Cicero’s Six Mistakes of Man
Today is traditionally taken to be the birthday of the great Roman lawyer, political figure, orator and philosopher Cicero, whose full name was Marcus Tullius Cicero. Nobody really knows the exact date of his birth, but for several centuries, January the 3rd it has been.
His life was extraordinarily successful by the standards of the day, and generations of school children learned some basic history and philosophy from him.
We also learned that success is subjective.
Over two thousand years ago he wrote about the “Six Mistakes of Man:”
- The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others
- The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected
- Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it
- Refusing to set aside trivial preferences
- Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and studying
- Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do
Even after all this time, how much has really changed?
I urge you to think about those six and whether any of them are operating in your life. I often use “The Six” as a jumping off point in therapy or workshops: they often help us to focus on some of our false beliefs and perceptions.
And to celebrate his birthday, here are a few choice Cicero quotations from my own collection.
Enjoy and, perhaps, learn something from them.
“A liar is not believed even though he tells the truth.”
“A man’s own manner and character is what most becomes him.”
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.
“A youth of sensuality and intemperance delivers over a worn out body to old age.”
“Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.”
“All things are full of God.”
“As fire when thrown into water is cooled down and put out, so also a false accusation when brought against a man of the purest and holiest character, boils over and is at once dissipated, and vanishes and threats of heaven and sea, himself standing unmoved.”
“As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.”
“As I give thought to the matter, I find four causes for the apparent misery of old age; first, it withdraws us from active accomplishments; second, it renders the body less powerful; third, it deprives us of almost all forms of enjoyment; fourth, it stands not far from death.”
“Avarice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.”
“Before beginning, plan carefully.”
“Before you trust a man, eat a peck of salt with him.”
“Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.”
“Brevity is the best recommendation of speech, whether in a senator or an orator.”
“By doubting we come at truth.”
“Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.”
“Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.”
“Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.”
“Generosity should never exceed ability.”
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.”
“Great is the power of habit. It teaches us to bear fatigue and to despise wounds and pain.”
“He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.”
“He who suffers, remembers.”
“If you would abolish avarice, you must abolish its mother, luxury.”
“In a disturbed mind, as in a body in the same state, health can not exist.”
“In everything satiety closely follows the greatest pleasures.”
“In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men.”
“Inability to tell good from evil is the greatest worry of man’s life.”
“It is a shameful thing to be weary of inquiry when what we search for is excellent.”
“It is exercise alone that supports the spirits, and keeps the mind in vigor.”
“Justice is the crowning glory of the virtues.”
“Many wish not so much to be virtuous, as to seem to be.”
“Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.”
“Nature has placed in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.”
“No man is so old as not to think he can live one year more.”
“One who sees the Supersoul accompanying the individual soul in all bodies and who understands that neither the soul nor the Supersoul will ever be destroyed”
“Our minds possess by nature an insatiable desire to know the truth.”
“Reason should direct and appetite obey.”
“Study carefully, the character of the one you recommend, lest their misconduct bring you shame.”
“Superstition is a senseless fear of God.”
“That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.”
“The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.”
“The beauty of the world and the orderly arrangement of everything celestial makes us confess that there is an excellent and eternal nature, which ought to be worshiped and admired by all mankind.”
“The beginnings of all things are small.”
“The celestial order and the beauty of the universe compel me to admit that there is some excellent and eternal Being, who deserves the respect and homage of men.”
“The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.”
“The cultivation of the mind is a kind of food supplied for the soul of man.”
“The diseases of the mind are more and more destructive than those of the body.”
“The foolishness of old age does not characterize all who are old, but only the foolish.”
“The forehead is the gate of the mind.”
“The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil”
“The harvest of old age is the recollection and abundance of blessing previously secured.”
“The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.”
“The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.”
“There are gems of thought that are ageless and eternal.”
“There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.”
“There is no grief which time does not lessen and soften”
“There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.”
“Through doubt we arrive at the truth.”
“To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.”
“To the sick, while there is life there is hope.”
“True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can any feigned thing be lasting.”
