The Sacred Gift Of Curiosity

Have you ever heard the term, curiosity killed the cat? Well, thank goodness people do not have that same condition happening to them. Curiosity is a very important part of personal development. It keeps us striving to learn more, which in turn keeps us moving forward with our growth.

Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning (William A. Ward)

The miraculous power that will drive man to the far reaches of the universe is not  anything tangible, such as rocket fuel or time travel. The power that will get him there comes from within. It is his insatiable appetite to explore. It is called curiosity. Just as infants tirelessly delight in exploring their immediate surroundings, man is driven to extend himself. He stretches out into space and reaches deep within himself, examining his own genes. Each new discovery leads to new questions, which calls for further exploration. Therefore, we travel on an endless road, motivated by the excitement we experience with each new discovery. Curiosity is the mother of philosophy, religion, and science.

Curiosity is a sacred gift. That is why  Einstein called it “holy” when he wrote, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”

Despite the treasures we have inherited at birth, many of us have become jaded, allowing the candle of curiosity to burn out. The result is devastating. We are surrounded by lost souls, drifting without a purpose, unaware of the wonder that surrounds them. They wander in a trance in search of happiness that eludes them. What happened? What went wrong? Many have been taken in by the false promises of advertising. We are told by the media that happiness comes from leading the “good life.” Material possessions, an attractive mate, and leisure time are the sources of happiness, so we are told.

But what happens when we accept the bait and follow this empty dream? Well, let us look
at an example. A young man thinks he can make big bucks in the Information Technology field, so he enrolls in an IT school. After entering, he discovers he has to study monster-size books. Soon, he is thinking, “Hey! No fair! Where is my leisure time? These books are b-o-r-i-n-g!!” If he graduates, what is his reward? More books! Bigger books! A lifetime of study! To stay employed, he will have to keep abreast of the ever-changing technology.

If we are unhappy in our present place of employment, there is no point in changing our job until we change our attitude. We need to change our perception, our awareness. We need to rekindle our curiosity and rediscover the joy of learning and creation. When we follow the right path, we will arrive at the right place. Remember, no time, place, or position is the wrong point to begin. Regardless of our age or job, we can always reignite our curiosity and set foot on the right road.

Why should you go on living? To satisfy your curiosity! How do we conquer boredom? With curiosity! How do we protect democracy and guard the environment? Is it not by being curious enough to question the statements of politicians and big business, while searching out the truth?

Your life does not stop at the walls of your home or apartment. It extends outward, beyond the walls. There is a limitless universe and a bottomless ocean of knowledge waiting to be explored.

Can we make any progress without curiosity? Do we not need to ask an endless series of questions?  The joy of life not only flows from our personal discoveries, but also from learning the solutions offered by others. Who knows? The next exciting thing I learn may be something you have discovered.

With thanks to Chuck Gallozzi http://www.personal-development.com/chuck/curiosity.htm

The Burden Of Perfectionism

“Perfectionism is self destructive simply because there is no such thing as perfect. Perfection is an unattainable goal.” Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You are Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are"

The Burden Of  Perfectionism

Perfectionism fuels procrastination, stress, fear, and crippling anxiety. It leads to feeling overwhelmed by the thought of starting a new project.

You feel compelled to find the perfect strategy before embarking on a project. You conduct endless research. You consume all the information you can get your hands on about the project. You splinter your attention and focus in a thousand directions instead of taking the first simple step. You leave no stone unturned before you start the project.

You strive to remove all uncertainty related to the outcome before you lift off. Risk and uncertainty can be reduced to increase the odds of success. However, most dreams in life carry a large dose of uncertainty that cannot be eliminated.

This mindset is not conducive to making meaningful progress. You learn exponentially more through experience than passively consuming information without applying it. Experience is a masterful teacher.

When you undertake an endeavour, you do not allow yourself to stop working until it is perfect. You make changes until you feel the end product cannot be improved. You place a paralysing burden of perfection on yourself.

You focus on the mountain ahead. You dread the substantial volume of work you will perform as you chisel away at the project until perfection. You worry, stress, and agonise over whether you will ever reach the distant summit of your dreams.

