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Personal growth: Are distractions restricting our progress? June 6, 2017

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Development Potential.
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In our current environment of almost limitless amounts of both amusements and serious pursuits, some social critics say we are ruining ourselves by choosing an excess of frivolity and illusions.

If true, then perhaps we are not in an ideal personal milieu in which to realize our personal development potential.

And yet, this debate about such choices and their consequences has been going on for many centuries.

The ancient Chinese philosopher Mencius (551-479 BCE) wrote:

“These days, rulers use times of peace to indulge in the pleasures of music and idle amusement. They’re bringing ruin down upon themselves. We bring it all upon ourselves: prosperity and ruin alike.” (1)

If we are able to bring both ruin and prosperity upon ourselves, then how should we proceed?

Mencius answers:

“The T’ai Chia says:
Ruin from Heaven*
We can weather.
Ruin from ourselves
We never survive.”

Or, paradoxically, we must and can deal with what the universe delivers to us, because the events are not within a sphere we can control; but it is much harder to cope with or recover from a path of self-destruction that we willingly choose to embark on.

More concisely, realizing what we can and cannot control and making good choices.

(1) The writings of Mencius, as translated by David Hinton in his book, The Four Chinese Classics, Counterpoint, Berkeley, California, 2013

* Hinton describes Heaven as indicating “Natural process. Or more descriptively, the inevitable unfolding of things in the cosmological process.”

Hinton also notes that, “In a culture that makes no distinction between those realms we call the heart and the mind, Mencius was the great thinker of the heart.”

— Dennis Mellersh

Personal growth: Moods, perceptions, and problem-solving May 24, 2017

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Overcoming Fear.
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By Dennis Mellersh

Most of us have been in the paradoxical situation in which a nagging problem that has been causing us misery and anxiety yesterday, or for a number of yesterdays, does not seem so worrisome today.

This, despite the fact that our circumstances today are identical to our circumstances yesterday.

Our problem or worrisome situation, has not gone away, but somehow our mood or our attitude to the problem seems more optimistic, so our misery and anxiety about the problem has largely gone away.

In a lighter mood

We don’t have an immediate solution to the problem, but we are now in a lighter mood, even perhaps a happy mood in which we can see that there are possibilities of solving the problem.

So clearly then, our happiness, or mood, does not depend on our circumstances.

So, wouldn’t it be great if we could, no matter what our circumstances might be, to be able to simply command our brain and our “anxiety centre” to switch to a happy, positive, “I can handle this” mode.

But alas, no such instant-acting brain-switch exists. Or, at least I haven’t found one yet.

Moods change perception

However, as Dr. Richard Carlson notes, “Circumstances are always neutral. If they were the cause of our problems, they would always affect us in the same way, which, of course, they don’t. It’s our thinking and perceptions about our circumstances that brings life to them.”

The perception of our problems is therefore mood-related.

So, although we need to work toward solutions to reality-based problems, in order to be better able to solve them, we need to realize that “feeling good comes first. Solving the problem comes later.”

Yes, but aside from studying Buddhism for ten years, how do we do that?

A possible solution

Richard Carlson takes an entire book (1) to fully explain all the details of how to accomplish this, but here’s one of the solutions he offers that we can start working on right now.

We can make an effort to move our focus away from the problem, because, as Carlson notes, “If circumstances seem hopeless, dwelling on them won’t help.”

Not focusing on the problem takes away the energy the problem needs to grow in our minds; with the problem growing in our minds it makes the problem seem worse.

“We do this not to avoid facing the problems but to make room for solutions to grow,” Carlson says.

(1) Dr. Richard Carlson, You Can Be Happy No Matter What: Five Principles Your Therapist Never Told You, New World Library, Novato, California, 1997