Acne may be the greatest gift life has given you so far.
When you are looking at the mirror in anxiety about the big, new pimple you just got and worrying how you are going to get through the day it may not seem like much of a gift. More like a curse.
You may not realize it yet, but in those moments of anxiety and despair lay they keys to happiness and clear skin.
Bad times give us much needed shaking. They lay bare the insane ways we live our lives. This is true in both collective and individual levels. Collective tragedies, such as war and injustice, expose our collective insanity. Similarly your personal tragedies, such as acne, can show your own insanity.
I’m not talking about insanity as mental disorder. I’m talking about insanity as creating unnecessary suffering in your own life. Insanity is living in despair and frustration when you could live in peace and happiness.
Challenges act as stress tests. They show the parts in you that aren’t working. Suffering and negativity is like a friend shaking you and shouting at your face “just look at what you do to yourself!”. If you are willing to listen, you can learn a valuable lesson.
All suffering starts in the mind
Your mind creates all your suffering. External events are simply excuses for your mind to create more suffering. You suffer when you focus on something you don’t want. That’s the only way to feel bad. Try focusing on something you want and feeling bad at the same time - it’s impossible.
Most people don’t exercise much control over their focus. The focusing process is on autopilot, and so are their emotions.
The mind is a bit like a computer; it works by executing installed programs. Your beliefs and ideas about yourself and the world are examples of these programs. The job of your mind is to make those beliefs and ideas come true to you. If you don’t think much of yourself, well… then that’s what you are going to get. If you believe you are sad and lonely, then it’s the job of your mind to make sure that’s true to you. Your wish is your mind’s command.
Your mind scans the environment you are in for information that matches your programming. It then brings that information into your awareness for you to focus on - and to feel bad about.
Your beliefs work a bit like colored glasses. If you look at the world through green glasses everything is tinted with green. The glasses don’t change the world you are looking at, they simple change your perception of it. If you look at the world through glasses of desperation, frustration and low self-esteem that’s what it looks to you.
Changing from green glasses to red ones gives you a new perception. Everything looks red now. Going from sadness and frustration to happiness and hope gives you a whole new perspective on the world.
Can you see yourself with clear skin?
This has a lot to do with getting clear. First, negative emotions are toxic to your health, but that’s not the main reason. Your external life always reflects your internal life. What goes on inside of your head happens outside of your head. If you see yourself as an acne victims who is plagued with this invincible curse, that’s what you get. It cannot be in any other way.
To get over acne you first have to see it as something you can get over with; then you have to see and accept yourself as a person with clear skin. You have to put on new glasses.
This is the missing piece from all acne cures and books. The updated version of Clear for Life talks about this in more detail. Since this is such an important point I’ve made this section available to my customers even before the updated version of Clear for Life is released.
If you are my customer you can get the section here:
http://community.natural-acne-solution.com/forum/topics/emotional-and-spiritual
There’s more to this than simply changing glasses. Most people are totally identified with their mind. They think they are this [insert your name] person, who is so and so many years old, works/does this, and this and that is going on in their life. In other words they are identified with their story, or their ego, as some would call it.
You are not your story
They don’t realize that this story is the glasses they wear, not who they really are.
Once you become aware of the mental processes (glasses) that color your perception you’ll see this clearly. Once you’ve changed these processes few times and seen how that changes your world it’s easy to see they are not you. That you are not your story.
If you are your story then how could you change it? Who would be the one that changes it?
This realization will forever change your world. An irrevocable change process begins. The grip of your mind over your life starts to weaken. And with the mind goes the insanity and suffering it creates. To the extent you can see you are not your mind, not your story, to the extent you experience peace and joy - regardless of what happens to you.
Without the mind playing its dirty tricks on you it’s impossible to suffer.
When you realize that the I, [insert your name] as a desperate acne victim, is just a story you’ve accepted, you can let go of the story. When you let go of the story you create an opening for a different reality to emerge. Perhaps one where you have clear skin?
Clear skin doesn’t happen by some divine magic or any other mystical means. It happens by you taking concrete action to create it. But when you let go of your old story you also let go of the limitations it imposes on you. Remember, your life always matches with your story. When you let go of your old story you open up to new possibilities. Perhaps a book just jumps off the shelve that has the answers to your problem. Perhaps you just stumble on a website that has the answers.
Your mind finds a way to bring you new internal reality into your external world; just like it did with the old internal reality.
