Defining Optimism: More Than Just Positive Thinking Optimism isn’t a glossy smile pasted over real problems. It’s an attitude rooted in expectation — a steady belief or hope that specific efforts or future events will have favorable, desirable outcomes. Unlike naive cheerfulness, true optimism involves interpreting setbacks as temporary and solvable, viewing effort as meaningful,…
Sometimes, all we need is something that can keep us motivated and get us back on track. We hope the following suggestions will do merely that for you. Appreciate loss Many of us find failure a bit too daunting. For them, failing on something- whether it’s a simple objective or a grand assignment- is enough…
By Deepak Chopra, MD
It seems perverse that the easier life becomes, the worse our problems. Technology has created life-changing innovations like the Internet that are directly linked with terrorist attacks, giving like-minded fanatics instant global communication. Computers gave rise to social media, which has led to cruel bullying at school, fake news, conspiracy plots, and the anonymity to mount vicious personal attacks—all of these seem as endemic as hacking, another insoluble problem created by technology.
One could go on practically forever, and it wouldn’t be necessary to blame current technology either—the internal combustion engine is directly connected to climate change, and nuclear fission led to the horrors of atomic warfare. But my point isn’t to bash technology; we owe every advance in the modern world to it—except one.
Technology is based on higher education, and whatever its benefits, higher education has almost totally lost interest in wisdom. Wisdom isn’t the same as knowledge. You can collect facts that lead to the understanding of things, but wisdom is different. I’d define it as a shift in allegiance, away from objective knowledge toward self-awareness.
The Greek dictum “Know thyself” doesn’t make sense if the self you mean is the ego-personality, with its selfish demands, unending desires, and lack of happiness. Another self is meant, which isn’t a person’s ego but a state of consciousness. “Self” might not even be a helpful term, despite the age-old references to a higher self identified with enlightenment. It is more helpful to say that the pursuit of wisdom is about waking up.
Waking up is a metaphor for the conscious life, and the conscious life is what wisdom leads to. Every day we are driven by unconscious impulses and desires, and unexamined processes go on beneath the surface of the mind that lead to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, self-destructive behavior, and every kind of pointless discord, from household tensions to war. The outbreak of World War I led to senseless slaughter, as did the excesses of Communism. These consequences were unforeseen, yet in retrospect it is obvious that World War I was a kind of eruption from the unconscious, of pride, anger, stubborn nationalism, and xenophobic tendencies that people were harboring as a matter of course.
European anti-Semitism wasn’t invented in Germany by a single fanatical Nazi; it was accepted in the most polite and civilized circles almost everywhere. In one way or another, allowing our unconscious to go unexamined has caused the greatest and longest suffering in human history. It was suffering and finding a way to end it that became the foundation of Buddhism, but any spiritual teaching that will show people how to wake up also aims to bring them out of suffering.
In that sense, wisdom has a definite purpose, but escaping the ills and woes of the unconscious life is secondary to the main purpose of waking up, which is to know who we really are. The answer can be formulated in a few words: humans are a species of consciousness whose special trait is self-awareness. Being self-aware, we have the capacity to access the very source of awareness.
At first sight this ability doesn’t necessarily sound positive. The vast majority of people have become expert at denial and were taught from childhood not to dwell on themselves, an activity deemed self-centered if not totally solipsistic. People are also expert at keeping secrets from themselves, at going along to get along, at valuing social conformity and fitting in. These habits unravel when self-awareness awakens. Not everyone wants to let them go, for obvious reasons.
But the worst aspect of being unconscious, or asleep to use the metaphor of waking up, is self-limitation. We all go around with core beliefs about how insignificant a single individual is, how risky it would be to step out of the norm, and how only the gifted few rise above the average. The wise in every generation have asserted the opposite, that the source of consciousness makes human potential infinite. We can think an infinite number of new thoughts and say things never before said. In fact, there is no arbitrary limit on any trait that makes us human: intelligence, creativity, insight, love, discovery, curiosity, invention, and spiritual experiences of every kind.
We are a species of consciousness whose great pitfall isn’t evil but “mind-forg’d manacles,” to borrow a phrase from the poet William Blake. We make up mental constructs, invent stories around them, and tell the next generation that these stories are true. One story says that women are inferior, a complex tale that gave rise to a thousand injustices and false beliefs. Us-versus-them thinking leads to stories about racism and nationalism that caused their own barbarous results.
Waking up allows us to escape all stories and to live free of self-limiting mental constructs. The real question is whether it can be done. Can you and I wake up? If so, how do we go about it? Are there awakened teachers who can provide examples of what it means to live the conscious life? This is exactly where wisdom enters the picture. Without living examples of awakened individuals, the whole enterprise would be trapped in a limbo of fantasy and wishful thinking. But when a society values wisdom, it turns out that the awakened exist among us and always have.
Anyone who wants to wake up is fortunate to be alive now, because despite our global problems, irrational behavior, and self-destructive denial, modern society is open to ready communication about every topic, including the exploration of higher consciousness. Where prior generations had little grasp of higher consciousness beyond the precepts of religion, millions of people today can walk their own path to self-awareness, choosing to include God, the soul, organized religion, and scriptures as they see fit, or to avoid them. Even “spirituality” is a term you can adopt or ignore—the real purpose of waking up is about consciousness.
We have always had the potential to be wise by using self-awareness to explore who we really are. A society driven by consumerism, celebrity worship, video games and social media gossip, and indifference to massive social problems feels like it could never find wisdom, or even the first impulse to wake up. But I’d argue that we are the most fortunate society to wake up in, simply because higher consciousness is open to anyone. I count this as the greatest opportunity facing us, to see that waking up is possible and to hasten toward it as quickly as we can.
