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Please find a Sample Newsletter for your enjoyment...

INTRODUCTION to our subject – Failure and Pain

QUOTE: “What we see depends mainly upon what we look for.”

(John Lubbock)

This quote has a depth of meaning that at first reading you don’t always recognise.

Have you ever been in a discussion or argument when the opposing person didn’t understand your point of view?

Have you ever searched for something, and then found it right under your nose?

If you’ve encountered either of those then you’ll also know that with practical philosophy and wisdom you have ‘light-bulb’ moments of recognition.

Just the other day in my office I started to look for my calculator. I work in an open office, so I know that other people come and borrow items that they can’t find on their own desk. As the calculator wasn’t where I normally leave it, I immediately assumed someone had taken it and not brought it back. With a little more effort I’d concluded that it had been taken. I stood up and said, “As anyone got my calculator?” Nobody had! I slumped back down in my chair and pulled myself back up to the desk. In doing so my elbow came to rest on the very calculator I was looking for.

John Lubbock’s quote therefore has a little more significance. We only see what we look for. I’d wrongly accused in my mind the other office staff, so that became a fixed view; I couldn’t see the calculator.

I’m sure by now you’ll have brought to mind a similar memory.

What are the consequences of allowing this particular aspect of SEEING to come into play?

Using this week’s newsletter theme FAILURE and PAIN, we all will be only too aware that these two emotions are extremely strong. Imagine what you’re going to SEE when you’re deep within these. You’re not going to see WHAT is really happening.

So the next question is, “How are you expected to resolve your problems, when you’re so deep within them, it is as if you can’t see the wood for the trees?” The calculator maybe under your nose, but you want to accuse everyone else. This sounds too familiar a situation, doesn’t it?

Have we ever tried taking a side step and seeing our own problems from a different perspective?

I’ve given a short story here to illustrate how an eagle deals with a pending problem.

EAGLES IN A STORM

QUOTE: The Bible says, "Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles." Isaiah 40:31

Did you know that an eagle knows when a storm is approaching long before it breaks? The eagle will fly to some high spot and wait for the winds to come. When the storm hits, it sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it.

The eagle does not escape the storm. It simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It rises on the winds that bring the storm. When the storms of life come upon us - and all of us will experience them - we can rise above them by setting our minds towards a belief. The storms do not have to overcome us. We can allow this power to lift us above them.

What enables us to ride the winds of the storm that bring sickness, tragedy, failure and disappointment in our life. We can soar above the storm.

Remember, it is not the burdens of life that weigh us down, it is how we handle them.

(Unknown Author)

What the eagle is illustrated here as doing is allowing a pending storm and its expected up-current, to help him rise above the bad weather arriving.

We need to bat clever, anticipate a problem arriving, and be prepared for it psychologically. In doing this, our state of mind is supreme as opposed to being ready to wilt.

QUOTE: “That, that does not kill me, makes me stronger.”

(Friedrich Nietzsche)

Friedrich Nietzsche is a philosopher who has always been considered an extremist; many people would consider his suggestions as bizarre. As far as Failure and Pain, he suggests this solution:

“Try cultivating trouble, and do not try and escape from it. If there is one consolation from taking this action is that we built our assets and strengths and problems become trivial.”

Cultivating maybe be a little too harsh a description, but certainly to run away from our problems would be both failure and painful, whereas if we stood up and dealt with our problems we’d become stronger with each experience.

We all know that experience is valuable, but hesitate when we hear a suggestion to bring on more of our troubles.

If you are weak your difficulties are immense. If you are strong they are more of a nuisance than a problem. If you were an athlete, you’d be out training tonight to keep up your fitness. Yet when we consider encouraging our difficulties to arrive quickly, we’d be seen as crazy.

Has Nietzsche got it wrong, or is worth a consideration?

To build the muscles within your mind you’ll certainly need to use them and practice regularly.

So FAILURE and PAIN – Edison, the famous scientist failed in over 2,000 attempts to create the light-bulb. It was clear however that in this instance that Edison was learning from every single experience.

To understand how best to deal with pain, we need to experience pain. No one answer will suffice for all, yet one common denominator will run throughout each escape, that the person who solves the pain associated with a problem, with ease, will be one who is in a better state of mind.

Actively encourage every tool you have to stay in a better state of mind and then both Pain and Failure will be short-lived and eventually beneficial.

So onto this week’s story…

1.        STORY

THE BUZZARD, THE BAT and THE BUMBLEBEE

If you put a buzzard in a pen six or eight feet square and entirely open at the top, the bird, in spite of his ability to fly, will be an absolute prisoner. The reason is that a buzzard always begins a flight from the ground with a run of ten or twelve feet. Without space to run, as is his habit, he will not even attempt to fly, but will remain a prisoner for life in a small jail with no top.

