Love has inspired books, songs, works of art, great achievements, and even changed the course of history. It is the bond that holds humankind together. There are many definitions of love, yet each one is inadequate. Love can be found in the dictionary somewhere between like and lust. and maybe that's were it belongs.
To understand what love is, we have to understand what love is not. Love is not hate, violence, ambition, or competition. It is not infatuation. Infatuation focuses only on external traits and is merely a form of conquest that fills a personal need that is invariable followed by disappointment.
Love is no sex. You can have sex without love and love without sex. But when sex and love are combined, the result is a beautiful spiritual experience one unequaled by any other. What, then, is love? Love is the attracting, uniting, harmonizing force of the universe.
Love is the desire to support a person in being all that they can be. It's helping the other person to grow emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Most of all, love is allowing another person the complete freedom to be himself or herself and accepting the person without trying to change them.
The problem with many relationships is the lack of balance. You must give but also receive love. The compulsion to keep giving without expecting a return or keep receiving without expecting to give does not support true love.
It is important to build a child's self-esteem early on. Often young girls do not learn that they can be loved for who they are. They feel they need a man to make them feel loved and valuable. Since she does not love herself she will obsessively seek the approval and the love she didn't get as a child. The odds are that she will end up divorced or with a husband/wife who is an alcoholic, mentally, physically, or emotionally abusive; or perhaps something worse. If self confidence, self acceptance and the acceptance of others had been cultivated early in life, this could have been avoided.
It is important in a relationship to preserve love. In order to do this, it is necessary to realize that you are not a couple or twosome or anything else. Despite the abundance of poetic imagery, it is impossible to merge two human beings as one. You are simply separate individuals who have found a great deal to share together. You came to this world alone and will leave it alone.
It is sheer folly to promise t o love someone forever. While it is beautiful to hear someone declare they will love us forever, it is an empty promise. Think about it for a moment. You cannot count on your lover loving you forever, no matter what he or she says, for love is a moment by moment experience. Yesterday's love has been spent, tomorrow's love is not here yet, and today's love must be earned. The fact is that love will only continue as long as each person fulfills a need and contributes to the relationship. And love must continue if a relationship is to be held together.
Love, romance, and excitement are all possible when you permit your partner to express his or her own individuality. When a relationship is not stifled by unreasonable demands and expectations, the partners will grow closer. The more independent you feel, the more you will value your partner. True love depends on true freedom. Only those who are free can afford to love without reservation.
Everyone wants to be loved. Evey stranger you meet is crying out inside, "Please love me.." Sometimes this is difficult to justify in the light of our actions; sometimes the individuals themselves don't recognize this as the inner hunger they feel.
Most people believe that they are not loved enough. This is because they cannot recapture the love they once knew as children, and so they go through life trying to regain this perfect emotion by searching outside of themselves.
Look at your life. You go to the grocery store for food, to classes for education, to the doctor to get well, to a contractor to build your house, and to the hair stylist to have your hair done. And so it is with love. You go to others for love. Like a carrot dangled before a horse, there is love, just of reach.
Stop looking for others to love you!
If you are seeking someone to love you, you will go through life disappointed. Love begins with loving yourself first. Unless you first love yourself, you will not be able to find it in another. Only when you generate love and radiate it forth until it embraces everything and everyone, will love be yours in return.
But remember you cannot GIVE your love to another person. You can only be loving. Being loving means learning to love your mind,m thoughts, body, life, and the god-power within you. Learn to love objects like trees, flowers, animals, sunshine and everything you see, touch and taste.
Loving is one of our strongest needs. It has been discovered by behavioural scientists that it is not lack of love that causes negative personality disorders, but lack of loving. One man proved this while running a ranch home for delinquent boys and girls by giving them each an animal to care for. For many this was the first form of life they could love. The success rate in rehabilitating these children was outstanding, just because he taught them to love.
To hurt another person mentally, physically, or emotionally means that we are hurting ourselves. Instead, we want to make it our desire to elevate the consciousness of humankind for, like a chain, the human race is only as strong as its weakest link.