“Virtue is its own reward.”
“We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is, the more he is inspired by glory
“Whatever that be which thinks, which understands, which wills, which acts, it is something celestial and divine and on that account must necessarily be eternal.”
“When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.”
“Work makes a callus against grief.”
Wishing You Great Learning Opportunities in the New Year!
“The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourself strong.”
–Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic and Spiritual Teacher, 1863-1902)
A lot of people tell me that they are pleased to see the back of 2006, and we certainly had more than our fair share of challenges during the year, having lost four members of our family in just a few months. The fact that they were not all human didn’t change the impact one bit.
But for all the people who have told me about their negative thoughts about the year I’ve said the same thing: the year has actually been a terrific learning experience. That’s not to say that we should slap a big smiley face on every pain, hardship and adversity, but it does mean that it is essential for all of us to try and find the meaning in the events that have happened in our lives.
When Nietzsche said “That which does not kill me makes me stronger,” he was giving voice to a peculiarly Germanic ideal of the time: that people need to be tested and tempered like steel. That’s not what I mean at all.
The three best and most effective ways of dealing with adversity are first to extract meaning from the event or situation: “Why is this happening?” “Is it just dumb bad luck or is there more to it?”
The second essential is to learn to detach from an event, so that it no longer has its emotional claws in you.
And the third is to accept a situation. Not in some passive way of letting life bowl you over, but of being able to acknowledge an experience and then using it as the basis for wise action.
Each of these can take a lifetime to learn the hard way, but you can actually master them very quickly with a series of simple steps.
I am going to be sharing some of them with you in the coming months. I am also going to be publishing an eBook on the topic of resilience, because detachment and acceptance come much more easily to the person with robust resilience.
Having recently had to make a number of unexpected trips overseas has delayed our publication schedule by three months, but we shall be back on track by the end of January.
And here’s a final thought for you from Healing, Meaning and Purpose: adversity is an invitation to grow. If approached in the right way, apparently negative events can lead to a shift in your consciousness and rapid spiritual development.
In fact the majority of my own teachers could trace their spiritual maturation to major life events that at the time seemed to be the end of the world.
Remember that what the caterpillar thinks to be the end of the world, is, for the butterfly, just a new beginning!
“Trials, temptations, disappointments — all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fiber of character but strengthen it. Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.”
James Buckham (American Naturalist and Writer)
“The most spiritual human beings, assuming they are the most courageous, also experience by far the most painful tragedies: but it is precisely for this reason that they honor life, because it brings against them its most formidable weapons.”
–Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (German Philosopher, 1844-1900)
“Out of confusion, you invent something permanent – the Absolute, the Brahman or God.”
–Jiddu Krishnamurti (Indian Spiritual Teacher, 1895-1986)
Banquo’s Ghost
“Chess is the game which reflects most honor on human wit.” — Voltaire (a.k.a. François-Marie Arouet, French Writer and Philosopher, 1694-1778)
For anyone with even a passing interest in chess, a re-unification match for the World Championship is currently taking place in Elista, the capital city of Kalmykia, a small region of the Russian Federation that is Europe’s only Buddhist country. Though I’m sure that some would quibble about whether it should be in Europe or Asia.
The beginning of the match between two of the world’s top Grandmasters – the aggressive Bulgarian gambler Veselin Topalov and the conservative Russian, Vladimir Kramnik – has led to and 2-0 score in favor of the Russian.
So why am I mentioning this is a blog dedicated to Personal Growth, Healing and Wellness? Because the current one-sided score line has a lot to do with each of these topics. This match is not just about chess playing ability: it is also about psychological and emotional strength, character and resilience.
There was a time when chess masters were unfit, often over-weight and the majority smoked. When I first started playing in tournaments in England, it was quite normal to have ashtrays beside most of the boards.
Oh how things have changed!
Now the players prepare physically, psychologically and some even spiritually with prayer and meditation:
- Very few players smoke, not just because of long-term health risk, but because the deleterious effects of lowered oxygen levels on cognition outweigh the short-term improvement in attention caused by nicotine.
