Psychological research suggests that people most predisposed to develop cancer, and a list of other serious problems, are those who fail to express their emotions, positive and negative .
Negative emotions promote survival through assertiveness and defensiveness. Positive emotions promote survival through nurturing and healing.
The inappropriate use of emotion can promote anti-survival behaviors. Awareness and clarity promote appropriate use of emotion.
All the world's a stage
And all men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
Woman, in the picture language of mythology,
represents the totality of what can be known.
The hero is the one who comes to know.
Joseph Campbell
Hero with a Thousand Faces
What we call "I" is just a swinging door
which moves when we inhale and when we exhale.
S. Suzuki
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
Nothing determines who we will become so
much as those things we choose to ignore.
Sandor McNab
"A man knows many things, yet knows not himself."
Meister Eckhart
If a child strives unsuccessfully, and hence develops a record of failure to achieve encouragement and affection, this record is likely to leave a heavy mark on the adult.
A special case is the infant or young child who had no parent to respond to the child's strivings. One can view the lack of a parent as a separation or deprivation which by itself predisposes the adult to the unhappiness of depression.
Alternately, one may see this as the child not being able to successfully induce its environment to respond positively to its efforts to obtain the gratification it seeks, leading to a sense of being helpless.
Such unsuccessful striving evokes the emotion of sadness. It also may produce the general conclusion about one's life that there is a negative balance between what one seeks and what one gets. It is reasonable that this leads to the disposition to evaluate oneself negatively relative to one's aspirations, hopes, and obligations.
Julian Simon
Good Mood
You are entitled to enjoy yourself.
Be not concerned with others' affairs even when ones' own house is presumably in order.
If you can't control yourself,
control somebody else.
E.J. Gold
Life in the Labyrinth
This life is only a test.
If it had been a real life
you would have received instructions.
YOU CAN NOT FAIL
TO LEARN.
Nothing determines who we will become so
much as those things we choose to ignore.
Sandor McNab
Change the eye that sees
and you change the world
that is seen.
"When faced with the choice between changing
and proving there's no need to do so, most people
get busy on the proof."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"Whether you say you can or you can't, either way you're right."
-- Henry Ford
"Success is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration."
-- Thomas Edison
"Intuition is more important than knowledge."
-- Albert Einstein
"The law of work does seem utterly unfair--but there it is, nothing can change it, the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in money also."
-- Mark Twain
"Decide what you want, resolve to pay the price."
-- Bunker Hunt
"If you want to succeed, double your failure rate."
-- Thomas Watson (founder IBM)
"Many times I had to choose between being right and succeeding."
-- Mitch Kaptor (founder Lotus Development)
"Nobody can make me feel bad without my agreement."
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
"A man is as happy as his mind allows him to be."
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Our interpretations and explanations of reality are not reality, they just determine our experience of reality."
-- M. McDonnell
SELF-TALK
Self stimulation of talking to ourselves using self intervention of self addressed commands we can interrupt a self defeating program (self talk) we can rewrite it or substitute another.
We can de-bug our thinking about ourselves to achieve a better self image.
Reprimands - selfish, stupid, lazy, bad, naughty - accepted as dogma to please/appease authority.
List Parent/Teacher's sayings & criticisms:
List Parent/Teacher's admonitions:
(These become internalized self-directives)
There often is a need to interact with relevant information conveyed by an outside source so the mind can heal itself.
To change cognitive unbalance of negative self comparisons:
reject, abandon, disavow or scale down overly idealized benchmark standards that others set for you in childhood.
Interrupt using forceful repudiation to get relief from unsuitable ideal standards.
Do you believe your condition/situation is beyond your personal control?
(Is there a loss that you have not fully recovered from?)
We're all (most of us) are acting out a negative or positive behavior at any given time. Change the image - change the behavior.
1. Witness thoughts.
2. Self-commands in inner dialogue (i.e.. repudiation or challenge standards and explanations)
3. Choosing and deciding to not think or act in certain ways (INTENTION).
4. Integration of intention through action.
Step back(observer) < Self analyze(self inquire) < Talk to self, using self-directed commands < Integration.
Use INTERRUPT process of Forceful Repudiation to release the unsuitable ideal standards (i.e.. say "NOT", "Stop" to them)
Interrupt negative self comparisons with saying NO, or NOT or STOP to the negative self comparison. Then ask yourself, "What is a more realistic and appropriate standard?"
"Is my estimate of my perceived-actual situation an accurate one?"
Stop making negative self comparisons. Start with a 5 minute time period per day. Then work up to 10 minutes. Eventually work up to 1 hour.
Intention < Attention < Resources < Goal Achievement
Whatever buffers us from the turmoil and pain of loss
also buffers us from feeling joy.
Indifference is not wisdom, it is acedia.
Self-Sabotage Habits
Know the habit in detail
Visualize what you would be like if you overcame the habit.
You will experience some discomfort with change
until the change occurs and then that's normal.
Procrastination = Overwhelm
Break things down into smaller chunks, or steps.
What have you identified that's in your best interest to stop doing or start doing now?
What would you have to deal with if you (changed habit.)
What is the payoff of the bad habit?
When making a change, nothing can defeat you but
your tendency to declare yourself powerless (helpless) and give up.
Change is possible if you define it as possible.
Refuse to put yourself down. This doesn't mean you can't be self critical about negative habits.
Truth is the greatest healer.
We do have in our life that which we have chosen.
1. Make a list of everything and everyone that is in your life. 2. Go down the list and think what it would be like to let go of each thing or person and then re-choose "that which I want and need to be part of my life."
What you haven't let go of you've chosen.
Look out for your own self interest and stop preoccupying yourself with the anger that comes from the attitude that someone is victimizing you.
What do you gain from not disclosing yourself to others?
What seems to be the worst thing about you?
What has taken the friendliness out of you?
It would be good to occasionally ask ourselves,
"What might I not be right about?"
Discover. Learn. Change.
Fix the problem, not the blame.
When we were young we got punished if we said, "I won't," and we got helped if we said, "I can't." Victims enjoy the luxury of saying "I can't."
Sick people are powerful. They make healthy people feel guilty.
The fears of the weak and fragile establish the limits of any relationship.
If I had one month to live, I'd.... (100X)
"Change Work" is designed to enhance your skills, not just to fix problems.
"Of all existing things some are in our power, and others are not in our power...What disturbs men's minds is not events but their judgment on events."
--EPICTETUS