Remain calm and loving regardless of the circumstances. Love is not a placid state but a conquering force. If someone does something to you that may seem unjust or unfair, learn to forgive that person, for forgiveness is part of love. Mentally note the situation has come into your life as a lesson. The way you meet the experience will determine whether or not you understand the meaning of love. If you do, you will be able to forgive, knowing that everything will work out for the good of all concerned. To pass love lessons victoriously is to reach new dimensions of success, prosperity, peace, and fulfillment.
Learn to love everything that happens to you because your experiences give you a change to grow in the consciousness of love. Say to yourself many times a day, "I am growing the consciousness of love." As your do, it will enrich your life in wonderful ways.
Many people go through life hating, criticizing, and condemning others for the own lack of love. These are negative people. They have a talent for putting others down with joking sarcasm and making them feel so inadequate and useless that they either hold back, withdraw, or just plain give up. Negative people without love, recognition, and compliments because they must always say what is on their minds, regardless of how destructive it is. They justify their verbal hostility as constructive criticism and honest relationship or even object appraisal. Their greatest talent lies in the ability to find and identify the weaknesses in others instead of their strengths.
The positive power of love determines hwo successful you will be in life. In order to be successful you must be able to get things done. There are three ways of doing this: to do the task yourself, to get someone to help your, or to team up with others and give help. The first method is most common but the most useful is to get or give help.
Giving help is one of the little known secrets of success. You get things done by helping others get things done. Any relationship can grown and prosper when we learn to assist others.
Love is the means by which we help others to be successful. It expresses itself in the ability to make others feel important, alive and capable of self-improvement. By giving others recognition and assurance, and pointing out their positive traits, we can stimulate them to make the best possible use of their unlimited potential. One of the greatest gifts we can give to other people is to open their eyes to their own greatness; to the potential they never realized existed.
Sufficient realization of love will overcome anything. There is no difficulty that love cannot conquer, no disease it will not heal, no door it will not open, no guilt it will not bridge, no wall it will not tear down, no sin wit will not redeem. Love will lift you to the highest dimension.
Love everything you do in life.
- Mood:chipper
Most of us have been conditioned to feel guilty. Family, friends, society, school, loved ones, and religion have consciously or unconsciously turned us into guilt machines. We have been reminded since childhood of our so-called "bad behaviour" and made to feel guilty about things we did or didn't do, or said or didn't say. Since most of us are conditioned to seek approval from others, we cannot handle guilt when it is imposed upon us from an outside source.
Guilt is the master tool of the manipulator. All a person has to do to make us feel guilty and we feel compelled to get back into their good graces as soon as possible. Most people can be manipulated into doing just about anything if they can be made to feel guilty enough.
Why do we permit this to happen? Simply because guilt has been associated with caring bad, if you don't care, you are a "bad person." The truth is that guilt has nothing to do with caring. Rather, it is a manifestation of neurotic behaviour, behaviour which, oddly enough, is accepted as "normal" by most people. In other words to show you really care, you are expected to feel guilty. If you don't, then you don't really care. This twisted line of reasoning controls the lives of a tragic number of individuals.
It is interesting to note, in my classes, when I say one must never feel guilty, someone invariable raises his hand and asks, "Do you mean that I shouldn't ever feel guilty about anything?" Of course, what he is trying to say is that he has been so conditioned into feeling guilty that he feels guilty about now feeling guilty.
A Look At Morality
A great many actions are labeled good or bad by certain individuals, society, or religious groups are nothing more than moral value judgements based on their present level of awareness, which may be faulty. What is moral and right for you today may not be tomorrow for morality varies from place to place and time to time.
Thomas Moore put it very well when he said,
I find the doctors and the sages
Have differ'd in all climes and ages
And two in fifty scarce agree
On what is pure morality.
Laws that a re based on morality are not universal laws, for universal laws are immutable. They are few, simple and enforceable everywhere, always, automatically, without interference or moral value judgment by any group, religion, or individual. There is no universal law to support guilt. Remember guilt is a learned emotional response.
The Seven Major forms of Guilt
Parent-Child Guilt.
