on my mind...

i was book hoppin' yesterday, and found one of m.scott peck's other
road less traveled books. he did a few after that one and i've got them
on my shelf.

after hitting one of his thoughts yesterday, i'm really wondering how
much of healing is truly  muscle building.

i've been noticing that with my own stuff.
sometimes i swear i feel like i'm lifting weights.
and i can see that the more i do it, the better i get.

he was talking about suffering.
he's quite willing to talk about pain and how it's part of life.
but he goes on to say he's not a masochist and he sees no virtue
in 'unconstructive suffering.'

if he has a headache, he'll go and get an aspirin.
he compares unconstructive suffering to that. if you've got it,
you should get rid of it, like you do a headache.

i think i like the 'unconstructive' term better than the one he changes
that to....'neurotic'....but he liked neurotic better, so he changes it to
neurotic suffering. and the 'constructive' suffering, he calls existential
suffering. (which is a whole different blog...)

so...he lays out a 'very simple albeit brutal rule for dealing with the
emotional pain and suffering of life.' in a simple three step process.

and now i'm laughing.
okay, give me a brutal three step rule. let's see what we can do....

first, you decide if your suffering (and he clarifies this with saying
''anxiety or guilt") if it's neurotic or not.

sigh.

okay. that's probably the brutal part.

but he says 90% of the time you can figure it out.
then if you figure it's neurotic (unconstructive) then you ask yourself
how would you behave if you didn't have this anxiety or guilt?
and then you fake it til you make it and act that way.

gulp.

he used his shyness as an example.
finally coming to the point where he asked himself if the shyness was
holding him back - was it enhancing his existence or limiting it?'

and then he faked it til he maked  it.  :)

i've been thinking about that ever since i read it.

when you sit and really think about it, doesn't it sound like muscle building?

sounds hard to me too.
but um.......sound pretty darn interesting too.
it's been on my mind since i read it.
wanted to share......