The Human Addiction

Do you stay to long in relationships that are going nowhere? Is your girlfriend, boyfriend or spouse a negative influence in your life? Does he/she treat you badly (we might even ask simply, does he or she treat you in a way you don't prefer to be treated)? Does it seem like you can never quite get on the same sheet of music, so to speak? And to quote the song, "How long has this been going on?"

A long time, right?

Your significant other is not your problem. As with absolutely every aspect of life, if there's a problem, YOU are that problem. In this case, you may suffer from the human addiction.

Where Do Affirmations Come From?

You are your consciousness. Your consciousness and Consciousness are one. You are Consciousness. Your voice is the voice of your consciousness. Your voice is the voice of Consciousness. When you use your voice, Consciousness is taking its rightful dominion. Use the voice of Consciousness to dictate to subconsciousness exactly what Consciousness wants for your life. These vocal directions are affirmations. Awareness of this simple process in the miracle of humanity.

But where do affirmations come from? This is an important question. In much the same manner as described in "How We Know Stuff," affirmations arise from being. If you give them a try, you'll find that you can't just pick any affirmation you want. You may get that affirmation down on paper and you might be able to say it a few times. But each time you do, it won't sit well with you. You'll find yourself pondering that affirmation, scrutinizing it, until finally you modify it or reject it as not in line with your being, with who you are.

Received in Email - A Call for Term Limits

I couldn't agree more with the below email I received yesterday.

* * *

Please consider forwarding, if you agree.

I have cleaned this e-mail of all other names, sending it to you in hopes that you will keep it going and keep it clean. This is something I believe in and I hope you all read it all the way through.

The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc.

Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.

I'm asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.

In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.

Congressional Reform Act of 2011:

Fully Commit to Feeling Great

Are you fully committed to feeling great? Your (quite logical) response to this question might well be, "Of course, I'm fully committed to feeling great, you idiot! Who wouldn't say yes to that?"

But are you? Think about it. How much of your day is spent in negative thoughts and feelings? That's not a rhetorical question. How much? If you take inventory during the next 24 hours, I think you'll be surprised.

How to Find the Doing That Arises from Your Being

"I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was." --Muhammad Ali

One of the best tests for figuring out if you're doing that which arises from your being is to modify Muhammad Ali's famous affirmation by saying out loud: "I am the greatest _____________ of all time," and fill in the blank with what you're doing right now. If this isn't really the doing that arises from your being, you probably won't even be able to finish saying this short sentence. And if you do finish it, the words will feel like bits of cardboard in your mouth.

If, on the other hand, the words roll off your tongue with fluidity and ease, you've found the right doing for you (and you probably already know that). Now, to achieve greatness in that doing, put aside any misplaced, misguided, culturally-induced sense of supposed humility you're supposed to harbor within your soul and say your own version of this affirmation as many times as you think of it throughout the day. Tinker with it to come up with your own wording to make it more personal to you, then make it your habit to think it and to say it as often as possible. Say it both to yourself and to other people. That's right, say it to other people. If you do, you will achieve greatness, guaranteed.

Self-Confidence: A Commitment to Feeling Good

Self-confidence is the key to all success. So what is it exactly?

We have already said that self-confidence is "the bond that connects being with doing," and "the strength to do that which arises from one's being, come what may." See "Use Daily Affirmations to Strengthen Self-Confidence"). But one might also say that self-confidence is a commitment to feeling good.

"How does that work?" you ask. It works like this.

Connection with being is that which gives rise to good feelings inside you. To get the sense of what I mean, go to "An Exercise for Experiencing the Joy of Being," and then come back and finish this article. Go ahead, we'll wait . . . 

"Love, and do what you will." --St. Augustine

I am the least moral person I know. Let me explain.

One of my favorite books is A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle. In that book, Tolle quotes St. Augustine's "Homily Number 7 on the First Epistle of John," reproduced below in it's entirety, in which Augustine preaches, "Love, and do what you will."

