Affirmations For Meditation And Reflection Week One
Affirmations For Meditation And Reflection (Week One) 1. TAKE 100% RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR FUTURE We don’t naturally want to take responsibility for our lives. We want to give the responsibility to someone else. We blame them when our lives aren’t good.—DONALD MILLER Author of A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story Let’s start with some really good news: You have total control over the thoughts you think, the images you visualize, and the actions you take. How you use these three things determines everything you experience in life. On your journey to a life of happiness, abundance, and success, taking 100% responsibility for your future is the starting line. Here is where you are today, and there is where you want to be—it is the fulfilment of your hopes and dreams. It is the realization of your life purpose and your ultimate goals, and I am going to show you the way to get there. Together, we are going to embark on an exciting journey that is based upon using daily affirmations—positive statements that affirm who you are, what you believe, and the fact that you already have everything you need at your disposal to succeed in reaching your goals. You may not think that you do, but I am going to show you how to change your thinking and build a blueprint for success. I am easily improving my life—moving with ease from where I am now to where I want to be. Positive energy will get your day off to a great start. Set a few minutes aside every morning and repeat your affirmation aloud with conviction and intention. Do this again at night and let your subconscious mind apply that positive energy as you sleep. When you let it empower your thoughts and dreams during the night, you are training it to think differently—to automatically lean toward positive opportunity and action while you are awake. Repeating affirmations will help you consciously improve as long as you take full responsibility for your life—that means every success, every failure, and every indecisive thought or action you have experienced. Regardless of the circumstance, placing the blame on the event or outcome won’t make a difference because it’s your response to it that is the game-changer—and your response, whether it’s your thoughts, images, or behaviours, is totally up to you. The truth is, you don’t have to settle for anything in life because you can keep changing your response to the circumstance you may face until you get the result you want. If you don’t like your current results, simply begin to do something different. I am confidently creating better circumstances and expanding opportunity for myself—responding with intelligence to events as they occur. It’s easy sometimes to think things “just happen” to you—that you were an innocent bystander or an unwitting participant. Don’t let yourself be tricked into playing that game. You are the one creating or allowing it to happen. Start paying attention to what I call “yellow alerts.” There are always signals that tell you something is off or something is about to happen. If you don’t pay attention to the internal and external yellow alerts, you will needlessly suffer. External yellow alerts are things like news trends that your industry is fading or the smell of alcohol on your teenager’s breath. Internal alerts are things like gut feelings, intuitive messages, and feelings of stress, tension, or pain. Paying closer attention to your internal and external yellow alerts will enable you to change your actions or responses once you become aware of them. Let this thought encourage you: Life becomes much easier when you take control of your own destiny. Don’t accept that things “just happen” to you—choose to create the life you really want! I am choosing to change my thoughts, images, and behaviours to respond differently and produce better outcomes. 2. BE CLEAR WHY YOU’RE HERE Decide upon your major definite purpose in life and then organize all your activities aroundit.—BRIAN TRACY Author of Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life Everyone has a unique calling in their life—something only you can do, something only you have the unique skills and wisdom to accomplish. Identifying, acknowledging, and honouring this life purpose may be the most important thing that you do on your way to creating a successful life. It’scertainly one of the most fulfilling. But, without a clear understanding of what you’re here on this Earth to do, and pursuing that purpose with passion and enthusiasm, you will almost certainly fall short of any goal you set. Most people haven’t a clue why they are on this Earth. Maybe they think knowing isn’t really important, or they are waiting for a personal awakening, or they’re hoping that the answer mysteriously appears on their daily to-do list. The problem with not knowing isn’t just that you lose time making U-turns, getting stuck, and backtracking to the fork in the road—but that you get lost, side-tracked, or become stagnant. When you lose your sense of direction, it can cause untold emotional setbacks and turmoil, leaving you feeling hopeless, useless, or frustrated. I am joyful and fulfilled, living in perfect alignment with my life purpose. Below is an exercise that will help you identify your life’s purpose and find meaning and direction. The life purpose exercise 1) List two of your unique personal qualities, such as leadership and innovation.2) List one or two ways you enjoy expressing those qualities when interacting with others, such as to support and to inspire.3) Assume the world is perfect and that each of us is living our unique calling. What does the world look and feel like? Example: Everyone is working in their ideal field, in harmony with each other and without conflict or damage to the Earth.4) Combine your answers above into a single statement that defines your life purpose and tells how it contributes to an ideal world. Example: To use
Toxic Character Types
Toxic Character Types Although each person’s character is as unique as a fingerprint, we can notice throughout history certain types that keep recurring and that can be particularly pernicious to deal with. As opposed to the more obviously evil or manipulative characters that you can spot a mile away, these types are trickier. They often lure you in with an appearance that presents their weaknesses as something positive. Only over time do you see the toxic nature beneath the appearance, often when it is too late. Your best defence is to be armed with knowledge of these types, to notice the signs earlier on, and to not get involved or to disengage from them as quickly as possible. 