Lifestyle

Which is the path to follow?

Are you choosing to be powerless or empowered? Tim Roberts says that when we feel small against the challenges we face or insignificant in the chaos that surrounds us, it’s natural to feel negative and to be passive, however, being negative, worrying over life’s decisions or being tempted towards self-pity is a terrible waste of your precious time

A friend of a friend asked the Dalai Lama the following
question: “When you come to one of life’s Tjunctions
where you can only turn left or right, and you can’t do both, how do you know which way to turn?”

The Dalai Lama thought for a while and then said: “It doesn’t matter which way you turn, what is important is that you don’t look back!”

So many times in my own life I have made decisions only to agonise over whether I have chosen unwisely. Sometimes I have tried to reverse these decisions only to add to my doubt and to find that I still worried about whether I made the best choice.

It is important to reverse damaging decisions if you can but these represent only a tiny minority of experiences. Only recently did I understand that there are very few right or wrong decisions in life.

This sounds bizarre, given that I am in my forties. I have always known this intellectually but something else happened in the last few months and the penny dropped, emotionally and spiritually. I really get it now!

What we really hope for is a way to read the future. Most decisions are just alternatives and at any given point in time we can only act on the best information that we have. When we select an option the issue of right or wrong can be a futile one.

Rather than worry over whether we chose wisely, it is
more productive to use our energy to make the best of the choice that we did commit to. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t change or adapt as the future
unfolds.

It does mean that we shouldn’t indulge in the three big Western temptations that strengthen self-contempt: beating ourselves up and feeling unworthy because life is not conforming to our demands; blaming others or feeling a victim to circumstances; regarding a set back as a personal rejection that will stay with us forever.

All three of these conditioned attitudes miss the point, which is to stay alive to reality in the moment.

Imagine that you went to your doctor to receive treatment for an illness and the doctor said:“I know how to cure your illness. I’m going to give you a prescription for some tablets. I want you to make your neighbour take one tablet four times a day and then
you’ll feel much better.”

This would confuse you because it’s clearly preposterous, giving your neighbour medicine and expecting to feel better in yourself.

Yet, we frequently try to adjust reality so that we can
experience a different frame of mind. We try to control others and to control events expecting that we will feel better. This is equally preposterous when it is
our attitude that is causing the suffering.

Powerless or empowered?
A question I recommend we ask each day is: “Am I choosing to be powerless or empowered?” When we hide behind the excuse of powerlessness we actually
become powerless.

There has been recent Dutch research to show that when we believe we are powerless, we are less capable of thinking and goalsetting and we act less intelligently than people of the same ability and intellect who believe they have more power.

When I choose to feel unworthy or get stuck in self-pity I am denying my inherent power to experience so much that is good and to make choices. At the very
least, I can choose my attitude.

Prison-camp survivor Viktor Frankel said: “Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing – the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude
in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

I can never be powerless – unless I collude with people or events, which is of course another choice albeit one we seldom take responsibility for. Those unmade choices expressed through our inaction all have consequences.

In our education and work we are constantly urged to acquire external knowledge but seldom helped to grow our natural wisdom. This is hugely out of balance and has a dramatic effect on society that is not measured.

This experience shapes our thinking and causes us to crave dependency and to feel lost if we do not know for certain what is best, or if we aren’t able to acquire the knowledge that will give us definitive answers. By relying on the external, on the knowledge, we overlook our qualities and intelligence.

When I was a university lecturer I was astonished at how people would arrive for seminars expecting to be passively filled with knowledge, models and research, and yet so unwilling to make the effort themselves to learn and grow, to challenge their own assumptions and let go of redundant habits.

There is as much difference between knowledge and learning as there is between a car and the ability to drive. A car is useless unless we can drive it but if we
can drive, we can use any number of cars.

Which attitude?
Life can be overwhelming. When we feel small against the challenges we face or insignificant in the chaos that surrounds us, it is natural to feel negative and to be passive. These are so dangerous. Every second we face what is our fundamental choice – which attitude do I choose?

I came to the conclusion some time ago after a period of despair that feeling negative about anything will not serve me or those I love.

Now, when I catch myself being defeatist or pessimistic, I remind myself that I am effectively working against my best interests by indulging in those
feelings.

It is surprising how just that recognition can be enough to lift the emotional tone and restore a sense of what’s possible.

Every second we live through is a point of departure – we either weaken or strengthen our progress in life. This may sound rather black-and-white but I believe that there are no truly neutral events.

If we indulge in negative thinking we stay stuck in a damaging mindset and we strengthen its pull on us. If we create positive, motivating and healthful
thoughts we start to move out of this mindset and we reinforce positive thinking.

When we strip it all back to the bone, what are we ultimately responsible for? I may not be able to control what thoughts spring to mind. I certainly can’t take
complete responsibility for the people around me because they think and act for themselves.

I can’t take responsibility for the circumstances that surround me because I can’t truly control these, and if I think I can then I am deluding myself. I can influence
and position things but that is not the same as control.

Heart of empowerment
So, if we return to this important and humbling question, when we strip it all back to the bone, what
are we ultimately responsible for? I suggest the answer is what I do with my current thought!

This creates an interesting set of assumptions. Being responsible for what I do with my current thought is what it means to be human. This may not sound like much but it is the heart of empowerment. Many people spend years or careers denying this ultimate responsibility and externalising or blaming what happens to them on others.

Another assumption that arises here is that when I can no longer think clearly I may not be able to claim so much responsibility. Perhaps this is during an illness, upset or old age. All this means that we are on a timer.

Maybe it took you ten minutes to read this page. If so, you are ten minutes nearer to your death. Now that’s sobering. Being negative, worrying over
life’s decision junctions or being tempted towards self-pity is a waste of your precious time.

Negativity may always lurk in our shadow but it need not affect us. There is a Tibetan saying that sums this up as: “Be attentive to the small negatives because even the tiniest spark can burn down a hillside.”

Top Home