Celebrate Life!
Don’t Sell Yourself Short!
James
R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
©
January 15, 2016
REFERENCE:
This is one of a series of essays that previously
appeared in trade journals and periodicals.
It is to be a book for the Kindle Library titled, “A Way of Thinking About
things.”
In our lives there is a
point, sometimes several instances, when we are forced to look through a glass
clearly. What is surprising is that more
often than not we look through a glass darkly.
This extends and worsens the pain.
We second guess ourselves and focus on the content of our life when the
problem resides in our subtext.
We tend to listen to everyone but ourselves as subliminal
messages bombard our subconscious. If we
would but listen, we would be in contact with ourselves and the habitual patterns
that dog our existence.
We are seemingly on automatic pilot drifting in a
sea of change ill equipped to change our course.
Our life has assumed a series of incremental
frustrations moving us away from celebration.
Yet, our worse moments can lead to our best moments once we jolted out
of our funk.
Take getting fired, made redundant, a romance gone
sour, going through a divorce, or a sudden illness due to lifestyle
excess. Such situations can introduce us
to our better self and release us from automatic pilot. You realize:
· There
is nothing wrong with you that cannot be changed.
Friends
think they know what is wrong or best for you: “You’re your own worst enemy,” “You need to hang out with a different
crowd,” “You’re in the wrong job (relationship),” “It’s not your fault,” “It’s the
economy (your boss, stress at home, on the job, the times),” “You need to take
a break (leave your job, family, area) and get a new start.”
In delicate
or blunt language, they act as your guide with their ambulance chaser
mentality. Best you ignore their counsel
and have a caring conversation with yourself.
You can
change your personality. You cannot change your essence.
You are born with your essence;
you acquire your personality. You can choose to change.
· Don’t
look to others for advice but extend that courtesy to yourself.
Listen to
your own counsel without blinders. So
you screwed up, so someone asked your opinion and you gave it, and now that
person is not speaking to you, so you’re not comfortable thinking in sound
bites, so you suffer fools poorly, and stay clear of small talk, flatterers and
spin. So what? Develop your own center and you will not lose
your way.
· Don’t
take yourself too seriously.
When crises
come, and they come to us all, don’t second guess yourself. Go with your intuition, your gut
intelligence. Don’t belittle yourself,
and don’t hang out with people who do.
Learn from experience. Don’t deny
blame when warranted. Deal with it. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and no one is guiltless
in crisis. Learn from the incident and
move on. Remember, we are imperfect but
perfectible.
· Forgive
yourself for being human.
We all take
false steps, do stupid things, and are not always on top of things. Nor do we always know when to say “no,” when to
go with the flow or when to resist it. We
occasionally take ourselves too seriously, but other times not seriously
enough.
Let today be
a day of celebration. It is the only day
you have for certain. Don’t dwell on
what you have lost but what you can gain.
Look for the bright sun beyond the dark clouds. It is there.
It is always there.
· Let
your intuition speak to you.
We may mock
our gut intelligence but at our peril.
We think with our whole body not only our minds. We are an animal. Like all animals we have the advantage of
instinct as well as its complement in conscious intelligence. Don’t belittle this. Intuition may save your life. It has saved mine.
It is
speaking to you as you read this. Are
you listening? If not, listen now! Your intuition is privy to that quandary
you’re wrestling with. It has the
answer. Listen and heed its
counsel. The gut never lies! It is our reptilian brain at work when we
pray for guidance.
· Be
your own best friend.
To have a
friend you must be a friend starting with yourself. It is your best friend if you would but allow
it to be so. Don’t look first for
friendship elsewhere. That will only
make you more anxious. Before you belong
to others you must first belong to yourself.
It begins with an intimate conversation with yourself.
Don’t seek
justification through the accumulation of wealth, kudos, accolades, rewards or
recognition. Find contentment in being,
not becoming. Once you find comfort with
yourself you will experience comfort with others. Test yourself. Spend an hour alone in silence allowing your
mind to wander in wonderment, no cell phones, no music, only Nature nurturing
your solace.
Don’t be misguided by words. Words are not actions. To say you “love yourself” is a word game and
irrelevant. If you must reduce the
matter to words, consider “like.” Like
yourself and you will like others as you find them because “liking yourself” is
another word for self-acceptance.
Word games are the
problem. We say we love ourselves but
don’t like ourselves very much. That is
because we judge ourselves too harshly.
Look in the mirror and
smile, “I’m all I’ve got, and I’m okay, a little frayed here and there, but
totally worthwhile.”
· Give others the benefit of the
doubt with this caveat.
So
often we treat our life as if an accident.
A series of choices put us where we find ourselves. Yes, we can blame others, and reap the
satisfaction of that denial, but that doesn’t change our situation. It wasn’t an act of God that put us here, it
was an act of will.
Our
acquired self, our personality, is of our own
construction. This molded us into the
person we are. If you compare and compete, the secular
religion of our society, chances are you are a collection of imitations. Psychiatrists
Willard and Marguerite Beecher explain this trend:
Competition enslaves and degrades the
mind. It is one of the most prevalent
and certainly the most destructive of all the many forms of psychological dependence. Eventually, if not overcome, it produces a
dull, imitative, insensitive, mediocre, burned-out, stereotyped individual who
is devoid of initiative, imagination, originality and spontaneity. He is humanly dead. Competition produces zombies! Nonentities!
(Beyond
Success and Failure, 1971)
Yet, society
decrees competition is essential to life.
We obediently follow its dictates from the time we enter school until we
retire. It is as if our corporate
society fears originality.
If our mania
is to copy others, we have little clue as to what floats our boat. We are slaves to the mundane as humor has been
reduced to a television canned laugh track and movie drama to filmed pyrotechnics.
In this funk,
we dwell on what we don’t have and are not.
We are not educated enough, not rich enough, not well mannered enough,
not handsome or pretty enough, not young enough, not socially acceptable enough.
As casualties of the Compare & Compete Syndrome, the demands
of personality dominate at the
expense of our essential uniqueness.
· Motivational
Changes
No doubt
life can find us unhappy campers and life a grind. Everything is an effort. Spontaneity is playing on another
circuit. Days are filled with woe: I should do this, I have to do that instead
of, I want to do this, and I will do
this!
We go from job
to job with equal drudgery and wonder why.
It is because we carry our psychological baggage with us wherever we
go. This finds life like driving our
automobile with the accelerator and brake on at once, burning up rubber and
feeling we’re getting nowhere. We are
prisoners of the “Paralysis of the Will,
captive to our own self-ignorance. We
are living the life we have constructed.
· Pay
Attention to Your Uniqueness, to Your Essence.
This is your
genetic code, the code of your soul, the chemistry of your being. It is not “out there!” It emanates from within. It is the color of your eyes and hair, the
shape of your body, and the slant of your mind.
Essence
gets scant attention with the focus on becoming. Acres of diamonds under foot are missed, as our
eyes are on the horizon.
Tap
your essence and you unearth contentment.
No longer will you imitate others as you are too busy celebrating your individuality. You are author of your footprints in the
sand, hero of the novels written on your heart, on stage in a singular drama
before an audience of one.
We
come into the world alone and leave alone.
In that span, if we make connection with ourselves, our life will scintillate
with surprise, no longer be in bondage to boredom or loneliness for we have a
new best friend, happily engaged in celebration.
Personal Excellence,
June 2004
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