1. The Hyperperfectionist You are lured into their circle by how hard they work, how dedicated they are to making the best of whatever it is they produce. They put in longer hours than even the lowliest employee. Yes, they might explode and yell at people below them for not doing the job right, but that is because they want to maintain the highest standards, and that should be a good thing. But if you have the misfortune of agreeing to work with or for such a type, you will slowly discover the reality. They cannot delegate tasks; they have to oversee everything. It is less about high standards and dedication to the group than about power and control. Such people often have dependency issues stemming from their family background. Any feeling that they might have to depend on someone for something opens up old wounds and anxieties. They can’t trust anyone. Once their back is turned, they imagine everyone slacking off. Their compulsive need to micromanage leads to people feeling resentful and secretly resistant, which is precisely what they fear the most. You will notice that the group they lead is not very well organized, since everything must flow through them. This leads to chaos and political infighting as the courtiers struggle to get closer to the king, who controls everything. Hyperperfectionists will often have health problems, as they work themselves to the bone. They like to blame others for everything that goes wrong—nobody is working hard enough. They have patterns of initial success followed by burnout and spectacular failures. It is best to recognize thetype before getting enmeshed on any level. They cannot be satisfied by anything you do and will chew you up slowly with their anxieties, abusiveness, and desire to control. 2. The Relentless Rebel At first glance such people can seem quite exciting. They hate authority and love the underdog. Almost all of us are secretly attracted to such an attitude; it appeals to the adolescent within us, the desire to snub our nose at the teacher. They don’t recognize rules or precedents. Following conventions is for those who are weak and stodgy. These types will often have a biting sense of humour, which they might turn on you, but that is part of their authenticity, their need to deflate everyone, or so you think. But if you happen to associate with this type more closely, you will see that it is something they cannot control; it is a compulsion to feel superior, not some higher moral quality. In their childhood a parent or father figure probably disappointed them. They came to mistrust and hate all those in power. In the end, they cannot accept any criticism from others because that reeksof authority. They cannot ever be told what to do. Everything must be on their terms. If you cross them in some way, you will be painted as the oppressor and be the brunt of their vicious humour. They gain attention with this rebel pose and soon become addicted to the attention. In the end it is all about power—no one shall be above them, and anyone who dares will pay the price. Look at their past history—they will tend to split with people on very bad terms, made worse by their insults. Do not be lured in by the hipness of their rebel pose. Such types are eternally locked in adolescence, and to try working with them will prove as productive as trying to lock horns with a sullen teenager. 3. The Personalizer These people seem so sensitive and thoughtful, a rare and nice quality. They might seem a little sad, but sensitive people can have it rough in life. You are often drawn in by this air of theirs, and want to help. Also, they can appear quite intelligent, considerate, and good to work with. What you come to realize later on is that their sensitivity really only goes in one direction—inward. They are prone to take everything that people say or do as personal. They tend to brood over things for days, long after you have forgotten some innocuous comment that they have taken personally. As children, they had a gnawing feeling that they never got enough from their parents—love, attention, material possessions. As they get older, everything tends to remind them of what they didn’t get. They go through life resenting this and wanting others to give them things without their having to ask. They are constantly on guard—are you paying them attention, do you respect them,are you giving them what they paid for? Being somewhat irritable and touchy, they inevitably push people away, which makes them even more sensitive. At some point they start to have a look of perpetual disappointment. You will see in their life a pattern of many falling-outs with people, but they will always see themselves as the wronged party. Do not ever inadvertently insult such a type. They have a long memory and can spend years getting back at you. If you can recognize the type early enough, it’s better to avoid them, as they will inevitably make you feel guilty for something. 4. The Drama Magnet They will draw you in with their exciting presence. They have unusual energy and stories to tell. Their
Judging People’s Character
How To Accurately Determine The Strength Of People’s Character When choosing people to work and associate with, do not be mesmerized by their reputation or taken in by the surface image they try to project. Instead, train yourself to look deep within them and see their character. People’s character is formed in their earliest years and by their daily habits. It is what compels them to repeat certain actions in their lives and fall into negative patterns. Look closely at such patterns and remember that people never do something just once. They will inevitably repeat their behaviour. Gauge the relative strength of their character by how well they handle adversity, their ability to adapt and work with other people, their patience and ability to learn. Always gravitate toward those who display signs of strength, and avoid the many toxic types out there. Know thoroughly your own character so you can break your compulsive patterns and take control of your destiny. At all costs, you must alter your perspective. Train yourself to ignore the front that people display, the myth that surrounds them, and instead plumb their depths for signs of their character. This can be seen in the patterns they reveal from their past, the quality of their decisions, how they havechosen to solve problems, how they delegate authority and work with others, and countless other signs. A person of strong character is like gold—rare but invaluable. They can adapt, learn, and improve themselves. Since your success depends on the people you work with and for, make their character the primary object of your attention. You will spare yourself the misery of discovering their character when it is too late. For thousands of years, we humans believed in fate: some kind of force—spirits, gods, or God—compelled us to act in a certain way. At birth our entire lives were laid out in advance; we were fated to succeed or fail. We see the world much differently now. We believe that we are largely in control of what happens to us, that we create our own destiny. Upon occasion, however, we might have a fleeting sensation that approximates what our ancestors must have felt. Perhaps a personal relationship goes bad or our career path hits a snag, and these difficulties are uncannily similar to something that happened to us in the past. Or we realize that our way of working on a project needssome improvement; we could do things better. We try to alter our methods, only to find ourselves doing things in exactly the same way, with nearly the same results. We might feel for a moment that some kind of malignant force in the world, some curse, compels us to relive the same situations. We can often notice this phenomenon more clearly in the actions of others, particularly those closest to us. For instance, we see friends continually fall for exactly the wrong person or