Parents unwittingly condition their children to feel guilty as a means of controlling their children. Guilt was enforced through the reward and punishment system. It was at this time that you began to identify with your actions. As a result, you developed a behaviour pattern of pleasing others first to avoid feeling guilty. You were conditioned to believe that, by conforming, you would please others. And so you developed the never-ending need to make a good impression.
Child-Parent Guilt
Children use guilt to manipulate their parents. Most parents want to be viewed as good parents and cannot cope with the feeling that their child thinks they don't love them. To coerce them a child will use statements like "You don't really love me." If your child is trying to manipulate you through guilt you can be sure he picked up the tactics from a good teacher - YOU.
Guilt Through Love
"If you loved me.." are some of the most guilt producing words used in a love relationship to manipulate the other partner. When we say this we are really saying "Feel guilty if you don't do it." or "If you refuse you really don't care about me."
Society Inspired Guilt
This starts in school when you fail to please your teacher. You are made to feel guilty about your behaviour by being told you could have done better or that you have let your teacher down. Without getting to the root of the problem, the student's faulty awareness, teacher inspired guilt makes less work for the teacher and is an effective means of control.
The prison system is an excellent example. You are expected to feel guilty for your crimes, the worse the crime the longer you must feel guilty. But this does not address the real issue, faulty awareness, more specifically, your poor self-esteem. The end result is most prisoners end up back in prison after committing another crime.
We have become so concerned about other people's opinions or being politically correct, that we have to monitor everything we say and do so that we don't offend anyone.
Sexual Guilt
Most people experience sexual guilt which is usually caused by religion. Religion has decided what forms of sexual expression are good or bad, natural or sinful. These moral value judgments have been passed on from generation to generation like a contagious disease. If your value system included any form of sexual expression that was considered morally unacceptable you were made to feel guilty and shameful. We need to learn that there is no need to feel guilty about any form of sexual expression that is within one's own value system and does not harm another person.
Religious Guilt
Religion has done more than its fair share to develop and instill deep seated guilt feelings. Through the mistaken interpretation of perfection many religions domination instill guilt in those who do not meet their moral value judgments based on their interpretation of the scriptures. Some religions, by expecting two people to perceive God, Truth, and the Scriptures in the same way, have doomed their followers to failure.
It is difficult for someone who has been programmed into believing that all sing is "ad" to see value and even beauty in sin and error. Religion says that sin is bad yet few clergymen would deny we learn from out mistakes. The difference may well be whether or not we learn the particular lesson they wish to teach us.
If you read the biography of any great man or woman who has made a significant contribution to humankind you will see a person with flaws many which society labeled sinful. Guilt is unnecessary and self-destructive.
Self Imposed Guilt
The most destructive form of guilt is that which is self imposed. This is guilt we impose on ourselves when we feel that we have broken our own moral code or the moral code of society. It originates when we look at our past behaviour and see that we've made an unwise action or choice. In most cases the guilt we feel is an attempt to show we are sorry for our actions. Essentially we are whipping ourselves for what we did in an attempt to change history. What we fail to realize is that the past cannot be changed.
There is a world of difference between feeling guilty and learning from the past. Feeling guilty does not build self-confidence. It will only keep you a prisoner of the past and immobilize you in the present. By harboring guilt you are escaping the responsibility of living in the present and moving toward the future.
Guilt Always Brings Punishment
The punishment may take many forms, including depression, feelings of inadequacy, lack of self-confidence, poor self-esteem, an assortment of physical disorders, and the inability to love ourselves and others. Those who cannot forgive others and hold resentment in their hearts are the same people who have never learned to forgive themselves. They are guilt ridden people.
Trying to ignore your mistakes is just as damaging as holding on to the guilt they have caused you. Mistakes should be treated like a speck of dust in the eye. As soon as you identify the problem, don't condemn yourself or feel guilty for having it. Just get rid of it. The sooner you do, the sooner you will be free from the pain it's causing you. Only then will you be able to live a creative life, build self-confidence, and express your unlimited potential.
