The Great Wisdom Resident Within Each Of Us

We have the truly amazing capacity, most of us, to listen to a friend in trouble and then give really good advice. Rarely do we do it. But there is an even more startling feature to most of us.  

We don't follow our own advice!

Take a tip and try this: Imagine you have just discovered you have a twin. Imagine too, he or she has exactly the same problem or issue you have got. He or she has no idea how to resolve it and has asked you to advise. So there the two of you sit in armchairs facing each other. Listen carefully to what you advise your mythical twin to do.

Hope you will find that helpful.

Oh! Best you do, of course,then follow your own advice. This could be applied immediately or it could be to see a professional advisor you have identified!

We have much greater wisdom stored within us than most of us give credit for.

Enjoy your day whichever time-zone you are in.

Coming to terms with abuse as a child

Gerry Neale has just posted some more articles on coping with child abuse on EzineArticles. If you have any comment on them do make one or if you want to be notified when more are posted fill in the EzineArticle mail box to receive them automatically.

Top 40 Ezine Article Author

Gerry Neale has just joined the elite top 40 authors on Psychology on Ezine Articles. Currently he is in the top 50 on Achievement and in the top 60 on goal-setting. Many other directories are now carrying his articles. Some of these include articles or references to his key hobbies of writing fiction and non fiction, of painting in mixed media ink pointillism and watercolour, and of writing lyrics to existing music.

Is It A Good Idea To Tell Others About My Goal?

The question of whether it is wise to share your goals with others is a significant feature of goal-setting. It is important to comment on the potential impact of confiding in others. Doing that could potentially involve people close to you or those you meet on your journey.

“To tell them…..,or not to tell? That is the question!”

The first all-embracing caution I would give is: ask yourself why you want to do this! If you are looking for moral support, then do not share your goal with anyone whom you have any reason to believe is likely to find fault with it.

Worse if they rubbish it and throw doubt on your own personal ability to achieve it! It is pretty obvious that all you will be doing is setting yourself up for a crushing disappointment. It will give a great opportunity for your negative self-talk to kick in and join this so-called friend and rubbish you as well!

And frankly there is little advantage either in sharing it with someone whose response is likely to be, “Well, it sounds very nice, dear.”

But suppose you have a partner or friend, or you meet someone along the way who is always one to focus on the best course out of problems, on finding solutions, on ways and means to help people towards their destination. Now that is different!

Such people do not come two-a penny! But they can be found and are very valuable for non-judgemental reality-checking of your goal as well as pointing out additional opportunities you may have to achieve it.

If you are so committed, so crystal clear in your path to achievement and lacking in all doubt as to success – (not an absolute condition found in many goal setters!), why tell anyone!


However you may judge that you can be confident that telling people about your intent will not compromise your commitment, and could be very useful marketing and fact finding for you.

All I would say is, “OK But tread carefully! If you are so confident and committed then why tell them anyway” And I would add, “By all means do the marketing or research but does the actual goal need to be shared?”

Essentially there is no problem in any of this if you are experienced in focussing on your future. If you have learned how to be resilient in the face of criticism and doubt, then that inner strength can be called upon at will to act as a buffer. You can plough on undaunted.

If however you are new to this then think twice. Yes, research what you are committed to achieve but confine your confidence to yourself or to a trusted and treasured friend or mentor.

I have posted this article on my blog, conscious that the full version would be rather too long to post on-line. Part 2 has an additional feature which should make one reflect about why one feels the need to tell other people. Do refer to it, if this a subject which is of significance to you.

Part 2:

The second element regarding confiding in someone about one’s goal is more imprecise, yet could be very revealing about the level of one’s self-esteem.

Ask yourself again why actually you want to tell particular people?

Could the answer possibly be that within yourself, you feel some nagging doubt as to whether on your own, you can go the distance needed to achieve the goal. So, barely consciously, you conclude that you could tell certain people who you feel already hold sway and influence over you.


Why would you want to do that?

Because then you will feel well and truly obligated to them to see it through otherwise then you will be letting them down! The sub-conscious request you are issuing is that they will keep the pressure on you! Why impose even more pressure on yourself!