unconsciously push away the right person. We cringe at some foolish behaviour of theirs, such as an ill-considered investment or career choice, only to see them repeat the foolishness a few years later, once they have forgotten the lesson. Or we know someone who always manages to offend the wrong person at the wrong time, creating hostility wherever he or she goes. Or they crumble under pressure, always in the same way, but blaming others or bad luck for what happens. And ofcourse we know the addicts who get out of their addiction, only to fall back in or find some other form of addiction. We see these patterns and they don’t, because nobody likes to believe that they are operating under some kind of compulsion beyond their control. It is too disturbing a thought. If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit there is some truth to the concept of fate. We are prone to repeat the same decisions and methods of dealing with problems. There is a pattern to our life, particularly visible in our mistakes and failures. But there is a different way of looking at this concept: it is not spirits or gods that control us but rather our character. The etymology of the word character, from the ancient Greek, refers to an engraving or stamping instrument. Character, then, is something that is so deeply ingrained or stamped within us that it compels us to act in certainways, beyond our awareness and control. We can conceive of this character as having three essential components, each layered on top of the other, giving this character depth. The earliest and deepest layer comes from genetics, from the particular way our brains are wired, which predisposes us toward certain moods and preferences. This genetic component can make some people prone to depression, for instance. It makes some people introverts and othersextroverts. It might even incline some toward becoming especially greedy—for attention or privilege or possessions. The psychoanalyst Melanie Klein, who studied infants, believed that the greedy and grasping type of child came into the world predisposed toward this character trait. There might be other genetic factors as well that predispose us toward hostility or anxiety or openness. The second layer, which forms above this, comes from our earliest years and from the particular type of attachments we formed with our mother and caregivers. In these first three or four years our brains are especially malleable. We experience emotions much more intensely, creating memory traces that are much deeper than anything that will follow. In this period of life we are at our most susceptible to the influence of others, and the stamp from these years is profound. John Bowlby, an anthropologist and psychoanalyst, studied patterns of attachment between mothers and children and came up with four basic schemas: free/autonomous, dismissing, enmeshed-ambivalent, and disorganized. The free/autonomous stamp comes from mothers whogive their children freedom to discover themselves and are continually sensitive to their needs but also protect them. Dismissing mothers are often distant, even sometimes hostile and rejecting. Such children are stamped
Signs Of Short Term Thinking And Strategies To Overcome Them
Signs Of Short-Term Thinking And Strategies To Overcome Them Most of us imagine that we engage in some form of long-term thinking; after all, we have goals and plans. But really we are fooling ourselves. We can see this most clearly when we talk to other people about their plans and strategies for the near and more distant future: we are often struck bytheir vagueness and the lack of deep thinking people generally give to such plans. They are more like hopes and wishes, and in the rush of immediate events, feeling pressure and the need to respond, such weak goals and plans are easily overwhelmed. Most of the time we are improvising and reacting to events with insufficient information. Basically we are in denial about this because it is hard to have perspective about our own decision-making process. The best way to overcome this is to recognize the clear signs of short-sighted thin lives. Only by seeing these signs can we combat them. The following are the four most common manifestations of short-term thinking: 1. Unintended consequences History is littered with endless examples of this phenomenon. In ancient Rome, a group of men loyal to the Republic feared that Julius Caesar was going to make his dictatorship permanent and establish a monarchy. In 44 BC they decided to assassinate him, thereby restoring the Republic. In the ensuing chaos and power vacuum Caesar’s great-nephew Octavius quickly rose to the top, assumed power, and permanently ended the Republic by establishing a de facto monarchy. After Caesar’s death it came out that he had never intended to create a monarchical system. The conspirators brought about precisely what they had tried to stop. In nineteenth-century India, under British colonial rule, authorities decided there were too many venomous cobras in the streets of Delhi, making life uncomfortable for the British residents and their families. To solve this they offered a reward for every dead cobra residents would bring in. Soon enterprising locals began to breed cobras in order to make a living from the bounty. The government caught on to this and cancelled the program. The breeders, resentful of the rulers and angered by their actions, decided to release their cobras back on the streets, thereby tripling the population from before the government program. Other notorious examples would include the Eighteenth Amendment, establishing Prohibition in the United States in 1920, which was designed to stop the spread of alcoholism but only ended up increasing alcohol consumption by a substantial amount; and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour by the Japanese in 1941, designed to decimate the U.S. naval force in one blow and bring America to its knees. Instead it shook the American public out of its deep isolationism, ensuring the total mobilization of the country’s superior manpower and resources to not only defeat the Japanese but also to obliterate its military for good. The very success of the attack guaranteed the opposite of the intended result. We can find less dramatic examples of this in our daily lives. We try to control a rebellious teenager by putting some restrictions on his behaviour, only to make him even more rebellious and uncontrollable. We try to cheer up a depressed person by making her realize that her life is not that bad and that the sun is shining, only to find out we have made her even more depressed. She nowfeels guilty about her feelings, worthless, and more alone in her unhappiness. A wife tries to get her partner to open up more to her. With the hope of establishing more intimacy, she asks him what he is thinking, what happened during the course of the day, and so on. He interprets this asintrusiveness and closes up further, which makes the wife more suspicious and more prying, which closes him up even further. The source of this age-old syndrome is relatively simple: alarmed by something in the present, we grab for a solution without thinking deeply about the context, the roots of the problem, the possible unintended consequences that might ensue. Because we mostly react instead