Why Knowing Yourself Is The Foundation Of Personal Growth

Originally posted 2011-05-20 13:15:08.

Why Knowing Yourself Is The Foundation Of Personal Growth

Know thyself… said the Greeks, and I can’t agree more.

Unless you are clear about where you are, what are your limitations, what are your inner pulls (conation), your results in life will be puny, in every area of life.

Know Thyself If men would search diligently their own minds, and examine minutely their thoughts and actions, they would be more cautious in censuring the conduct of others, as they would find in themselves abundantly sufficient cause for reproof. “It is a good horse that never stumbles;” and lie is a good man indeed who cannot reproach himself with numerous slips and errors.” “Every bean has its black,” and every man his follies and vices.

The adage also teaches us to set a proper value upon ourselves, and to be careful not to do anything that may degrade us. It is not known to whom we are indebted for this golden rule; we only learn that it is of very long standing, and was held in such high estimation by the ancients, that it was placed over the doors of their temples, and it was also supposed by them, that ” E coelo descen- dit,” it came down from heaven. ” ‘Man know thyself!’ tins precept from on high Came down, imagined by the Deity; Oh! be the words indelibly imprest On the live tablet of each human breast.

But how do you Know Yourself? Know yourself as others know yourself? Know about yourself? Know what psychologist made up as a category for yourself? Do the test that was devised for testing privates sent to fight in the VietNam war?

People want to know themselves to make it easier to win… to make it easier to beat bad habits. To justify why they are the way they are.

My experience (as a coach, 30 years and thousands of people), has been that you do best when you know your machine. Your machine has a bent… an inclination, and if you know it you can be successful… with any machine.

Some 30 years ago I had a car I didn’t have to lock, because only I could drive it. It would stall for everyone else. I drove it another 100 thousand miles. I got it after the previous owner gave up on it. It had 160 thousand miles on it.

The knowledge: know yourself, here, with that car, applied to the car and myself, together. The car was seriously flawed… but no one could have guessed from the outside, when I drove it.

I have dyslexia, serious, but I read one or two books every week. I also write for a living.

I had two major episodes of brain damage: you wouldn’t know it. I know how to drive my machine.

My soul correction is arrogance and condescension. It’s taken me longer to drive my life with these horrible afflictions, but knowing it made it possible.

When you know all the quirks of your machine, when you know what is your unscratchable itch, when you know what the machine will do unless you compensate for it, you can take your machine anywhere, any heights, any distance, any achievement.

As you work to grow in different areas in you life, it is important to really know yourself. The concept of not knowing yourself may sound preposterous to some people, but hear me out. Because we live such hectic lives, it is important to take time to become reacquainted with ourselves. It is very easy to get so focused on living life that we lose ourselves in the hustle and the bustle. With every phase in life, we change and evolve, and if all goes as planned, we should not be the same person we were five years ago. This is not to say that everything about us has to change, but it is perfectly natural and healthy to mature and grow in different areas.

Knowing yourself can help you improve your work ethic because you can really understand your limitations and know when you are pushing yourself too hard. If you are a self starter like me, you would probably work for 24 hours a day if you could. In fact, you’ve probably had to make yourself step away from your work one more than one occasion. While this self starting attitude is a good thing, it can also be a problem. If you aren’t careful, your desire for success can drive others away from you and actually ruin relationships. You may be thinking, “I thought we were supposed to be able to accomplish everything.” That is true, but sometimes you can bite of much more than you can chew, and running yourself into the ground to accomplish goals in not healthy. The beauty of accomplishing goals and achieving personal growth is discovering the balance of work and play.

While it is important to know your limits, knowing yourself helps you to know what you can’t accomplish as well as what you can accomplish. Many times, people don’t push themselves to accomplish real goals simply because thy think don’t think they’ll be successful. Once you really know yourself, you will know what you can accomplish. However, if you never try, you’ll never know how much you can truly accomplish.

When you know yourself, it is easier to keep yourself motivated. It you met someone for the first time, and they asked you to encourage them without giving you any details about their life, you would have a hard time encouraging them. By being aware of the types of things that keep you motivated, you will be less likely to reach that rock bottom point where you feel like your world is crumbling around you. It is best to constantly encourage and motivate yourself as your grow and mature.

