Entries Tagged 'Self-Worth' ↓
August 17th, 2008 — Lifelong Learning, Self-Worth, Stress Trap
Last week we talked about Life As a Shared Adventure:
Life doesn’t always go smoothly, and it’s a lot more fun when we think of it as an adventure rather than complaining because things aren’t going our way.
In particular we talked about the importance of attitude and developing our skills. In the comments section Karin pointed out there’s a combination of acceptance and trust in my favorite prayer:
Thank you, Lord, for the opportunity. I sure hope You know what You’re doing.
I’ve been thinking of that a lot this past week. I certainly don’t believe in the Law of Attraction, that if we think the right thoughts and play our part well we will get what we want in life. I’ve seen too many cases where things haven’t turned out that way for people…one of the most recent being Randy Pausch. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue living life to its fullest. As Randy said:
Cheating the Grim Reaper doesn’t mean living longer. It means living well.
For me that means not fighting life, not defining ourselves too narrowly, but instead understanding that our view of life is limited, that to grow we must be willing to change. As Kathleen Norris puts it,
Prayer isn’t asking for what we want. It’s asking to be changed in ways we can’t imagine.
Or, one of my very favorites, Richard Bach’s:
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.
Amen to that!
Obviously I’m inspired by quotes.
But quotes aren’t enough. I also need to remember stories, examples from my own life where scary changes have turned out just fine and from the lives of other people. Three of my favorite stories are about James Whistler, Mary Kay Ash and Scott Adams.
James Whistler
Had silicon been a gas, I would have been a major general.
—James Whistler
Whistler was attending the West Point military academy until he failed a chemistry test. So instead of being successful in the army, and being forgotten by history, he became a world-renown artist.
Mary Kay Ash
When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.
—Mary Kay Ash
Mary Kay Ash was a highly competent salesperson and trainer until she was passed over for a promotion in favor of a man she had just trained. She was so frustrated by the discrimination against women that she decided to write a book to help other women succeed in business. The book turned out to be a business plan for the company she founded…a company which had over $2 billion in sales when she died. She wrote three best sellers in the course of her career. One of them, Mary Kay on People Management has been included in business courses at the Harvard Business School.
Scott Adams
Most success springs from an obstacle or failure. I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive.
—Scott Adams
When Scott Adams didn’t move up the corporate ladder, he created the popular cartoon Dilbert, about the frustrations of working in a large corporation. He has touched the hearts of millions of people.
So detours may be frustrating at first, but that doesn’t mean we won’t end up liking the new path better than the one we had started on. Have you ever been forced to take a detour? How did it turn out?
March 30th, 2008 — Self-Worth, Stress Hardiness
Lee Gomes at the Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting article the other day: Why We’re Powerless To Resist Grazing On Endless Web Data. Like many headlines, this one exaggerates for the sake of effect, but Gomez does present some food for thought. He suggests that the human mind is as hard-wired to notice new information as a cat is hard-wired to chase a laser spot. He says that explains why some people get “addicted” to the Web.
He talks in terms of websites, but the allure of new information also extends to e-mail, watching TV, listening/watching/reading the news, and even to chatting on the cell phone. We’re all different and have our favorite forms of stimulation. Mine happens to be solving puzzles/problems. Last week I mentioned I had started doing some Word Jumbles to warm me up for doing my income tax, but I really got hooked on doing them. I didn’t worry about it too much, I just indulged until I finished the book so it would no longer sit around tempting me. But that excitement was powerful.
And power like that isn’t bad. It’s simply motivation we can learn to use wisely. I turned my fascination with problem solving into a career. My favorite nightmare used to be that I had to go on a business trip and couldn’t pull myself away from work to go home, pack, and rush to the airport. By now I’ve learned to be careful setting goals and making To Do lists…I recognize my tendency to be compulsive and simply plan around it. The trick is to have more than one thing that can grab my attention. For instance, it’s easy to pull myself away from projects to exercise every day because I have interesting DVDs to watch while I use my NordicTrack treadmill. It’s simply a matter of balancing one pleasure against another to be highly effective.
I learned this trick years ago when I stopped a preoccupation with food by finding something I enjoyed even better than eating. It took quite a while to find it…as the saying goes, “Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.” But it turned out learning to play the piano stimulated the pleasure centers in my brain enough to do the trick.
Item #2 of the Traits of Stress-Hardy, Resilient People is
They realize that the quality of our lives depends on how we focus our energy and our attention. They try to align their thoughts and actions with their values. They know how to motivate themselves to take action.
The first step is awareness, not only uncovering what we really want in life so we have a direction to go in, but also noticing what grabs our attention so we have the power to get there.
What about you? What grabs your attention? How can you harness this power wisely? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
Thanks to bikehikebabe for commenting on last week’s post.