of think, our actions are based on insufficient information—Caesar was not planning to start a monarchy; the poor people of Delhi despised their colonial rulers and would not take kindly to suddenly losing money; Americans would be willing to go to war if attacked. When we operate with such a skewed perspective, it results in all kinds of perverse effects. In all of these cases a simple move partwayup the mountain would have made clear the possible negative consequences so obvious to us in hindsight: for example, offering a reward for dead cobras would naturally cause impoverished residents to breed them. Invariably in these cases people’s thinking is remarkably simple and lazy: kill Caesar and the Republic returns, action A leads to result B. A variation on this, one that is quite common in the modern world, is to believe that if people have good intentions, good things should be the result. If a politician is honest and means well, he or she will bring about the desired results. In fact, good intentions often lead to what are known as cobra effects, because people with the noblest intentions are often blinded by feelings of self-righteousness and do not consider the complex and often malevolent motivations of others. Nonconsequential thinking is a veritable plague in the world today that is only growing worse with the speed and ease of access to information, which gives people the illusion that they are informed and have thought deeply about things. Look at self-destructive wars such as the 2011 Operation Linda Nchi, Kenya’s surprise invasion of Somalia, the attempts by the Kenyan government to borrow huge loans for short-term political gain, the increasing number of financial bubbles from the craze for quail and its eggs to real estate. Related to this is a gradual disconnect from history itself, as people tend to view present events as if they were isolated in time. Any
Big Picture Thinking
Big-Picture Thinking “Where success is concerned, people are not measured in inches, or pounds, or college degrees, or family background; they are measured by the size of their thinking.”—DAVID SCHWARTZ Big-picture thinking brings wholeness and maturity to a person’s thinking. It brings perspective. It’s like making the frame of a picture bigger, in the process expanding not only what you can see, but what you are able to do. CULTIVATE BIG-PICTURE THINKING BY ELEVATING YOUR PERSPECTIVE It is in the animal part of you to be most impressed by what you can see and hear in the present—the latest news reports and trends, the opinions and actions of the people around you, whatever seems the most dramatic. This is what makes you fall for alluring schemes that promise quick results and easy money. This is also what makes you overreact to present circumstances—becoming overly exhilarated or panicky as events turn one direction -or the other. Learn to measure people by the narrowness or breadth of their vision; avoid entangling yourself with those who cannot see the consequences of their actions, who are in a continual reactive mode. They will infect you with this energy. Your eyes must be on the bigger picture, and trends that govern events, on that which is not immediately visible. Never lose sight of your long-term goals. With an elevated perspective, you will have the patience and clarity to reach almost any objective. We tend to live in the moment. We respond first and foremost to what we see and hear, to what is most dramatic in an event. But our reality as human beings encompasses the past—every event is connected to something that happened before in an endless chain of historical causation. Any present problem has deep roots in the past. It also encompasses the future. Whatever we do has consequences that stretch far into the years to come. When we limit our thinking to what our senses provide, to what is immediate, our reasoning powers are neutralized. We are no longer aware of why or how things come about. We imagine that some successful scheme that has lasted a few months can only get better. We no longer give thought to the possible consequences of anything we set in motion. We react to what is given in the moment, based on only a small piece of the puzzle. Naturally our actions then lead to unintended consequences, or even to disasters. To complicate matters, we are surrounded by others who are continually reacting, drawing us deeper into the present. Salesmen and demagogues play on this human weakness to con us with the prospect of easy gains and instant gratification. Our only antidote is to train ourselves to continually detach from the immediate rush of events and elevate our perspective. Instead of merely reacting, we step back and look at the wider context. We consider the various possible ramifications of any action we take. We keep in mind our long-term goals. Often, in raising our perspective, we will decide that it is better to do nothing, to not react, and to let time go by and seewhat it reveals. Such sanity and balance do not come naturally. They are powers we acquire through great effort. Almost all of us have experienced something similar to the following scenarios: Someone we need or depend on is not paying us proper attention, not returning our calls. Feeling frustrated, weexpress our feelings to him or double our efforts to get a response. Or we encounter a problem, a project that is not going well, and so we decide upon a strategy and take appropriate action. Or a new person appears in our life, and captivated by her fresh energy and charm, we become friends. Then weeks go by and we are forced to reassess what had happened and how we had reacted. New information comes to light. That person who was not responding to us was himself overwhelmed with work. If only we had just waited and not been so impatient, we could have avoided pushing away a valuable partner. That problem we tried to solve was not really so urgent, and we made it worse by rushing an outcome. We needed to know more before acting. And that new friend ends up not being so charming; in fact, time reveals her to be a destructive sociopath whose friendship takes us years to heal from. A little more distance could have let us see the red flags before it was too late. Looking back on our life, we see that we have a tendency to be impatient and to overreact; we notice patterns of behaviour over long periods of time that elude us in the moment but become clearer to us later on. Elevate Your Perspective for More Mental Clarity What this means is that in the present moment we lack perspective. With the passage of time, we gain more information and see more of the truth; what was invisible to us in the present now becomes visible in retrospect. Time is the greatest teacher of them all, the revealer of reality. We can compare this to the following visual phenomenon: At the base of a mountain, in a thick forest, we have no ability to get our bearings or to map out our surroundings. We see only what is before our eyes. If we begin to move up the side of the mountain, we can see more of our surroundings and how they relate to other parts of the landscape. The higher we go, the more we realize that what we thought further below was not quite accurate, was based on a slightly distorted perspective. At the top of the mountain we have a clear panoramic view of the scene and perfect clarity as to the lay of the land. For us, locked in the present moment, it as if we are living at thebase of the mountain. What is most apparent to our eyes—the other people around
