Lulletje Rozewater
08-06-2009, 08:01 AM
Have you accepted yourself?
Are you satisfied with yourself as you are?
Do you feel there is nothing about you that needs improve*ment?
Or, if you are disturbed about any areas in your life, are you at a loss to know what to do about them?
Whatever your state of mind, like it or not, you have to manage to live with it as best you can.
That is, until and unless it gets so bad that you just can't take it any longer.
"I hate myself," "I don't know why I do what I do."
"I know I am drinking and smoking too much."
"My sex life is all mixed up."
"I can't get along with my wife [or husband] or relatives or friends."
"I'm always making the wrong decisions or saying the wrong thing."
"I don't seem to be able to hold a job."
"I get tired and bored easily."
"I'm overweight. I can't control my eating."
"I'm nervous and high-strung, get depressed, often lose my temper, take out my feelings on my children and loved ones."
"I'm afraid I'm heading for a nervous breakdown or I'm going to blow my mind."
"I'm hearing voices telling me to do crazy things, trying to get me to kill my wife [or husband] and to commit suicide.
Either that, or making obscene remarks and suggestions stimulating me sexually, representing that they are spirits from the other side of life who love me and want to possess me,body and soul."
"I've lost faith in myself and in God. I don't go to church any more, it doesn't have anything for me." "I'm loaded with fears."
"I have no self-confidence anymore."
"I'm deep in debt, and I don't see any way out."
"My wife [or husband] doesn't love me, and I love some*one else."
"I'd like to find someone I could love and who could love me."
"I'm ugly and unattractive, and nobody likes me."
"I was born with a handicapped body," or "I have suffered a crippling injury [or disease], and my life isn't worth liv*ing."
"I'm afraid of what's going to happen to the country and the world."
"It isn't safe anywhere anymore. I don't trust anyone.
It seems like people are always trying to take advantage of me."
"I'd like to get away from it all, but where does a person go?"
"I've been getting readings from fortune-tellers and medi*ums and astrologers, but I'm worse off now than I was before."
"The doctors and psychiatrists can't help me.
I've had shock treatments and the whole bit, including drugs and hypnotism, but I'm still bad off; so what do I do now?"
"What is life all about, anyway, and why did I have to be born?"
Many of these distressed people, from all walks of life and all grades of intelligence are urgently seeking answers to personal problems which have seemed insurmountable.
Have you found yourself in this list; or are you still in a different category?
Perhaps you are a young man about to go into the service, and you are expressing your thoughts and feelings in this fashion:
"What chance do I have to make anything worthwhile out of my life?
I'm soon going to be drafted and sent to fight a war I don't believe in.
I'm against killing, and I know that's what they're going "to teach me to do. They're going to brainwash me, if they can; tell me I've got to kill or be killed,
that it's my patriotic duty. I'm old enough to fight and die but not old enough to vote, to have any say about it...
"I'm in love. Should I marry before I go to the service and make my wife sit it out for God knows how long—perhaps end up a widow or get me back all shot up, an invalid for the rest of my life?
To what do I have to look forward? How do I face this; or should I? I don't think I can take it without cracking up."
If you are a young woman, you may be expressing your thoughts and feelings in this manner:
"What is right and what is wrong?
If I can't marry the man I love before he goes in the service, should I go all the way with him—get as much as we can out of romance while we can?
What are my chances of having a home and chil*dren, anyway?
Or a happy, permanent married life?
"If we marry before he leaves and I have a baby, can I support the child and stick it out till he gets back?
If I take take the pill and we don't have a baby, and I can get work, can I he true to him indefinitely, or he to me?"
These thoughts must occupy the minds and hearts of millions of young people.
They are compelled to make decisions based upon their Individual circumstances and needs, however wise or unwise these decisions ultimately turn out to be.
The long hair, the unwashed bodies, the careless dress or undress, the rock and roll rhythms,
and the rebellions of the defiant protesters, the psychedelic, the sexpots, the love and the hate addicts, are all forms of resistance—violent or
complacent—to established ways of life which many find abhorrent and unacceptable.
If you are numbered among these revolutionists, you have consciously or unconsciously wanted to change the image of things and have begun with yourself.
What has resulted thus far, however, has been mainly confusing and distorting, per*haps as disturbing to you as it has been to your elders.
To what is this all leading? There is definitely and ines*capably a generation gap.
