Thursday, September 22, 2005

Take a different approach

In his book SUMO, Paul McGee humbly uses a self developed quote..."the most important person you will ever talk to is yourself." This would generally be regarded as thinking and all the while you have to be careful about wallowing or obsessing on thoughts.

Have you ever noticed that by simply obsessing on a subject, in ex; yelling at the driver who cut you off, will effect your driving. You tend to become more aggressive and the revenge factor can come upon you. Your blood pressure rises and tunnel vision sets in and your whole thought pattern becomes that other driver.

It is just another form of how you can allow yourself to be affected and react to situations. If you had simply stopped and thought, "hmmm, maybe they are in a rush to pick up a child from school or maybe they were cut off and were obsessed with getting some other driver." You have the choice to allow or disallow it to affect you.

This translates into every day life, work, home, relationships and church. Everything you do and how everything that happens to you allows you to make that choice. One of the people quoted in the book was William James (1842-1910), who is described as an original thinker in and between the disciplines of physiology, psychology and philosophy.

See the following link for more information on him: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/.

One of his quotes that I found was, "Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives." So true as I've seen it in my life and in the lives of others. All of us still get those moments as life can be described as a 'roller coaster of experiences'. I choose not to shudder but to enjoy the ride.

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