How do you react to disappointment? What do you do when you’re sad? How often do you need to take time to truly relax? In order to maintain balance in your life, you have to constantly ask yourself these types of questions. Not only do you need to know yourself in order to have a strong foundation for personal growth, but you also have to be willing to motivate yourself when things are less than ideal.

Spirituality and Personality: The Psycho-Spiritual Controversy

Originally posted 2011-05-14 05:00:06.

If you have been involved in either therapy or counselling, or spirituality and meditation, in recent years you have probably encountered two basic, polarized viewpoints concerning personality. Essentially it amounts to this: therapists are pro-personality (and its improvement through healing neurosis etc.) while spiritual teachers proclaim personality a big waste of time, since neurotic or not, you are more than your personality.

This is not particularly surprising, since therapy and counseling tend to be concerned with the individual, while spiritual practices are concerned with higher matters. But it does lead the novices and beginners into a quandary where they are faced with the decision of what to do about personality. On the one hand, therapy could be an expensive, futile effort to better the personality, whereas, on the other hand, spiritual practice may offer an excuse to leave personal problems behind, with the justification that you are moving on to more lofty concerns.

In the extensive time I have been engaged in therapy and spirituality I can say that I have discovered the answer to this controversy! And I don’t say it without reluctance and a certain caution, since my answer is liable to offend both camps — therapists and spiritual teachers. Perhaps my answer is less a rejection or abandonment of one viewpoint for another and more of a synthesis. This may be an answer of the best kind – the kind that doesn’t marginalize or dismiss anyone’s experience or viewpoint. For my answer, while radically new and innovative, does not fundamentally disagree with either point of view, but considers each appropriate to the complex, total unfolding process of our human nature and potential.

My answer to the dilemma is to propose a third band of human experience. I call this “the authentic self” and since I am not using any unusual words I need to define this term, because I do mean something specific. The authentic self, in the way I use the term, is the bridge between the personality and the spiritual self. It is arrived at usually, but not always, after a lengthy period of intensive, deep, applied and consistent inner work. This inner work consists of a journey of self-discovery in which one circumvents the self, becoming increasingly aware of the conscious and unconscious material that comprises one’s sense of self, or ego. This involves character, which is essentially defensive strategy or an intelligent, protective reaction to early conditioning, which becomes increasingly calcified and adapted throughout adolescence and adult life. Character is composed of the way in which we survive and protect ourselves from inner and outer stimuli and ultimately avoid really meeting life. It creates a self-imposed prison — limitations in which we feel falsely safe.

Self-discovery also involves cultivating our awareness of personality, or the way in which character (defenses and strategies) is experienced. Both inwardly and outwardly we erect a barrier to experience — life events and other people — which is a mask, façade or persona which eclipses the real person, or our true nature.

We also raise emotional and behavioural patterns out of the murky stratum of the unconscious, out of unawareness, and see just how much our life is lived automatically, as an automaton without real human response, emotional feeling, resonance, empathy or even awareness.

The process of self-discovery involves witnessing, reliving and remembering, practicing awareness and releasing pent-up emotions, returning the bodymind, through self-regulating, self-healing and self-referral, to a natural state of balance, ease and relaxation, and opening to insight and experience. In the short-term the experience is enriching, enlivening and full of dramatic changes. In the long-term through achieving personal wholeness, soul nourishment and insights we reach a threshold, a bridge, a chasm – all variously transitional metaphors that signify a quantum leap, a fourth dimensional change that I have termed “the threshold of transformation”.

The significance of this threshold, and what distinguishes it from all the changes that have gone before, is that is effects are irreversible — it is a step from which there is no going back. Once taken, this step across the threshold will lead you to the condition of authenticity and intimacy with your own true nature.

This insight renders the controversy about personality redundant. But it does depend on our ability to clearly distinguish the psychological from the spiritual.

How To Play An Active Part In Your life, your fortune

Originally posted 2011-05-11 13:15:05.

How To Play An Active Part In Your life, your fortune

In a Landmark Education Course I took back in 1987, I learned that it is possible to live life from a new context: “Life is a conversation”

It is quite simple if you can wrap your mind around it, incredibly difficult if you are attached to the way you see the world. Continue reading “How To Play An Active Part In Your life, your fortune”

Affirmations to Keep You on Track in Life

Originally posted 2011-05-07 23:30:04.