Older people are equally lacking in feelings of security.
They may like neither themselves as they are nor the world around them which they have been largely responsible in making; but many are afraid of change, vio*lently opposed to it, so much so that they are ready to fight any segment of the population, young or old, who seem to be threatening the Establishment.
Does one have to destroy before he can build anew?
Must there be freak-outs and burn-outs and shoot-outs and lock*outs and rat-outs and fall-outs as a part of an all-out emo*tional explosion against everything we feel is wrong or unjust or opposed to our likes and dislikes—racially, religiously, educationally, economically, socially, morally, or politically?
The world is in turmoil because the mind is in turmoil; and the mind is in turmoil because of the world that the mind has created.
How do we change the picture?
It begins, of course, with ourselves.
Since the times are undergoing violent change, we must be able to change with them.
If we do not, we run the risk of being caught in the backwash of oncoming events and left high and dry upon the abandoned beaches of yesterday.
All change is not good, and you will often find it difficult, in this era of great change, to judge which changes are ultimately going to prove beneficial or harmful. But, since change is the order of the day, you cannot stop it.
You must learn to adapt yourself as best you can and go along with it.
As you become engulfed, your greatest problem will be how to protect and preserve your self, to correctly evaluate the changes taking place inside you as they relate to the changes taking place around you.
In other words, you must somehow maintain the ability to see yourself as you are and to make sure that this image of yourself is what you want it to be—to see whether it, like almost everything else in today's world, needs alteration and improvement.
So—starting as of now—how do you see yourself?
A good way to begin is with an outside look. Stand before a full-length mirror and examine yourself.
Then ask yourself these questions:
(1) Do I like what I see?
(2)Is my appearance as attractive and appealing as it could be?
(3)Does it represent, as nearly as possible, what I really am inside?
(4)Are my style of dress, my choice of colors, my hairdo,my makeup best suited to me?
(5)Does my normal facial expression reflect a positive or a negative attitude?
(6)Do I command respectful attention with my eyes, or do they reveal an insecurity or lack of friendliness or confi*dence in meeting people that I inwardly feel?
(7)How is my posture? Am I poised? Do I stand erect,carry my body well?
(8)My profile? Are my features, in my estimation, weak or strong?
(9)Is my body appreciably under-or overweight?
(10)Regardless of my shape or size, the general image
other people get of me, do I have a likable overall bearing,one that I would enjoy meeting, myself?
So much for the outside look. Now, since your physical Image is pretty much the outer reflection of your inner thoughts and feelings, what do you see as you view your real self?
This beneath-the-surface inspection tour is not going to be easy; it may even be painful.
It's not always pleasant to see yourself as you are.
To stand up to what you discover often requires courage.
Every day there are people throughout the world who have become so depressed or frightened or unnerved at being required, ultimately, to face what they fancy they see or actually confront in themselves that they try to destroy the outer and inner image by committing suicide.
I hope you have not arrived at this unhappy state of mind: that you have not, at times, considered ending it all or felt that life is not worth trying to keep on keeping on.
If you have, take heart. Things are not as bad as they may have seemed; and, I am sure you will have found life not only bearable but filled with new promise and hope.
All right. You are now preparing to go deep inside yourself to explore your inner thoughts and feelings. You are not seeking answers at this time; you are simply taking a penetrating inventory of the stock of images, good and bad, which you have accumulated through the years, images which have
contributed toward making you the person you are today!
The self-revealing questions:
(1) What do I really think of my self, that something that
says "I am I" to me, that reacts to everything I feel or do,that—like it or not—I have to live with day and night?
(2)Do I realize that my body is not the real me; that it is just the house in which I am temporarily residing; that I am actually on earth as a result of a lend-lease arrangement with my creator?
(3)Do I further realize that the upkeep of this house has depended upon how I have treated it with my mind; that my thoughts and feelings and the things I have done to and with my body have been responsible for the condition, the state of repair, it is in today?
(4)Can I now separate my body from my mind so I can begin to see myself as I really am?
(5)Have there been times when I have wanted, for whatever reasons, to get away from myself and the unhappy consequences of my thoughts and actions?
(6)What thoughts and feelings occupy my mind most of the time?
(A)Is it occupied, either directly or indirectly in the background of
consciousness, with sex?