- Aerobic exercise is essential to ensure that the brain is perfused with oxygen, and if you are physically unfit you cannot expect to survive a number of games that may each last for five or six hours.
- Strength training is also essential to overall fitness and physical and the maintenance of psychological resilience. Topalov is going to need that now.
- Posture is extremely important. According to Chinese and Ayurvedic physicians and chiropractors, bad posture results in a restriction in the flow of Qi, Prana, or blood. Whether or not you believe in the flow of Qi in the body, it is easy to demonstrate that bad posture has bad effects on cognition.
- Flexibility is also an essential part of physical wellness that affects you psychologically as well as physically. Daily stretching should be part of everyone’s life.
- Relaxation and meditation: one or other or both are essential tools for maintaining your balance while under stress, and for building resilience.
- Diet: a carefully balanced nutritious diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids (without any added mercury!) and fiber is essential for optimum mental functioning.
- Fluid intake: the current recommendations are for a healthy person to drink between 80 and 120 fluid ounces of pure water each day.
- Avoid alcohol: A former World Champion – Alexander Alekhine – lost his title after turning up drunk on a number of occasions during a match to defend his title.
Looking at the pictures from the match, in both games Topalov looked intense and Kramnik far more relaxed. It could have been an illusion: I would need to be in proximity to be sure. In the first game Topalov took a needless risk in a dead level position. In the second, he had an absolutely won game. I’m no grandmaster, but even I spotted a win in three moves. How could he have failed to find it and then lost?
What is the explanation? Chess players have to play a certain number of moves in a specified time, so not only are they playing their opponent, they are also playing against the clock. The biggest prize in the game is on the line, for which both players have been preparing since childhood. And there are hundreds of thousands of people who are watching and analyzing their every move.
I know from personal experience that it can be hard enough to be interviewed on a television show being watched by millions of people, where any false statement would haunt me forever. Imagine having a battle of wits with one of the finest chess players in the world in the knowledge that every move will be analyzed for the next century, and computers are already analyzing every permutation of every move that the two players have made.
The stress on the players is unbelievable. Both have prepared for it, but it is also a matter of who has prepared best: that is a mixture of temperament and training. Just today I read an article talking about ways of avoiding stress. This is silly: stress is part of life and it can provide the motor in motivation. The trick is how we learn to respond to stress.
There is also another stressor that has only been felt by world championship contenders on two or three previous occasions. This match is being played in the shadow of the retirement of Garry Kasparov, who, in the opinion of most people, is the strongest player who ever lived, with the possible exception of Bobby Fischer. The difference is that Bobby became World Champion all by himself, with little help and by inventing a new approach to chess. It is a great tragedy that his life has apparently been blighted by mental illness, and that he has played only a few recorded games in the last 34 years.
By contrast, Garry was the strongest player in the world for twenty years, and in the opinion of most experts would probably still beat both of the current contenders. So whoever wins wants to prove himself a worthy champion. Garry’s specter remains like the ghost of Banquo in the Scottish play.
The final essential is that both players have to detach from the results of the first two games. Kramnik will obviously have his tail up now, but he is too smart and too experienced to give in to complacency. Topalov has to completely forget about the first two games and focus on what lies ahead: I’m sure that he has someone on his team working on simple techniques to stop the past from populating his psychological present.
Whatever lies ahead for these two men in the next few weeks, we shall see that chess is a microcosm of life in general.
“What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.”
–Jiddu Krishnamurti (Indian Spiritual Teacher, 1895-1986)
Creativity and Resilience
“No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.”
–Epictetus (Phrygian-born Greek Stoic Philosopher, c.A.D.55- c.A.D.135)
I have written several articles about resilience, and I have begun to talk about some of the methods for developing psychological resilience and also some of the potential consequences of not developing this essential psychological strength.
I’d also like to share with you another aspect of resilience: it is essential ingredient of creativity and of innovation.