If you know me, you know that the misery I experienced in my life for 50 years drove me to many modalities of relief, including affirmations.

Affirmations don’t work for me. Never did and never will.

Why? Because affirmations are spoken from the mind: and the mind says so many things, a nice word here and there won’t make a difference. Just watch how much difference and how long a pat on the back does to you: not much, correct?

Life started to change when I learned different ways of speaking. I learned that there is descriptive language, and that includes the affirmations: the ordinary way of speaking of most people.

Then there are the active ways of speaking:

requests, promises, and declarations. This way of speaking does not come from the mind: it comes from your higher way of being: your vertical plane, your vertical self.

This kind of speaking creates a context that is inescapable.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that people won’t use request or promise sounding sentences, that come from the mind, a casual tool of babbling. They may even seem to declare something, but the power is missing.

I measure the power of your word in the Starting Point Measurements

The power of MY word is 70%… But even with that much power you need to know that what you say matters. If the mind says: ‘you are lying’, then it doesn’t matter how much power your word has… does it?

Any speaking that comes from the mind is mere chatter, and any speaking that comes from the Self is a command.

So then why do negative statements seem to have disastrous consequences: what the statement says seems to come true? Because those statements, when spoken in the absence of a commitment, the absence of a higher context, are the true description of where the speaker’s world is heading.

I often say: this won’t work… this is going to fail… but my actions are not consistent with those ‘affirmations’, they are consistent with making it work.

Your most important job, if you want your word to have power, is to learn to connect to your higher self (not god! not Jesus! but your own higher self), and speak from there.

Until then you are just littering the world with your affirmations.

‘What changes your focus: changes your faith. What changes your faith changes your outcome.’ ~ Jesse Duplantis

Let me start by saying that everything you say is some kind of affirmation – either positive or negative. When you complain to your friends, ‘nothing ever goes right for me,’ you are affirming to the world and the universe that nothing should go right in your life.

It’s true, you know. You are where you are today because of your beliefs, attitudes and words.

What you say today becomes your reality tomorrow. What you believe about yourself and your situation creates and maintains your world.

You may not like where you are right now. You may not think you deserve all the hassles, stress and problems. And you are right. But you are the only one who can change your life with affirmations.

It was a revelation to me that my lack of money, bad attitude and poor relationships were my own fault! It was life-changing to learn that I could change my circumstances by changing my words.

Over the years, I have learned to say certain things – affirmations – to cancel negatives and attract positive results. Here are six affirmations that changed my life.

1. ‘I will not be defeated and I will not quit.’ It is so easy to throw up your hands and say, ‘I tried.’ But ‘try’ is never enough. To win in any situation, you have to be prepared to stay with it until you do win! It’s a philosophy that applies to everything. Michael Jordan is perhaps the greatest basketball player ever. But he freely admits that he has lost more than 300 games and missed over 9,000 shots. But he never quit. Whatever you want, whatever you need to accomplish, don’t let your circumstances win. Don’t quit.

2. ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’ Yes, it’s a Bible verse. But I use it all the time – when I’m tired and just want to give up (see #1!), when I’m faced with a problem that I don’t know how to solve, when I need physical strength to just get through the day. Sometimes I partner it with ‘I rest in God’s energy,’ drawing strength and resolve from the Eternal source of all energy and ability.

3. ‘I have the mind of Christ.’ The power here taps into Divine wisdom to solve seemingly unsolvable problems. God has answers to every situation. Affirming that connects your spirit with His wisdom. Patience allows Spirit to work on your behalf to bring the answers or change the circumstances to bring the solution you seek.

4. ‘I am rooted and grounded in Love.’

This one is particularly effective when I’m NOT feeling very loving. When someone interrupts ‘my’ routine, wants something from me that I don’t really want to do, or when I’m feeling selfish, I remind myself of my higher calling. I am rooted and grounded in love. I can set aside my wants and focus on the other person. God will take care of me. Use that as an affirmation, coupled with appropriate action to line yourself up for greater blessing.