The ordinary bat that flies around at night, a remarkable nimble creature in the air, cannot take off from a level place. If it is placed on the floor or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle about helplessly and, no doubt, painfully, until it reaches some slight elevation from which it can throw itself into the air.

Then, at once, it takes off like a flash.

A Bumblebee if dropped into an open tumbler will be there until it dies, unless it is taken out. It never sees the means of escape at the top, but persists in trying to find some way out through the sides near the bottom. It will seek a way where none exists, until it completely destroys itself.

In many ways, there are lots of people like the buzzard, the bat and the bee. They are struggling about with all their problems and frustrations, not realizing that the answer is right there above them.

(Unknown Author)

3. EVERYDAY EXAMPLE

THE AMAZING MATHMATICAL FORMULA FOR EMOTIONAL PAIN

Contrary to popular opinion ... expecting the impossible of ourselves is not motivational. It is suicidal. This is not to be confused with expecting the best of ourselves, or believing in ourselves, or even believing that we can be and do and have what we once thought impossible.

Simply: In any given moment we are who we are; We have what we have. Expecting it to be different in that moment is certain pain.

PAIN = THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OUR EXPECTATION AND WHAT ACTUALLY IS.

It's maths. When we take the risk of bringing our expectations in line with our present tense reality (This is called self compassion), new energy becomes available to us. This is the energy previously consumed by the pain. Once released to us, how we choose to invest that energy is an important personal decision. And beware: It is easy enough (even reflexive) to reinvest in emotional pain. The pain is familiar.

The more difficult and more courageous choice is to invest that energy in a daily practice of self-compassion. This choice will feel awkward, even contrived or fake, at first-- like a right-handed person learning to be left handed. The more awkward the experience, the more self-compassion is needed.

Try using this information to change the maths of your life.

(Thom Rutledge)

4. RESPONDING TO YOUR QUESTIONS

QUESTION: “I have a difficult situation to resolve, but I don’t know whether it is my anger or my attitude that’s holding me back. Can you advise?”

ANSWER: Within the rest of your email I’ve decided it isn’t your attitude. The very fact that you’ve asked a question is your attitude stifling you’re anger for a moment, instead of the other way around.

When you are angry, you cannot see the obvious, not too dissimilar of course to the theme of this week’s newsletter.

You are definitely being engulfed by anger, which is consuming your energy. Allow this next excerpt to explain further.

THOUGHTS ON ANGER

Many people spend their days in anger and aren't aware of it. The conditions of work and life make many of us angry; we feel powerless to change them, and our frustration angers us more...

If we examine our lives fearlessly, we may find many things that are in our power to change.

Since we cannot change, or do not choose to change some things, we'd do well to accept them, instead of spinning our wheels in unproductive anger or turning the anger in, against ourselves.

And when we summon the courage to change the things we can, our lives will bless us.

Our problems with anger and our problems in relationships go hand in hand. Some of us have held back our anger, which led to resentment of our loved ones. Some of us have indulged our anger and become abusive. Some of us have been so frightened of anger that we closed off the dialogue in our relationships when angry feelings came out.

Some of us have wasted our energy by focusing anger on people who weren't really important to us. Do we truly want them to become so important?

Yet, perhaps the important relationships got frozen because we weren't open and respectful with our anger. It isn't possible to be close to someone without being angry at times.

We let our loved ones be part of our lives by feeling our anger when it is there and expressing it openly, directly, and respectfully to them--or by hearing them when they are angry.

Then, with dialogue, we can let it go.

We have a right to claim our own feelings. Sometimes we get angry, but hold it inside because we think it's wrong to feel it. If anger builds inside us, it expands like a balloon ready to burst. If not released, it can make us depressed, or even physically ill. When we give ourselves permission to feel anger, we are better able to get rid of it in a healthy way.

Our inner voice can tell us how to let go of our anger. And once we've released it, we can easily get in touch with the feelings that caused it.

When we recognize our anger for what it is--one feeling among many others that makes us unique--it loses its significance, and we can prevent it from consuming us.

Indira Ghandi said, "You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist." When we let go of our anger we can honestly embrace each other with open arms.

(© 1996 Hazelden Foundation from the books Touchstones and Today's Gift)

5. PHILOSOPHICAL QUOTES

“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw the ‘WHY’ for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any ‘HOW’.

(Victor Frankl)

“Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-negelcting.”

(William Shakespseare)

“The little unremembered acts of kindness and love are the best parts of a person’s life.”

(William Wordsworth)

Next week we look at the subject ‘Everything Happens’.

Bye for now.

PS: “Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbours as being very much.” (Zora Neale Hurston)

======================================================

Phil Booker

Editor, Author, Businessman and Philosopher of Life.

Providing you with the Weekly Newsletter - WISDOM 4U

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