All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insoluble…. They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This “outgrowth” proved on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest appeared on the patient’s horizon, and through this broadening of his or her outlook the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms but faded when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.
—Carl Jung
When you start doing Morning Pages, you’ll be surprised at the things you find lurking within. And, just as you feel refreshed when you step out of the shower, your mind, heart, and soul will feel refreshed after writing Morning Pages. You will walk a little lighter. Your mind will be more focused on the task(s) at hand. Your thinking will be more clear. Your heart will be open — so you may find yourself more patient or less irritated with the day’s events.
—Website discussing Julia Cameron’s morning pages
I’ve been thinking a lot about Bob’s comment to last week’s post: “My big problem is that I just do not do well with any kind of conflict in my life. Any time I think that someone is upset with me or disappointed in me, it really tears me up.” He raises an important point…getting some perspective and seeing things rationally is important, but it’s not enough. We still have to respect our feelings and deal with them. Feelings are, they’re not to be judged but listened to. And when they’re deeply heard, they shift by themselves.
I’ll talk more about this in future posts. For now I’ll just say free association writing is one of the most effective ways of dealing with feelings…and to get the kind of shift Carl Jung is talking about. Just get some paper and a pencil or a pen (or do it on the computer if you prefer) and let it all out. Keep the pen (or pencil or fingers) moving. Don’t worry about punctuation or spelling…just write down anything that comes into your mind. The important thing is not to judge or censure, just put it all down. If things come up that you would rather not share with anyone else, then shred the paper afterwards. The idea is to get in touch with the deepest parts of you. You’ll be surprised what you learn. And you’ll be surprised at the clarity and integration that comes from the process.
What about you? Have you ever tried free-association writing? How do you deal with your feelings? This site is about sharing, so please tell us your thoughts in the comments section.
Picture of girl writing by arkworld via Flickr. Used with permission. All rights reserved by owner.
Picture of hand writing in green ink by snorrlax via Flickr. Used with permission. All rights reserved by owner.
Picture of hand writing in notebook by bgblogging via Flickr. Creative Commons license.
And did you find what you wanted in this life even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved.
To feel myself beloved on this earth.
–Raymond Carver
The Dalai Lama once told a group of professors at Columbia University that the greatest teachers in the world aren’t the lamas or professors or gurus. The greatest teachers are the mothers, for they’re the ones who give children their first experience of being loved and valued as human beings.
I would expand that view of teacher to fathers, grandparents and any other person who has a compassionate and loving relationship with a child.
And this teaching isn’t just for children. It is for ourselves and everyone we come in contact with. When we practice love and compassion we bring more peace and happiness into the world. As the Dalai Lama says, “The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes. Cultivating a close, warm-hearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. This helps remove whatever fears or insecurities we may have and gives us the strength to cope with any obstacles we encounter. It is the ultimate source of success in life.” It is our human nature to want love and connection with others.
One of the greatest sources of stress and depression in modern life is the over-emphasis on material things and not enough on the deep need for affection and connection with our fellow human beings.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “We must be the change we want in the world.” Every day we have opportunities to put more love and compassion into the world. Becoming a “great teacher” by taking advantage of those opportunities is the greatest thing we can do for ourselves and for everyone else.
For more on the Dalai Lama’s views, click here.
And to explore another view of the search for purpose, see Adam Kayce’s post
Yea, Cyn! In her final comment yesterday Cyn wrote:
“I don’t want to define my selfworth by the WORK I get done. I just want to BE & enjoy just being me.”
That’s why I’m doing an interactive blog rather than just writing articles. Notice I didn’t tell Cyn what to do, she went from (1) wanting to control her husband to (2) saying she fights with her husband because of self-worth issues, to (3) saying she’d be better off doing work that made her feel good about herself, to (4) saying she wants to enjoy herself just the way she is. She doesn’t want her self-worth to be dictated by what she work does.
I didn’t do much at all, just asked a couple of questions for her to think about. There are gazillion books out there telling us how we can improve our lives. We’re fortunate to have them at our disposal, but they won’t do much until
- we tune into ourselves and see what we really want,
- notice if what we’re doing now is getting us closer to what we want, and, if not,
- do something else.
That’s a big part of the process. Another part, if we so choose, is to remember to keep doing it. Hopefully, that’s an important part of this website, to have supporters interested in what we’re trying. Please keep us posted, Cyn!
Linda Salazar at Awaken the Genie Within has a relevant post on The Need to Be Right. That, of course, was one of the points of Cyn’s comments to the last post:
“If [my] husband agrees with me, he says nothing. Often he disagrees. (difference of opinion)
Then it’s an argument; each trying to prove I’m right. We both can be right, but we fight for our point. I never argue with anyone, but my husband.”
Linda ends her post with: “After all, would you rather be right or happy?” The truth is, a lot of people would rather be right. My guess is they think their self-worth is at stake. What do you think?