Learning From The Past
Learning from the past means recognizing the mistakes and resolving, to the best of your ability and awareness, not to repeat them. Mentally whipping yourself over what you have done or wasting valuable time and energy feeling guilty, shameful, or unworthy is not part of this lesson. Such negative emotions only prevent you from changing your present life experience because your dominant attention is focused on the past.
Nobody can live in the past and function creatively in the present. Your mind cannot cope with two realities at the same time. Your life reflects whatever occupies your dominant attention. If you are giving dominant attention to what you have or should have said and some, the present will be one of frustration, anxiety and confusion. It is far better to forgive yourself and move on toward the future.
Remember - You always do your best
Mark it well and don't forget it. Every decision you make and every action you take is based on your level of awareness at that moment. You can never be better than your present level of awareness for it is the clarity with which you perceive any situation. IF your awareness is faulty you will have a faulty experience, which may cause you to do or say things you will regret.
You are not your actions
Your actions are only the means you used to fulfill your dominant needs. They may be wise or unwise but this does not classify you as good or bad. At the very source of your being you are spiritually perfect but may be acting upon a faulty awareness. The scriptures state that you are made in the image and likeness of God." If this is true, then you must already be perfect but are prevented from this realization by your existing awareness. The more you accept this truth, the more you will be able to express that perfection. It helps to remember that God doesn't turn out faulty products.
Make a Guilt Diary
For the next 21 days keep a guilt diary. Observe yourself in action for this three week period. Make notes and record all the details:
1. Every time you try to make someone else feel guilty.
2. Every time someone tries to make you feel guilty.
3. Every time you try to make yourself feel guilty.
By doing this you will be come acutely aware of how much time is spent playing the guilt game. Every time you try to make yourself or someone else feel guilty, stop right then and there and make a correction. This will change your habit patterns and soon you will cease playing the game altogether.
Every time you sense someone is trying to make you feel guilty, then let them know that their game is no longer effective. The victim must let the exploiter know he or she is is no longer vulnerable. At first they won't believe you because they have been using guilt to manipulate you for so long. But once they realize you no longer need their approval and will not play the guilt game, they will cease using guilt as a means to exploit you.
- Mood:okay
You will never be free until you learn to be true to yourself and accept full responsibility for your own life and the fulfillment of your needs. But, in doing so, you must also accept full responsibility for every thought, word, deed, and decision, for inevitably you will have to pay the price for each.
Keep in mind nothing you do is right or wrong, good or bad. It is only wise and unwise. Hopefully as you progress from unwise to wise actions, the importance of this terminology will become increasingly evident.
In regard to wise or unwise decisions, before you take any action, ask yourself the following questions:
Is this a wise or unwise act?
Will it contribute to my basic needs?
Will it harm me or someone else?
What is the total price I must pay?
Is it in harmony with Laws of the Universe, as I understand them?
Am I willing and able to pay this price and accept the consequences?
By asking these questions, you will put yourself in full conscious control of your life. This will help you to build a new Awareness based upon the knowledge that the person to whom you are accountable for all your actions is YOU. The logic of this is quite evident when you consider that it is you who will reap the reward or suffer the consequences.
You cannot give up anything you regard as desirable
Positive Habit Conditioning Program
Use the following program to condition yourself to substitute any negative habit that you find detrimental to your well-being.
Step 1: Write down the following:
A: What negative habit do you desire to replace?
B: What positive habit or attitude will you develop to replace it?
C: What actions will you take to replace your negative habit?
D: What is the easiest most logical way to do this?
Step 2:
A: Visualize yourself as already having succeeded in changing your habit. See yourself enjoying the benefits of your new positive habit.
B: Use a positive affirmation to go along with the visualizations.
Step 3:
Observe your actions and note every time you fail to do what you promise. Remember, DO NOT condemn yourself Simply make a non-judgmental observation and allow yourself to make the necessary correction.
Step 4:
Keep a record for at least twenty-one days
After you consciously chose your new positive habit pattern, these four steps will enable you to program it into your subconscious. It will then become an automatic response action.
