Make the most of life – Page 169

….and the consequent defensive nature of consuming

July 24, 2012July 23, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

Consumers are often not conscious of being motivated by social status and are far more likely to attribute such motives to others than to themselves. We live with high levels of psychological denial about the connection between our buying habits and the social statements they make. Most Americans would deny that, by their spending, they are seeking status, in the usual meaning of the word — looking to position themselves in a higher economic stratum. They might point out that they don’t want everything in sight, that purchases are often highly selective. Indeed, what stands out most about much of the spate of spending is its defensive character. Parents worry that their children need computers and degrees from good colleges to avoid being left behind in the global economy. Children, concerned about being left out in the here and now, demand shoes, clothes, and video games. … Increasingly overworked, adults need stress-busting weekends, microwaves, restaurants meals, and takeout to keep up with their daily lives. But the cost of each of these conveniences add up.

Juliet Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need

Some thoughts on fear…

July 24, 2012July 23, 2012 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Very early we all begin our attempt to protect ourselves against the threatening occurrences that pop up regularly. In the fear caused by them, we begin to contract. And the open, spacious character of our young life feels pushed through a funnel into a bottleneck of fear. Once we begin to use language the rapidity of this contracting increases. And particularly as our intelligence grows, the process becomes really speedy: now we not only try to handle the threat by storing it in every cell of our body, but (using memory) we relate each new threat to all of the previous ones – and so the process compounds itself.

Charlotte Joko Beck

Noticing our sense of entitlement

July 22, 2012July 20, 2012 Karl Duffy2 Comments

Learning to live from genuine happiness requires first seeing what blocks it. One of the major blocks is our deeply rooted sense of entitlement. In fact, this is a big part of the “problem” of happiness: we firmly believe that we should be happy. We think it’s our right, and consequently, we feel entitled to it, even if we’re not clear what happiness is, except to feel good. This expectation can have many faces. For example, we often feel entitled to good health, expecting that we can and should be able to stay youthful and physically fit. When life comes along to greet us with illness or injury we can easily sink into a stupor of frustration and even despair. Sometimes just getting a cold will trigger our anxieties over losing control and feeling powerless. This sense of entitlement — which basically says that life should go the way we want and expect it to go — even tells us we shouldn’t have to experience discomfort. Then, when we do experience discomfort, we feel that something is wrong; we might get angry and feel it’s unfair, or we may feel sorry for ourselves.

Ezra Bayda, Beyond Happiness

Sunday Quote: difficulties

July 22, 2012July 14, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties,

only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

Alain de Botton

Why weekend rest should include the mind

July 21, 2012July 20, 2012 Karl Duffy2 Comments

In our consciousness there are wounds, lots of pains. Our consciousness also needs to rest in order to restore itself. Our consciousness is just like our body. Our body knows how to heal itself if we allow it the chance to do so. When we get a cut on our finger we don’t have to do anything except to clean it and to allow it the time to heal, because our body knows how to heal itself. The same thing is true with our consciousness; our consciousness knows how to heal itself if we know how to allow it to do so. But we don’t allow it. We always try to do something. We worry so much about healing, which is why we do not get the healing we need. Only if we know how to allow them to rest can our body and our soul heal themselves.

But there is in us what we call the energy of restlessness. We cannot be at peace with ourselves. We cannot be peaceful. We cannot sit; we cannot lie down. There is some energy in us to do this, to do that, to think of this, to think of that, and that kind of restlessness makes us unhappy. That is why it is so important for us to learn first of all to allow our body to rest. We have to learn how to deal with all our energy of restlessness. That is why we have to learn the techniques of allowing our body and our consciousness to rest.

Thich Nhat Hahn.

Not defined by past experiences

July 20, 2012July 18, 2012 Karl Duffy4 Comments

You may struggle to understand your authentic self. For instance, you may unconsciously assume that you are the collection of old habits of mind that you have accrued over your lifetime in reaction to difficulty, disappointment and uncertainty. You may believe you are someone who is anxious because as a child you had to endure a constant stream of criticism from your parents. Or you may see yourself as a failure because you haven’t achieved your career goals. But these conditioned mind states are not you – they are merely thoughts and feelings. These thoughts and feelings, as you can observe for yourself, are temporary and ever-changing, and arise episodically. So while they may characterise your experience sometimes, they don’t define you. Your authentic self is defined by the values from which you respond to these mind states.