I’ve had a longstanding fascination with the creative process, and one of the most robust findings in the research on extraordinary creative achievement is that even the greatest performers in their fields seem to produce the same ratio of undistinguished works to notable ones through their careers. The great chess player wins more often than the average one, but only sometimes produces a truly great creation. Even the best engineers and scientists conduct many unsuccessful experiments. The stories are legion of artists who produce many paintings and works of music that never win recognition and may not even be much good. Many great actors, directors, cricketers and companies have a great many failures behind – and sometimes in front – of them.
Amongst the many attributes of the high achiever in each of these fields is a remarkable ability to bounce back, to detach from the apparent failure, to see it as an education, and to understand the importance of persistence and perseverance. To take a risk, to take a step back and to learn and adapt if at first it doesn’t succeed. This never means repeating the same strategies over and over again, it means being smart and not being fazed by failure
“Unless you are willing to try, fail miserable, and try again, success won’t happen.”
–Phillip Adams (Australian Broadcaster, Filmmaker, Archaeologist and Satirist, 1939-)
I was once working with a company that had just tried to launch a promising new medicine. The initial effort had been a flop and at the time that I became involved, the company had just fired the entire marketing team. Neither the company nor the recently departed team had had the chance to find out what had gone wrong and how to build something new and different. The new team had to start from scratch and, living in constant fear, was burning out at an astonishing rate. The real problem was the inflexibility of the company that was stifling creative solutions to problems. Once that was fixed, things began to improve very quickly.
If anyone ever says that they and the company never accepts failure, it is laudable but impractical.
It’s different if an enterprise fails because people are not pulling their weight; or failing to meet deadlines; or being overly rigid in interpreting rules or just goofing off. But if everyone is trying to help, learning, and being dynamic and flexible, then it’s best not to send them on their way, but instead to see how we can learn from a failure.
And the key for you personally and the key for your company is to learn to develop personal and corporate resilience. Then creative answers have the chance to start flowing.
“Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.”
–Thomas Alva Edison (American Inventor, 1847-1931)
“No one succeeds without effort…. Those who succeed owe their success to their perseverance.”
–Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic and Spiritual Teacher, 1879-1950)
Revisiting Resilience
“I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs, but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.”
–General George S. Patton (American General, 1885-1945)
Resilience is the process of being able to adapt and to thrive in the face of adversity, stress, trauma, tragedy or threats. A resilient person is les likely to succumb to any of these life events and is less likely to develop mental illness. But resilience is more than a passive strength or resistance to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: it is a dynamic capacity that not only protects us, but enables us to turn adversity into strength and an opportunity for growth.
Despite our extraordinary health care system and a multi-billion dollar antidepressant industry, the rates of depression are increasing throughout the Western world. A recent book has suggested that boredom was unknown before about 1760: the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. All this tells us that something is seriously wrong with our resilience.
“The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.”
–Plutarch (Greek Biographer and Priest to the Oracle at Delphi, A.D. 46-c.120)
In Healing, Meaning and Purpose, I pointed out some of the incredible changes that have taken place over the last one hundred years, and their impact on health. To try and apply the principles of the past to the problems of the present and future is unlikely to be crowned with success. We need to adapt. Buddhists do not normally eat meat. Except for Tibetan Buddhists, who need to eat some meat in order to survive at the high altitudes of the Himalayas. I have a good friend who created the finest integrated medicine clinic in the world, the Hale Clinic in London. Normally an abstemious vegetarian, when she was embroiled in business meetings, she would often take some meat to remain grounded. I have done the same thing myself for years. I prefer not to eat meat. I have not had a steak in more than thirty years. But if I am to do a lot of traveling and need to work with politicians and business people, a bit of chopped up fish or poultry can be essential.