Now this happens more often than we care to admit, so do beware! And what does it suggest to us? Does it not reveal we still lack some inner conviction about our goal? Best then we rid ourselves of that doubt ourselves privately. Intensify the visualisation. Employ the other ingredients to successful goal setting.

Why?

There is a more significant issue at stake here. Imposing some form of ‘Have to’ on ourselves is crazy. We need to find, where-ever we can, the points we need to cause us to ‘want to and love to’ do it. In fact we should have striven to remove from our preparation for our goal, all unhelpful pressure on our sub-conscious caused by an inner sense of ‘have to’.

All we need is to reinforce the deep sense of ‘wanting to’ to get to that picture of our goal achieved, which we have taken such pains to create in our mind.

Let us assume you have actually succeeded in creating the image. You have the picture in your mind and filled with positive emotions. Do you still have some doubt? Of course, you would be inhuman if you did not have some!

We reassure ourselves that a bit of apprehension and anxiety is healthy and useful.

So wham! We make it ten times worse! We tell several people of our intentions in order to put yet more pressure on us to perform!

Whatever for!

We need every ounce of our mental and emotional strength to apply positively to our goal. Why undermine ourselves by having now to use some of that energy defensively to keep faith with these friends!

But reflect on this deeper point as you have, to your credit, checked this out:

• How far in your life has your cognitive behaviour become a situation where
most of what you do is somehow and so often at someone else’s behest?
• Is it actually more difficult for you to want to do something for yourself?
• And does even thinking about it somehow seem self-indulgent?
• Well, don’t let it. You are worth it and it is far better that you do not undermine your wish to succeed:

So think twice, even three times whether you tell anyone and if so, select carefully! Far better to achieve it and then tell people afterwards how you did it!

Good luck!

Psychology Simplified: Creating Want To’s and Not Have To’s! Part 2 by Gerry Neale

 

An Employer’s “Want To” Can Become Employees’ “Have To’s” in the same instant, if great care is not taken! If a business truly wants to succeed, it is self-evident it needs a ‘success’ culture amongst its staff. And that success is far more likely to come - and to come quickly, if it is sought by staff who feel they are working with the grain, and not against it.

The cynical employer might say, ‘Look here, who is in charge here? Who is the owner of this business? Someone has to provide the leadership! If I want this done, done it should be!’

Mercifully such attitudes in management are less easy to find. And it is not leadership that is at fault: it is just certain types of leadership. Also, if you are reading this, then I can assume that you are already looking for better ways than Lording it over your staff!

One feature often missed about employees is that most yearn for that feeling of wanting to come to work. They want to feel good about the job they do and the employer they work for. They know too well that inner sense of wretchedness linked to turning up to work for someone they don’t want to work for and doing what they don’t want to do.

Now, of course, there can be personality clashes involved that can be at the heart of this. There can be personal problems at play too.

Yet, surely, any employer in the 21^st Century does not deserve his business to succeed if he turns his back on sources of information like this.   

It is my belief that one can be a truly gruff and up-front boss and yet still be respected and even loved by ones workforce. If manifestly one is fair, just and faces reality head on, the respect follows. Many who have been employed for years know they would not want to bear the burden of running a business themselves. Yet they will respond immediately and proportionately the more they feel they are treated as stakeholders in the business and its future.

Years ago, I was involved in a non-executive capacity with a friend in a business dealing with breaking down messy and corrosive substances. In certain respects he was difficult to work for and capable of making his own and other’s life difficult. His prudence was legendary. He bargained hard but fairly. He expected full commitment from the staff yet gave it to them as completely..

Any costly or minor mistake by one of them, invariably drew the remark from the Boss, “I shall never get my Rolls Royce now!” Yet it was no jest!

The time came when, prudent though he was, he felt he could realize a life’s ambition to own such a car. He shared the thought and the doubt with the staff, hardly any of whom voiced dissent. However such was his prudence that when a minor recession suddenly hit, he hesitated.

Even though the business was insulated from the worst of it, the Rolls Royce was to be put on hold. Remarkably, the staff would not have it! They wanted to work for a company where the Chairman had such a car! So the car was acquired.

But the story did not stop there. With the Rolls Royce bought, the proud Chairman would drive it to the factory and then purposely park it in the most obstructive place possible, even in the gateway itself.