(B)Since sex is a fundamental drive of life related to the creative energy in me and in all persons, am I conscious of unsatisfied or repressed urges in myself concern*ing others, known or unknown, with whom I am associated
or with whom I may be brought into contact?
(C) In other words, is my like or dislike for others subconsciously motivated, to a greater or lesser degree, by the images I have established through past experience of those of either sex who either appealed to or repulsed mesexually?
(7)Am I afraid of myself or afraid of some types of people as a result of previous reactions to life's happenings?
(8) Am I a worrier? Do I spend time wondering if I have done the right or wrong thing? Do I have a tendency to expect or fear the worst when up against a difficult situation?
(9)) Do I feel that I am able to cope successfully with most things that happen to me, either of my own making or though circumstances seemingly beyond my control? If not, why not? What has happened in my past which has destroyed either partially or wholly, my confidence in myself?
(10) Am I subject to moods of depression? Do I get discouraged easily?
Have I a tendency toward self-pity, self-condemnation?
(11) Am I expressing my personality as positively and appealingly as I should?
(12) How are my drinking, smoking, and other personal habits? Have they become excessive? Am I taking drugs,sending myself on "trips," seeking new thrills and release from tensions?
(A) If so, what has this done and what is it doing lo my mind, my emotions, my sex drives, my body, my social, personal, and business lives?
(B) Should I stop now if I can? If I can't, should I seek help before I destroy my health and possibly my sanity?
This look at yourself, inside and out as you are—if you have not shut your eyes to your revealed faults and weak*nesses—should set the stage for you to now examine yourself us others see you.
Their views and their opinions may not always be accurate.
You may have given them a wrong impression through something you have said or done which they have misunderstood or misinterpreted.
Even so, if you have some unconscious mannerism, attiude, practice, or expression of personality that disturbs or offends others, you should discover what these things are and do your best to correct them if you wish to be liked and accepted for what you really are.
Of course, if you actually are, at present, the type of person your friends and loved ones regard you to be, and if these impressions are generally unfavorable—you have a job on your hands.
What to do about it? And how quickly can you change this undesirable image of yourself?
Are you ready? This may hurt a little. We all like approval and appreciation. It is a cinch we will not always find it when we take a detached view and try, impersonally, to see our*selves as others see us.
What you think of yourself is at present more important then ever
How are you doing thus far
Are you satisfied with yourself as you are?
Do you feel there is nothing about you that needs improve*ment?
Or, if you are disturbed about any areas in your life, are you at a loss to know what to do about them?
Whatever your state of mind, like it or not, you have to manage to live with it as best you can.
That is, until and unless it gets so bad that you just can't take it any longer.
"I hate myself," "I don't know why I do what I do."
"I know I am drinking and smoking too much."
"My sex life is all mixed up."
"I can't get along with my wife [or husband] or relatives or friends."
"I'm always making the wrong decisions or saying the wrong thing."
"I don't seem to be able to hold a job."
"I get tired and bored easily."
"I'm overweight. I can't control my eating."
"I'm nervous and high-strung, get depressed, often lose my temper, take out my feelings on my children and loved ones."
"I'm afraid I'm heading for a nervous breakdown or I'm going to blow my mind."
"I'm hearing voices telling me to do crazy things, trying to get me to kill my wife [or husband] and to commit suicide.
Either that, or making obscene remarks and suggestions stimulating me sexually, representing that they are spirits from the other side of life who love me and want to possess me,body and soul."
"I've lost faith in myself and in God. I don't go to church any more, it doesn't have anything for me." "I'm loaded with fears."
"I have no self-confidence anymore."
"I'm deep in debt, and I don't see any way out."
"My wife [or husband] doesn't love me, and I love some*one else."
"I'd like to find someone I could love and who could love me."
"I'm ugly and unattractive, and nobody likes me."
"I was born with a handicapped body," or "I have suffered a crippling injury [or disease], and my life isn't worth liv*ing."
"I'm afraid of what's going to happen to the country and the world."
"It isn't safe anywhere anymore. I don't trust anyone.
It seems like people are always trying to take advantage of me."
"I'd like to get away from it all, but where does a person go?"
"I've been getting readings from fortune-tellers and medi*ums and astrologers, but I'm worse off now than I was before."
"The doctors and psychiatrists can't help me.
I've had shock treatments and the whole bit, including drugs and hypnotism, but I'm still bad off; so what do I do now?"
"What is life all about, anyway, and why did I have to be born?"
