Skip to main content

The ten emotions of Power



"There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion"
- Carl Jung

 I'd like to introduce you to a fellow named Walt. Walt is a good, decent human being who always tries to do the right thing. He has his life down to a science: everything in its proper place and in the correct order. Weekdays he arises at exactly 6:30, showers and shaves, gulps down some coffee, grabs his lunch pail filled with the requisite bologna sandwich and Twinkies, and runs out the door by 7:10 to spend forty-five minutes in traffic. He arrives at his desk by 8:00, where he sits down to do the same job he's been doing for the past twenty years.

 At 5:00 he goes home, pops the top on a "cold one," and grabs the TV remote-control. An hour later his wife comes home and they decide whether to eat leftovers or throw a pizza in the microwave. After dinner he watches the news while his wife bathes their kid and puts him to bed. By no later than 9:30 he's in the sack. He devotes his weekends to yard work, car maintenance, and sleeping in. Walt and his new wife have been married for three years, and while he wouldn't exactly describe their relationship as "inflamed with passion," it's comfortable-even though lately it seems to be repeating a lot of  the same patterns of his first marriage.

 Do you know someone like Walt? Maybe he's someone you know intimately-someone who never suffers the depths of utter devastation or despondency, but also someone who never revels in the heights of passion and joy. I've heard it said that the only difference between a rut and a grave is a few feet, and over a century ago, Thoreau observed that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."......

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"This, too, shall pass,"

Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania did an intensive research on what creates learned helplessness. In his book Learned Optimism he reports on three specific patterns of beliefs that cause us to feel helpless and can destroy virtually every aspect of our lives. He calls these three categories permanence, pervasiveness, and personal. Many of our country's greatest achievers have succeeded in spite of running into huge problems and barriers. The difference between them and those who give up revolves around their beliefs about the permanence, or lack thereof, of their problems.  Achievers rarely, if ever, see a  problem as permanent, while those who fail, see even the smallest problems as permanent. Once you adopt the belief that there's nothing you can do to change something, simply because nothing you've  done up until now has changed it, you start to take a pernicious poison into your system. No matter what happens in your life, you've got ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Problem Solving Questions ...............Continued

Every morning when we wake up, we ask ourselves questions. When the alarm goes off, what question do you ask yourself? Is it, How come I have to get up right now?," "Why aren't there more hours in the day?, "What if I hit the snooze alarm just one more time?" And as you get in the shower, what are you asking yourself? "Why do I have to go to work?," "How bad is the traffic going to be  today?," "What kind of stuff is going to be dumped on my desk today?" What if every day you consciously started asking a pattern of questions that would put you in the right frame of mind and that caused you to remember how grateful, happy, and excited you are? What kind of day do you think you'd have, with those positive emotional states as your filter?  Obviously it would affect how you feel about virtually everything. Realizing this, I decided I needed a "success ritual" and I created a series of questions that I ask myself ever...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Magnificent Obsession - Creating A Compelling Future....

GIANT GOALS PRODUCE GIANT MOTIVATION So often, people ask me, "Where do I get my energy? With all that intensity, no wonder you're so successful. I just don't have your drive; I guess  I'm not motivated. I guess I'm lazy." My usual response is, "You're not lazy! You just have impotent goals!" Frequently I get a confused look to this response, at which point I explain that my level of excitement and drive comes from my goals. Every morning when I wake up, even if I feel physically exhausted from a lack of sleep, I'll still find the drive I need because my goals are so exciting to me. They get me up early, keep me up late, and inspire me to marshal my resources and use everything I can possibly find within the sphere of my influence to bring them to fruition. The same energy and sense of mission is available to you now, but it will never be awakened  by puny goals. The first step is to develop bigger, more inspiring, more challenging ...
Post a Comment
Read more