The Flexible Mind—Self Strategies
The Flexible Mind—Self-Strategies You find it frustrating when people resist your good ideas out of sheer stubbornness, but you are largely unaware of how the same problem—your own stubbornness—afflicts you and limits your creative powers. As children our minds were remarkably flexible. We could learn at a rate that far surpasses our adult capacities. We can attribute much of the source of this power to our feelings of weakness and vulnerability. Sensing our inferiority in relation to those older than us, we felt highly motivatedto learn. We were also genuinely curious and hungry for new information. We were open to the influence of parents, peers, and teachers. In adolescence many of us had the experience of falling under the sway of a great book or writer. We became entranced by the novel ideas in the book, and because we were so open to influence, these early encounters with exciting ideas sank deeply into our minds and became part of our own thought processes, affecting us decades after we absorbed them. Such influences enriched our mental landscape, and in fact our intelligence depends on the ability to absorb the lessons and ideas of those who are older and wiser. Just as the body tightens with age, however, so does the mind. And just as our sense of weakness and vulnerability motivated the desire to learn, so does our creeping sense of superiority slowly close us off to new ideas and influences. Some may advocate that we all become more sceptical in the modern world, but in fact a far greater danger comes from the increasing closing of the mind that afflicts us as individuals as we get older, and seems to be afflicting our culture in general. Let us define the ideal state of the mind as one that retains the flexibility of youth along with the reasoning powers of the adult. Such a mind is open to the influence of others. And just as you use strategies to melt people’s resistance, you must do the same on yourself, working to soften up yourrigid mental patterns. To reach such an ideal, we must first adopt the key tenet of the Socratic philosophy. One of Socrates’s earliest admirers was a young man named Chaerephon. Frustrated that more Athenians did not revere Socrates as he himself did, Chaerephon visited the Oracle of Delphi and posed a question: “Is there a wiser man than Socrates in all of Athens?” The oracle answered no. Chaerephon felt vindicated in his admiration of Socrates and rushed to tell his mentor the good news. Socrates, however, being a humble man, was not at all pleased to hear this and was determined to prove the oracle wrong. He visited many people, each eminent in their own field—politics, the arts, business—and asked them many questions. When they kept to knowledge of their field, they seemed quite intelligent. But then they would expatiate on all kinds of subjects about which they clearly knew nothing. On such subjects they merely spouted the conventional wisdom. They did not think through any of these ideas. Finally Socrates had to admit that the oracle was indeed accurate—he was wiser than all the others because he was aware of his own ignorance. Over and over again he examined and re-examined his own ideas, seeing inadequacies and infantile emotions lodged within them. His motto in lifehad become “The unexamined life is not worth living.” The charm of Socrates, what made him sodevilishly fascinating to the youth of Athens, was the supreme openness of his mind. In essence, Socrates assumed the weaker, vulnerable position of the ignorant child, always asking questions. Think of it this way: We like to scoff at the superstitious and irrational ideas that most people held in the seventeenth century. Imagine how those of the twenty-fifth century will scoff at ours. Our knowledge of the world is limited, despite the advances of science. Our ideas are conditioned by the prejudices instilled in us by our parents, by our culture, and by the historical period we live in. They are further limited by the increasing rigidity of the mind. A bit more humility about what we know would make us all more curious and interested in a wider range of ideas. When it comes to the ideas and opinions you hold, see them as toys or building blocks that you are playing with. Some you will keep, others you will knock down, but your spirit remains flexible and playful. To take this further, you can adopt a strategy promulgated by Friedrich Nietzsche: “He who really wants to get to know something new (be it a person, an event, a book) does well to entertain it with all possible love and to avert his eyes quickly from everything in it he finds inimical, repellent,false, indeed to banish it from mind: so that, for example, he allows the author of a book the longest start and then, like one watching a race, desires with beating heart that he may reach his goal. For with this procedure one penetrates to the heart of the new thing, to the point that actually moves it: and precisely this is what is meant by getting to know it. If one has gone this far, reason can afterwards make its reservations; that over-estimation, that temporary suspension of the critical pendulum, was only an artifice for luring forth the soul of the thing.” Even in writing that is inimical to your own ideas there is often something that rings true, which represents the “soul of the thing.” Opening yourself up to its influence in this way should become part of your mental habits, allowing you to better understand things, even to criticize them properly. Sometimes, however, that “soul” will move you as well and gain some influence, enriching your mind in the process. Upon occasion it is good to let go of your deepest set of rules and restrictions. The great fourteenth-century Zen master Bassui posted at the door of his temple
Five Strategies For Becoming A Master Influencer And Persuader
Five Strategies For Becoming A Master Influencer And Persuader 1. Transform yourself into a deep listener In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own. Or we are even daydreaming about something irrelevant. The reason for this is simple: we are more interested in our own thoughts, feelings, and experiences than in those of the other person. If this were not the case, we would find it relatively easy to listen with full attention. The usual prescription is to talk less and listen more, but this is meaningless advice as long as we prefer our own internal monologue. The only solution is to somehow be motivated to reverse this dynamic. Think of it this way: You know your own thoughts only too well. You are rarely surprised. Your mind tends to circle obsessively around the same subjects. But each person you encounter represents an undiscovered country full of surprises. Imagine for a moment that you could step inside people’s minds and what an amazing journey that could be. People who seem quiet and dulloften have the strangest inner lives for you to explore. Even with boors and fools, you can educate yourself as to the origins and nature of their flaws. Transforming yourself into a deep listener will not only prove more amusing as you