Sunday, March 20, 2011

The Emperor


Seek not to rule nor to be ruled over by others. Every man is his own authority who makes his own rules, boundaries and parameters; but only after choosing to stand alone and reject all outside authorities.

JDZ

The Art of War History Channel Part 1



"Know your enemy and know yourself and in 100 battles you will never be in peril"

"To win 100 battles is not the height of skill, to subdue the enemy without fighting is"

"Avoid what is strong.. Attack what is weak"

SUN TZU

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Peaceful Warrior Edit (Part 2 of 3)



"A warrior is not about perfection or victory or invulnerability... he's about absolute vulnerability, and that's the only true courage"

"A warrior acts, only a fool reacts"

"There is no stopping nor starting, only doing"

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Finding your own North Star

Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean Everybody Isn't Out To Get You

Don't look now, but a lot of very powerful people are trying to stop you from reaching your North Star. Unless we deal with them, you might as well call off the whole trip. The conspirators who marshaled against you are the very people who exiled your essential self in the first place, the ones who put your overgrown social self in complete command of your life. Right this minute, they are rallying to keep you from making positive changes. Who are they? Everybody, that's who. People in general. Society at large. The whole six-billion-member kit and kaboodle we call the human race.

You think I sound a teensy bit paranoid? Hey, I didn't come up with this on my own. I have many, many informed sources. My clients have a very firm grasp of what Everybody thinks, and they share the information with me almost every day..

Ah, yes. Everybody seems to know what Everybody thinks. It's fascinating to get a bunch of people together to ask about Everybody, because, though each individual is convinced that he or she has a finger on the pulse of some universal Zeitgiest each of their Everybodies turns out to be a very small slice of the human pie. Your view of Everybody is completely different from my view of Everybody, which completely from, say, Saddam Hussein's view of Everybody.

In fact, everybody's Everybody is composed of just a few key people. Our social nature makes us long to fit in with a larger group, but it's difficult to hold the tastes and opinions of more than five or six individuals in your mind. So the resourceful social self creates a kind of shorthand: it picks up on a few people's attitudes, emblazons them on your brain, and extrapolates this image until it covers the entire known universe. The vague compilation of folks you call Everybody is what psychologists call "the generalized other".

No matter how deeply your essential self longs to find the real love, the real mission, the real meaning of your life, your social self will not let you embrace these things as long as Everybody disapproves. The social self isn't opposed to your reaching your North Star, per se: it just won't allow you to proceed toward it until you get Everybody's permission. Actually, the social self would prefer that you don't do anything, anything at all, until Everybody kneels down and begs you to do it.

The social self wigs out when you begin to listen to the essential self, because the latter immediately begins to suggest that you do things your Everybody might not like...

Essential Self: I hate this job.

Social Self: Don't you dare quit! Do you know how that will look on your resume? Everybody will think you're a complete failure.


Remember, your social self is just trying to keep you from getting hurt. Everything it says may be partially true. What your social self doesn't know is that 1) very few people actually feel this way; 2) these people are not like to be the best source of information about your ideal life; and 3) there may be a whole bunch of other people who would actually praise and accept you for doing exactly what feels best to your essential self. By installing a hypercritical social group as your definition of Everybody, your social self may well be keeping you from the Everybody who will applaud and support your quest for your North Star.

The way to solve this problem isn't to reject or condemn your social self; it's just doing its well-meaning best. No, we're going to give the social self exactly what it wants - Everybody's approval - while also allowing you to take directions from your essential self. This is the only way to find your North Star, but you may not like how we have to go about it. See, you want the Everybody you have now, the people whose influence landed you in your present life, to approve of your essential self. This will happen right after Hell becomes the official Olympic ice-dancing venue, and you may have that kind of time, but I don't. I'd rather take the quick approach by exchanging your present generalized other for a whole new Everybody.

Finding your own North Star (pp.59-61) by Martha Beck