The power of Now
Challenging times and suffering create the opening for that transition to happen. When you suffer you can go inside and see how that happens. When you observe yourself doing suffering, you’ll see that the suffering is not a part of you but rather something you do. This realization spells the end of suffering and feeling bad.
You can only do this when you are present in the moment. Luckily it doesn’t cost you anything and is to do easy with practice.
Learning to be present in the Now is a skill, and like any skill, takes some practice to get good at.
Here are few ways to bring your focus into the present moment.
Observe your breath. Breath is one of the easiest ways to access the present moment. Simply watch as breath flows in and out of your body. Observe how your lungs, abdomen and chest expand when you breathe in and contract as you breathe out.
As you watch your breath notice how thinking stops. Your mind cannot survive in the present moment. It wants you to focus on the future or the past. To your mind present moment is simply means to a better future and thus to be discarded. But if you ignore the present moment you throw away the only way you can make a meaningful change in your life. Better tomorrow never comes as long as you try to escape the horrors of today.
So when you notice yourself thinking about the past or the future bring your focus back to the present moment and notice how the constant stream of thinking stops. That’s when you are in the present moment and free to see the mind for what it is.
Another way to access the present moment is to focus on what you experience in the moment. If you are sitting, feel what it feels like to sit. Focus on how your clothing feels on your skin, and the pressure on your buttocks and the backs of your legs. Feel your feet touching the floor. Again notice how you can’t focus on your experience and think at the same time.
In the Power of Now Eckhart Tolle gives another way to access the present moment. Become aware of your ‘inner’ body. Feel the energy in your body. Initially it may be easier to just focus on one body part, such as your hand, and feel the energy there. You may feel just the light tingle, but that’s it. Just focus on that feeling and it gets stronger. Later on you can feel the same energy in and surrounding your whole body.
I highly recommend you pick up Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now and read it. He talks about the power of the present moment and how to access it in much more detail. His other book The New Earth also helped me a lot. I got the inspiration to write this as I finished it earlier today.
Please try these exercises today. See which you like and make them a part of your daily life. Use any idle moment you have to practice. That way you’ll never be bored and always have something ‘to do’.
At first you may be able to access the present moment only for few seconds before your mind takes over again. But that’s enough. It’s enough to create an opening and with practice the gaps in thinking get longer and longer.
Accepting what is ends suffering
When you are at the present moment your next job is to accept it as it is. What is, is, and nothing you can do about it. So if at the moment you experience any negative emotions simply accept them. Resistance is the domain of the mind and only perpetuates the negative emotions.
Simply acknowledge how you feel and that is it. Accepting doesn’t mean resigning to your fate and thinking you can’t change anything. Accepting means seeing your reality as it is in the moment. It’s the only sane thing to do.
If it helps you can try seeing the negative emotion as some external object and resistance as pushing it away. When you stop resisting you stop pushing.
The negative emotion probably weakens significantly as you accept it, it may even go away completely and you’ll notice you are at peace.
If the negative emotion didn’t go away completely just observe it with curiosity. Don’t try to change it or push it way. Simply observe it. See what’s behind it. Ask yourself “could I let go of this feeling?”. As you keep doing this you’ll notice that the negative emotion vanishes completely.
Can you accept your acne?
Here’s how to take this a step further. This may be a bit uncomfortable at first, but please try this.
Find a mirror and look at yourself. If you see acne and that makes you feel bad, even better. Then focus on your breath and access the present moment. When you are present work on accepting what you see.
If you have acne, no power in the world is going change it today; probably not even this week. Your skin is what it is. The only sane thing to do is to accept it as it is.
Resisting your skin or wanting it to be something else simply creates more suffering. It’s no different than frustrating over the fact that rocks are hard. You wanting them to be soft won’t change the facts. It only creates suffering for you.
If you can’t let go of resisting your acne, accept that. Acknowledge that you can’t stop resisting it. Stop resisting the resisting. Then simply observe the resistance with curiosity and see what happens.
Then work on accepting your skin as it is. I’m not saying you have to be happy about your skin. You probably won’t be. It also doesn’t mean you resign to it. Acceptance simply means seeing your skin for what it is. Accepting means letting it be what it is, for now. When you accept you stop doing suffering. When you stop suffering you create an opening for a different reality to emerge.
As you work on accepting your acne the story of yourself as helpless acne victim weakens. As your story and external reality always match, along with the story goes the struggle and frustration it brings.
