A Users Guide to Your Mind: How to Win in Love & Get Along With Each Other

by Bouchard, Michael Ra, Ph.d.

• ISBN13: 9781462022519
• ISBN10: 1462022510
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-11-01
• Publisher: Author Solutions

Summary

Thoughts are very real things. They can be compared to the elements that create the weather we experience. From clear and sunny to overcast and dreary, your thought-machine mind creates your reality. Whether or not you are consciously aware of it, you alone control the angles and rotations of the kaleidoscopic mirrors within the workings of your mind. If you don't like your reality, you can always adjust your outlook simply by adjusting your way of thinking. One of life's mercies is that we can retrain our mind. This guide is an appeal for rational thinking. When all is said and done, there are only three fundamental areas over which you have any real control in your life: how you think/feel (as in two sides of the same coin), how you act, and how you react. When you are unhappy in life or love, the best place to start looking for both the cause and the cure is within the inner narrative of your thoughts. It is here you will find the fountainhead of resiliency from which your strength and well-being flow. Resiliency in people is not an accidental occurrence; rather, it is the cumulative effect of an individual's decision making. In a nutshell, humans need not always interpret things in the negative, instead, the choice to view things either as "a positive" or as "a negative" is entirely your own to make. The intelligent approach insists you strive to see both the positive and the negative in people, situations, and events. Doing so won't negate the negative, it simply helps to balance it. The knowledge contained in A User's Guide to Your Mind is threefold: how to live mindfully of your thoughts, how to exercise emotional intelligence in relationships, and how to exercise social intelligence in everyday life. Exercising social and emotional intelligence-along with good old common sense-is essential to soundly managing your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. If you are tired of just talking about making changes and are now actually prepared to do something about it, the guidance within will provide detailed blueprints to get you started in redesigning your life and relationships. Best of all, you can implement what you learn as you see fit, according to your own goals, value system, and moral principles. This book shows you how.

Excerpts

Getting along well with others is essential to living and loving successfullly. Each of us is obligated in life to seek that we become an emotionally and socially well-adjusted contributing member of society. Since only two emotionally and socially well-adjusted individuals stand a chance of becoming one emotionally and socially well-adjusted couple, careful attention to developing our personal character is an essential prerequisite for coupled happiness. Getting along with people isn't rocket science even though it often feels that way. Harmoniously relating to others—and especially our significant other—is one of life's basic human requirements. Yet, for most of us, the ability to connect fully and deeply with others doesn't always come easily. We have to take care not to botch it up along the way with our faulty thinking patterns, irrational demands, and unrealistic expectations. Essentially, we have to get out of our own way, starting with the recognition that our thinking is actually part of the problem. As part of the problem you must factor yourself into the solution, since the common denominator of everything happening in the design of your life is, of course, you. It's all about the recovery To further happiness in our primary relationship, and life in general, the ability to recover swiftly from challenges, setbacks, and hurt feelings is indispensible. We need to address the situations at hand quickly and effectively to move from the mess up to the fix up with as little fuss as possible. Of course, it's impossible to prevent occasional friction and discord when living and loving in close proximity. Conflict inevitably happens. What determines whether we strengthen or weaken our connection is the manner in which we deal with the conflict—directly or indirectly, quickly or slowly, kindly or harshly—specifically through our words and our actions. Living and loving in integrity If you are to live and love successfully, it's essential that you commit yourself to carefully developing your character by living and loving truthfully and with unshakeable integrity. This approach demands a fundamental honesty with ourselves and others, and a willingness to go the distance with people when the going gets tough. Everyone has reasons, yet in the end, there is only the choice itself that matters. We are each born with an inner compass. It is how we develop and apply it that point to our values. Trust that no matter however many ways you may choose to pursue it, there is no higher life purpose than furthering love's fullest realization every chance you get. Living the non-reactive life The most effective approach to staying kinder, gentler, and honorable with everyone is by developing and practicing mindful non-reactiveness. Think of it as living from a mindset of thoughtfully engaged detachment. If we are to consistently live "at cause" in our life verses living life "at effect" of people and events, learning to live and love non-reactively is mandatory. No matter how sad, wrong, and painful our loss, suffering, or situation is, we always retain ability to "self-right" ourselves and land on our feet. We do this by choosing instead to make every effort to accentuate the positive and good of any hardship, sorrow, or challenging situation, and by not indulging in self-pity or negativizing thinking or talk. Naturally, sometimes we have strong feelings, yet we can avoid reacting strongly by recognizing and non-reactively managing them. To do this requires that we break the habits of being reactive and engaging in negative self-talk. We must replace emotional reactiveness with emotional sobriety and substitute positive self-talk for negative self-talk. You must understand that the best antidote to being reactive is to be direct and to avoid personalizing events or the reactions of others. This approach is best accomplished through the practice of mindfully engaged detachment. Of course, it's only human to overreact or act irrationally on occasion, especially when we have a high personal and emotional investment in an outcome. Knowing this, we must steady ourselves when we first feel the urge rising within us and adamantly refuse to indulge in unthinking emotional reactions to people and situations. To succeed in our self-directed behavior change we must accept and apply the basic principle of living non-reactively. Namely, as was first expressed by the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus, it is not people and events that cause us upset, but rather the judgments we make about them that cause us to disturb ourselves. If you are ever to break free of this deeply ingrained habit and more effectively manage yourself emotionally, you must begin by bringing a stop to personalizing everything that happens in your life. This is how we refuse to let our judgments hijack good reason and common sense, and maintain a basic sense of self-respecting decency when things aren't going our way. We keep a mindset that has us become witnesses and observers rather than losers or victims. The importance of exercising emotional and social intelligence in everyday life The knowledge contained in this self-help manual is three-fold: how to live mindfully in your thoughts, and how to exercise emotional and social intelligence in your everyday living. Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive and understand your feelings, and the feelings of people around you. Social intelligence is the ability to perceive and understand social cues and customs, and the ability to get along well with people. Exercising emotional and social intelligence—along with good old common sense—is essential to soundly managing your thoughts, feelings, actions, and reactions. Each of us is obligated in life to seek that we become an emotionally and socially well-adjusted contributing member of society. Since only two emotionally and socially well-adjusted individuals stand a chance of becoming one emotionally and socially well-adjusted couple, careful attention to developing our personal character is an essential prerequisite for coupled happiness. Following these psycho-spiritual-educational guidelines will teach you how to live your life more "at cause" and less "at effect." This is accomplished through the practice of mindful awareness, composed of rational, non-reactive, and realistic thinking and the subsequent making of better choices that naturally follows. We begin to practice mindful awareness merely by paying attention to the richness of the present moment. We can learn to choose — from one moment to the next — how we want to live. We learn that it is by expanding our consciousness and remaining aware as we move through life that we keep present in the world. When we are present, we align our energy with the moment and connect with the whole. he more we connect with the whole, the more our heart opens. The more your heart opens, the better you connect with yourself and your own thoughts and feelings. The better you connect with your own thoughts and feelings, the better you connect with others and the entire Universe. And the better connected you are, the less likely you are to resort, consciously or unconsciously, to thoughts or actions of anger, violence, and conflict. This systematic study guide is packed full of "convenient truths" for adults at any age and every stage of life seeking guidance and inspiration towards more successfully realizing these worthwhile ends.What's important to know is that you can apply them all as you see fit according to your own values and principles.