   Dr. Phil's 10 Life Laws
Life Law #1:
You either get it or you don't.
Strategy: Become one of those who gets it.
It's easy to tell these people apart. Those who "get it" understand how things work & have a strategy to create the results they want. Those who don't are stumbling along looking puzzled
& can be found complaining that they never seem to get a break.
You must do what it takes to accumulate enough knowledge to "get it." You need to operate with the information & skills that are necessary to win. Be prepared, tune in, find out how the game is played
& play by the rules.
In designing a strategy & getting the information you
need - about yourself, people you encounter, or situations - be careful from whom you accept input. Wrong thinking & misinformation can seal your fate before you even begin.
Life Law #2:
You create your own experience.
Strategy: Acknowledge & accept accountability for your life. Understand your role in creating results.
You can't dodge responsibility for how & why your life is the way it is. If you don't like your job, you're accountable. If you're overweight, you are accountable. If you aren't happy, you're accountable. You are creating the situations you are in & the emotions that flow from those situations.
Don't play the role of victim, or use past events to build excuses. It guarantees you no progress, no healing & no
victory. You'll never fix a problem by blaming someone else. Whether the cards you've been dealt are good or bad, you're in charge of yourself now.
Every choice you make - including the thoughts you think - has consequences. When you choose the behavior or thought, you choose the consequences. If you choose to stay with a destructive partner, then you choose the consequences of pain
& suffering.
If you choose
thoughts contaminated with anger & bitterness, then you'll create an experience of alienation & hostility. When you start choosing the right behavior & thoughts - which will take a lot of discipline - you'll get the right consequences.
Life Law #3:
People do what works.
Strategy: Identify the payoffs that drive your behavior & that
of others.
Even the most destructive behaviors have a payoff. If you didn't perceive
the behavior in question to generate some value to you, you wouldn't do it. If you want to stop behaving in a certain way, you've got to stop "paying yourself off" for doing
it.
Find & control the payoffs, because you can't stop a behavior until you recognize what you're gaining from it. Payoffs can be as simple as money gained by going to work to psychological payoffs of acceptance, approval, praise, love or companionship.
It's possible that
you're feeding off unhealthy, addictive & imprisoning payoffs, such as self-punishment or distorted self-importance.
Be alert to the possibility that your behavior is
controlled by fear of rejection. It's easier not to change. Try something new or put yourself on the line. Also consider if your need for immediate gratification creates an appetite for a small payoff now rather than a large payoff later.
Life Law #4:
You can't change what you don't acknowledge.
Strategy: Get real with yourself about life & everybody in it. Be truthful about what isn't working in your life. Stop making excuses & start making results.
If you're unwilling or unable to identify & consciously acknowledge your negative behaviors, characteristics or life patterns, then you will not change them. (In fact, they'll only grow worse & become more entrenched in your life.)
You've got to face it to replace it.
Acknowledgement means slapping yourself in the face with the brutal reality, admitting that you're getting
payoffs for what you're doing & giving yourself a no-kidding, bottom-line truthful confrontation. You can't afford the luxury of lies, denial or defensiveness.
Where are you now? If you hope to have a winning life strategy, you have to be honest about where your life is right now. Your life isn't too bad to fix & it's not too late to fix it. But be honest about what needs fixing. If you lie to yourself about any dimension of your life, an otherwise sound strategy will be compromised.
Life Law #5:
Life rewards action.
Strategy: Make careful decisions & then pull the trigger. Learn that the world couldn't care less about thoughts without actions.
Talk is cheap. It's what you do that determines the script of your
life. Translate your insights, understandings & awareness into purposeful, meaningful, constructive actions. They're of no value until then.
Measure yourself
& others based on results - not intentions or words.
Use any pain you have to propel you out of the situation you're in &
to get you where you want to be. The same pain that burdens you now could be turned to your advantage. It may be the very
motivation you need to change your life.
Decide that you're worth the risk of taking action & that your dreams aren't to be sold out. Know that putting yourself at risk may be scary, but it'll be worth it. You must leave behind the comfortable & familiar if you're to move onward & upward.
Life Law #6: There is no reality,
only perception.