What do you think happens to your acne if your new story is one where you are at peace with your skin? The worst that could happen is that your acne stays the same, but it doesn’t bother you anymore. You simply look at it with no emotion at all.
So, in your head you have your little Aladdin’s Lamp. Your wish is its command. If you choose to see acne and a harbinger of misery and suffering, that’s what you experience. You can have this experience as long as you want. And you can end it anytime you want. Simply choose again. Choose to see acne as a gateway to happiness and overcoming your limitations and that’s what you get.
It’s your choice.
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Clear for Life - The lifestyle for health, happiness and clear skin
February 9th, 2009 at 11:32 am
What a coincidence tha you publish this! After reading Buddhist texts I have been working on accepting myself and imagining myself with clear skin. I see 70% improvement in my skin condition
wud recommend everyone to try it out.. theres nothing to lose.. thanks for including it in your series .. ! Another topic you could probably cover is releasing repressed emotions which I think also plays a big role.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Congratulations for making good progress! You can release any emotion you hold by being present and not resisting it. Resistance locks the emotions in place. When you stop pushing them away and just accept them they go away on their own.
February 9th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Thank you for posting this! I strongly believe in the stuff you are talking about. It also has a little bit to do with the law of attraction which i have studied in depth. It is great to be told that doing away with the negative thoughts can help with acne. I am working on this every day.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:11 am
I really like the approach you have taken towards this miserable skin condition called acne. Although for better then 20 - years of my life and fighting this problem and having tried every one of the remedies you have outlined in your book “Clear for Life,” I have not heard of someone putting all the available information together where it makes “clear,” sense, LOL Although I have only recently finished reading Clear for Life,” and just began a new diet and applying what I have learned. I must admit I am teatering mentally whether this program will be yet another tried but unsuccesfull attempt at getting clear or if in fact this will forever change my life as I knew it .And Im favoring the latter at the moment. Thanks for your encouraging life stories/forums. I can really relate to you.:)
February 10th, 2009 at 6:49 am
this technique is what i started to do when i first discovered clear for life. i didn’t care about my acne at all then it started to go away. i was feeling the best i had ever felt. but once in a while ill get the fat mountain zit in between the eyes or some where and that’s like a thousand times harder to just accept and forget about as opposed to have acne all over my face. because in my mind i knew anyone who looked at me there attention was directed to the fat zit. and i found my self feeling worse and depressed then when i had acne all over.
February 10th, 2009 at 7:53 am
Mike,
Dealing away with negative thoughts and limiting beliefs has a lot to do with everything in life. Your beliefs literally create your experience of life.
Instead of calling them beliefs we should call them choices because that’s what they really are. Choices of the kinds of experiences and emotions you would like to experience. Of course these are often not conscious choices. But even if you choose at subconscious level they are still choices.
Let’s see how this relates to acne. That fact that you have acne now is an objective fact. What is, is. What’s really important is how you choose to see that fact. In other words what you believe about it. Because how you choose to see the fact that you have acne creates your experience of acne. If you choose to see it as an invincible monster then you will experience it as an invincible monster. You can have this experience as long as you wish.
You can also stop having it by choosing again. You can choose to see acne, for example, as a gateway to a better life. As a challenge to grow and overcome your limitations. When you make that choice you will see acne as a gateway, and pretty soon you will experience it.
The first choice creates suffering and misery, the second choice creates hope and courage. It is really that simple. And it really is a choice.
You simply have to become aware of your choices, of what’s going on in your subconscious mind. One way to do that is by accessing the present moment and what you experience.
February 10th, 2009 at 7:58 am
Paul,
Clear for Life can be both for you. It can be just another failed attempt or it can be the thing that breaks you free. As I mentioned in the previous comment it’s a choice. If you have doubts or fears about this watch them with curiosity. In the present moment experience yourself having those doubts. This will probably clear them.
Those doubts are your subconscious mind choosing that this will not work for you.
At the moment you are choosing two things. At conscious level you choose that this works for you, but in the subconscious you choose doubt. So you will probably experience a bit of both. Some indications that this is working for you but also some confusion and doubt.
Since you paid good money for this I’m assuming you want this to work for you. Therefore work on doing away with those doubts and fears. So that you choose the same thing in both conscious and subconscious levels.
February 10th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Nate,
I wonder what would happen if you’d change you mind? That in your mind you know that people are just too busy with their own lives to care about your pimple. I wonder how that would make you feel?
Why don’t you give it a shot?
