Self Improvement Newsletter
Issue # 442, February 27-28, 2007
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Improvement Newsletter, Click here!Please Visit Our Sponsors
Self Improvement Newsletter
Issue # 442, February 27-28, 2007
FREE Self
Improvement Newsletter, Click here!
Please Visit Our Sponsors
* Self Improvement and Personal Growth Weekly Newsletter
* Issue # 442, Week of February 27-28, 2007
Publisher: David Riklan -
http://www.SelfGrowth.com
In this issue:
-- Quotes of the Week
-- Personal Growth Products and Services
-- Article: Unbend Your Anger with "Stop, Drop, and Roll" – By John R. Rifkin
-- Article: Three Truly Liberating Procrastination Tips – By Deon Du Plessis
-- Book Review: The Present: The Secret to Enjoying Your Work And Life, Now! –
By Spencer Johnson
-- Brief News of the World
-- How to Subscrïbe and Unsubscrïbe from this Newsletter
Current Subscribers – 254,208 subscribers.
Remöval instructions are listed at the end of the newsletter.
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*** Quotes of the Week ***
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You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty. – Sacha Guitry,
1885-1957, French Film Actor/Director/Playwright
Victory belongs to the most persevering. – Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769-1821, French
General and Politician
Every great film should seem new every time you see it. – Roger Ebert, American
Film Critic and Pulitzer Prïze Wïnner
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*** Personal Growth Products and Services ***
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*** Article: Unbend Your Anger with "Stop, Drop, and Roll" – By John R. Rifkin
***
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Everyone seems to understand the destructive power of anger. That's because
everyone equates anger with aggressive behavior, and aggressive behavior hurts
people. Once we are injured by someone who is angry, it is an easy next step to
thinking it is the anger that injures us. Anger, however, is only an emotion. It
takes a person to change the emotion into an aggressive behavior.
Emotions take place in our bodies and minds, in an interactive manner. When
trying to understand anger, you must first place it in the context of emotion,
especially negative emotion. At the most basic level of emotion, there are
really only two: pleasure and pain.
Pain is the primary negative emotion. Without pain or injury we really don't
experience any problems. Secondary to pain or injury, there are three negative
emotions that follow, in greater or lesser amounts. The amount of each of these
will vary from person to person and for differing injuries. Sadness is a
secondary emotion to injury that I define as an honoring of that injury. Fear is
energy that the body generates to avoid being hurt again. Finally, anger is
energy that the body generates to attend to or fix the injury.
When you begin to look at anger as energy instead of dangerous aggressive
behavior, you begin to become compassionate for the emotion. You begin to look
at your anger and the anger of others as a reflection of the human experience of
injury. Instead of making the judgment that anger is bad, you begin to
investigate it as what it really is: energy that is meant to heal the injury.
After having worked with this energy of anger in healing for 30 years and seen
how powerfully it can work, both in the dysfunction in peoples'lives as well as
in their healing processes, I've developed a simple system for unbending anger
from dysfunction into functional behavior. I call this system "Stop, Drop, and
Roll."
Stop, Drop, and Roll is what you're told you're supposed to do when you catch
fire. Of course, if you don't notice that you're on fire, you won't stop, drop,
and roll, so it is actually a four-step system.
The metaphor I like to use to demonstrate Stop, Drop, and Roll applied to the
idea of bent anger is what I call "the mosquito." If you imagine a mosquito
landing on your hand, you can see this as a metaphor for the
injury: a bloodsucker, with a potentially life-threatening illness, is preparing
to attack you. This information gets transferred by the nerves in your hand and
eyes to your brain. You respond by generating energy, the fight or flight energy
of fear and anger.
A functional response to that injury would be to utilize the energy of your fear
and anger to wipe off the insect. Bent anger would be represented by taking that
same energy and the same hand and, instead of wiping off the bug, slapping
yourself in the face! Such an act would represent, metaphorically, depression,
addictions, anxiety, explosive anger, and extramarital affairs, to name but a
few.
In using Stop, Drop, and Roll, the first step is for you to identify the
problematic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make up the bent anger in
your life. Once you have identified them, you need to begin to train yourself to
notice them before you get overwhelmed by them. This may take a lot of practice.
Once you can notice them in a timely way, it is time to begin the Stop step.
This involves taking time out from your place of injury. This step may take
quite a bit of practice as well.
When you have been able to complete the Stop step, you will have the opportunity
to Drop. Dropping means preparing to take action. You do this by becoming
cognitive and by beginning, through investigation, to understand why you are
about to slap yourself across the face instead of wiping off the insect. This
will require understanding what has injured and upset you in the present as well
as how these injuries may relate to your childhood.