If you have established negative responses to life situations, your automatic mechanism will cause you to respond the way you have conditioned yourself to FEEL and ACT.
It is advisable to monitor your responses or habit pattersn by using the following three-step formula to evaluate and correct them.
1. Remove anything in your life that is not working for your good.
2. See what is working for you and continue to program that into your subconscious.
3. Add new things you find desirable that are likely to work for you.
Use the above formula for the rest of your life and you will find that you will gain self-confidence and your life will be full of successful experiences.
Remember these important facts about changing your baits:
A: Recognize and accept the fact that you have negative habits and place no value judgment on yourself.
B: Before starting to change your habit, weigh the potential benefits against the price you will have to pay to overcome it.
C: Understand that no amount of willpower is of any use unless you really want to give up a habit.
D: You must be convinced that change will bring about the gratification of a particular need or desire.
E: Above all, do not feel guilty, condemn, or blame yourself for your present condition. Up until now, you have only done what your level of Awareness has allowed you to do.
As a new habit becomes stronger we are tempted less and less by the old one. We must always be aware of our thoughts and actions and keep our dominant thoughts focused on what we want instead of what we don't want.
- Mood:bored
Recognizing your own true worth is another crucial factor in building total self-confidence. You can never be "better" that your own self-esteem. Positive self-esteem is not the intellectual acceptance of one's talents or accomplishments. It is personal self-acceptance. Developing positive self-esteem is not an ego trip. You simply realize that you are a truly unique and worthy individual; one who does not need to impress others with your achievements or material possessions.
Developing positive self-esteem is not just a matter of making yourself happy; it is the foundation on which you must build your whole life. If you ever hope to be free to create the life you desire, it is a task that you must take seriously. If you don't. you can only expect your low self-esteem to get even worse as you grow older until you end up like a tragic number of people who are unhappy or, worse yet, suicidal.
There are three major causes of low self-esteem. The first is a series of self-defeating concepts, beliefs, and values that you have accepted from your parents. The second is a unique set of put downs, received throughout your school years, from false and distorted concepts of teachers and such things as vocational placement analyses and IQ tests. The third stems from negative religious conditioning with its emphasis on feelings of guilt and unworthiness. While there are many other contributing factors to low self-esteem, these three are the most important.
By far the strongest single contributing factor to our low self-esteem is the low self-esteem of our parents. This is especially true of our mothers, the person with whom we usually spend our most impressionable years. Since most adults labor under false concepts, values, and beliefs, these ideas are passed onto children through attitudes, actions, and reactions like a contagious disease. If our parents feel inadequate and inferior, we, as children, will feel unworthy and, as a result, will be unable to cope with even the simplest problems in home or school. In essence, the "false" assumptions of our parents become the "facts" of our existence.
As a child when you did something wrong you were told you were a "bad girl" or" bad boy". By telling that you that you identified with your actions rather then recognizing that your actions are but the means through which you choose to fulfill your dominant needs. If a child is not made to understand this and believes that he is basically bad, he will develop feelings of unworthiness and inferiority, which will be programmed into his unconscious mind. These feelings will subsequently manifest themselves as shame, self-condemnation, remorse, and guilt.
A low or negative self-esteem is further developed through the common habit of belittling by comparison. When parents compare a child with a brother, sister or someone outside the family, the child's sense of inferiority is compounded. If parents were to temper their criticism with encouraging phrases like, "You're far too nice a boy/girl to let something like this happen," this kind of negative programming could be largely prevented.
Contrary to common belief, raising a child through a system based primarily on reward and punishment is guaranteed to perpetuate low self-esteem. The child must be permitted, without fear of punishment, to make as many mistakes as necessary to learn his lessons. Once he has learned them, most likely he will never have to repeat them. He will know that, whatever he does, he either earns his own rewards or suffers the consequences of his mistakes.The earlier he realizes this, the better!
The most damaging aspect of low self-esteem is that we pass it from one generation to another. Research has tragically demonstrated that suicides follow along family lines. After what you have just read, this should not surprise you. IT is easy to see that if low self-esteem is inherited, in some cases the resulting manifestation will be extreme.
