If you’re plagued by guilt or worry and find yourself unwittingly falling into th
e same old self-destructive patterns, then you have “erroneous zones” – whole facets of your approach to life that act as barriers to your success and happiness.
A constant companion: Your-Own-Death
Look over your shoulder. You will notice a constant companion. For want of a better name, call him Your-Own-Death. You can fear this visitor or use him for your personal gain. The choice is up to you. With death so endless a proposition and life so breathtakingly brief, ask yourself, “Should I avoid doing the things I really want to do?” “Should I live my life as others want me to?” “Are things important to accumulate?” “Is putting it off the way to live?” Chances are your answers can be summed up in a few words: Live…Be You…Enjoy…Love. You can fear your death, ineffectually, or you can use it to help you learn to live effectively.
The next time you are contemplating a decision in which you are debating whether or not to take charge of yourself, to make your own choice, ask yourself an important question, “How long am I going to be dead?” With that eternal perspective, you can now make your own choice and leave the worrying, the fears, the question of whether you can afford it and the guilt to those who are going to be alive forever.
Learning to take charge of yourself
Learning to take total charge of yourself will involve a whole new thinking process, one which may prove difficult because too many forces in our society conspire against individual responsability. You must trust in your own ability to feel emotionally whatever you choose to feel at any time in your life. This is a radical notion.
You’ve probably grown up believing that you can’t control your own emotions; that anger, fear and hate, as well as love, ecstasy and joy are things that happen to you. An individual doesn’t control these things, he accepts them. When sorrowful events occur, you just naturally feel sorrow, and hope that some happy events will come along so that you can feel good very soon.
Choosing how you’ll feel
Feelings are not just emotions that happen to you. Feelings are reactions you choose to have. If you are in charge of your own emotions, you don’t have to choose self-defeating reactions. Once you learn that you can feel what you choose to feel, you will be on the road to “intelligence”. This is the very heart and soul of personal freedom.
You have the power to think whatever you choose to allow into your head. If something just “pops” into your head, you still have the power to make it go away, and therefore you still control your mental world.
“If you don’t control your thoughts, who does?”
You and only you control your thinking apparatus. Your thoughts are your own, uniquely yours to keep, change, share, or contemplate. No one else can get inside your head and have your own thoughts as you experience them. You do indeed control your thoughts, and your brain is your own to use as you so determine.