Self Improvement

Is the one who's holding you back the most in your life, yourself? Our media tell us: "Be all you can be". We are brainwashed from a very young age. Get a good education, get a good job, get a great husband or wife, make the money, have a beautiful family, retire in comfort and then die surrounded by your loved ones.

Problem is, not everyone's life goes according to plan. Life's events get in the way. One thing you can't control is your very early years. You were at the mercy of those who raised you. So you were affected. You bring these memories and thoughts and feelings to bear in your adult life. This affects how you react to events and how you act as a social being.

One big mistake people make is thinking that they _are_ their feelings and memories.

By this I mean, you think that the phenomena of thoughts and feelings are the same as your inner self, your soul. I think of them as bubbles of gas rising up out of a deep pond or like flies buzzing around an elephant. The flies fly hither and thither in a very agitated manner but the elephant moves on slowly and inexorably towards its destiny.

It's important to realise that you are distinct from your thoughts and emotions. That your thoughts and emotions are affected by your bodily state and that they in turn affect your body. Consider what 40 years of constant anxiety and anger can do to a human body purely on a chemical level. The 'mind' affects the body and the body affects the 'mind'.

So what does this mean on a practical level?

It means that most people spend their sleeping and waking moments flitting from thought to thought and feeling to feeling without stopping occasionally to recollect themselves and refocus. This can make them ill.

Some facets of your life you can affect. Some are out of your control. With the latter, what you _can_ change is how you _react_ to these events.

So something bad happens. Say it's not something you can fix. You can let it bother you for days or let it go. The same goes for any continuous, distressing thoughts or emotions you have. Examine them in a detached manner, like a scientist, then imagine them dissolving into dust and nothingness, _as long as you are not imagining real people, living or dead_. You don't want to wish evil on others. It's wrong.

Modern psychologists and psychiatrists are making a grave error in telling their patients it's all right to continuously revisit negative thoughts, feelings and memories. This gives them energy and makes them stronger.

Consider what happens in your own mind, every day. Your current obsessions and old hurts come back over and over again. What's the clever move? To allot them more and more of your time and mental energy or just ignore them? As the descendents of hunter-gatherers we fret about problems as a way of fixing them. When you can't fix the problem then you have to let it go.

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By: Odysseus Svengali

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Want to hear more? Go to www.onlinecounsellorlondon.co.uk and then 'phone Tommy. Tommy is an online life coach offering business advice from in London, UK.