Deepak Chopra MD, FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing, is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation, and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. Chopra is the author of more than 85 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are The Healing Self co-authored with Rudy Tanzi, Ph.D. and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. Chopra hosts a new podcast Infinite Potential available on iTunes or Spotify www.deepakchopra.com
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2019 Pisces New Moon – March 6, 2019 8:03 AM PST / 11:03 AM EST / 4:03 PM GMT 15 Pisces 47 Astrology Forecast for the 2019 Pisces New Moon To listen to Astrologer Kathy Biehl discuss the Pisces New Moon 2019, click the player below. The 2019 Pisces New Moon is a woozy-making, escapist exercise. It serves up a double dose of otherworldliness right while our experience changes of the ground beneath our feet. The day itself could be confusing to the max, and that vibe continues through much of the month. We might not mind, though. Actually, we might not notice. This New Moon introduces no new influences. Instead, it escalates what we’ve been experiencing, and then some. Pisces is the sign of boundless water, imagination, formlessness, and inter-connectedness. It’s dreamland and funhouse mirrors, religious heights and other kinds of high. We’re more than well acquainted with it these days. We’ve been exploring this territory for the past nine years as Chiron passed through it. He may have left it on Valentine’s (more about that in a moment), but we’re not getting out for a few weeks. What’s more, we’re experiencing the sign’s propensity for boundlessness and blurring of boundaries more than usual. Reason one is that the sign’s ruler is at the helm: Dreamweaver Neptune, lord of the seas and ruler of illusion, higher love and everything that transcends earthly experience. His close proximity to the New Moon envelopes it in mists, fog, visions, and glamour, which blur perceptions and disable logic. Reason two is that Neptune’s getting assistance in unmooring us. He’s in a mutually expanding clash with boundless Jupiter in Sagittarius, which has an overdrive effect as if bigger and bigger clouds are billowing and spreading from a fog machine. The pair…
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One of the major differences between people and their outlook on life is the questions that they consistently ask themselves. If this seems like a strange observation, it may be that you have been underestimating the power of questions to change your mindset.
Questions have the ability to change our focus in an instant. Asking the right questions can change our mindset from a limiting one to an empowering one. Our personal view of reality hinges on what we focus on and questions are one of the fastest ways to shift to a more empowering and resourceful mindset.
We are all in the habit of asking ourselves questions every day, most of the time were not even aware of their effect. Our minds love it when we ask ourselves questions. Questions provide the mind with incentive, direction and focus. As soon as we ask a question, our mind immediately begins searching for an answer. If we don’t like the answers that we are getting, it probably has a lot to do with the questions we are asking.
Questions have a dramatic effect on everything we do in life. They determine our abilities, the quality of our relationships and our income. By asking the right questions we can shift to a more empowering mindset and find the answers needed to change any aspect of our life.
Questions that cause us to focus on possibilities and solutions are the ones that empower us by shifting our mindset. The problem is, we can easily slip into the habit of asking ourselves questions that are limiting, or even mentally and emotionally disabling.
Whatever we focus on the most will eventually become our reality. By training ourselves to consciously ask empowering questions, regardless of our circumstances, we will direct our mindset to continually focus on new possibilities and solutions. This is exactly the kind of focus that enhances our personal growth and development.
Now let’s look at a couple of situations that could arise and notice how asking different types of questions can radically alter our mental disposition and mindset.
Let’s say it’s Wednesday morning and the alarm just went off, what’s the first question you ask yourself? If you say, “Why do I have to go to work today?” how is that going to affect your attitude? If you say “Why do I feel so tired and run down?” how is that going to affect your energy levels? With those two simple questions you have set yourself up for a disappointing day. Why? Because now your mind is focused on finding reasons why you’re tired and have to do something you don’t want to do like go to work.
What if the first two questions you asked yourself were, “What do I have to look forward to today, and what am I most grateful for right now?” Even if you don’t have the immediate answers to those questions, this positive mindset will focus your attention on finding the answers. Ask yourself those questions a few times and notice how the answers make you feel. All of a sudden you have something to look forward to and something to be grateful for. How will that kind of mindset affect your day?
If someone makes a thoughtless comment to you, what’s the first question you ask yourself? If you ask, “Why don’t they like me?” how will that make you feel? Probably pretty bad, because now your mindset is looking for reasons why people don’t like you and the answers aren’t likely to be very encouraging.
But what if your response was, “I wonder what I can do to help them feel better?” As your mind searches for the answers to that question you’re going to be focused on positive things, because you’re looking for a way to help someone else.
As you can plainly see, asking the right questions can quickly shift your mindset in a very positive direction. The challenge is that most of us are on automatic pilot. Most of the time we fail to take conscious control of the questions we ask ourselves. As a result, we can inadvertently adopt a less than empowering mindset.
In the next article we will look at some exercises we can do to train ourselves to consistently ask empowering questions. For now, try working with your morning questions and notice how it affects the rest of your day.
Do you think your questions have power?
Do you agree with the question-mindset connection?
Share your thoughts on facebook or google+
This is part 1 in a series of 3 articles about Using Questions to Change Your Mindset.
For the rest of the story visit…
Use questions to Change your Mindset – Part 2
Use questions to Change your Mindset – Part 3
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The post Use Questions to Change Your Mindset – Part 1 appeared first on Advanced Life Skills.
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