You feel relentless pressure as a result of not giving yourself permission to make mistakes. A perfectionist walks through life with 100 pound weights on each shoulder. You constantly carry the weight of perfectionism, from one project to the next.

A perfectionist does not squeeze out the lessons contained in failures. Each failure is an opportunity to learn and improve if you have a growth mindset. If you ask productive questions after failures, you turn them into your greatest teachers. What would I do differently next time? Where did the project break down? What can I learn from this?

A perfectionist obsesses over the end result instead. You mentally beat yourself up over not producing the desired outcome. The perfectionist mindset prevents you from looking at the situation from the most advantageous angle.

The Cost Of Perfectionism

Perfectionism is hard to kick because it produces results. It supplies fuel that propels you to put in the thousands of hours of work required to succeed for the biggest life goals. However, perfectionism is not  a free ride towards your dream life. It carries psychological baggage.

Perfectionism comes with a side of anxiety, stress, and constant worry. You agonise over every mistake and replay the failures in your mind on a loop.

The weight of perfectionism leads to procrastination in your work and personal life. You put off starting many projects and dread the amount of work and struggle it takes to complete projects to your level of satisfaction. You feel that you have to create a masterpiece every time. It becomes a grind, but you succeed despite the friction caused by your mindset.

Dream of a road to success without the heavy price charged by perfection.

The Power Of Good Enough

Shift your mindset and realise that every project does not  need to be finished at a 100% quality level. It frees you to focus on the task ahead instead of the end result. It takes a huge burden off of your shoulders to know that 80% is good enough. You do not have to hit the perfection target every time you step up to the plate.

80% to perfection is better than 0%. It is better to finish a project with flaws and  mistakes than to procrastinate for years.

There are additional benefits to targeting 80%. It takes a significant amount of effort to improve the end product from 80% to 90%. Usually, the marginal time and effort outweigh the value gained from that additional 10% of quality. The cost-benefit analysis leads to the conclusion that 80% meets the needs of the project.

Perfectionism should be reserved for the most important goals that produce disproportionate, massive results. Learn  to reserve being surgically precise, methodical, and meticulous for the highest leverage projects.

The perfectionist says, “I need to produce great work without any mistakes or errors. It has to be just right.”

The better strategy is to treat the first pass of the project as a practice run. You will edit and review your work several times before it is final. When you embrace this mentality, the first pass carries a low level of pressure.

You start the project with peace of mind knowing that the product will improve significantly in the second and third passes. This mindset allows you to make progress quickly as you work with a clear mind that is  not burdened by perfection.

When you transform your mindset from perfectionism to growth and improvement, you enjoy the process. If your standard is perfection, you will disappoint yourself continually; it is not attainable.

If your standard is continuous growth, you simply have to be willing to put your ego aside so that you can strategically evaluate results and incorporate lessons learned on the next attempt. The only requirement is to be better than you were yesterday.

That is doable. It is achievable, stress free and the way forward towards living your dreams

With thanks to Jose Ramos http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/3-lessons-from-a-recovering-perfectionist/

Learn To Speak The Language Of The Universe

Stop Self Sabotaging Yourself

The expression “you are your own worst enemy” rings true for most of us. How many times have we acted against our self-interest, then asked ourselves why did we self-destruct? Why did we say that to a loved one, procrastinate on that project, stopped doing that one thing that makes us feel great? Self sabotaging thoughts and behaviours are perpetuated by an inner critic we all possess, called “the critical inner voice.”

The critical inner voice does not represent a positive sense of self that you can trust in. Rather, it epitomises a cruel “anti self,” a part inside of us that we turn against ourselves. It casts doubt on our abilities, undermines our desires, and convinces us to be paranoid and suspicious toward ourselves and those close to us. This anti-self fills our mind with critical self-analysis and self-sabotaging thoughts that lead us to hold back or steer away from our true goals.