February 11th, 2009 at 3:13 am
Seppo,
I think you are awesome! I look forward to your advice, and all of your emails. Everything just “makes sense”. I have started to integrate some advice from acne 101, and I have seen some improvement. I am very new, so it will probably take some time. Thanks to your advice, I will live in the present and accept that, as I picture and feel positive “things”.
Thanks,
Michelle
February 22nd, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Dear Seppo,
could teens benefit from your plan as well?
I am 16 and I always thought that teen acne was caused by our “raging hormones”! Could the hormones be tamed by life style change? Or are us teens with acne just doomed to wait till everything settles? I eagerly await for your reply.
-Max
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:29 am
Max,
I’m sure teens would also benefit from healthy lifestyle choices. Growing up puts more stress on your body, partly because of raging hormones, but your body should be able to deal with them. Unhealthy diet and lifestyle just makes you more ’sensitive’ to raging hormones and this gives you acne.
March 19th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Well, you are right when you say that all suffering starts in our mind. And I guess I agree once you accept your acne and your skin for what it is, you can be happy. Except that this is not gonna make your acne go away. Sure, it won’t matter to you anymore that your face looks like a mine! You are happy anyways! But when your ultimate goal is to clear your skin, being happy alone is not gonna do much. You still have to take measures. At least it didn’t work for me, until I started using acne.org’s benzoyl peroxide. My skin isn’t perfect, but I seem to be slowly getting there! Thanks to your advice, Seppo, acne didn’t influence my personal life much before. But now that I’ve found something that rids me of it, I am utterly happy!
Thank you, Seppo, for teaching how to be happy no matter what. And thanks to benzoyl peroxide for keeping me clear!
March 21st, 2009 at 9:31 am
Aiko,
You are right. Being happy doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get clear. You still have to take measures to clear skin because this isn’t magic. Though being happy can reduce stress and hence make it easier to get clear.
By the way accepting your skin as it is doesn’t mean signing away your power to change it. It simply means you don’t worry about it as it is. You are still free to do everything it takes to get clear. It means you are comfortable in your skin - not resigning to your fate.
Let me ask you is your ultimate goal to get clear or to be happy?
Would you rather be happy and have acne or clear and unhappy?
Most people try to get clear because they believe it makes them happy. However you can be happy before you get clear also.
I don’t advocate choosing between happiness and clear skin. I advocate choosing both. Doing everything you can to cure your acne; and at the same time accepting your skin as it is and being ok with where you are.
It may sound hard, but both of those are possible.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:27 am
Just wanted to say that I am so thankful for this website you’ve built and all of your advice.
which is good!!!
It has been a real eye-opener. I spent about a week reading every article on your website, and then… I changed my health habits completely. I’ve been doing so for the past couple of months and it has also influenced the rest of my family.
I feel so much better about myself, knowing that I’m doing the best things for my body. Everything you have written makes so much sense and feels just right.
Are you into the Law of Attraction also? Because it’s what it seems like
I’ve been struggling with acne for so long, and I am still in the process of getting rid of it, but everything has gotten remarkably better.
I am grateful that you are so generous with your knowledge!
Thanks again for letting us all benefit from what you’ve learned
April 13th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Jade,
Thanks for the positive comments. I’m glad to hear that you are feeling better. Once you feel what real health is all about it’s hard to go back to your old ways. So just keep up with it.
Am I into Law of Attraction?
Well, I don’t know how to put it. Yes, I practice the principles; focusing on what you want and staying positive.
However I don’t agree with the way it’s ‘taught’. Many ‘gurus’ make it sound like magic; that you only have to send your intention to the universe/god/whatever and wait for the goods to arrive.
Unfortunately no dump truck is going to unload a pile of cash on your front door - no matter how much you try to attract it.
It’s still about action and action only. If you don’t take action then nothing’s going to happen. If you want to get clear you have to earn it through your actions; you just can’t ‘attract’ it.
The value of focusing on what you want is that it gets you to notice opportunities that help you move towards your goals, it also creates motivation to act. But there’s nothing new about that - and it certainly has nothing to do with ‘attracting’ anything.
So I don’t believe in magical thinking, but I do believe you can have/do/be almost whatever you want as long as you are willing to do what it takes.
May 10th, 2010 at 1:47 am
I think ur right and I love eckhart tolle I have been struggling with acne and diet and I’m 22 and I just want to give my skin a break from all the diff productS but I will work on changing my out look on beinG happy and accepting where I am in life at the present moment thank u