Low self-esteem has many manifestations or addictions. These can be described as the means and habits we develop to escape the demands of everyday living. They are simply alibis that permit us to temporarily avoid facing up to personal reality. The severity of the addiction we choose is in direct proportion to our sense of inadequacy and fear of having to justify who and what we are. The addicted person uses his alibi to cover up the low self esteem he doesn't want other to see.
Major Addictions of a Person with Low Self-Esteem:
Blaming and Complaining:
The person who habitually complains and blames others feels inadequate and tries to build himself up by putting other people down.
Fault Finding:
We find fault with others because they do not accept or comply with our won set of values. We compensate for our feelings of inadequacy by trying to make ourselves right and make them wrong. Notice that we frequently do not like it when they do the things we most dislike about ourselves. When we find fault with their actions, in effect we are saying, "I don't like myself for doing that, so I can't let you get away with it."
Need For Attention and Approval:
Many people have a compulsive need for attention and approval. They are unable to recognize and appreciate themselves as worth, adequate individuals of importance. They have a compulsive need for continuous confirmation that they are "OK," and that others accept and approve of them.
Lack of Close Friends:
Persons with low self-esteem usually do not have close friends because they do not like themselves. Or they may be come aggressive, overpowering, critical, and demanding. Neither type of personality is conducive to friendship.
Aggressive Need to Win:
If we have an obsession with winning or being right all the time, we are suffering fro ma desperate need to prove ourselves to those around us. We try to do this through our achievements. Our motivation is always to receive acceptance and approval. The whole idea is to be, in some way, better than the next person.
Overindulgence:
People who "cannot live with themselves" because they do not like the way they are trying to satisfy their needs through a form of substitution. Feeling deprives and hurt, they seek mental and physical opiates to dull the ache. They medicate themselves with food, drugs, alcohol, or tobacco to get temporary satisfaction. This allows them to temporarily cover up their emotional pain and poor self-esteem. Overindulgence compensates for feelings of self-rejection. It gives them a temporary reprieve from facing reality and the growing need to change their habits.
Depression:
We get depressed because we think something outside of ourselves is keeping us from having what we want. We become totally discouraged with ourselves because we feel our of control, inadequate, and unworthy. The frustration and anxiety in trying to live up to our own expectations and those of others cause us to have low self-esteem.
Greed and Selfishness:
People who are greedy and selfish have an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. They are absorbed in their own needs and desires, which they must fulfill at any cost to compensate for their lack of self-worth. They seldom have the time or interest to be concerned with others, even with the people who love them.
Indecision and Procrastination:
Low self-esteem is frequently accompanies by an abnormal fear of making mistakes. Afraid that he may do not do what he "should" or what others expect him to do, a person with low self-esteem usually does nothing at all or, at least, delays doing anything for as long as possible. He is reluctant to make a decision because he feels he is incapable of making the right one. So, if he does nothing he cannot make a mistake.
Another type of person who falls into this category is the perfectionist. He has a similar personality pattern, only he always needs to be right. Basically insecure, he is intend on being above criticism. In this way, he can feel better than those who according to his criteria are less perfect.
Putting Up a False Front:
Those who put up a false front feel less than others around them. To counteract this, they often name-drop, boast, or exhibit such nervous mannerisms as a loud voice or forced laughter, or use material possessions to impress others. They will not let anyone discover how they truly feel about themselves and in an effort to hide their inferiority, put up a false front to keep others from seeing them as they really are.
Self-Pity:
A feeling of self-pity results from our inability to take charge of our lives. We have allowed ourselves to be places at the mercy or people, circumstances, and conditions. We permit people to upset, hurt, criticize, and make us angry because we have a dependent personality and like attention and sympathy.
Suicide:
This is the severest form of self-criticism. People who commit suicide are not trying to escape from the world; they are escaping from themselves. Instead of facing up to the condition, which is at the root of their problem, they feel hurt and resentful and seek to put an end to it all. Their problem is low self-esteem.
1. What we are picturing and imagining in our minds is based on what we now believe is the Truth, regardless of how faulty or distorted it may be. Our minds control our actions and reactions.