open your mind to their mind but will also provide the most invaluable lessons about human psychology. Once you are motivated to listen, the rest is relatively simple. You cannot make the strategic purpose behind your listening too obvious. The other person has to feel it is a lively exchange, even though in the end they may do 80 percent of the talking. For this purpose, you must not barrage them with questions that make it feel like a job interview. Instead, pay attention to their nonverbal cues. You will see their eyes light up when certain topics are mentioned—you must guide the conversation in that direction. People will become chatty without realizing it. Almost everyone likes to talk about their childhood, their family, the ins and outs of their work, or some cause that is dear to them. An occasional question or comment plays off something they have said. You are deeply absorbed in what they say, but you must feel and appear relaxed in being so. You convey that you are listening by maintaining relatively consistent eye contact and nodding as they talk. The best way to signal how deeply you are listening is to occasionally say something that mirrors what they have said, but in your own words and filtered through your own experience. In the end, the more they talk, the more they will reveal about their insecurities and unmet desires. Your goal is to make them come away from the encounter feeling better about themselves. You have let them be the star of the show. You have drawn out of them the wittier, more fun-loving side of their personality. They will love you for this and will look forward to the next encounter. As they become increasingly relaxed in your presence, you will have great latitude for planting ideas and influencing their behaviour. 2. Infect people with the proper mood As social animals, we are extremely susceptible to the moods of other people. This gives us the power to subtly infuse into people the appropriate mood for influencing them. If you are relaxed and anticipating a pleasurable experience, this will communicate itself and have a mirror-like effect on the other person. One of the best attitudes to adapt for this purpose is one of complete indulgence. You do not judge other people; you accept them as they are. In the novel The Ambassadors, the writer Henry James paints the portrait of this ideal in the form of Marie de Vionnet, an older French woman of impeccable manners who surreptitiously uses an American named Lambert Strether to help her in a love affair. From the very moment he meetsher, Strether is captivated. She seems a “mix of lucidity and mystery.” She listens deeply to what he says and, without responding, gives him the feeling she completely understands him. She envelops him in her empathy. She acts from the beginning as if they have become good friends, but it is in her manner, nothing she says. He calls her indulgent spirit “a beautiful consciousmildness,” and it has a hypnotic power over him. Well before she even asks for his help, he is completely under her spell and will do anything for her. Such an attitude replicates the ideal mother figure—unconditional in her love. It is not expressed so much in words as in looks and body language. It works equally well on men and women and has an hypnotic effect on almost anyone. A variation of this is to infect people with a warm feeling of rapport through laughter and shared pleasures. U. S senator and later president, Lyndon Johnson was the master of this. Of course, he used alcohol, which flowed freely in his office, his targets never knowing that his own drinks weregreatly watered down so he could retain control of himself. His bawdy jokes and colourful anecdotes created a comfortable club-like atmosphere for men. It was hard to resist the mood he set. Johnson could also be quite physical, often wrapping his arms around a man’s shoulder, frequently touching him on the arm. Many studies on nonverbal cues have demonstrated the incredible power that a simple touch of people’s hands or arms can have in any interaction, making them think positive things about you without their ever being aware of the source of their good opinion. Such gentle taps establish a feeling of visceral rapport, as long as you do not maintain eye contact, which will give it too much of a
Influence And Persuasion Skills
Influence And Persuasion Skills The art of influencing others so that they think like you, believe you and act in a way you want is called as persuasion. Very few people have excellent persuasion skills and those who have make the world follow them. People who do not master the art of influencing others often get lost in thecrowd and fail to make a mark of their own. Persuasion skills are extremely important at workplace for others to take you seriously and also acknowledge your hard work. Even a brilliant idea is of no use if it is not shared with others who eventually believe and implement the same in their day to day life. Trust me, convincing others is no cake-walk and you really need to be good at it. In today’s scenario, where everyone is well aware of what is happening around him/her and even the minutest details can be verified at the click of a button, it is not easy to fool anyone and imposeyour ideas and opinions forcefully. The way you speak, the way you carry yourself and the authenticity of the content play an important role in persuading others. Make Other People the Focus of Attention Life is harsh and people competitive. We naturally must look after our own interests. We also want to feel that we are independent, doing our own bidding. That is why when others try to persuade or change us, we become defensive and resistant. To give in challenges our need to feel autonomous. That is why to get people to move from their defensive positions you must always make it seem like what they are doing is of their own free will. Creating a feeling of mutual warmth helps soften people’s resistance and makes them want to help. Never attack people for their beliefs or make them feel insecure about their intelligence or goodness—that will only strengthen their defensiveness and make your task impossible. Make them feel that by doing what you want they are being noble and altruistic—the ultimate lure. Learn to tame your own stubborn nature and free your mind from its defensive and closed positions, unleashing your creative powers. Learn How to Become a Person of Influence Influence over people and the power that it brings are gained in the opposite way from what you might imagine. Normally we try to charm people with our own ideas, showing ourselves off in the best light. We hype our past accomplishments. We promise great things about ourselves. We ask for favours, believing that being honest is the best policy. What we do not realize is that we are putting all of the attention on ourselves. In a world where people are increasingly self-absorbed, this only has the effect of making others turn more inward in return and think more of their own interests rather than ours. The royal road to influence and power is to go the opposite direction: Put the focus on others. Let them do the talking. Let them be the stars of the show. Their opinions and values are worth emulating. The causes they support are the noblest. Such attention is so rare in this world, and