Never
despair. But if you do, work on.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query despair. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query despair. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Saturday, June 10, 2017
As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
As a Man Thinketh, a short
book written by James Allen,
has become a staple of self-help
literature. Many stripes of self-help teachers have referred to it since, from
the mystical to the practical-minded.
As the title suggests, Allen teaches that a person’s life and
achievements are results of his thoughts.
Thoughts are the seeds. These seeds grow into actions. The fruit of actions are
wealth or
want, health
or illness, joy
or despair. It simply depends on the kinds of seeds you plant.
If you’re not intentionally planting seeds, preferably thoughts will
produce salutary and beautiful results, your mind will be seeded with whatever
falls there. Your life will be weedy, having mixed and low-value results.
Each chapters of the book is an essay on some aspect of Allen’s theme.
They deal with character,
life conditions, health, purposefulness,
achievement, vision
and peace. I
each case, Allen suggests the life you have is the life you choose through your
habits of
thought.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Allen, James. As a Man Thinketh.
White
Plains, NY: Peter
Pauper Press.
Saturday, November 24, 2018
The Beethoven Factor by Paul Pearsall
Sometimes it seems like we’re all sick and crazy. This may stem from a
focus on trying to find and fix what is wrong with us. Psychologist
Paul
Pearsall referred to this as a pathogenic focus. In his book The Beethoven Factor, he discusses
the field of positive
psychology, which focuses on what is right with people and what we can
learn from those who are well adjusted, happy and healthy. In
particular, Pearsall focuses on thriving.
Thriving is growth in the aftermath, and even in the midst of, stressful
situations. The people he discusses and learns from in his book, some patients
of his and many his fellow patients in a cancer ward,
often suffered greatly from disease, war, poverty and
other hardships. These people had there ups and downs, but they managed an
emotional upward trend.
The heart of thriving is a flexible explanatory style. We’re all
telling ourselves stories that interpret and evaluate our lives. People who
thrive are adaptive and creative in the stories they tell themselves, which
allows them to savor
and find meaning
in their lives even while suffering.
Thriving can be paradoxical,
especially from a pathogenic outlook: someone is becoming stronger in a
situation that is expected to make them weaker. Those who thrive can defy the
expectations the traditional view of healthy thinking. They work on themselves,
which can sometimes make them seem aloof or insensitive. They can be in denial,
but they use it to give themselves a temporary escape for pain and time to
think. They can be hard to like because of their intensity; when someone is
getting the most out of life, they may have little patience for interruptions,
naysayers and whiners. They are reflective, which can make them seem withdrawn.
They can be depressed, down on themselves and loose hope as they make their
journey. Thriving is a process of learning, so
it can take a long time, though sometimes someone will catch on quickly.
Pearsall offers a lot of advice on how to thrive, especially in the
second half of the book (the first half focuses on introducing positive
psychology and defining thriving). This section focuses on four aspects of
thriving: hardiness, happiness, healing and hope.
Hardiness comes from our beliefs. Hardy
people have beliefs that help them commit to engaging in living, finding a
sense of control—which
includes knowing when to let go of control—and seeing the difficulties they
face and challenges they can cope with if not overcome.
Happiness is rooted in flow. It is focus and engagement
in life. Happy people push aside distractions,
expectations
and striving for things that don’t really bring them joy.
Healing is fundamentally learning. We
all suffer to some extent in our lives, and these periods of sickness or other
hardship are telling us to slow down and pay attention.
Healing people learn to make sense of what happens (in their own ways), cope with it, and find meaning in their
experiences.
Hoping is what Pearsall calls “cautious optimism.”
People who hope find a way to hold onto their dreams, or come
up with new dreams, without expecting on depending on them. They imagine that
the world, imperfect as it is, may be the best possible world, so they get on
with seeking all they can enjoy in it.
Pearsall offers his readers a big dose of practical grace. If you’re
really finding your own way to cope with adversity in a way the truly engages
life as fully as you can, you’re on the path to thriving and it is okay that
you may not be the upbeat, outgoing, positive, realistic
person that your psychologists, physicians,
self-help
books and friends
think you should be. Living is learning, especially in times of sickness and
difficulty; learning is challenging, slow work that requires focus and imagination.
If you’re learning, you will struggle and be worn out sometimes. You’ll also be
engaged in life in a way that puts you in an uneven, but upward trend, instead
of spiraling downward in despair.
Paul Pearsall also wrote
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Pearsall, Paul. The Beethoven
Factor: The New Positive Psychology of Hardiness, Happiness, Healing, and Hope. Charlottesville,
VA: Hampton
Roads, 2003.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Friday, April 30, 2021
Superimmunity by Paul Pearsall
Psychologist Paul Pearsall was an early proponent of current notions of mind-body medicine. For Pearsall, it was important to heal a person’s life even if it wasn’t possible to cure their disease. Often a disease can be the body’s way of getting a person’s attention, and letting him know a change is needed. People who make those changes can experience healing, sometimes in the form of a cure and sometime as health and happiness in the midst of disease. Pearsall described some of his ideas in Superimmunity.
In this book, Pearsall draws from Eastern medicine an organizing theme: hot and cold thinking. Hot thinkers are fast, impatient, black-or-white thinkers. They can be judgmental and prone to exaggeration, overreaction and isolation. Cold thinkers overreact to trivial things and underreact to important things. They are prone to passivity and feeling of inadequacy. They are isolated in their own way, and though often out of touch with their emotions, they often despair.
The body responds to these thinking styles. Hot reactors are always on the attack, and their immune systems attack their bodies. Heart disease is associated with hot people. Cold reactors are inactive, so their bodies may respond with excessive activity, particularly cell growth (i.e. cancer).
Pearsall does not eschew medicine. If you are facing a serious illness, the likes of heart disease or cancer, you need a lot of medical help. However, you also need to enlist the aid of your own immune system, which may be doing something counterproductive if it is very active at all. You’re immune system is closely linked to your brain, more so that was commonly thought when Pearsall was writing in the 1980s, so getting the best immune response calls for leaving hot or cold thinking for something more balanced.
“Until recently, we have behaved as if the immune system were somehow separate from us, doing its job secretly, automatically, beyond our control…. Research now tells us that our immune system functions within a supersystem of mind and body,” Paul Pearsall, Superimmunity
Superimmunity includes many tests to help you identify if you tend to be a hot or cold thinker (you can be both). From there, Pearsall offers strategies for cooling off or warming up your thinking as needed. This can mean observing your body, listening to your disease and getting in touch with your emotions in ways that can be unfamiliar to one in the throes of hot or cold reaction. This self-evaluation that reveals the underlying dysfunction, and your own exploration and imagination may uncover your path to healing.
Pearsall does not suggest that changing your thinking will always lead to a cure, though sometimes it might. Disease and mortality are part of being a human. However, you can truly live while you are alive, and in this since experience healing. Life is more than surviving, eating, drinking and breathing. It is important to live as fully as you can.
Paul Pearsall also wrote
The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel
G. Amen
The Relaxation Response by Herbert
Bnson with Miriam Z. Klipper
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott
Peck
Timeless Healing by Herbert Benson with Marg
Stark
Pearsall, Paul. Superimmunity: Master Your Emotions & Improve Your Health. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987.
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