bypass them (harassers) next time and jumping to a worst case scenario

distraction:  (delay in the pleasure of getting over) grief from loss of momentum (caused by)

end of what I was just doing:  feeling happy about my success (good performance) at sneaking by them

true response:  I flow with the wave of satisfaction that I made it. I fist pump and sigh with relief.

Repeat all until I do it.

Example 2

I’m racing/playing well

I pass a few other racers fairly easily. I quickly bump a few other players who try to slow me down. I try to figure out how to get around them, when they race/play harder against me.

A good idea comes to me, and I feel happy, Then I rapidly feel let down because I’m scared I’ll fail, because I just predicted I would fail to execute my idea correctly or I would fail to make the impact I’m visualizing. I try to fix this by trying less hard while I think about it. I’ve lost my concentration. The other players play better than me, and I fail to recover in time.

Step 1

Pick the thought or feeling I think is a psr.  Optional: A useful guide: The Database of Psr’s

(In this example,) I predict failure when I’m happy. (PF6 in the Database)

Classify my emotional response to the psr using three simple classes:

“good me” for feelings that are positive (pleasure) or for feelings that I imagine will solve things fast (anger always comes with the fantasy that I can shake up the environment into going my way),

“bad me” for hurting or judging myself.

“poor me”  for fear and for feeling sorry for myself.

(NB. I decide on how many psr’s I want to b and c. It could be just one, or I could do all of them until they stop coming. The more I practice, the closer I get to one, then a ghost of one, then none. The number of practices is like learning to walk, or to play a musical instrument, or to play a sport well or to cook food well, or do anything well. It’s a large number. )

Like this:

Bad me, predicting failure to get the result I’m planning.

Good me, I’ll think about how to fix the failure.

Good me, I’ll back off my plan and see if the fear goes away.

Good me, maybe then I’ll feel like trying it.

Good me, I love the fantasy I can depend on feeling happy in order to carry out/act on/externalize my decision.

Poor me, I’ve lost the moment to act and now I’m being out-played/out-raced.

Poor me, I didn’t think things could turn against me so fast.

Good me, replay the past and try to imagine how I fix it.

Poor me, that puts me even further out of the action.

Step 2

The reversal: (find the cause of the psr’s, not by asking why, but by imagining what I would see if I didn’t do psr’s to myself.)

Because poor me if I didn’t (predict failure and replace my happiness with fear of failure),

I’m afraid I’ll see I’m in the pain of failing to ignore distractions,

namely, the delay in the pleasure of getting over the grief from the loss

of momentum caused by the end of what I was just doing:

(which was) _______ .

(

I fill this in using one of five possible “endings”. If I don’t know which one to choose, I can guess.

Endings

1) “the end of what I was just doing, (which was): imagining my action image if I see all the parts of it, or previewing my action image if I see a quick glimpse before I work out the parts”.

Examples:

All parts – doing something I’ve practised many times.

Quick glimpse: I see myself putting down a chopping knife just before I come to the end of using it, but my work surface is crowded and I haven’t yet looked for a place to put it.

2) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): trying and failing to match my action to my action image“.

Example: My failing to look at an object all the way to my reaching for it and grasping it.

3) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): feeling my happiness/satisfaction about my success (at forming and externalizing my true response, in other words, “at matching my action to my action image)”

Example: I look where I’m reaching for an object that’s not easy to hold onto, like twigs to start a cooking fire.

Or “feeling happy/satisfied/content about what just came into my mind without me trying”. This happiness is more passive than me matching my true response. It’s just experiencing, that is, enjoying, receiving/observing-not-solving, not editing, not perfecting, not putting my mark on, what the environment  or my mind gives me that fits me and therefore triggers pleasure.

Example 1: something beautiful coming into my view. For this the wording is “the end of what I was just doing: enjoying seeing beauty, or feeling lucky (seeing beauty”.

Example 2: While observing a situation, usually a real problem, I get a bright idea about how to understand it or how to solve it, or both.  I use this wording: “the end of what I was just doing: feeling happy that a bright idea popped into my mind.”

4) “the end of what I was just doing (which was): experiencing or observing a problem (or something that is different from what fits me), that I can’t solve now or have no business solving even if I could, or both.”

(Four Examples from an endless list:)

a) observing your lazy consideration (about what you know I need you to consider). (Example: your anger at me for being independent of you.)

b) observing your disapproval. Example: my shun of your lazy consideration.

c) observing your fear of making the transition on your own from awake to falling asleep; and your attempts to get me to fix that fear for you.

d) experiencing a coincidence that doesn’t fit me (bad luck, such as an accident, or anything I have no interest in, like most distractions): This ending is similar to 2) above in that the end is a failure. But the difference is that it’s a failure of the environment to go my way, while 2) is my failure to make myself go my way.

5)  the end of what I was just doing (which was): being in a blank, (a state of no thought or feeling).”

A blank occurs when:

a) I don’t know or can’t remember what to think when I need to find an answer. This could be before I’ve tried to figure it out or after I’ve run out of ideas. Example: a math equation.

b) I finish a feeling, say happiness, that isn’t a psr. Or I finish matching my action to my action image, and I haven’t decided what to do next.

Example: A common sequence in me: a blank; then the psr “predicting failure” predicts the blank will fail to be brief; that causes fear which is another psr;  then a third psr: fix the fear in the quickest way I can think of – repeat what I just finished thinking or saying. Thus, I often repeat myself to fill in blanks.