people are so hungry for it, that giving them such validation will lower their defences and opentheir minds to whatever ideas you want to insinuate. Play the Long Game by Asking for Advice Your first move then is always to step back and assume an inferior position in relation to the other. Make it subtle. Ask for their advice. People are dying to impart their wisdom and experience. Onceyou feel that they are addicted to this attention, you can initiate a cycle of favours by doing something small for them, something that saves them time or effort. They will instantly want to reciprocate and will return the favour without feeling manipulated or pushed. And once people do favours for you, they will continue to work on your behalf. In doing something for you, they have judged you worthy of this, and to stop helping you would mean to call into question their originaljudgment and their own intelligence, which people are very reluctant to do. Working slowly this way in a group, you will expand your influence without it seeming aggressive or even purposeful, the ultimate disguise for your ambitions. Lower People’s Defences and Instil a Feeling of Inner Security From early on in life we humans develop a defensive and self-protective side to our personality. It begins in early childhood as we cultivate a sense of personal physical space that others should not violate. It later expands into a feeling of personal dignity—people should not coerce or manipulate us into doing things we don’t want to. We should be free to choose what we desire. These are necessary developments in our growth as socialized humans. As we get older, however, these defensive qualities often solidify into something much more rigid, and for good reason. People are continually judging and appraising us—are we competent enough, good enough, a team player? We never feel quite free of this scrutiny. One noticeable failure inour lives, and people’s scrutiny will turn into negative judgments that can cripple us for a long time. Furthermore, we have the feeling that people are always trying to take from us—they want our time, our money, our ideas, our labour. In the face of all of this, we naturally become more self-absorbed and defensive—we have to look after our own interests, since nobody else will. We set up walls around ourselves to keep out intruders and those who want something from us. By the time we reach our twenties, we have all developed systems of defence, but in certain circumstances our inner walls can come tumbling down. For instance, during a night of revelry with friends, perhaps after some drinking, we feel bonded with others and not judged by them. Ourminds loosen up, and suddenly new and very interesting ideas come to us, and we’re open to
The Lure Of False Purposes
The Lure Of False Purposes The gravitational pull we feel toward finding a purpose comes from two elements in human nature. First, unable to rely on instincts as other animals do, we require some means of having a sense of direction, a way to guide and restrict our behaviour. Second, we humans are aware of our puniness as individuals in a world with billions of others in a vast universe. We are aware of our mortality, and how we will eventually be swallowed up in the eternity of time. We need to feel larger than just the individuals we are, and connected to something that transcends us. Human nature being what it is, however, many people seek to create purpose and a feeling of transcendence on the cheap, to find it in the easiest and most accessible way, with the least amount of effort. Such people give themselves over to false purposes, those that merely supply the illusionof purpose and transcendence. We can contrast them with real purposes in the following way: The real purpose comes from within. It is an idea, a calling, a sense of mission that we feel personally and intimately connected to. It is our own; we may have been inspired by others, but nobody imposed it upon us and nobody can take it away. If we are religious, we don’t merely accept theorthodoxy; we go through rigorous introspection and make our belief inward, true to ourselves. False purposes come from external sources—belief systems that we swallow whole, conformity to what other people are doing. The real purpose leads us upward, to a more human level. We improve our skills and sharpen our minds; we realize our potential and contribute to society. False purposes lead downward, to the animal side of our nature—to addictions, loss of mental powers, mindless conformity, and cynicism. It is critical that we become aware of these false forms of purpose. Inevitably all of us at some point in our lives fall for them because they are so easy, popular, and cheap. If we can eliminate the impulse toward these lower forms, we will naturally gravitate toward the higher, in ourunavoidable search for meaning and purpose. Here are five of the most common forms of false purposes that have appealed to humans since the beginning of civilization. 1. The pursuit of pleasure For many of us, work is just an irritating necessity of life. What really motivates us is avoiding pain, and finding as much pleasure as possible in our time outside work. The pleasures we pursue can take various forms—sex, stimulants, entertainment, eating, shopping, gambling, technological fads, games of all sorts. No matter the objects of the pursuit, they tend to lead to a dynamic of diminishing returns. The moments of pleasure we get tend to get duller through repetition. We need either more and more of the same or constantly new diversions. Our need often turns into an addiction, and with thedependency comes a diminishing of health and mental powers. We become possessed by the objects we crave and lose ourselves. Under the influence of drugs or alcohol, for instance, we can temporarily feel transported beyond the banality of our lives. This form of false purpose is very common in the world today, largely because of the cornucopia of distractions we can choose from. But it goes against a basic element of human nature: to havedeeper levels of pleasure, we have to learn to limit ourselves. Reading a variety of books for entertainment, in rapid succession, leads to a diminishing sense of satisfaction with each book; our minds are overwhelmed and overstimulated; and we must reach for a new one right away. Reading one excellent book and absorbing ourselves in it has a relaxing and uplifting effect as we discoverhidden riches within it. In the moments when we are not reading, we think of the book again and again. All of us require pleasurable moments outside work, ways to relieve our tension. But when we operate with a sense of purpose, we know the value of limiting ourselves, opting for depth of experience rather than overstimulation. 