Observing Yourself
It is impossible to go through life without feelings and thoughts. These
feelings and thoughts affect your body and your mind and can bring you in
various mental states, from elation to devastation.
However, as you mature, you also learn that nothing lasts: not elation, not
devastation, and not anything in between. Feelings and thoughts come and go
like the tides of a river. If your responses to emotions are like those of
the majority of other human beings, you probably enjoy the feelings of
elation and dread those of devastation. You may then have also learned that
elation, devastation, and all in-between states can elicit behaviors in you
that you would have avoided, were you in a more moderate state of mind.
Fortunately, there is a way to establish better balance in your life, in
which neither elation nor devastation, nor any state in between, will derail
your acts or your perspectives about what makes sense, and what not. That is
the way of observation.
By observing your states mindfully, you learn to see them in their right
perspectives. You also learn to see their origins, so you get to understand
them better and consequently release them from additional baggage that
merely engorges their volume and, thus, blows them out of proportion. It is,
after all, this blowing out of proportion, that creates extremes such as
elation and devastation.
This is not to say that mindful analysis of your feelings and thoughts will
entirely eliminate extreme emotional experiences, as you are still part of
this world, and there will still be events that will bring out intense
emotions within you at times, due to your connectedness with other living
beings. However, it does entail that there will be fewer outliers and more
balance in your states from then on.
So how do you observe yourself?
1) Examine your emotions and thoughts from an outsiderÆs perspective
whenever you think about them (For instance: "Boy, am I upset today!").
2) Realize what exactly it is that you are feeling or thinking now ("I
experience a feeling of disappointment").
3) Analyze how this feeling or thought came about ("I experience a feeling
of disappointment because my colleague at work whom I considered a friend
told others something I had shared confidentially with him or her").
Once you have detected the nature of your feeling or thought (2) and its
reason for existence (3), you can start working at it: in the above example
you can either decide not to trust this colleague anymore, or you can
express your disappointment about his or her actions.
In either of the steps you decide to take in order to balance this emotion,
you have to make sure it frees you from the excessive sentiment, and
transforms this feeling into one that you can easier accept. Yet, it may
also be wise not to forget the lesson you learned from this feeling or
emotion, which, in this case may be to remain friendly and kind, but to
refrain from, or be more careful about, sharing confidential information
with others in the future.
One thing you should definitely refrain from is becoming and remaining upset
at yourself. You are the one closest to your feelings and thoughts, so you
better keep them bearable toward yourself.
Concluding: By engaging in observation about your mental and emotional
states, you will get better insight into your character: your strengths,
weaknesses, likes, dislikes, interests, and non-interests. It is this
evaluation of your feelings and thoughts and their origins that will
ultimately eliminate most extremes and make you a better-balanced person,
more capable of coping with the surprises of life, overall.
Dr. Joan Marques,
Burbank, CA, 06/15/04
About the Author:
Joan Marques emigrated from Suriname, South America, to California, U.S., in
1998. She holds a doctorate in Organizational Leadership, a Master's in
Business Administration, and is currently a university instructor in
Business and Management in Burbank, California. You may visit her web sites
at
http://www.joanmarques.com <
http://www.joanmarques.com/> and
http://www.spiritcounts.com <
http://www.spiritcounts.com/>
It is better to live in serene poverty than in hectic affluence. Everything
has a price. The price for nurturing your soul is turning away from
excessive stress, destruction of self-respect, and the constant strive in
lifestyle with the Joneses. But itÆs worth it.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Laptop Battery
According to the indictment, Jones would steal various IBM and Penguin computer servers from Verisign's warehouse in Virginia and sell them to Johnson. Johnson would then sell the servers to several individuals, who would sometimes place them for sale on eBay. As a result of this scheme, the indictment alleges that Jones and Johnson caused Verisign to lose more than $120, 000 worth of computer equipment. In the indictment, Jones and Johnson are charged in three counts with causing the interstate transportation of stolen property, namely IBM 330 and 335 servers, in violation of 18 U.S.C.
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