Where Self Sabotaging Thoughts Come From

Our critical inner voice is formed from our early life experiences. Without realising it, we tend to internalise attitudes that were directed toward us by parents or influential caretakers throughout our development. For example, if our parent saw us as lazy, we may grow up feeling useless or ineffective. We may then engage in self sabotaging thoughts that tell us not to try, i.e.“Why bother? You will never succeed anyway. You just do not have the energy to get anything done”

In a similar manner, children can internalise negative thoughts that their parents or early caretakers have about themselves.  If we grew up with a self loathing parent, who often viewed themselves as weak or a failure, we may grow up with similar self sabotaging attitudes about ourselves. For instance, if our parent felt critical of their appearance, we may take on similar insecurities without realising it. We may feel easily self-conscious and less sure of ourselves in social or public situations.

We cannot change the past. Yet, as adults, we can identify the self sabotaging thoughts that we have internalised and consciously choose to act against them. When we fall victim to our critical inner voice and listen to its directives, we often engage in self limiting or self sabotaging behaviours that hurt us in our daily lives. As author Elizabeth Gilbert put it, “You need to learn how to select your thoughts in the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life, work on the mind. That is the only thing you should be trying to control.”

How To Stop Self Sabotaging Behaviour

Once we know where our self sabotaging thoughts come from, we can start to differentiate from the negative identity we have cast upon ourselves. We can familiarise ourselves with our critical inner voice and notice when it starts to seep into our thought process. As we do this, we can start to recognise ways we act that we do not like or respect. For example, if we often feel embarrassed or ashamed and, as a consequence, hold ourselves back socially, we can start to push ourselves to be more outgoing and open.

Changing these self sabotaging behaviours will make us anxious, because it means challenging deeply ingrained, old and familiar attitudes that we have long held about ourselves. Differentiating from these behaviors is essential to leading happy lives.

Authors Dr Robert Firestone, Dr Lisa Firestone and Joyce Catlett describe the steps involved in differentiation.  Separating ourselves from the destructive attitudes (critical inner voices) we internalise based on painful early life experiences requires us to separate from the negative traits in our parents or influential caretakers that we have taken on as our own. 

By challenging these destructive defenses or adaptations we made to the pain we experienced growing up may have helped us in childhood but, very often, hurt us as adults. For instance, if we were used to being let down or rejected as children, we may have formed a defense mechanism that shuts us off from wanting or expecting much from others. Though this lowering our expectations may seem to help cushion us from getting hurt as a child, this same defense can keep us from trusting or getting close to someone as an adult.

The final step of differentiation asks us to develop our very own sense of our unique values, ideals and beliefs. Once we have separated from the negative overlays from our past, we can uncover who we really are. We can stop our self sabotaging behaviours and choose the person we want to be.

How To End Self Sabotaging Relationships

The defenses and critical inner voices that we carry over time often lead us to recreate dynamics from our early life into our adult life. We tend to play out negative, old behaviour patterns with the people we get close to. We often form self sabotaging relationships by indulging in our critical inner voices and failing to challenge our core defenses.

For example, if we felt abandoned as a child, we may have the tendency to become insecure in our adult relationships. We may hear “voices” toward ourselves like, “How can you trust her? She is just going to leave you. Be careful and do not let yourself get close to her.” If we had a parent who was overbearing or intrusive, we may feel easily suffocated by our romantic partner. We may hear voices like, “He is too needy. Can he just leave me alone? You are better off on your own. You just cannot handle being close.”

Our critical inner voices encourage us to act out our defenses in all areas of our lives, but most often in our closest relationships. They often hold us back from getting what we really want, instilling fears in us that we will be hurt in the same ways we were hurt as children. We may even choose partners who play into these old dynamics, recreating past scenarios that help us maintain a negative identity we have long held.

Getting to know our patterns can help us avoid self sabotaging relationships. We can start to act against our inner critic and break from defenses that no longer serve us well today. Facing our past is an important part of this process. Once we familiarise ourselves with our defenses, we can differentiate from self sabotaging behaviours and live a more liberated life, in which we are more powerful and much more in control of our destiny.

With thanks to Psychalive https://www.psychalive.org/self-sabotaging/