Many of these distressed people, from all walks of life and all grades of intelligence are urgently seeking answers to personal problems which have seemed insurmountable.
Have you found yourself in this list; or are you still in a different category?
Perhaps you are a young man about to go into the service, and you are expressing your thoughts and feelings in this fashion:
"What chance do I have to make anything worthwhile out of my life?
I'm soon going to be drafted and sent to fight a war I don't believe in.
I'm against killing, and I know that's what they're going "to teach me to do. They're going to brainwash me, if they can; tell me I've got to kill or be killed,
that it's my patriotic duty. I'm old enough to fight and die but not old enough to vote, to have any say about it...
"I'm in love. Should I marry before I go to the service and make my wife sit it out for God knows how long—perhaps end up a widow or get me back all shot up, an invalid for the rest of my life?
To what do I have to look forward? How do I face this; or should I? I don't think I can take it without cracking up."
If you are a young woman, you may be expressing your thoughts and feelings in this manner:
"What is right and what is wrong?
If I can't marry the man I love before he goes in the service, should I go all the way with him—get as much as we can out of romance while we can?
What are my chances of having a home and chil*dren, anyway?
Or a happy, permanent married life?
"If we marry before he leaves and I have a baby, can I support the child and stick it out till he gets back?
If I take take the pill and we don't have a baby, and I can get work, can I he true to him indefinitely, or he to me?"
These thoughts must occupy the minds and hearts of millions of young people.
They are compelled to make decisions based upon their Individual circumstances and needs, however wise or unwise these decisions ultimately turn out to be.
The long hair, the unwashed bodies, the careless dress or undress, the rock and roll rhythms,
and the rebellions of the defiant protesters, the psychedelic, the sexpots, the love and the hate addicts, are all forms of resistance—violent or
complacent—to established ways of life which many find abhorrent and unacceptable.
If you are numbered among these revolutionists, you have consciously or unconsciously wanted to change the image of things and have begun with yourself.
What has resulted thus far, however, has been mainly confusing and distorting, per*haps as disturbing to you as it has been to your elders.
To what is this all leading? There is definitely and ines*capably a generation gap.
Older people are equally lacking in feelings of security.
They may like neither themselves as they are nor the world around them which they have been largely responsible in making; but many are afraid of change, vio*lently opposed to it, so much so that they are ready to fight any segment of the population, young or old, who seem to be threatening the Establishment.
Does one have to destroy before he can build anew?
Must there be freak-outs and burn-outs and shoot-outs and lock*outs and rat-outs and fall-outs as a part of an all-out emo*tional explosion against everything we feel is wrong or unjust or opposed to our likes and dislikes—racially, religiously, educationally, economically, socially, morally, or politically?
The world is in turmoil because the mind is in turmoil; and the mind is in turmoil because of the world that the mind has created.
How do we change the picture?
It begins, of course, with ourselves.
Since the times are undergoing violent change, we must be able to change with them.
If we do not, we run the risk of being caught in the backwash of oncoming events and left high and dry upon the abandoned beaches of yesterday.
All change is not good, and you will often find it difficult, in this era of great change, to judge which changes are ultimately going to prove beneficial or harmful. But, since change is the order of the day, you cannot stop it.
You must learn to adapt yourself as best you can and go along with it.
As you become engulfed, your greatest problem will be how to protect and preserve your self, to correctly evaluate the changes taking place inside you as they relate to the changes taking place around you.
In other words, you must somehow maintain the ability to see yourself as you are and to make sure that this image of yourself is what you want it to be—to see whether it, like almost everything else in today's world, needs alteration and improvement.
So—starting as of now—how do you see yourself?
A good way to begin is with an outside look. Stand before a full-length mirror and examine yourself.
Then ask yourself these questions:
(1) Do I like what I see?
(2)Is my appearance as attractive and appealing as it could be?
(3)Does it represent, as nearly as possible, what I really am inside?
(4)Are my style of dress, my choice of colors, my hairdo,my makeup best suited to me?
(5)Does my normal facial expression reflect a positive or a negative attitude?
(6)Do I command respectful attention with my eyes, or do they reveal an insecurity or lack of friendliness or confi*dence in meeting people that I inwardly feel?
(7)How is my posture? Am I poised? Do I stand erect,carry my body well?
(8)My profile? Are my features, in my estimation, weak or strong?
