When "Abundant Thinking" Is Hard, Try This Approach InsteadIf it feels like a bit of a big ask to embrace an"abundant mindset", we need to consider the idea of accepting what we lack Life is pretty hard when we don't have what we need to move forward. We try our best but we don't have enough money to invest in projects; we don't have enough contacts to help us expand; we don't live anywhere with great opportunities and life just seems to present us with continuous obstacles and not much else. After a while we get trained to spot why things can't work; why we can't do what we want to do; why it might be better to give up instead. When we get into that habitual frame of thinking, we are exhibiting what is known as a Lack Mentality (or Scarcity Thinking) - and it's a crippling mindset. It's particularly insidious because, for many of us, it's simply a default setting. It doesn't feel like we are being defeatist. This is just reality. The Problem With Abundant Thinking Stepping out of a Lack Mentality can be a bit of a problem, then. The antidote we are often presented with, to help move us out of this state, is also rife with issues. It's what is known as "Abundant Thinking". Abundant Thinking asks us to embrace possibility, imagine things getting better and develop a grand vision of a life that is so much more exciting than the one we are currently living. While fantasizing can give us a temporary high, the problem is that deep down we are all too well aware of our realities. The disparities between what we want and what we have can be enormous, which makes the mental jump so difficult. "Abundant thinking" is a big ask if we live in an environment which is constantly reinforcing the opposite of abundance wherever we look. An Alternative Suggestion A paradoxical way of freeing ourselves from a Lack Mentality is by completely accepting lack is there and that it might always be there. It's a form of Radical Acceptance. Radical Acceptance is a therapeutic intervention developed by psychologist Marsha Linehan. It was intended for sufferers of borderline personality disorder but its principles can be applied universally. The idea is to take us on the very path we are trying to avoid - the one that leads towards painful realizations of difficult realities. Instead of wishing things were different, it makes us face the fact that life is not the way we want it to be - and it might never get better. It is painful to do this - but the pain is short-lived. What we are essentially doing is fully embracing the unpleasant emotions fully that arise from being brutally honest with ourselves. In this case, it would be the pain of accepting we don't have XYZ (and we might never have it). Once we face it, we effectively free ourselves from the internal resistance to where we are. We come out the other side with a new perspective - one that is grounded in reality. Much like Intense Realism, this practice will then narrow our attention to what we do have at our disposal. As a result, we give ourselves the potential to become more focused, creative, innovative and resourceful. The alternative is a pain that lasts far longer - it's called denial. Denial is "Abundant Thinking" for people who don't really buy into it but do it anyway because they don't know what else to do. Embracing our lack, rather than pretending it isn't there, is a key to help us out of our mental prison, when imagining we are not in prison is just too hard to do.
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This Is When Blind Faith & Hard Facts Can Co-ExistWhen we're caught in a bind (and we've been there a while) we need to find that magic spot between brutal realism and everlasting hope. It’s not unusual, when life goes south, to want someone - anyone - to tell us everything is going to be OK. But the truth is, some things don’t ever seem to improve — or, at least they can take a very, very long time to. We can always find ourselves trapped in situations which we once thought would resolve themselves quickly, only to find ourselves months — or even years — later, still there, still hoping for change, still trying to escape. It might be a bad marriage. It might be a shitty job. It might be that we finally left that bad marriage or quit that shitty job and now we have found a brand new place to be stuck in. And life can suck for a very long time. The thing is, just knowing that something isn’t working isn’t enough to make that thing change. And blind faith that it will somehow magically get better next week, next month, or next year, is only a short-term solution - something that momentarily makes us feel better. To survive the spirit-crushing nature of our predicaments, then, we have to throw ourselves a rope — one that is, conversely, both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. The real lifeline comes from embracing the opposites and living both truths side by side, as James Stockdale will tell you. The Stockdale Paradox Relentless optimism in a situation where you don’t really have anything to be optimistic about is more than just deluded thinking. When you are a prisoner of war, it can actually be life-threatening. Stockdale, a naval officer at the time of the Vietnam War, had to learn this the hard way when he was held in a POW camp for seven long