)

(End of endings, now continuing with bnc)

(I choose: ____________) feeling happy that a bright idea popped into my mind.

At the end of my thought that forms my true response:

I’m already dead inside about this act of ignoring.

But I have to ignore anyway.

So start ignoring the delay by moving my focus on to

mechanically

(which means without feeling like it/without motivation) (matching my external action to the action image of my decision)

(externalizing my true response/decision by matching my external action to the action image of my decision/true response)

carrying out my plan to crush my opponents with my brilliant idea.

Step 3

Wait to see what comes into my mind next.

If another psr, repeat Steps 1 and 2 until: psr’s stop, or I decide to stop, or I run out of time and have to do something else.

If my true response, I naturally

(which means in first-party observing self/unselfconsciously/without stepping outside myself/without thinking)

with steely execution, leave my poor fellow competitors in the dust.

Short version:

psrs: poor me, feeling like doing my idea never came

distraction:  (delay in the pleasure of getting over) grief from loss of momentum (caused by)

ending (end of what I was just doing): feeling happy about my brilliant countermove to my opponents 

true response: Execute, execute.

Repeat all until I do it.

Example 3

I’m lucky: I saw beauty, I saw fun, I received the kindness of a stranger, I experienced love, I escaped death, I escaped injury… (quite a day).

Step 1

I feel sad there isn’t more luck, poor me.

That’s because, bad me, I’m predicting failure to get lucky again.

Good me, look on the bright side of my luck, which means I’m re-enacting the positive event to get the positive feeling it gave me, in order to solve my imaginary sadness, good me.

Step 2

Because poor me if I didn’t (predict failure to get lucky again and solve it by re-enacting (the lucky event)

I’m afraid I’ll see I’m in the pain of failing to ignore distractions,

namely, the delay in the pleasure of getting over the grief from the loss

of momentum caused by the end of what I was just doing:

(which was) _______ .(feeling happy that I was lucky)

Step 3 

At the end of my thought that forms my true response:

I’m already dead inside about this act of ignoring.

But I have to ignore anyway.

So start ignoring the delay by moving my focus on to

mechanically

trying again to enjoy my luck without attacking it. And when the enjoyment ends, say goodbye. 

Short version:

psrs: poor me, feeling sorry for myself there isn’t more.

distraction:  (delay in the pleasure of getting over) grief from loss of momentum (caused by)

end of what I was just doing: enjoying good luck

true response/decision: try again to enjoy and then say goodbye to it. 

Repeat all until I do it.

Postscript 1

Happiness comes in waves. Thus it rises and falls and rises again until the brain gets used to it and no longer gives me a feeling. It’s that first quick loss of momentum that triggers the psr’s that make me think it won’t come back. If I b and c, in order to ride out the delay in the pleasure of getting over my grief at the loss of momentum, I come to this indestructible (in the moment) state: Patience. Patience. For the next wave to come.

Postscript 2

Reminder 1 to self:

To b and c or not to b and c. That is the question. To b and c is to suffer the frustration of missing the starting signal – a psr, an astonishingly large number of times. To not b and c is to suffer repeating anxiety and the exhausting work of trying to solve it. Thus, both ways are difficult. And that sucks. But only I can decide which way I want my existence to suck in any moment, when I do catch the signal, the psr.

Reminder 2 to self:

I need to memorize these sentences or I’ll never do them. And even when I do memorize them, it will take more suffering my anxiety before I remember to do them, and even more suffering before I even decide to do them after I remember. Even then, I’ll need more practice to do it live, in the moment. That’s the easiest way? Yup.

Reminder 3 to self:

The above two reminders are about what causes change in my brain: persistent practice that builds alternate memory centres. Change doesn’t come from  judgment or punishment or encouragement or copying rules or help from another. So I’m free not to use them, and I’m especially free from needing to judge myself for not using them.

To repeat in another way: the only thing that changes my brain is seeing through the tricks my anxiety plays on me to solve itself, and disbelieving them by b and c, over and over again. Only then will I have built a new memory centre, a new planet, of bitching and complaining/deconstructing that redirects my focus onto my true response.

Reminder 4 to self:

Question

Why don’t I just say what the distraction is? It’s grief. The grief from the loss of momentum caused by the end of whatever I was just doing,

Answer

Because grief would not be a distraction if it went away instantly. While grief is brief, like all emotion, it keeps coming back in waves. While I’m feeling the grief, I’m distracted into checking how long it’s lasting. As a result, the distraction is not the grief. It’s the delay in the pleasure, the relief,  of getting it over with.  That delay in getting over grief from loss of momentum occurs in the instant I have to transition, that is, change, my focus, from the high return work of forming my true response to the low return work of  externalizing it. In other words, to go from fun to boredom without complaint.

Reminder Summary

To take this answer back to where I started seeing. Me being distracted means I have failed to ignore when I most need to ignore. My high pain of failing to ignore is triggered by this failure. Because the pain is intense, it frightens me. To solve the fear, my brain is compelled to use psr’s to fix, not the fear, but its cause, the pain.

But, if I want to avoid disappointing myself by failing to externalize my true response, followed by my scrambling to adapt to the consequences, I must not give in to the fixing of the pain of failing to ignore. Through more repetitions than I ever feared, and in every part of my life, I must train myself to b and c until I can  mechanically, like a reflex, focus on externalizing my true response.