Strategy: Identify the filters through which you view the world. Acknowledge your history without being controlled by it.
You know & experience this world only through the perceptions that you
create. You have the ability to choose how you perceive any event in your life & you exercise this power of choice in every circumstance, every day of your life. No matter what the situation, you choose your reaction, assigning meaning & value to an event.
We all view the world through individual filters, which influence
the interpretations we give events, how we respond & how we are responded to. Be aware of the factors that influence the way you see the world, so you can compensate for them & react against them. If you
continue to view the world through a filter created by past events, then you are allowing your past to
control & dictate both your present & your future.
Filters are made up of fixed beliefs, negative ideas that have become entrenched in your thinking. They're dangerous because if you treat them as fact, you'll not seek, receive or process new information, which undermines
your plans for change. If you "shake up" your belief system by challenging these views & testing their validity, the freshness of your perspective can be startling.
Life Law #7:
Life is managed; it isn't cured.
Strategy: Learn to take charge of your life & hold
on. This is a long ride & you're the driver every single day.
You are a life
manager & your objective is to actively manage your life in a way that generates high-quality results. You are your own
most important resource for making your life work. Success is a moving target that must be tracked & continually pursued.
Effective life
management means you need to require more of yourself in your grooming, self-control, emotional management, interaction with others, work performance, dealing with fear & in every other category you can think of. You must approach this task with the most intense commitment, direction & urgency you can muster.
The key to managing your life is to have
a strategy. If you have a clear-cut plan & the courage, commitment & energy to execute that strategy, you can flourish. If you don't have a plan, you'll be a stepping stone for those who do. You can also help yourself as a life manager if you manage your expectations. If you don't require much of yourself, your life will be of poor quality. If you have unrealistic standards, then you're adding to your difficulties.
Life Law #8: We teach people how to
treat us.
Strategy: Own, rather than complain about, how people treat you. Learn to renegotiate
your relationships to have what you want.
You either teach people to treat you with
dignity & respect, or you don't. This means you're partly responsible for the mistreatment that you get at the hands of someone else. You shape others' behavior when you teach them what they
can get away with & what they can't.
If the people in your life treat you in
an undesirable way, figure out what you're doing to reinforce, elicit or allow that treatment. Identify the payoffs you may be giving someone
in response to any negative behavior. I.e., when people are aggressive, bossy or controlling - & then get their way - you've rewarded them for unacceptable behavior.
Because you're accountable, you can declare the relationship "reopened for negotiation" at any time you choose & for as long as you choose. Even
a pattern of relating that is 30 years old can be redefined. Before you reopen the negotiation, you must commit to do so from a position of strength & power, not fear & self-doubt.
Life
Law #9: There is power in forgiveness.
Strategy: Open your eyes to what anger & resentment are doing to you. Take your power back from those who have hurt you.
Hate, anger & resentment are destructive, eating away at the heart & soul of the person who carries them. They're absolutely incompatible with your own peace, joy & relaxation. Ugly emotions change who you are & contaminate every relationship you have, They can also take a physical toll on your body, including sleep disturbance, headaches, back spasms & even heart attacks.
Forgiveness sets you free from the bonds of hatred, anger & resentment. The only way to rise above the negatives of a relationship in which you were hurt is to take the moral high ground & forgive the person who hurt you.
Forgiveness isn't about another person who has transgressed against you; it's about you. Forgiveness is about doing whatever it takes to preserve the power to create your own emotional state. It's a gift to yourself & it frees you. You don't have to have the other person's cooperation & they don't have to be sorry or admit the error of their ways.
Do it for yourself.
Life Law #10: You have to name it before
you can claim it.
Strategy: Get clear about what you want & take your turn.
Not knowing what you want - from your major life goals to your day-to-day desires - isn't OK. The most you'll ever get is what you ask for. If you don't even know what it is that you want, then
you can't even ask for it. You also won't even know if you get there!
By being specific
in defining your goal, the choices you make along the way will be more goal-directed. You'll recognize which behaviors & choices support your goals - & which don't. You'll know when you're heading toward your goal & when you're off track.