2. It is easier to give excuses or, as we prefer to call them, "logical reasons" why it isn't necessary, or even possible, to change.
3. We seek only those experiences that support our present values and avoid, resist, or, if necessary, forcibly reject those that are inconsistent with our existing beliefs.
4. We have built and programmed into our subconscious minds and central nervous systems the wrong responses to life's situations that cause us to respond the way we have been programmed. In other worlds, we respond to the what we have been conditioned to feel and act. This "system" is of our own creation and only we can change its basic patterns.
Your number one priority in life is the expansion of your awareness. By expanding your awareness,you will remove the "mistaken certainties" that have been keeping you from being the self-confident person you would like to be. You do this by:
1. Ceasing to automatically and arbitrarily defend your personal viewpoints of "right" and "wrong." Defending them keeps you in ignorance by blocking the reception of new ideas.
2. Reassessing your concepts, values, beliefs, ideals, assumptions, defenses, aggressions, goals, hopes, and compulsions.
3. Reorganizing and understanding your real needs and motivations.
4. Learning to trust your intuition.
5. Observing your mistakes and trying to correct them; being aware that herein lie some of the most valuable lessons you'll ever learn.
5. Loving yourself and others.
7. Learning to listen without prejudging and automatically thinking, "this is good; that is bad." Training yourself to listen to WHAT is being said without the necessity of believing it.
8. Noticing what you are defending most of the time.
9. Realizing that your new awareness will provide you with the means and motivations to change for the better.
Begin to ask yourself, "Are my beliefs rational? Could I be mistaken?" If another person held your beliefs, you would be able to be very objective. You would, no doubt, present a convincing argument as to why they may be wrong. Learn to view your own beliefs in this matter. Question EVERYTHING and draw your own conclusion only after you have considered all the possibilities.
The moment you begin to compare yourselves with anyone you are subjecting yourself to psychological slavery.
NO ONE CAN EVER LET YOU DOWN IF YOU ARE NOT LEANING ON THEM. No one can hurt your feelings, make you unhappy, lonely, angry, or disappointed if you are not dependent on them for your welfare, inspiration, love, or motivation.
The person who is self-reliant does not need to find a master to lean on. She is able to meet life's challenges with confidence and power by looking at each situation in the light of reality.
Once you have developed self-reliance, you do not have to procrastinate, escape, or evade what is facing you because you have the confidence to meet each life situations with self-assurance and poise. You are free from worry because you know that you are in full control. You are not separated from your source of power. You do not need repeated doses of inspiration and stimulation from others to do what you have to do. Instead, you go through life with the realization that the internal power within you is greater than any problem that faces you.
Overcoming the need to manipulate:
As a child, you neither knew nor cared about what was going on in the world around you. Your only concern was your won welfare. Helplessness made you dependent on what others would give you and do for you. Your greatest happiness was being fed held and played with. Your main concern was to get as much attention as possible.
You quickly discovered that, if you started to cry, you could summon an adult to take care of your needs. Even if you just got bored, you could start crying and someone would usually appear to comfort you. Smiling, too, worked exceptionally well. So you soon learned to smile when you were picked up and cry when you were put down. This simple exercise in manipulation set the pace for the rest of your life.
As a child, behaviour like this was excusable, but as an adult, it is self-defeating. If you are still trying to manipulate others to do that with you are sufficiently capable of doing yourself, you cannot consider yourself emotionally mature.
A growing habit in our culture is to do more and more for children and expect less and less. Parents guilty of this are unwittingly cheating their offspring by allowing them to be dependent for things they should be doing for themselves. By spending the first 18 years leaning and depending on others, children are cast in the role of prisoners with good behaviour privileges. It is interesting to note this is a human phenomenon. Shortly after birth, all other species of animal push their young out into the world where they soon learn independence.
The greatest gift any parent can give their children is to help them to become self-confident by making them self-reliant. Children should be given as much responsibility as they can handle at any age level. Only through independence will they learn the joy, privilege, and human dignity of standing on their own two feet.