The changes in our lifestyles over the past century have dramatically reduced the level of physical activity necessary to provide life’s basic resources: our effort-based rewards that are intimately involved in the regulation of mood. If you think about it for a moment, if your great-grandparents wanted to eat, there was probably a lot of effort involved. Our brains still contain a huge number of circuits that evolved to play roles in sustaining the kind of continuous effort that would be critical for the acquisition of resources such as food, water and shelter. So what happens when we suddenly on longer need much physical activity to obtain those resources? What happens to those parts of the brain that have millions of years evolving? There will be reduced activation of those brain regions essential for reward, pleasure, salience, motivation, problem-solving, and effective coping strategies. The practical consequence of that is that these systems will not sit there idling: if under-stimulated, since these systems are so heavily involved with our emotions, we would expect to see people becoming depressed. And we know that depression has been increasing throughout the Western world. Of course, many people need to stimulate these regions of the brain artificially, as with drugs, pornography or extreme sports.
Effort-based rewards are an essential component of resilience to life’s stressful challenges. Purposeful physical activity is important in the maintenance of mental health. It therefore makes sense to put more emphasis on preventative behavioral and cognitive life strategies, rather than relying solely on psychopharmacological strategies. Our strategy is geared toward protecting people from developing depression, and compensatory behaviors. One of the very interesting new ideas in pharmacology is that antidepressants and antipsychotics may act to enhance resilience at both the cellular level and in the whole person. This is a very different concept from thinking of medicines as chemicals that simply block symptoms.
Our aim is to improve resilience and gradually to increase activation of all those under-used systems of the brain to treat and then to prevent problems. All the things that mother always said were good for you: healthy exercise, meditation, a balanced diet, charity and kindness, and actions aimed at fulfilling your personal and Higher Purpose have already been shown to treat and to protect.
Here are some proven methods for improving resilience:
1. Learn to be adaptable: the heart of resilience is the ability to take things in your stride and to be able to surf the ocean of change, rather than trying to hold the hold it back.
2. Be aware of the blockages in your mind or in the subtle systems of your body that are preventing you from bouncing back form adversity
3. Attitude: avoid seeing a challenge as an insurmountable problem
4. Accept that change is part of life: you can do little about it, but you can do a great deal about how you react to change
5. Ensure that you have meaningful goals that are consistent with your core desires and beliefs, and that you are moving toward them
6. Do all that you can to work on establishing your own Purpose in life. You can create a purpose for your life, but also be aware that there is a Higher Purpose in you life
7. Take decisive actions: even if the first action may not be the best one. Any action is usually better than denying that problems exist, and hoping that they will evaporate while you are asleep or watching television
8. Develop and maintain close relationships. Even if you are not a sociable person, relationships are one of the most potent way of protecting yourself from life’s ups and downs
9. Look for opportunities to learn more about yourself, and how you react to situations. This doesn’t mean becoming an introvert or a rampant narcissist, but it does mean taking a moment each day to review where you are and what you can learn form things that are or have happened in your life. This is a big subject, but there are many good ways to answer the question, “Why is this happening to me again?” and from preventing habitual problems and routine self-sabotage. (I shall be publishing an eBook and CD about this crucial topic in the very near future)
10. Work on developing a positive self-image. I have had some harsh things to say about the excesses of the self-esteem movement, but it has now been replaced by something far more valuable: the science of positive psychology. We have a great deal of empirical data on how to improve a person’s happiness and resilience. Again, we can speak about that some more if you are interested.
11. Maintain hope for the future. We have done research that has shown that one of the best ways of predicting a positive outcome with major mental illness, or of reducing the risk of recurrent substance abuse is to instill hope. Again, there are techniques for doing this, even when the whole world seems to be against you.
12. Maintain perspective: do not blow things out of proportion, and remember that this too shall pass.
13. Take care of yourself, physical, emotionally and spiritually. Listen to yourself: what does your body need? What do you need emotionally? What do you need from a relationship? What do you need spiritually?
14. Are you giving others what they need from you? If you have a nagging sense that you are not giving a child or a spouse that they need and deserve, it can dramatically reduce you resilience.
15. Rather than just thinking about and worrying over your problems, or problems that may turn up in the future, get into the habit of thinking of yourself not just as an individual who is going through problems, but as a boundless spiritual being who is learning a lesson.
16. Never forget to think about the legacy that you are going to leave. Not just to your family, but to the world at large. If you can’t think of one, this is a good time to begin to create one. That is an enormously powerful perspective on the world and on your problems.