Be bold enough to reach for what will
truly fill you up, without being unrealistic. Once you have the strength & resolve enough to believe that you deserve what it is that you want, then & only then will you be bold enough to step up & claim
it. Remember that if you don't, someone else will.
source: Dr. Phil's Website
Stress Management Techniques
This section
of Mind Tools helps you survive under the intense stress that can come with a challenging career.
The first
articles help you to understand stress & what causes it: This is an important starting point for effective stress management. They introduce you to the 3 main approaches to stress management & then shows you how you can identify the key sources
of stress in your life.
We then look at range of stress management techniques. Unlike other approaches to stress management, the Mind Tools approach is, where possible, to tackle stress at source. This means that not only do we show you how to deal with the symptoms of stress, we show you how to deal with the underlying causes as well.
By the end of the section,
you should have a clearer understanding of stress & the importance of managing it. You should be able to analyze the points of pressure in your life, so that you
can plan to neutralize them. You'll also have access to a range of different stress management techniques.
Also remember, as you work through, that
if you have have particular issues in bringing balance to your life, this is where our coaches can help.
Yikes! Help !!! I'm so stressed!!!!
Stress Management Techniques
A lot of research
has been conducted into stress over the last 100 years. Some of the theories behind it are now settled & accepted; others are still being researched & debated. During this time, there seems to have been something approaching open warfare
between competing theories & definitions:
Views have been
passionately held & aggressively defended.
What
complicates this is that intuitively we all feel that we know what stress is, as it's something we've all experienced. A definition should therefore be obvious…except that it isn't.
Hans
Selye was one of the founding fathers of stress research. His view in 1956 was that “stress isn't necessarily something bad - it all depends on how you take it. The stress of exhilarating, creative successful work is beneficial, while that of failure, humiliation or infection is detrimental.” Selye believed that the biochemical effects of stress would be experienced irrespective of whether the situation was positive or negative.
Since
then, a great deal of further research has been conducted & ideas have moved on. Stress is now viewed as a "bad thing", with a range of harmful biochemical & long-term effects. These effects have rarely been
observed in positive situations.
The
most commonly accepted definition of stress (mainly attributed to Richard S Lazarus) is that stress is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that “demands exceed the personal & social resources
the individual is able to mobilize.”
This
is the main definition used by this section of Mind Tools, although we also recognize that there's an intertwined instinctive stress response to unexpected events. The stress response inside us is therefore part instinct & part to do with the way we think.
Fight-or-Flight
Some of the early research on stress (conducted by Walter Cannon in 1932) established the existence of the well-known “fight-or-flight”
response. His work showed that when an organism experiences a shock or perceives a threat, it quickly releases hormones that help it to survive.
In
humans, as in other animals, these hormones help us to run faster & fight harder. They increase heart rate & blood
pressure, delivering more oxygen & blood sugar to power important muscles. They increase sweating in an effort to cool
these muscles & help them stay efficient.
They
divert blood away from the skin to the core of our bodies, reducing blood loss if we're damaged. As well as this, these hormones
focus our attention on the threat, to the exclusion of everything else. All of this significantly improves our ability to survive life-threatening events.
Not only life-threatening events trigger this reaction: We experience it almost any time we come
across something unexpected or something that frustrates our goals. When the threat is small, our response is small & we often don't notice it among the many other distractions of a stressful situation.
Unfortunately,
this mobilization of the body for survival also has negative consequences. In this state, we're excitable, anxious, jumpy & irritable.
This
actually reduces our ability to work effectively with other people. With trembling & a pounding heart, we can find it
difficult to execute precise, controlled skills.
The
intensity of our focus on survival interferes with our ability to make fine judgments by drawing information from many sources. We find ourselves more accident-prone & less able to make good decisions.
There
are very few situations in modern working life where this response is useful. Most situations benefit from a calm, rational, controlled & socially sensitive approach.
In
the short term, we need to keep this fight-or-flight response under control to be effective in our jobs. In the long term we need to keep it under control to avoid problems of poor health & burnout.
Introducing Stress Management
There are very many proven skills that we can use to manage
stress. These help us to remain calm & effective in high pressure situations & help us avoid the problems of long term stress.