Finally, the Roll step involves taking that angry energy that used to be bent
into dysfunction and using it for some form of healthy activity. You may find a
different healthy use for your functional anger in every situation, but there
are only two broad categories for the functional use of anger: self-nurturing
and empowerment. Self-nurturing is where you use the energy of anger to care
directly for yourself, and empowerment is where you act on the world so that the
world can empower you. Every other use of anger is dysfunction.
Let's look at how Sheila learned to use Stop, Drop, and Roll. Sheila identified
her particular brand of catching on fire as her depressive thinking. Sheila was
a single, 27-year-old elementary school teacher. In her mind her self-talk was
self-abusive at times. The most negative thought that she identified was
thinking "nothing's ever going to work out for me." Self-abusive thinking
becomes clearly angry when you imagine how angry it would sound if you said the
same thought to someone else.
Sheila first trained herself to be on the lookout for this thought. She had to
notice it when she heard it in her mind. It took a little practice before she
noticed it regularly.
Once Sheila had learned to recognize this dysfunctional, angry thought, she
began to practice the Stop step of intervening in this depressive cognitive
behavior. She would try to stop thinking the thought. In order to do this, she
had to understand that she was in an emotionally injured state and to be ready
to start thinking about why.
For the Drop step, Sheila needed to investigate what was hurting her in the here
and now and how that injury resonated with injuries from childhood. She had
recently gone out on a date with a young man and had enjoyed her time with him.
She'd been hoping to hear from him, but it had been several days since he'd
called. Her experience of waiting to be called resonated with her experience of
her father's gradual disappearance from the lives of her and her mother after
her parents' divorce when she was seven years old as well as other dating
disappointments throughout her life.
As Sheila came to understand the sources of her injury, she was ready to do the
Roll step. She began to think about how to use her angry energy to attend to
herself and to the pain she was experiencing. She decided to call a friend and
find some fun things to do as well as to attack some hills on her bike.
The Stop, Drop, and Roll system is relatively easy to explain, and yet hard to
do. It takes practice, and mastering each step can be challenging. However, if
you keep working at it, you will be successful. It can help to journal your
progress and your process as you work at the steps. If you don't give up, you
can't fail.
Learn to use your anger to carve out the life you want for yourself!
About the Author:
This article was written by Dr. John Rifkin, contributing author to "101 Great
Ways to Improve Your Life: Volume 2." Dr. Rifkin is a licensed psychologist with
a private practice in Boulder, Colorado. His book, "The Healing Power of Anger:
The Unexpected Path to Love and Fulfillment," was published in 2004 and has been
nominated for the prestigious William James Book Award. Visit his website at
http://www.EmotionalSuccess.com
His article above is one of 101 great chapters that can be found in "101 Great
Ways to Improve Your Life: Volume 2." This powerful compilation book -- with
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*** Article: Three Truly Liberating Procrastination Tips – By Deon Du Plessis
***
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Are you immobilized by procrastination and indecision? We all know that it is
impossible to steer a car that's not moving, and the same is true with your
life. You simply cannot direct and steer your life if you are immobilized by
procrastination and indecision. It is what prevents you from doing the very
things you need to do to make progress.
This debilitating behavior, or shall I say lack of behavior, is responsible for
destroying so many dreams and aspirations. Action is the proper fruit of
knowledge, and doing what you 'know' is often much harder than knowing 'what' to
do. This is actually a very accurate description of procrastination. It is the
frustrating pattern of wanting to (consciously), knowing how to, but not doing
it. It is the lack of action that keeps you from moving forward and making
progress. Frustration sets in when you know you can do something, but still you
don't, and this frustration can easily turn into anger, a loss of
self-confidence, and even depression.
If you are the kind of person who's actively improving and developing yourself,
then there's usually a gap between where you are and where you want to be. The
only way to close this gap is to take action, to act on your desire for change
and self-improvement. For this very reason, you simply cannot afford to be stuck
in procrastination. You must take action and liberate yourself from the
disempowering effects of procrastination.
Procrastination is not so much a behavior as it is a way of thinking. The real
problem is with your psychology and not with your behavior -- the behavior is
only the symptom. To liberate yourself from procrastination, you must liberate
yourself from the inside. It's an internal shift that's necessary, and once you
make the internal shift, it will automatically spill over into your actions.
Here are three powerful procrastination tips that will help you liberate
yourself from its immobilizing effects.