“I am an old man and have had many troubles, most of which never happened.”
–Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, American Humorist, Writer and Lecturer, 1835-1910)
Technorati tags: Resilience Life event Life balance Legacy Stress management
Critics and Creativity
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
–Albert Einstein (German-born American Physicist and, in 1921, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1879-1955)
I have had the incredible privilege of knowing, working with, and sometimes sitting at the feet of more than one hundred of the greatest and most influential thinkers, scientists and spiritual leaders of the last fifty years. I have never been interested in listing them: many wish to retain their privacy, and it is much more important for you to get the message, rather than its origin.
It’s great if a Nobel Laureate or a fourteenth generation teacher transmits his or her insights and wisdom. Yet it remains our responsibility to use all our powers – emotional, intellectual and intuitive – to decide what is right for us. I have seen a T’ai Chi Ch’uan master forget the “form,” a “guru” who neglected the most fundamental part of his own teachings, and a Nobel Laureate misquote a study in which I was involved. Such things happen; it just means that we have to bring our own gifts to bear when we decide how to proceed. Some spiritual teachers deliberately throw in some misinformation to see if we are actually working with their material, and not just sitting passively and soaking it up like a sponge.
After all these years spent with these fine people and scores of complementary practitioners, athletes, musicians, opera singers and ballet dancers, all have told me the same thing: the more creative you are, the more you give the world, the stronger the negative reaction. It almost seems to be a law of nature, to stop anyone form rising too high.
Debate is great! Willful destruction never is. Gently pointing out errors or inconsistencies is one of the marvelous strengths of the Internet. Smashing things and people for fun seems singularly pointless! Think about all the people in the public eye, actors and performers, who have been built up only to be thrown down again.
I’ve always been a gossip magnet: it’s just one of those things that I’ve come to expect! Yet we recently had something totally bizarre: we received a number of odd messages from people with strange pseudonyms. One made the bizarre claim that I was going to die. Well, I guess that’s a safe prediction for anyone! But with thanks to this modern Cassandra I am not, in fact, even close! I practice what I preach. Experts who have looked at my biophysical and "energetic" profiles think that I’m going to be around for another fifty to seventy years. And I plan to use those years to do what I can for others: helping, guiding, teaching, encouraging and supporting. And as long as people find them helpful, I’m going to keep the blogs, articles, books and CDs coming!
As Mark Twain said:
“The report of my death was an exaggeration.”
And another wise person had this to say:
“Pay no attention to critics. No one ever erected a statue to a critic.”
Odd comments like those recently sent to me are a terrific gift: they help us to see how far we’ve come with one of the three great pillars of self-realization: detachment. The other two pillars are "Honesty of mind" and "Sincerity of spirit."
You must decide how far along you and I are with those!
Technorati tags: Creativity Criticism Detachment Cassandra
Rooting Out Resistance to Change
It is never easy to change our mind about anything, as long as we remain attached to a particular belief, outcome or line of reasoning. Subsequently, we can become inflexible and intolerant of new ideas. There are several barries to emotional, personal and spiritual freedom and ATTACHMENT is one of the most potent.
In my recently released book, Healing, Meaning & Purpose: The magical power of the emerging laws of life, I discuss 12 major reasons why people resist change. They are:
- Being unaware that change is possible.
- Having entrenched belief systems.
- Having an emotional or habitual attachment to a particular way of doing things.
- Feeling comfortable about where you are.
- Fearing change or the consequences of change, like losing face or risking embarrassment or ridicule.
- Having intellectual reasons for maintaining the status quo.
- Being unaware of information to support the need for change.
- Being unconvinced by the necessity for change.
- Having blockages or perturbations in their energy fields.
- Having a life story that does not leave room for change or evolution.
- Being unaware of the rewards that flow from changing.
- Not knowing how to harness resources to accomplish change.
What are your roadblocks to emotional, personal and spiritual freedom? What is the first step in creating positive changes in your life?
Technorati tags: spiritual growth