5. ‘There is nothing lost in God’s world.’ Use this one where you are looking for lost keys, glasses or any misplaced item. It may take some time, but if you will let this work, a thought will pop into your mind to look… somewhere. And you will usually find exactly what you are looking for.
6. ‘God loves me and has a good plan for my life.’ Use this all the time, but especially when circumstances seem aligned against you. This affirmation helps to line up your thinking with the divine plan of blessing and abundance. It helps defeat stress by acknowledging the power of Divine assistance and direction.

Remember, you must stay consistent with your affirmations.

Think of your words like a bucket of paint.

If you are filling the bucket with negative (black) words, complaints and mumblings throughout your day, how much white (positive) words will you have to speak to get the color you want?

Don’t just think of affirmations as things you speak sometimes. Watch your everyday words to make sure you are speaking what you want. God explained it this way: call those things that be not as though they were (Rom. 4:17). By following His method of creation, you can re-create your own world with your words.

Words have power. They have the power to change your mindset. By changing your mind – your beliefs – you change your attitude. That leads to a change in your actions. Use the ‘A-team’ – Affirmation, Attitude and Action – to change your life.

Obviously this wasn’t my article… it was quoted by some god-fearing person. You need to find what YOU have faith in… if you don’t have faith in Christ or whatever….

What Is Sleep Hypnosis And How Does It Work?

Originally posted 2011-05-05 02:00:09.

Hypnosis is mysterious and peculiar. It is not fully understood. Some therapists are taught a very diluted version of hypnosis and they market themselves with statements about hypnosis that are not true. They are true to the techniques they use, but not to hypnosis. Here are six common misconceptions about hypnosis and their relevance to effective change work. Some are encouraged by practicing therapists and some are just urban legends.

Hypnosis is a sleep like state

Hypnosis gets its name from the Greek God of sleep, Hypnos, which is misleading. Relaxation and sleep are two very common suggestions used in the induction process. The relaxed state you often see in hypnotised people is the acceptance of a suggestion, but it is not hypnosis. It is the effect not the cause.

In a stage show you will see the subjects slumped when the hypnotist is not using them, they look like they are asleep, puppets with their strings cut, yet as soon as the puppeteer gives them an instruction they jump to it – you do not do that when you are asleep. When they are doing what they are told as part of the performance – eating an onion or falling in love with a mop – in the reality that the hypnotist has given them they are in they still hypnotised and they are very definitely not asleep.

In therapy the client will spend a lot of time with their eyes closed in a relaxed state as in therapy the attention is turned inwards and so it makes sense to block out external stimulus, but they are not asleep, they are following instructions given to them by the hypnotist, rearranging their subconscious patterns and changing their lives.

A good therapist will ensure some sort of two way communication between themselves and the client so they can gauge the effectiveness of what they are doing as they go. This might involve talking with the client, asking for head nods or shakes or establishing Ideo Motor Responses which are tiny involuntary muscle movements – one for Yes and one for No. You cannot do that with someone who is asleep.

The most common phrase from a clients mouth when you wake them up is something along the lines of ‘that was weird’ – probably not the first phrase uttered each morning.

The Hypnotist cannot make you do anything you do not want to do!

Many hypnotherapists will claim this on their FAQ pages, they will tell you that you are completely in control throughout the session as many hypnotherapy schools teach this. Any therapist that claims this is not using hypnosis or they do not understand the tools of their own trade. Hypnosis is the acceptance of suggestion without question, without reservation, without inhibition and that is exactly why you go to hypnotist rather than a counsellor or psychotherapist which work with your conscious faculty at the pace you wish to go to try and get past problems – hypnosis removes your conscious critical faculty from the equation to get you fast results.

Let’s examine the term ‘want’. Let’s say you get a panic attack every time you are in a small enclosed space. You want to stop doing that but you can’t. If you really truly wanted to stop you would. So why is it not possible? Because there is a deeper want – part of your mind wants to keep you out of small enclosed spaces. Part of your mind, the part that is in charge, does not want to go into small enclosed spaces. Go and see a hypnotist though, and they can talk to that part of your mind and tell it that you will be okay if you go into small enclosed spaces without panicking. And you will feel fine after that. The hypnotist has made you do something that you do not want to do.