2. Causes and cults People have a profound need to believe in something, and in the absence of great unifying belief systems, this void is easily filled by all kinds of microcauses and cults. We notice that such groups tend not to last very long. Within ten years they already seem passé. During their brief existence, their adherents will substitute extreme conviction and hyper belief for a clear vision of what they are after. For this purpose, enemies are quickly found and are said to be the source of all that is wrong in the world. Such groups become the means for people to vent their personal frustrations, envy, and hatred. They also get to feel superior, as part of some clique with special access to the truth. We can recognize a microcause or cult by the vagueness of what its disciples want. They cannot describe the kind of world or society they desire in concrete, practical terms. Much of their raison d’être revolves around negative definitions—get rid of these people or those practices and theworld will become a paradise. They have no sense of strategy or defined ways of reaching their nebulous goals, which is a clear sign that their group is merely about the release of emotions. Often such groups will depend on large public gatherings in which people can become intoxicated by numbers and shared feelings. Wily rulers throughout history have used this to great effect. People in a crowd are highly suggestible. Through short, simple phrases, with lots of repetition,they can be made to chant back slogans and swallow the most absurd and irrational ideas. In a crowd people can feel relieved of any personal responsibility, which can lead to violence. They feel transported beyond themselves and not so puny, but such enlargement is an illusion. They areactually made smaller by losing their will and their individual voice. Allying
Strategies For Developing A High Sense Of Purpose
Strategies For Developing A High Sense Of Purpose Once you commit yourself to developing or strengthening your sense of purpose, then the hard work begins. You will face many enemies and obstacles impeding your progress—the distracting voices of others who instil doubts about your calling and your uniqueness; your own boredom andfrustrations with the work itself and your slow progress; the lack of trustworthy criticism from people to help you; the levels of anxiety you must manage; and finally, the burnout that often accompanies focused labour over long periods. The following five strategies are designed to help you move past these obstacles. They are in a loose order, the first being the essential starting point. You will want to put them all into practice to ensure continual movement forward. 1. Discover your calling in life You begin this strategy by looking for signs of primal inclinations in your earliest years, when they were often the clearest. Some people can easily remember such early indications, but for many of us it requires some introspection and some digging. What you are looking for is moments inwhich you were unusually fascinated by a particular subject, or certain objects, or specific activities and forms of play. The great nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century scientist Marie Curie could distinctly recall the moment when she was four years old and entered her father’s office, suddenly mesmerized by the sight of all sorts of tubes and measuring devices for various chemistry experiments placed behinda polished glass case. Her whole life she would feel a similar visceral thrill whenever she entered a laboratory. For Anton Chekhov, it was attending his first play in a theatre as a boy in his small town. The whole atmosphere of make-believe thrilled him. For Steve Jobs, it was passing an electronics store as a child and seeing the wondrous gadgets in the window, marvelling at their design and complexity. For Tiger Woods, it was, at the age of two, watching his father hit golf balls into a net in the garage and being unable to contain his excitement and desire to imitate him. For the writer Jean-Paul Sartre, it was a childhood fascination with printed words on a page, and the possible magical meanings each word possessed. These moments of visceral attraction occurred suddenly and without any prodding from parents or friends. It would be hard to put into words why they occurred; they are signs of something beyond our personal control. The actress Ingrid Bergman expressed it best, when talking of the fascinationshe had with performing in front of her father’s movie camera at a very early age: “I didn’t choose acting. It chose me.” Sometimes these moments can come when we are older, as when Martin Luther King Jr. realized his mission in life as he got pulled into the Montgomery bus boycott. And sometimes they can occur while observing other people who are masters in their field. As a young man, the future Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa felt particularly aimless. He tried painting, then apprenticed as an assistant director on films, a job he hated. He was ready to quit when he got assigned to work for the director Kajiro Yamamoto in 1936. Watching this great master at work, suddenly his eyes were opened to the magical possibilities of film, and he realized his calling. As he later described this, “It was like the wind in a mountain pass blowing across myface. By this I mean that wonderfully refreshing wind you feel after a painfully hard climb. The breath of that wind tells you, you are reaching the pass. Then you stand in the pass and look down over the panorama as it opens up. When I stood behind Yama-san in his director’s chair next to the camera, I felt my heart swell with that same feeling—‘I’ve made it at last.’” As another sign, examine moments in your life when certain tasks or activities felt natural and easy to you, similar to swimming with a current. In performing such activities, you have a greater tolerance for the tedium of practicing. People’s criticisms don’t discourage you so easily; you wantto learn. You can contrast this with other subjects or tasks that you find deeply boring and unfulfilling, which frustrate you. Related to this, you will want to figure out the particular form of intelligence that your brain is wired for. In his book Frames of Mind, the psychologist Howard Gardner lists certain forms of intelligence for which people usually have one particular gift or affinity. This could be mathematics and logic, physical activity, words, images, or music. We could also add to this socialintelligence, a superior sensitivity to people. When you are engaged in the activity that feels right, it will correspond to that form of intelligence for which your brain is most suited. From these various factors you should be able to spot the outline of your calling. In essence, in going through this process you are discovering yourself, what makes you different, what predates the opinions of others. You are reacquainting yourself with your natural likes and dislikes. Later in life we often lose contact with our own preferences for things, deeply influenced by what others are doing and by the culture. You are subtracting such external influences. The deeper you make this connection to your calling, the more you will be able to resist the bad ideas of others. You will engage that internal guidance system. Put some time into the process, working with a journal ifnecessary. You are developing the habit of assessing and listening to yourself, so that you can continually monitor your progress and adjust this calling to the various stages in your life. If you are young and just starting out in your career, you will want to explore a relatively wide field related to your inclinations—for instance, if your affinity is words and writing, try all the different types of writing until you hit upon the right fit. If you are older