These skills fall into 3 main groups:
-
Action-oriented
skills: In which we seek to confront the problem causing the stress, often changing the environment or the situation
-
Emotionally-oriented
skills: In which we don't have the power to change the situation, but we can manage stress by changing our interpretation of the situation & the way we feel about it
-
Acceptance-oriented skills: Where something has happened over which we have no power & no emotional control & where our focus must be on surviving the stress
Warning: Stress can cause severe health problems & in extreme cases, can cause death. While these stress management techniques have been shown to have a positive effect on reducing stress, they're for guidance only & readers should take the advice of suitably qualified health professionals if they have any
concerns over stress-related illnesses or if stress is causing significant or persistent unhappiness.
Health professionals should also be consulted before any major change in diet or levels of exercise.
has the thought of someone judging you in some way kept you from acting, planning or goal setting in your past? let's look more about why fear of judgments bothers some people.... & don't forget to click on the words
judge, judged, judges, judgment, judging, etc. to go over to feeling emotional, 3 to read more about judgments!
Yikes! Someone may be thinking bad things about me?
(1) judge situations/others as right or wrong
(2) judge situations/others as good or bad
(3) judge situations as possible or impossible
"There is nothing
good or bad but thinking makes it so."
It's a natural thinking stage for children to pass thru & for adults to question. Most of us incorporated many such messages in our childhoods. We
fail to see their tyrannical nature if we retain them as adults. For right / wrong & good / bad judgments about situations & others cause most of us much unhappiness every day.
Another reason for our judgments is our poor self-esteem. Most of us have areas of our lives (our thinking, our emotions, our relationships, our sexuality, our addictions, our hangups, etc.) which we judge as not being OK, areas in which we have poor self-esteem. We then often try to make ourselves feel better at another's expense by judging them inferior in some way, "Look at how good I am in comparison."
The macho judgment that women are inferior has its roots in poor male self-esteem; vulnerabilty, humaneness & caring are covered w/a facade of strength. Current male-bashing also has similar roots in poor female self-esteem.
I personally strive never to feel or think that another's behavior or action is ever
wrong or bad. I can always find some reasoning process to validate & accept what at first glance may seem very wrong or bad.
Usually I do this by reaffirming my belief that each of us is perfect or by reaffirming my belief in Earth School that requires us to learn in ways that we might not consciously want.
I can always find a possible reason why such situations are as they should be, instead
of judging them to be wrong or bad. By reaffirming my belief that whatever is in our lives is in our best interest , I'm able to drop the "shoulds."
You too have the capability for dropping your shoulds by truly accepting the following happier ways of thinking:
(1) we are always perfect
(2) we all are students here on Earth School
(3) everything in our lives is in our own best interest.
Where the word should is used, there's an unhappy judgment.
Make sure not to judge yourself as bad or wrong when you find yourself making a judgment. For you & your judgments are, of course, perfect for that moment.
The key is to begin changing your path toward the goal of dropping that judgment the next time that identical situation arises. Move to making a new choice, rather than remain stuck in blaming of oneself.
Some judgments are still sometimes necessary as to right / wrong or good / bad for me. They're useful (not tyrannical)
in selecting appropriate action. i.e., I won't do that now because I learned in the past that it felt wrong or because that
possibility feels wrong for me at the moment.
Such judgments don't apply to others. Just because I found something didn't work for me today or yesterday doesn't mean that it won't be
exactly what you need to do (or, for that matter, what may wind up being appropriate for me in the future).
There are usually objections to this
along the lines of, "If I dropped my judgments, then I wouldn't act appropriately to right the wrong." Not at all. If you put your hand on a hot stove you'll take action
in response to the pain.
Later you can try to find out why
you've repeated that behavior 4 times in the past week & why someone or something keeps making burns "right" for you.
You respond to pain & discomfort perfectly, of course, for you now.
Similarly, you don't need judgments to take appropriate action in response to situations that aren't as you would like.
& how about that ugly habit of procrastination? let's conquer that right
here!
Time Management
Beat work overload. Increase your effectiveness. Achieve more.