The same goes for any issue that you might want to see a hypnotist for – the process aligns your conscious desires with your subconscious resistance so there is no conflict.

It is a wonderful process that can do wonderful things for you but be sure you trust your hypnotist and chose them carefully.

Hypnosis is a completely natural state which you drift in and out of several times a day

For hypnosis to happen you need a hypnotist and a hypnotee. The thing that makes hypnosis hypnosis is the acceptance of the hypnotist’s suggestion without reservation, without inhibition. This cannot happen regularly throughout the day unless you are joined at the hip of a hypnotist who barks suggestions at you regularly.

Trance is often mistaken for hypnosis. Daydreaming is a form of trance. Autopilot that you slip into while driving a familiar root is a form of trance. Watching TV is a form of trance. Hypnosis is a form of trance, but trance is not hypnosis, not without a hypnotist there to drive it.

Hypnosis is when a hypnotist encourages your subconscious to become dominant over your conscious mind which is important because your subconscious can do anything, it does not know its limits, whereas your conscious mind has limits and it knows exactly where they are.

The hypnotist does not do anything to you, they just encourage the subconscious to come out and play, using your imagination and focus while persuading the conscious mind to sit back for a while. This does not happen several times a day. In a session with a good hypnotist you will have a new and different, weird and wonderful experience.

You can hypnotize yourself

Following the above logic, you cannot hypnotise yourself. You cannot bypass your own conscious faculty. You cannot stick your own finger to the end of your own nose without glue but a hypnotist can. It is very hard to consciously change a subconscious belief once it is formed as your conscious mind is a result of that belief – this is a bit like trying to pick yourself up off the floor. You need someone else to bypass that conscious mind for you.

Self hypnosis can be good to focus your attention, your energy and your self awareness, it can be good to really think about how you are seeing the world and to find new ways of seeing it, but it is not hypnosis – it is self-induced trance or meditation and it can do you the world of good, but it will not be as fast as hypnosis and is not the same thing.

Only the weak minded can be hypnotized

This misconception was quite possibly started by bad hypnotists who just wanted people to comply. It is not true. Hypnosis is more of a talent of the hypnotee than the hypnotist, it is a skill to be able to take someone else’s words as your own reality. It is a skill that some people have naturally, others can learn to be better at it and some people will never be able to do it. So what determines how good a hypnotee you are?

In a study by J. E. Horton et al entitled ‘Increased anterior corpus callosum size associated positively with hypnotizability and the ability to control pain’, he discovers that someone’s ability to be hypnotised depends on the size of the rostrum which is part of the brain within the corpus callosum which links the left and right hemispheres, the rational and creative parts of the brain. The bigger the rostrum the better a hypnotee you are; if your rostrum is small it may be that you cannot be hypnotized.

The best way to find out how hypnotizable you are is to spend some time with a hypnotist and try some things and this would be wise to do before investing a full amount in treatment. Do some tests and you have an idea how likely it is to work and a good hypnotist will give you the opportunity to find this out as this determines if and how they are going to be help you.

The other things that may get in the way on the day are: mood, rapport with the hypnotist, setting, things going on in your life and choice of inductions to name but a few, but a good hypnotist will work with you to get past these variables and if you can be hypnotised, you will be.

You can get stuck in hypnosis

If the stage hypnotist dies in the middle of the show, will you live the rest of your life in love with a mop? If the therapist walks out in the middle of a session and never comes back will you never ‘wake up’?

To take the therapy scenario first, your subconscious is bright, it is in control of so much all the time, it will realise that the hypnotist is gone and allow you to either fall into a comfortable sleep or ‘wake you up’ of its own accord.

In terms of your showbiz love affair with a mop, you may stay in love with the mop for a while, but your mind can still learn and there is more evidence that the mop is not actually a person worthy of your love than there is to the contrary and so you will process this and fall out of love quite quickly.

This is why the hypnotist needs to be clever in therapy as the effects in the session need to last. The suggestions that are designed to effect the rest of your life must be put in a way that will remain congruent with the way you experience life or the work that is done in the session will be undone over time. The change needs to be made and then your subconscious prepared for potential challenging times ahead so that it can run the new pattern even when the going gets tough rather than reverting habitually to the old pattern. The therapist cannot stop life from happening, but they can give you the tools to cope with whatever is thrown at you.

