Happiness, Health, Wisdom and Wealth ™"The Owner's Manual for Your Life" |
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"Know Thyself""Know Thyself" has been accepted common wisdom for millennia. It has been attributed to Socrates, Pythagoras, Solon and others. In Greek, γνωθι σεαυτον (in English letters, gnothi seauton), it was inscribed in the entry of The Temple of Apollo at Delphi where the Oracle at Delphi dispensed wisdom to the ancient world. The importance of knowing oneself is hard to overstate. If you don’t know yourself you can’t really know anything else. This is not immediately obvious but it is absolutely true. Everything you observe, analyze, investigate, or think about is ‘contaminated’ by what is already in your mind. What you already ‘know’ and believe determines how any new information is treated. No two people can see the same information the same way. Their different minds guarantee that they will perceive things each in their own way. Imagine for a moment wearing a pair of glasses that distorts visual reality in the way a fun house mirror might. Imagine that your friend is wearing a similar pair of glasses that also distort vision but differently than yours. Now, looking at the same thing, you will see very different ‘realities’. The only way you will both ever be able to anything like that same reality is if you both learn the properties of your glasses so well that you can use you mind to ‘correct’ the distortions the glasses create. That is you’d have to know your glasses. Your mind as it is now is much like those glasses. Your mind acts like a lens, changing the input based on prior knowledge and belief. Don’t believe it? The vast majority of people in the world are the same religion as their parents. How do you explain that? If people chose their religion the same way they buy a car you would expect similar results. Knowing what kind of car someone drives is not a good predictor of what kind of car their parents drive. There are dozens of religions in several major groups, not unlike automobile makes and models. The probability of parent and child choosing the same make might be one in ten, the same make and model maybe one in a hundred, the same make, model and color maybe one in a couple of thousand. If it happened we’d be surprised. If my son and I went car shopping separately and came home with the same car, we be astonished! If we chose our beliefs like we choose our cars you would expect a similar distribution. You would be surprised to discover parent and child shared the same religion in common. But we’re not surprised, are we? In fact, we’re more likely to be surprised by the reverse. |
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Does anyone doubt that basic beliefs, like one's religion, change the way they see the world. If they didn’t, what would be the point? If your religion includes belief in reincarnation, it forces a profound shift in the way you view the animal kingdom. It’s a lot harder to squash an ant if it might be your aunt!! Belief in an afterlife requires that you live with an eye toward your future life instead of living your life as though it was your last. And all of this happens, not by choice but by accident of birth. I’m certainly not suggesting that you should run out and choose a new religion. I am suggesting that if you don’t understand how your core beliefs affect your view of the world, you can’t know what you’re really seeing. Your Axioms Control Your LifeAn axiom is a fundamental belief; a belief so basic that we can use it to prove or justify many, many other beliefs. We usually only have a few axioms that guide our lives. They can be positive, negative, or neutral, true or false. To be happy your life must be based on optimistic truth. So we would like axioms that we believe are solidly true and we would like to phrase them optimistically in our minds. Usually though, our axioms are never thought out but created for us in the deep basement of our mind. The place we rarely go that scares us a little. We base our axioms on things people tell us; we base them on our experiences viewed through a distorted lens; we almost never create them thoughtfully but we act as if they are true. Then we base other things we believe on them. Once adopted they can become self-fulfilling prophecies. If you have an axiom that means that people won’t like you, you will tend to act closed, unapproachable, wary of being not liked. Since these aren’t typically ‘likeable’ behaviors, many people may not take the time to get to know you. They may treat you as an outsider and in doing so confirm your axiom. You will notice the times your axiom is reinforced far more than the times it is negated. So your data collection is biased for both reasons. We tend to think our axioms (our most basic beliefs) are based on reason and experience but that is rarely the case. If you want your life to be different; it MUST be based on different axioms. Creating an axiom indicating that you can create, destroy and change axioms is the first order of business. This can be difficult for some but is possible for everyone. The difficulty is that people think of axioms as their property; the result of investment. In reality this is seldom the case. They are most often accidental. But since we think of them as our property we are reluctant to give them away. So don’t give them away, simply acknowledge that you’ve outgrown them. Our axioms make all the difference in limiting or enhancing what we get out of life and what we put into it. They can be boosters or barriers. Taking us beyond limits or imposing artificial ones. They change what we think we deserve and what we are capable of. Many axioms come from childhood influences such as parents or teachers or clergy, the media, advertising, songs, books, etc. These early acquired axioms are often the most hidden and we don’t realize that they are controlling our adult behavior. As adults we occasionally create axioms and regularly reinforce old ones. Here are some examples of common axioms;
"I deserve all the bad things that happen to me." "No pain - no gain." "I need to have lots of money to be happy." "You can’t trust anybody." "You can’t get over a bad start in life." "I never get what I want." "You can’t teach an old dog new tricks." "Other people are better than me." "I don’t deserve to be successful." "I’ve reached my limits." "I need to work very hard to have enough money to live." "Success takes a very long time." "I was born to suffer." "No one will ever really love me." "You can’t both have money and be happy." "__________(group i.e. men, foreigners, etc.) can’t be trusted." Also statements or beliefs made in absolute terms are often axioms. I always… They always… It always… I never… They never… It never… These kinds of axioms control your life. Do we really want to accept allowing axioms to control our lives unquestioned? Suppose they are mistaken? What difference would that make? Sometimes just being able to articulate an axiom and call it into question is enough to destroy it. Their power to control you is in their residing in your unconscious. So the first step is to put them into words or write them down. Then they are exposed and can be examined and if necessary reconstructed. |
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