It was a certainty that in no time any one of the staff would need it moved. It could be the yardman in the filthiest overalls, who would come in swearing uninhibitedly at the Chairman in person. The response was that the car keys were lobbed to him coupled with reciprocal abuse at the yardman, threatening all manner of sanctions if the seats were dirtied!

It was their car! Not just the Chairman’s! And they all got to drive the Company’s flagship!

Were there disputes? Of course! Was there discontent occasionally? Yes! But the lesson for me was to see how, even in appalling working conditions with little to redeem them, employees could be treated in ways where they were respected and trusted. They did of course dream of a very different life. Yet they did want to come to work and manifestly took pride in the business..

 

When it boils down it, most people are pretty clued up. Whether they are employers or employees, they know that it is human nature to prefer to do what we want to do, not what we have to do.

Business success for its participants is not and should not be only about money, important though that is.

The trick is clearly not to look for complex solutions, but to apply simple psychology. If shown reasonable respect – and, yes, affection too: and if encouraged with realism shared, I am in no doubt about the result. Our Have to’s may not be eradicated entirely, but they are substantially reduced and diluted by additional Want To’s generated by empathetic leadership.

Psychology Simplified About The Sub-conscious Mind And Making Our Future

All manner of accounts have been written over time about the nature of our sub-conscious mind. Distil any five articles or descriptions into one and there is no doubting the result comprises an extraordinary picture of this feature of human beings. Among the almost unbelievable complexities thrown up by research are some simpler truths available to us. They shine out like gold nuggets in the dim light. And they point to equally simple actions we can take for our own benefit.

Let’s try to contemplate the future for a moment, and our own future within it.

Do we instinctively view it with dread or with excitement? If we are normal, we would almost inevitably say, some of both. If one was pressed more and asked what proportion of both, what would be our response?

My first guess is that most people would have to think about the question for more than a moment or two. My second guess is that in so doing, anyone looking to answer the question would become clearer on how our picture of The Future and of our own future within it can affect our confidence, our aspirations and our happiness.

If The Future looks terrifying to us, seems to be devoid of any certainty, chaotic and full of dread, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell us just how defensive and reclusive that thinker could become.

Equally, suppose the view of The Future was the opposite, wouldn’t our suspicions be aroused by such a thinker? I have in mind someone who sees life ahead as amazing, fantastic, a wonderful and exciting dream, an absolutely perfect place to be and certainly way, way better than where we are now or have ever been before! Again we’ve no need for the rocket scientist to be able to see that such a thinker has little likelihood of realistic and practical roots in their present or the past.

Yet in both cases the sub-conscious has been asked and has responded with a picture. So what does that mean for us? Where is our sub-conscious mind trying to position us as we contemplate our own future?

With a little too high a dose of doom and gloom, won’t we shrink back and become mildly defensive and even a little reclusive ourselves?

If we then try to compensate for this stance, sub-consciously or consciously, don’t we need to start constructing control systems to reduce the chaos we perceive ahead? Won’t doing this perhaps fool ourselves into believing that we are managing our lives well. Won’t this authorise our subconscious to contrive and invent on-going control systems which will rule out and all but smother chance encounters and opportunities?

On the other hand, what happens if consciously we increase the dose of Optimism? Immediately we trigger within us more positive perceptions of the future.

Let’s agree with ourselves that we have done pretty well to get to this point in Life. Let’s further agree that here in our own present moment, we can claim justifiably to have learned a lot from our past which equips us for our future. There is much to be positive about!

Now! Can the World around tap into this private, more positive, upbeat but practicable approach forming in our mind? Personally I believe it can and does. But what does undoubtedly tap in this new view of ourselves and our future is our sub-conscious mind! Feed ourselves with more upbeat messages, assessments and aspirations and our sub-conscious goes into overdrive to find even more.

The simple truth is our sub conscious does not have, and is not, a mind of its own. Its resource base is the sum total of all that we have fed it since birth. But feed it with a different diet of information, and yes, the nature of its resource changes.

And Yes! Yes! Yes! Its extraordinary creative powers are fired into action, causing us to behave to our new view of the future.

“Learned Optimism” is a skill! Read the book of that title by Martin Seligman!

Good luck but remember we can also create our luck!.