Self Defeating Desires
If something isn’t working, do you stick with it? Let’s say your computer is constantly giving you trouble, turning off for no reason, deleting files, and full of spyware. Are you just going to live with it, or are you going to get it fixed?
Most of us would get it fixed.
Now, our lives have things like frustration, anger, stress, and general unhappiness. Why don’t we see that as a ‘broken life’? We don’t because we’ve been convinced into thinking that this sort of life is normal. But it’s not. Life can actually be exciting, joyful, and completely stress-free – regardless of our circumstances. And the funny thing is that our circumstances will actually tend to improve only after we’ve changed our thoughts and feelings about life.
If we pay attention to how the world really works, we’ll soon notice that our mental activity – our thoughts and feelings – are the single most powerful factor in deciding if life is good or bad. In fact, if we experience enough of life’s extremes, (or talk to people who have experienced extremely tragic circumstances) we’ll discover that some people give in to despair when everything goes wrong, while other people find an inner strength and manage to turn the ‘negative’ experience into a positive experience. During my summer in the woods, I was able to experience months of gnawing hunger, the incessant buzz and bite of mosquitoes night after night (I had no tent to keep them away), extremes of heat and cold, and sickness and infection without any recourse to medical treatment. And yet, after a brief period of wishing I could just escape and get out of these rather unpleasant experiences, I came to find that I felt more alive than I ever had, and soon found myself relishing every moment of mosquito-swatting, dirty, belly-grumbling, shivering bliss.
Our experience of life as good or bad depends on our thoughts and feelings. NOT on our circumstances. Yet most of us go our entire lives only paying attention to bettering our circumstances. Our serious goals are things like climbing the pay ladder at work, finding a pleasant mate, and trying to make wise investments. Engaging in the ‘fluffy’ work of changing our attitudes takes second priority at best. We fail to see that attitude ‘work’ is much more important – and will bring us much more happiness – than any other investment we can make.
If you really want to fix your life, you first have to understand what’s wrong with it. Although the examples below are general, they illustrate the basic workings of our current mental attitudes.
The fact is, our mental attitudes (thoughts and feelings) are set up for self-defeat. They don’t allow us to have the things we desire. They’re actually preventing us from getting the things we say we want!
In other words, your desires for security, money, love, and peace are actually the very things which prevent them from manifesting in your life! To understand how, let’s take a look at the basic desires most people have. Note that each desire is opposed to other desires. In other words, having one makes you dissatisfied in other categories.
Money – We can’t acquire lots of money because we’re afraid to take the risks (Security) to make that happen. We believe that having money will give us Inner Peace, Love, Recognition, and Happiness, but once we acquire our millions, we find that we don’t have Inner Peace because we feel a little guilty for having so much when other people are going hungry. We can’t have Love or Companionship, because we suspect that other people are just hanging around us because we’re so rich. We may have Recognition, but it’s a sour recognition, because if we went broke, we know everyone would lose their high opinion of us. And all this doubt and confusion definitely doesn’t bring us Happiness.
Security – Clinging to Security prevents us from gaining Money, Love, and Happiness, as we’re afraid to take the ‘risks’ necessary to bring those things into our lives. We don’t have Inner Peace because we’re always worried about whether we’re secure enough or not. And no Recognition, because no one respects a worry-wart.
Inner Peace – Most of us have a concept of Inner Peace that is a little mixed up. We believe that devoting ourselves to Inner Peace means that we can’t be a millionaire or have our desires. Our usual idea of Inner Peace involves an ascetic-type lifestyle, where we miss out on most of the fun in life (Happiness). This simply isn’t true.
Love and Companionship – As already noted, Love is directly opposed to Money, unless we can make our friends and meet our mate well before we acquire our large bank accounts. Love also robs us of Time, since after the initial honeymoon stages of a relationship, we find ourselves altering our plans in order to create time to give attention to our mate. Besides, most of us won’t find true love anyway since we’re so addicted to Security, and we tend to choose our mates based on how secure they make us feel rather than how challenging or exciting they are to us.
Recognition – This is opposed to Money, as stated above. It’s also opposed to Love and Companionship, because if we’re famous, we’re convinced that people only like us for our fame. Any amount of fame also destroys most of our free Time, robs us of Inner Peace, and makes it rather difficult to be truly Happy.
Time – If we take too much free time, we won’t be able to earn Money, we’ll have no Recognition because everyone will think we’re lazy, and our mate will get mad at us because we’re not productive (Love) . Our other desires all tend to rob us of Time.
Happiness – All these conflicting desires have one basic affect. They destroy any chance we have at true happiness.
Remember, these examples are only generalizations. Take a moment to think about or write down your own life desires. What do you really want in life? After you have a few things listed, take a good, long look at them. See how each of your personal desires contains preventative measures against your other desires. Then ask yourself why you’re continuing to play this self-defeating game.
Getting out of this cycle is easy. All you have to do is change your mental attitudes and begin your re-education in a new way of living life. It’s not about eradicating desires — it’s about changing the feeling or compulsion behind those desires. Changing the way we desire. The first step? Become happy with where you are.
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