Augustine (354-430 AD) was the Bishop of the city of Hippo in what is modern-day Algeria. His simple precept is a far cry from what the Roman Catholic Church (and most Christian denominations) are today, with its complete incorporation of ethics, morality and judgment, a result of the adoption of Aristotelian philosophy in the thirteenth century via the writings of Thomas Aquinas, most notably Summa Theologica.

"Love, and do what you will," is the original Gospel with a capital G. Jesus taught people not to judge.

The problem is, you can't have a conception of morality or ethics without judgement. Most people just laugh this off, thinking, "That can't be what Jesus really meant. He just meant to say, 'don't be a judgmental person,'" as if this answers the question. What is a judgmental person? Where do you draw the line? Judgment is judgment and Jesus didn't misspeak.

Use Daily Affirmations to Strengthen Self-Confidence

The core principle of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, the granddaddy of all success literature, is the building of self-confidence through twice-daily affirmations, a process Hill called "auto-suggestion." He says quite pointedly:

Taking inventory of mental assets and liabilities, you will discover that your greatest weakness is lack of self-confidence. This handicap can be surmounted, and timidity translated into courage, through the aid of the principle of autosuggestion.

Your problem, in other words, is a lack of self-confidence, and here's how to fix it. And fix it, it does.

The Case Against Coupons

There's nothing wrong with coupons. Families use them to advantage; and the larger the family, the larger the advantage.

But Brett Arends, in his article posted to Yahoo! Finance, "Doing the Math on Coupons," part of a continuing series on Financial Fitness, goes overboard in his appreciation.

Citing statistics provided in a press release from a company called Inmar as his source, Ardent says that on average each coupon saves its redeemer $1.44. Estimating that each coupon requires about a minute to find, clip and file, that would be a savings of $86.40 per hour of work. And since this savings is tax-free, figures Ardent, he feels justified in rounding up that number to arrive at a rounder wage rate of $100 per hour for coupon clipping. Not bad.

Now I have no bone to pick with the statistics, nor with Ardent's calculations. But Inmar is a company that provides promotional services, including coupon operations, to retailers and wholesalers. They have a vested interest in promoting coupons.

Let's look inside the computations to see if Ardent's numbers are helping Inmar along.

If we estimate that each coupon redeemed saves on average 10% of the purchase price (the average is actually about 7%) , that would mean a family would have to purchase $864 in groceries each week to redeem all that they clipped. That's $1.44 x 10 x 60 = $864. This seems a little high for all but the Duggers, doesn't it?

So it's more likely that coupon clipping once a month, or even less often, will suffice for most people. It's a tiny part time job, nothing like the net of $1,200 per year projected by Ardent.

If coupon clipping is something you enjoy doing for yourself or your family, that's great. I say do it. But for many of the rest of us, it's a tedious practice, one better employed as something of a last resort rather than a lifestyle choice.

Photo courtesy of Copy Cop.

Tantrums: Tolle vs. APA

The American Psychiatric Association recently introduced its first revision to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 16 years. The "bible" of the psychiatric field, the DSM, as it's called, has wide-ranging impact upon mental healthcare and society at large. It's revision has taken ten years so far and has a least another two to go before the new disorders it proposes will reach the quivers of healthcare professionals.

The APA is recommending some 41 changes in the area of childhood disorders ranging from learning disorders to retardation (can the APA still use this word?) to the relationship of Asperger's Disorder to autism.

Among the proposed new childhood disorders is one called "Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria." This proposed disorder occurs between the years of six and ten and "is characterized by severe recurrent temper outbursts in response to common stressors."

Or in a word, tantrums.

Modern Concept of "Flow" has Its Roots in Taoism

As reported in the Good News Gazette, veteran reporter Cheryl Hall of The Dallas Morning News had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, best known for his development of the concept known as "Flow," which has gained wide application in the business world.

Feel Good First: The New Hedonism

The Hedonists Had it Right . . . Almost

Owing mainly to the swinger resorts of the same name, the word "Hedonism" conjures up visions of freewheeling sexuality. . . not that there's anything wrong with that. But that isn't really what hedonism was originally all about. Shall we say that this is a perversion of the original school of philosophical thought?