(9)Is my body appreciably under-or overweight?
(10)Regardless of my shape or size, the general image
other people get of me, do I have a likable overall bearing,one that I would enjoy meeting, myself?
So much for the outside look. Now, since your physical Image is pretty much the outer reflection of your inner thoughts and feelings, what do you see as you view your real self?
This beneath-the-surface inspection tour is not going to be easy; it may even be painful.
It's not always pleasant to see yourself as you are.
To stand up to what you discover often requires courage.
Every day there are people throughout the world who have become so depressed or frightened or unnerved at being required, ultimately, to face what they fancy they see or actually confront in themselves that they try to destroy the outer and inner image by committing suicide.
I hope you have not arrived at this unhappy state of mind: that you have not, at times, considered ending it all or felt that life is not worth trying to keep on keeping on.
If you have, take heart. Things are not as bad as they may have seemed; and, I am sure you will have found life not only bearable but filled with new promise and hope.
All right. You are now preparing to go deep inside yourself to explore your inner thoughts and feelings. You are not seeking answers at this time; you are simply taking a penetrating inventory of the stock of images, good and bad, which you have accumulated through the years, images which have
contributed toward making you the person you are today!
The self-revealing questions:
(1) What do I really think of my self, that something that
says "I am I" to me, that reacts to everything I feel or do,that—like it or not—I have to live with day and night?
(2)Do I realize that my body is not the real me; that it is just the house in which I am temporarily residing; that I am actually on earth as a result of a lend-lease arrangement with my creator?
(3)Do I further realize that the upkeep of this house has depended upon how I have treated it with my mind; that my thoughts and feelings and the things I have done to and with my body have been responsible for the condition, the state of repair, it is in today?
(4)Can I now separate my body from my mind so I can begin to see myself as I really am?
(5)Have there been times when I have wanted, for whatever reasons, to get away from myself and the unhappy consequences of my thoughts and actions?
(6)What thoughts and feelings occupy my mind most of the time?
(A)Is it occupied, either directly or indirectly in the background of
consciousness, with sex?
(B)Since sex is a fundamental drive of life related to the creative energy in me and in all persons, am I conscious of unsatisfied or repressed urges in myself concern*ing others, known or unknown, with whom I am associated
or with whom I may be brought into contact?
(C) In other words, is my like or dislike for others subconsciously motivated, to a greater or lesser degree, by the images I have established through past experience of those of either sex who either appealed to or repulsed mesexually?
(7)Am I afraid of myself or afraid of some types of people as a result of previous reactions to life's happenings?
(8) Am I a worrier? Do I spend time wondering if I have done the right or wrong thing? Do I have a tendency to expect or fear the worst when up against a difficult situation?
(9)) Do I feel that I am able to cope successfully with most things that happen to me, either of my own making or though circumstances seemingly beyond my control? If not, why not? What has happened in my past which has destroyed either partially or wholly, my confidence in myself?
(10) Am I subject to moods of depression? Do I get discouraged easily?
Have I a tendency toward self-pity, self-condemnation?
(11) Am I expressing my personality as positively and appealingly as I should?
(12) How are my drinking, smoking, and other personal habits? Have they become excessive? Am I taking drugs,sending myself on "trips," seeking new thrills and release from tensions?
(A) If so, what has this done and what is it doing lo my mind, my emotions, my sex drives, my body, my social, personal, and business lives?
(B) Should I stop now if I can? If I can't, should I seek help before I destroy my health and possibly my sanity?
This look at yourself, inside and out as you are—if you have not shut your eyes to your revealed faults and weak*nesses—should set the stage for you to now examine yourself us others see you.
Their views and their opinions may not always be accurate.
You may have given them a wrong impression through something you have said or done which they have misunderstood or misinterpreted.
Even so, if you have some unconscious mannerism, attiude, practice, or expression of personality that disturbs or offends others, you should discover what these things are and do your best to correct them if you wish to be liked and accepted for what you really are.
Of course, if you actually are, at present, the type of person your friends and loved ones regard you to be, and if these impressions are generally unfavorable—you have a job on your hands.
What to do about it? And how quickly can you change this undesirable image of yourself?
Are you ready? This may hurt a little. We all like approval and appreciation. It is a cinch we will not always find it when we take a detached view and try, impersonally, to see our*selves as others see us.
What you think of yourself is at present more important then ever
How are you doing thus far