This
section of Mind Tools shows you how to use personal time management skills. These
are some of the most important career skills that you can learn.
Time
Management Skills are essential for successful people - these are the practical techniques which have helped the leading people in business, sport & public service
reach the pinnacles of their careers.
The skills
we explain help you become highly effective by showing you how to identify &
focus on the activities that give you the greatest returns.
Investing
in these time management activities will actually save you time, helping you work smarter, not harder.
Beating Procrastination
Manage your time. Get it all done.
If you’ve found yourself putting off important tasks over & over again, you’re not alone. In fact, most people procrastinate to some degree - but some are so chronically affected
by procrastination that it disrupts their careers & thwarts even their best efforts.
The key to controlling & ultimately combating this destructive habit is to understand how & why it happens (even to the best of us) & to take a few simple steps to better
manage your time & outcomes.
Overcoming procrastination:
In a nutshell, you procrastinate
when you put off things that you should be focusing on right now, usually in favor of doing
something that's more enjoyable or that you’re more comfortable doing.
Sometimes this happens when someone doesn't understand the difference between urgency & importance. The prevailing belief here:
We all have the same amount of time in every
day & procrastinators spend this time fully, but don't invest it wisely.
Instead, procrastinators focus
so much on urgent issues that they have little or no time left for the important tasks, despite the unpleasant outcomes this may bring about.
Other causes of procrastination
can be as simple as:
How to combat procrastination:
Whatever the reason behind procrastination,
it must be recognized, dealt with & controlled before you miss opportunities or your career is derailed.
Part of the solution is to develop good organizational & personal
effectiveness habits, such as those described in Mind Tools “Make Time for Success!”
This helps you establish the right priorities
& manage your time in such a way that you make the most of the opportunities open to you.
The other part of the solution can be as simple as applying this
rule of thumb:
If you're not working (directly
of indirectly) to progress your top priority projects, you’re probably procrastinating.
And, when you're doing something important, such as working on your top-priority project or task & something urgent comes up,
recognize that this will take time away from this important work.
To do this, it's imperative to understand the difference between urgency & importance.
On one hand, let’s say that your boss comes to your office
& says he or she has called a meeting & wants you to join other team members in the conference room now. This is clearly
urgent.
Or, your sales manager calls in from the field & explains that
your biggest customer just received the wrong shipment & is in dire need of the correct shipment. This will require tracking down the original shipment, working thru the placed orders, even the salesman’s
paperwork, etc. Again, this is urgent.
However, while immediate action is needed here, these things only tangentially affect the truly important things in your life.
Important things are likely to be the actions that serve to broaden you, build your career, or achieve something
of real human significance to you.
These important actions are often easy to pinpoint, for they're the ones that help you achieve your goals (another of the major topics within “Make Time for Success”.)
This isn't to say that you don't have to take care of the urgent things. Instead, you'll need to take care of these things as efficiently as possible, while also staying on top of the important demands / going-ons of the day.
You’ll need to minimize the time spent on these urgent tasks, while still ensuring that they're
successfully & efficiently resolved.
With proper planning & some
self-discipline, many urgent matters disappear altogether or, when they do surface, your planning
& discipline makes them less urgent & easier to deal with. This means that
you waste less of the valuable time that should be spent on the important things.
And, keep in mind that you probably don't have to handle every urgent matter yourself. Delegate as far as possible, so that you don't get caught up in remedying
every urgent situation. To spend life "firefighting" is a misuse of your “important” time.
Activity Logs
Finding Out How You Really Spend Your Time
How to Use Tool:
Activity logs
help you to analyze how you actually spend your time. The first time you use an activity log you may be shocked to see the
amount of time that you waste!
Memory is a
very poor guide when it comes to this, as it can be too easy to forget time spent reading junk mail, talking to colleagues,
making coffee, eating lunch, etc.
You may also
be unaware that your energy levels may vary thru the day. In fact, most people function at different levels of effectiveness
at different times.
Your effectiveness may vary depending on:
There is also some good evidence that you have daily rhythms of alertness & energy.