1. Detach Yourself From Your Behavior.
Realize that you are not your behavior. As soon as you start identifying with a
behavior, you become it. Just because you procrastinate at times does not make
you a procrastinator -- unless you believe it. One of the strongest forces
within the human personality is for your behavior to be consistent with your
self-concept. Once you believe that you are a 'procrastinator' all your actions
will be filtered through this belief. Since all beliefs are self-reinforcing,
you will only strengthen this belief with your (in)action.
Instead, you must start by building a positive self-image and develop empowering
beliefs. Choose different ways of defining yourself and forget about what you've
done up until now. This is a fresh moment, and
you can change everything around, right now, by changing your beliefs about
yourself.
2. You Don't Have To Get It Perfect -- You Just Have To Get It Started
One of the major causes for procrastination is this notion of wanting to get
everything perfect. For some it even goes as far as waiting for the 'perfect
time' before they take action. Underneath this need to get things perfect lies
the fear of failure and how your results will reflect on you. See, when you do
nothing, nobody can judge or criticize you. Right? Wrong!
If you do nothing, you will get nowhere. This universe is one that is driven by
action. There are NO rewards for inaction. Only frustration and a longing for
something that you know you can achieve, 'if only you do it.' Instead of making
perfection your goal, you should make 'starting' your goal. As you do this and
practice it, you will soon discover the real secret: once you start, you build
momentum and you end up doing much more than you ever intended to do when you
set out to just get it started.
Perfection does not exist. Don't be misguided by the illusion that you have to
get it perfect. It's a weak excuse and one that will keep you immobilized.
Liberate yourself and strive for a 'poor' result -- that way you cannot be
disappointed!
3. Change Your Perception
One of the most profound teachings with roots in eastern philosophy is that when
you change the way you look at things, things change. This idea can free you
from virtually anything that might be holding you down. All of life relies on
perception. What you 'take in' with your senses is nothing but a vast array of
sounds, colors, shapes, images, and smells. None of it has any meaning in
itself. You are the one that can give it meaning, and you are the one that gets
to decide how you interpret this information.
Procrastination is nothing but a way of evaluating something and assigning a
meaning to it that keeps you from taking action. At some level, mostly
subconscious, you believe that taking action will be more painful than not
taking action, and by design, you will prevent yourself from taking action.
This is one of the most powerful procrastination tips, and you can liberate
yourself by starting to change the way you look at the things that you are
procrastinating about. Ask yourself 'What else can this mean?' and instead of
saying that you 'have to do it,' say that you "choose to do it." The difference
is subtle, but significant. Change the way you look at things, and the things
will change.
These three procrastination tips are by no means the begin all and end all of
overcoming procrastination, but it will most certainly help to liberate you from
being immobilized by procrastination and indecision.
About the Author:
Deon Du Plessis from
http://Overcoming-Procrastination.Com is a former chronic
procrastinator who never managed to get anything done. He now teaches some of
the most powerful strategies for overcoming procrastination in A Course Of
Action, a FREE online course. You can enroll here:
http://www.selfimprovement-gym.com
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*** Book Review: The Present: The Secret to Enjoying Your Work And Life, Now! –
By Spencer Johnson ***
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Johnson's mega-selling "Who Moved My Cheese?" helped readers cope with changes
beyond their control. The author now proffers another easily digestible parable
encompassing a related, but broader, topic: how to
attain happiness and success in life.
In large type that's easy on eyes both old and young (and that stretches this
brief book past 100 pages), Johnson lays out a bare-bones tale of a man who
learns a valuable lesson about living in the present from a wise old gent. Stuck
in a rut in his job and personal life, the younger man learns about The Present,
a three-fold way of living and working.
Bit by bit, the old man explains how it works: in order to achieve bliss in
life, it's important to pay equal attention to the past (learn from mistakes),
the present (live in the moment), and the future (plan for it as best as
possible, but don't "lose yourself in worry or anxiety"). The common-sense
knowledge and concentration on living in the now lend a Zen feel to the story,
and while Johnson's approach may border on the corny (everything runs smoothly
for his characters, and they share with each other such tidbits as, "The Present
is a gift you give to yourself. Only you have the power to discover what it
is"), it's undeniably sound.
Despite some awkward phrasings, Johnson's book brims with good ideas for those
feeling frustrated, stagnant, depressed, or overwhelmed, and is bound to be
embraced by the self-help-loving masses. (Copyright 2003 Reed Business
Information, Inc.)
-------
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