As I work in self development, you touch on a broad range of topics that are relevant to the human experience. Self development is about training. Training yourself for real life. While most people in my field belong to the "cult of positive thinking" & "feeling good about yourself", I take a more pragmatic approach to training students.
Sometimes the decisions you have to make in life don't feel good. Sometimes life is hard, awful or plain draining. So I train my students and business clients to "handle the worst scenarios in life so they can better enjoy the good times". Training for happiness is pointless. You know what to do when life is good. What people don't know how to do is deal with life when its bad. That's where you need to build muscle so when bad stuff happens, you don't get knocked off your horse.
I've said it before and I will say it again, the self help movement focuses so much on healing emotions, balancing emotions and adjusting emotions, that it does not train you to stand your ground or be emotionally robust. The movement is about changing emotion ( sometimes is applicable ) not becoming emotionally durable.
So many of my students are emotionally weak or under developed when they comes to me because they have been taught to "change every emotion they dislike", rather than build up a strong understanding, resistance and tolerance to it. So when mass hysteria breaks out, for example, they are the ones will a cool head and taking the leadership role to calm the chaos.
When it comes to dealing with real life, you need a tough skin sometimes and you need to face up to your issues like a (wo)man and work with unpleasant situations. That's where real maturity is found. In your equal ability to handle happiness and upset. Without flinching.
But, fortunately, life is not about bad things happening everyday. The good times are when you can think clearly and cultivate plans of action and systems that cultivate even more good stuff. While safeguarding you against potential bad stuff. The good times are when you build systems that help you to be even more strong and robust in the world. And so happiness can exist more and more.
I teach my students "you are only as strong as your plan B". This statement gets the point across. They get it and as soon as I say it, people look at you like you have stripped them naked and taken their credit cards from them. That statement gets to the heart of your thinking, planning and how exposed you are to potential issues. People soon realize that they have no back up plans, for anything, especially financially.
While doomsday preppers take it to extremes, one should prepare an escape plan and exit strategy as part your planning process. Fall backs and factoring for potential problems are great as they provide you with a better "plan A". And also some peace of mind as you aren't afraid to fall down to failure. A good plan factors for potential failure and accepts it as a possibility. Rather than denies it.
What boggles my mind is the lack of a "plan B" for society as a whole. While we vaguely understand fire drills, etc, we have no thought or awareness of anything but the good life. Which is what slams people to the ground when a real disaster strikes. A natural disaster, like an earthquake or city fire, is one thing. But our lack of preparation and training ourselves for these possibilities is what really shakes the ground.
Life will always be good. Or so our thinking goes. While I may be accused of negativity for this article, I would not trade common sense of realistic thinking for the world.
Think about where you need to implement a "plan B" and work it into your systems and thinking. Your "plan A" will be the stronger for it.
Thanks for visiting,
Brendan Rohan - Melbourne, Australia
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