Keeping an Activity Log
Keeping an Activity
Log for several days helps you to understand how you spend your time & when you perform at your best. Without modifying your behavior any further than you have to,
note down the things you do as you do them on this template.
Every time
you change activities, whether opening mail, working, making coffee, gossiping with colleagues or whatever, note down the time of the
change.
As well as recording activities,
note how you feel, whether alert, flat, tired, energetic, etc. Do this periodically throughout the day. You may decide to
integrate your activity log with a stress diary.
Learning from Your Log
Once you've
logged your time for a few days, analyze the log. You may be alarmed to see the length of time you spend doing low value jobs!
You may also
see that you are energetic in some parts of the day, & flat in other parts. A lot of this can depend on the rest breaks
you take, the times & amounts you eat & quality of your nutrition. The activity log gives you some basis for experimenting
with these variables.
Key points:
Activity logs
are useful tools for auditing the way that you use your time. They can also help you to track changes in your energy, alertness & effectiveness throughout the day.
By analyzing
your activity log you will be able to identify & eliminate time-wasting or low-yield jobs. You will also know the times
of day at which you're most effective, so that you can carry out your most important tasks during these times.
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Stress Diary
Identifying sources of short-term stress
Introduction:
Stress Diaries are important for understanding the causes of short-term stress in your life. They also give you an important insight into how you react to stress & help you to identify the level of stress at which you prefer to operate.
The idea behind
Stress Diaries is that, on a regular basis, you record information about
the stresses you're experiencing, so that you can analyze these stresses & then manage them.
This is important because often these stresses flit in & out of our minds without getting the attention & focus that they deserve.
As well as helping you capture & analyze the most common sources of
stress in your life, Stress Diaries help you to understand:
- The causes of stress in more detail;
- The levels of stress at which you operate most efficiently
- How you react to stress & whether your reactions are appropriate & useful.
Stress Diaries, therefore, give you the important information that you need to manage stress.
Using the Tool:
Stress Diaries are useful in that they gather information regularly &
routinely, over a period of time. This helps you to separate the common, routine stresses from those that only occur occasionally. They establish a pattern that you can analyze to extract the
information that you need.
Download our free Stress Diary template & make regular entries in your Stress Diary (i.e., every hour). If you
have any difficulty remembering to do this, set an alarm to remind you to make your next diary entry.
Also make an entry in your diary after each incident that is stressful enough for you to feel that it's significant.
Every time you make
an entry, record the following information:
- The date & time of the entry.
- The most recent stressful event you've experienced.
- How happy you feel now, using a subjective assessment on a scale of -10 (the most unhappy you've ever been) to +10 (the happiest you've been). As well as this, write down the mood you're feeling.
- How efficiently you're working now (a subjective assessment, on a scale of 0 to 10). A 0 here would show complete inefficiency, while a 10 would
show the greatest efficiency you've ever achieved.
- The fundamental cause of the stress (being as honest & objective as possible).
You may also want to note:
- How stressed you feel now, again on a subjective scale of 0 to 10. As before, 0 here would be the most relaxed you've ever been, while 10 would show the greatest stress you've ever experienced.
- The symptom you felt (e.g.
“butterflies in your stomach”, anger, headache, raised pulse rate, sweaty palms, etc.).
- How well you handled the event: Did your reaction
help solve the problem, or did it inflame it?
You'll reap
the real benefits of having a stress diary in the first few weeks. After this, the benefit you get will reduce each additional
day. If, however, your lifestyle changes, or you begin to suffer from stress again in the future, then it may be worth using the diary approach again. You'll probably find that the stresses you face have changed. If this is the case, then keeping a diary again will help you to develop a different approach to deal with them.
Analyze the diary at the end of this period.
Analyzing the Diary
Analyze the diary in the following ways:
- 1st, look
at the different stresses you experienced during the time you kept your diary. List the types of stress that you experienced by frequency, with the most frequent stresses at the top of the list.
Next, prepare
a 2nd list with the most unpleasant stresses at the top of the list & the least unpleasant at the bottom.
Looking at
your lists of stresses, those at the top of each list are the most important for you to learn to control.