Are You Committed to Happiness?

Originally posted 2011-04-19 08:45:30.

Commitments are powerful. They are life transforming. When you commit to doing something, doors open and paths appear. When you commit in word and action, people appear to support you in your quest. Commitment leads to change. Decide what you are committed to and your life will change in that direction.

What is a commitment? Merriam-Webster, an Encyclopedia Britannica Company, defines commitment as “an agreement or pledge to do something in the future.” I like this definition because it does not include “obligation,” “financial risk,” or “emotional promise.” It is merely an agreement or pledge that you willingly and noncoercively have decided to do.

A true commitment involves a sense of “No matter what.”

No matter what happens, I will continue eating less food or specific food as required by this diet.
No matter how I feel, I will exercise several days for at least one hour every week.
No matter how my partner responds, I will maintain my own state of equilibrium and reduce my own stress.
No matter how much money I make, I will manage my bills and save a specific amount each month.
No matter how long it takes, I will develop the required skills and learn how to….
No matter how I feel, I will find a way to be happy in any given circumstance.

Happiness is a mental state. It is built on internal, not external, realities. Regardless of the external circumstances, we can choose to be happy in any given moment. In fact, there is a system known as the “Science of Happiness,” which seeks to apply the scientific method to determine what happiness is and how we might attain it. Wikipedia cites a quote from Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihaly “We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise that achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in individuals, families, and communities.” The goal of this scientifically derived, positive psychology, is to enable others to thrive, not to just survive.

What would it be like for you to make a commitment to happiness? Do you believe you can actually make the choice and decide to be happy? Can you make this choice into an actual commitment? Can you decide that you are committed to being happy, no matter what lemons life might present you with?

Once you truly make a commitment, any commitment, the universe has a way of first showing you the opposite of what you are striving for. That means, you will be tested and you may be tempted to give up and forget your dream. But if you hang in there, hold on to your commitment – no matter what – miracles may happen. And you may find yourself so happy, most of the time, that you never believed such happiness was possible.

Are you willing to make a commitment to happiness?

THE Missing Piece Of The Law Of Attraction Puzzle

Originally posted 2011-04-06 13:35:55.

THE Missing Piece Of The Law Of Attraction Puzzle

How To Manifest Anything or THE Missing Piece Of The Law Of Attraction Puzzle: …Or How To Be In Vibrational Harmony With Money, Love, And Success

how to manifest anything: moneyHow to Manifest Anything or the Missing Piece of the Law of Attraction Puzzle

We all want to manifest our wants and needs. We all want miracles. We all want some divine assistance to solve our problems. But… Continue reading “THE Missing Piece Of The Law Of Attraction Puzzle”

The Anatomy Of Guidance: Ask For Guidance And Get The Guidance. Bagdad Cafe

Originally posted 2011-04-04 10:34:04.

spiritual guidance not liquor guidanceGuidance: How to Ask And Get Guidance

I have been asking for guidance, ever since I discovered that I can.

According to Kabbalah, an 6000-year body of knowledge, the mistake I need to correct in this lifetime is thinking and behaving like there is nothing and no one who can know better than me.

My life had been, before my discovery, an exact match to that behavior, not very attractive, is it? Continue reading “The Anatomy Of Guidance: Ask For Guidance And Get The Guidance. Bagdad Cafe”

Paris In The Spring Or The Benefits Of An Empty Mind

Originally posted 2011-03-30 10:22:32.

Paris in the spring with Paris Hilton shoesParis in the spring… nice thought.

Stay with me for a moment!

I am part of a study group. We go to seminars together to learn integrity so we can live an unpredictably great life.

This past Sunday, when the sun was shining and it was the first nice-weather weekend of the year, five out of the seven members of the group forgot to call our conference line on Sunday. Paris in the spring…

The seminar leader suggested we declare a breakdown. “What’s declaring a breakdown?” Asked one of the members innocently.

I volunteered to write a little essay (that is like a one-page scientific paper, lol) and sent it out to everyone. And then the s-h-i-t hit the fan.
Continue reading “Paris In The Spring Or The Benefits Of An Empty Mind”