years. This is an account of his time there by Jim Collins in his book, Good To Great: "Tortured over twenty times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner’s rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again." Initially, when Collins asked Stockdale how he endured this, he replied that he “never lost faith in the end of the story”. He “never doubted” that he would get out one day, that he “would prevail in the end” and ultimately be defined by the experience in the best way possible. Yet, at the same time, Stockdale said that the ones who suffered the most in that camp — and even died prematurely — were in fact, the optimists. How so? Again from Collins' book, Good To Great: “Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.” A Marriage Of Opposites The lesson, said Stockdale — and the thing that kept him going — was to hold two contrasting beliefs in his mind. He wasn’t getting out by Christmas. But he absolutely was getting out. The trick was not to allow his optimism to blind him to the “brutal facts” of his situation, which were just as vital to his survival during this time. As he told Collins: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose - with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” Facing facts might not be as sexy as “you will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger” but it is vital we do so, particularly when we feel trapped. While optimism is an essential component of psychological health; blind optimism — the kind where we think life will magically sort itself out on its own — is a dangerous state to stay in. Just like the blissful high that comes from a visit to a tarot card reader, these kinds of states aren’t meant to last. Eventually reality will come crashing in, regardless of whether we want to face it or not. So balancing faith with facts, is an advisable way to navigate these times; to stay grounded — not deluded. Aside from anything, it might just save us from a broken heart. More ARTICLES >>
Want To Know What "The Shadow" Is All About? Here's An Easy Place To StartIf we want to get to know - and make peace with - the rejected and darker sides of our nature, we need to face up to our hypocrisy When we talk to the uninitiated about Shadow Psychology: our repressed states, the idea about "integrating" our darker, unacknowledged traits in order to be fully realised "whole" human beings - we can forgive people if they look back at us blankly, unashamedly uninterested. But mutter the word "hypocrite" in anyone's direction and we will get a decidedly different response. Hypocrisy, is a loaded - and very well understood - term. And it's powerful. There are, arguably, fewer powerful insults we can throw at someone than this one - particularly the more moral and ethical the target considers themselves to be. It is a gift, in a sense, when we bump into it, as it is perhaps the ideal introduction into the world of Shadow Psychology. Do As I Say, Not As I Do Hypocrisy means saying (or preaching) one thing but doing the opposite (often in secret). It's the priest proselytizing on purity and abstinence while battling a drink problem or abusing the vulnerable; it is the avidly homophobic politician-in-public who is engaging in a homosexual relationship in private. It's when we criticize and condemn people for acting in a way that we in fact are also acting ourselves but it can also be us hating on people for things we are not doing but wish we were. As Jung once famously said: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” Psychology and philosophy vlogger Einzelgänger gives a layman's introduction, here, and as he explains, it is not the fact that we are hypocrites in the first place that is the problem. It is that we fail to recognize it. And that means we miss the opportunity to "integrate" these hidden aspects into our conscious selves so we are no longer dominated by misunderstood, unrecognized unconscious forces. What We Resist... Our darker urges exist because we resist looking at them. And our hatred of other people's behaviour stems from the failure - or refusal - to recognize that the things we are villainising lie inside of us too. Only when we bring these traits to the surface, then, facing them in the cold light of day and admitting that we are, also, like that too, can they ever cease to hold power over us. So how do we do this? "The Work" There are many different ways to do it (you can find various techniques here). One way is via "The Work", by Byron Katie. Katie has a simple "Judge Your Neighbor" exercise (with an explanatory video here). The basic idea behind it is that whatever it is that is driving us nuts about our "neighbour" is generally the very thing we need to own up to ourselves. And it goes without saying that it's easier to do in some cases than it is in others. But it is always worth doing. Why? At the very least, as Jung says, if we learn to recognize the hypocrisy in ourselves, it might not only make us whole but it might just make us connect with people a little bit better (and isn't that what we all ultimately want?): "A little less hypocrisy and a little more self-knowledge can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.” Take Byron Katie's |
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