Working thru
the stresses, look at your assessments of their underlying causes & your appraisal of how well you handled the stressful event. Do these show you areas where you handled stress poorly & could improve your stress management skills? If so, list these.
- Next, look
thru your diary at the situations that cause you stress. List these.
- Finally, look
at how you felt when you were under stress. Look at how it affected your happiness & your efficiency, understand how you behaved & think about how you felt.
Having analyzed your
diary, you should fully understand what the most important & frequent sources of stress are in your life. You should appreciate the levels of stress at which you're happiest. You should also know the sort of situations that cause you stress so that you can prepare for them & manage them well.
As well as this,
you should now understand how you react to stress & the symptoms that you show when you're stressed. When you experience these symptoms in the future, this should be a trigger for you to use appropriate stress management techniques.
Summary
Stress Diaries help you to get a good understanding of the routine, short-term stresses that you experience in your life. They help you to identify the most important & most frequent, stresses that you experience, so that you can concentrate your efforts on these.
They
also help you to identify areas where you need to improve your stress management skills & help you to understand the levels of stress at which you're happiest & most efficient.
To keep a stress diary, make a regular diary entry with the headings above. i.e., you may do this every hour. Also
make entries after stressful events.
Analyze the
diary to identify the most frequent & most serious stresses that you experience. Use it also to identify areas where you can improve your management of stress.
does your false belief system concerning
gender capabilities keep you from setting yourself into motion & setting yourself up for success in whatever you want
to do? read on... let's work on those false notions immediately!
Men & Women Will Never Be The Same Sexually
In recent years it's become
popular to believe that if only those of the opposite sex would get rid of their hangups, they'd act sexually
like me. Wrong.
While men & women are
often the same, obviously it's in the sexual area of existence that we are often most different from each other.
(1) Different hormones coursing
thru our veins usually make men more interested in sex all the time & women potentially more emotionally volatile during
PMS time.
(2) The tendency for women
& men to favor different sides of the brain causes (on the average) more female talking
interest & more male sexual interest.
(3) Our bodies are different
& do respond somewhat differently during sex.
It's our choice, to celebrate
our sexual differences or to remain unhappy complainers about the opposite sex.
Human Sexuality
SEX (as defined & described by a man): fun, raucous, wild, lusty, playful, ecstatic, hot, sweaty, spontaneous,
exquisite.
SEX (as
defined & described by a woman): serious business.
Which of the above definitions
of sex / sexuality most fit you? While those 2 definitions are, of course, gross exaggerations, they contain significant truth, even today.
Women have received more negative training & sexual education about their human sexuality than men. To have a primary belief that one's human sexuality is serious first & pleasurable a distant second causes the loss of much pleasure in many sexual
processes.
That sexuality belief also leads to much putting down of men for their "frivolous" sex behavior, not just because of serious consequences that
men might be overlooking but because "human sex should be serious & you men don't treat it seriously enough." In other
words, to be lusty, wild or playful isn't OK human sexuality.
The human sexuality sphere
is one in which many men & women tend to judge the opposite sex as not being OK. Most making such sex judgments would feel better & be happier if they adopted some of the opposite sex's ideas about sex via their own personal sex education.
The current emphasis on wild
women seems exactly right to me. It reflects the increasing human awareness among women that they can change themselves. Let's celebrate the growing number of women who've found that it's better to empower themselves by eliminating
their own unhappiness than to remain unhappily dependent upon the adage "men should change."
It's popular with some women
to bash male sexuality, but such bashing often seems an attempt to obscure women's difficulties with the topic. Those women
who bash men's sexuality often deny they have difficulties with their own wild sexual enjoyment.
Human compassion (for men & women) would be a happier state for such women & also more effective in eliciting changes in men. Let's celebrate some of the newer feminists who are expressing more human compassion.
The failure of men to be serious about the consequences of their sexual behavior has been very harmful to our human society. Men have
abandoned millions of children & have helped cause the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
Those acting so irresponsibly are probably not reading this book. But I hope that their partners (who may be reading it) can start demanding both serious & wild
behavior from such men. For partners sometimes can be the catalysts for human change, sex education advocates.
Suggestion: In your own life
try to make sex both lusty & serious.
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