The Fatal Decision Of Conformity:
Most of us grew up never having to make any major decisions. Adults frequently deprived us of this responsibility and made them for us. If we tried to make a decision or state an opinion, it was never given any importance. Our parents were the final authority. We either agreed to their demands or else tried to talk our way out of what they wanted us to do.
As we entered adolescence, it became apparent that we would soon have to decide what was best for us. This can be a frightening experience, as the average teenager goes forth into the adult world with very little preparation for what lies ahead. Our home training and system of education have largely ignored this vital and necessary part of our growth.
It is at this stage of our lives that we make the fatal decisions to conform. As children, we were trained to obey or suffer the consequences so it is little wonder that, as we enter adulthood, most of us chose to perpetuation conformity as the easiest and most expedient approach to life. We prefer not to rock the boat because our need for approval is usually stronger than our desire to do what we really want.
Conformity is one of the greatest psychological evils of humankind. The person caught in this destructive habit rarely reaches his or her goals. She wants to be a great person, be independent, and do important things. But she can't. Her primary motivation to always seek approval prevents her.
The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity. We should never invest another human being with the power to either build or wreck our lives, or dominate our initiative.
How Comparison Breeds Fear:
Comparison is a sign of poor self-esteem. The person who compares herself to others lives in a state of fear. She fears those she imagines are above her. Believing them to be superior, she feels she can never achieve their level of competence. She fears those she imagines are below her because they seem to be catching up. If she works in a large company, she is always looking around to see who is a threat. As she rises to greater heights, the greater is her fear of falling.
Competition - Killer of Creativity
All forms of competition are hostile. They may seem friendly on the surface but the prime motivation is to be or do better than the next person. We were placed on this earth to create, not to compete, so if competition is used as your basic motivation to do anything, it will literally conspire against you and defeat you every time. "I am FOR me, not AGAINST anyone!"
The self-reliant individual does not feel the need to compete. She does not need to look and see what others are doing or be "better than" the next person. It is better to recognize your own capabilities and strive for excellence in your own life.
Praise vs. Recognition:
(Praise)
Oh, how we love the sweet music of praise! Most people will go to almost any lengths to hear it. As they run from one person praising them to another they become trapped in an addiction of approval. The more they are addicted the more they abdicate their lives to others for direction.
Praise seeking implies that you must constantly prove your worth. Every time you make a mistake or do something you feel does not meet with someone else's standards, you feel "less than" others. You then blame yourself and feel guilty for not doing what you think you "should." You keep asking yourself "Have I done well enough?" But the person who goes through life trying to do "well enough" develops the compulsive need to be or do better than others. You will always feel inadequate when you do this.
(Recognition)
There is a world of difference between praise and recognition. Recognition, as we shall use it here, is a factual observation. It is neither a compliment, nor a value judgment. It is simply what the name implies, recognition that a person has done the best she or he can based on their current level of awareness.
The major difference between praise and recognition is that praise is a value judgment. If you tell someone that he is a "great person" for doing something for you, you are also saying he is "not such a great person" if he doesn't fulfill your desires. If people are not given the recognition they need to make them feel accepted as the truly unique individuals they are, they will resort to seeking praise and become its prisoner.
Freeing yourself from others:
We are reluctant to lose the approval of family, friends, co-workers, and peer groups by doing what we feel and know we should do. And so we let opportunity after opportunity pass by, afraid to pay the price of emancipation. Yet we can break away anytime we want. So, the problem is not with someone else, the problem is with us.
Your fundamental responsibility is your won physical and emotional well-being. By not breaking away, you are contributing to a situation of mutual dependency. The fact is that in the long run they will get over their hurt or disappointment. Most importantly if you meet your own needs first, they will have new respect for you.
Nothing can stop you from achieving total self-confidence, if you really want to. But until you free yourself from the mistaken certainty that dependency, manipulation, conformity, comparison, and competition are essential to your well-being, you will not be able to create the life you desire. Only when you decide that you are going to do everything you possibly can do to free yourself on a mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual level, will you be able to be the self-confident person you like to be.
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