Probably the first thing that comes to mind when you begin reading an article with this title would be 'spend less', 'save', 'invest', and the like. While these are good things to do, and arguably if you do these you'll amass some amount of money, the above activities are the results of habits, they're secondary to the sorts of basic things this article will discuss.
What this article will discuss are more properly the habits of effective people- people who are happy, dynamic, and good at what they do, whatever it is. These are all small, but profound things that come together to make the big things happen more quickly and with greater ease.
Stop Complaining- Complaining is not just annoying to other people, it is harmful to you. huh? Complaining is the strategy we use in order to get other people to solve our problems for us, and what's more, usually it's the strategy we use to make other people feel bad for us. What complaining does for us is to attract people who want to feel bad for you, repel people who won't tolerate that sort of behavior, locks you into a dependency paradigm, and it rewards you for giving up. If you complain effectively, people will come to you and give you attention- it worked when you were a baby, right?
The problem is that when complaint becomes a habit, when your first strategy in the face of adversity is to give up and complain in the hopes that other people will come to either solve your problem for you or console you, it means that your habit is to impose on anybody who will let you. Complainers like to describe people who aren't interested in being imposed upon as 'selfish' or 'insensitive', and often are the same people who equate selfishness with bad moral character- after all, if they can't manipulate these people by complaining, they must be bad, right?
When you complain, you rob yourself of initiative, you shut your imagination down, and you stop looking for solutions to your problem on your own. Instead of becoming larger than your problems, you become smaller, and in order not to feel miserable about it, you complain in order to get some self-validation. As soon as you bring self-validation into it, you get your ego involved, which only complicates things- at that point you have to choose between being right and being happy, and your ego is very motivated to be right. Instead of finding a way to overcome your problem, you'll settle for feeling righteous about how unfair your life is.
how to know you're getting good at not complaining-
You look for constructive things to do about a problem first
big problems start to look a lot smaller, or even un-noticable
drama? what drama? The interesting parts of your life are the positive things, rather than the negative ones.
You don't take adversity personally
People stop coming to you with their complaints, and start coming to you with good news instead.
Stop Worrying- Worry occurs in your imagination, not in reality. Worry is the process by which you torture yourself with past could've-beens and future what-ifs- both of which are, by virtue of their imaginary status, impossible to address in the present. They are separate from reality, and separate in time, from anything you can control- all you can control is yourself, in the present. If, with your present self, you choose to worry, all you accomplish is to take yourself out of reality for the duration of your trip.
If your worry is about something that may happen in the future, ask yourself two questions- 1) is there anything I can do about it now? If so, get to it, and 2) isn't this a problem I'll be able to deal with when it comes up?
If your worry is about something that could've happened in the past, ask yourself whether it's relevant in any way to the present or future, and how can you apply questions one and two above to it? ...at that point, you can drop the subject, resolved, until the next time you need to deal with whatever it was that bothered you enough to worry.
Worry is a function of fear, and fear is your subconscious's way of telling you that it is uncomfortable with something- and your subconscious will make you miserable until the problem goes away... but the problem is that worrying doesn't solve anything. The quickest way (indeed, the only way) to resolve something that bothers you is to act in the present, in reality, outside the context of your fear. Inside it's context... you could wrestle with it forever, and it will only make you unhappy and powerless.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -Albert Einstein
Worry traps you in the context of your fear- in your imagination, out of reality, without a means of actually solving the problem that's got you all worked up. Worry is the stick your subconscious uses to jerk you around, to tell you there's something wrong- it is NOT THE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM.
I've been told earnestly by a friend that if he didn't worry about the future, the future would be a disaster. A friend of mine told him that worrying doesn't actually *do* anything- it just makes you unhappy now. Upset, he insisted that if he didn't worry, how could he know that he'd behave appropriately in the future? My friend suggested that the only time he'd be able to do anything about it would be when the future arrived... but that when it did arrive he might miss it because he'd still be worrying about an even more distant future instead of behaving well in the present. Sure enough, he got mad at my friend and didn't understand the lesson.
I walked away from that conversation with an interesting thought- I don't know that I'll behave appropriately in the future- that is the meaning of freedom. When the time comes, I'll probably do the right thing- out of choice, not because I've tortured or brainwashed myself into it.
How to recognize you're getting good at not worrying:
You solve problems as they come up
You procrastinate a lot less than you used to
You're happier and more free
Get over being selfish- It's a basic truth that you have needs, and a simple way of defining needs is 'what you require in order to fulfill your purpose'. If you're a carpenter, you need your tools or else you can't do carpentry, and it's impossible for you to do the good things you do that make life better for other people. You have many purposes, and therefore many needs- you are someone's child, someone's friend, someone's parent perhaps- all of these roles confer responsibilities upon you, and fulfilling these responsibilities is arguably part of your purpose in life. If you fail to get your own needs met, you cannot effectively serve those purposes. Getting your needs met is an absolutely moral endeavor, because it establishes your own ability to contribute to the lives of others.
Being selfish doesn't mean taking more than your share- that's what the complainers would have you think- they want you to feel bad about not meeting their needs before yours. Being selfish is not the opposite of being generous, it is the pre-requisite of being generous. What being selfish does is allow you to fulfill your potential- it allows you to discover, and to express the values that define your purpose in life. It allows you to filter out demands of you that are unreasonable, it allows you to attract positivity and position yourself in a way that everything you do makes you happy, including giving.
If you're positioned in your life to get happiness out of everything you do (I get a lot of satisfaction out of giving gifts, it makes me happy, it's a selfish act) then you become motivated to do more- and in doing more, more people benefit from you, it's as simple as that. At the same time, you free yourself to reap the benefits of everything you do- and you realize your ability to fulfill your purpose in life.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do[...] it's in everyone. As we let our own light shine we give others permission to do the same; as we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." -Marianne Williamson
Your first responsibility, before all others, is to meet your own needs. Until then, you're not only cheating yourself, you're cheating everyone around you of the benefits that you could have offered to the world, had you realized your potential. If your needs are not met, you cannot be happy, free, ethical, moral... because these are the values that express who you are after they are met. If you don't have what you need in order to be you, you can't do that. For this reason, it is profoundly immoral to neglect your potential, just as it is to ask another to do so.
If you are unprepared to serve yourself, you cannot serve others. Make yourself happy, and you will attract people who are, or want to be, happy. Accept that you cannot make anyone else truly happy- only they can do that, by following the same selfishness principle. Create within yourself what you want to attract from without- it works in no other way, and it starts with being selfish.
How to know you're getting better at being selfish:
Your 'wants' are few.
Your friends are happier
You attract more people to you
More and more of what you do makes you happy
- To be Continued -
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