Alex Shalman.comPractical Personal Development

Let me start this off by thanking Alex for my first guest blogging opportunity. I hope that my being here is as profitable for his readers as the experience is for me.

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“God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.” — Reinhold Niebuhr

Did you happen to catch the segment on CBS News where James Ray, spiritual teacher and contributor to the movie The Secret, debated psychology professor John Norcross on the merits of the movie?

I’m not going to try and convince anyone of who was right and who was wrong. There are plenty of articles on that subject already. But I would like to point out one place where the psychologist was correct.

In the interview, Dr. Norcross pointed out: “When it [the principle taught in the movie] doesn’t work, people then begin to blame themselves and become demoralized.”

How do I know that he’s right? Because that’s exactly what I did to myself.

But with me it wasn’t “The Secret”. It was a book called “As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen. I read it, recognized the truth that it contained, and tried to put it’s teachings into practice.

And I failed miserably. If anything, my life began to get worse!

One thing about personal change is that it usually isn’t as easy as flipping a light switch. When our brains are wired one way, it takes time and effort to change the way our neural pathways process information. In other words… change is hard! In rare instances, a person may be able to do an about face and suddenly quit smoking, lose weight, or even be cured of a life threatening disease. But it usually takes time.

Years of thinking one way had produced habits in me that weren’t going to budge just because I read a book or watched a movie. It’s taken (and still takes)… Oh Lordy, Lyman, don’t say it… work!

Try, fail, try, fail, try… have a small success, then fail. Try, fail, try… have a small success.

It’s usually not a linear progression from where you are to where you want to be.

But that’s OK.

When I first bought into the “Change your Thinking, Change your Life” mindset, I’d spend a few moments thinking positively, but my new home, a healthy body, or huge checks coming in the mail wouldn’t materialize by the following Thursday. So I would throw up my hands at the first failure and say “See! It doesn’t work!” (James Ray actually describes something similar in The Secret, which is one of the things that I really identified with.) What I didn’t realize then was that this in itself is a thought! All of the anger at myself and the depression it resulted in (many psychologists consider depression to be “anger turned inward”) were thoughts themselves. The whole time that I was trying to make myself a better person by whipping the heck out of myself (”Come ON! Straighten up and fly right! Why can’t you just GET THIS STUFF!”) all I was doing was perpetuating the very thinking that was bringing me down in the first place.

So how do you get from there to where you want to be?

Unconditional acceptance of who you are right now.

This isn’t saying that who I am, or what I’ve done in the past, is OK. All acceptance means is it is what it is, and no amount of emotional railing is going to change that. Anything that I’ve thought, said, or done in the past is just that… in the past. To sit around, shifting between blaming others (”If it wasn’t for them!”) or myself (”I’m just worthless.”) is futile at best, and dangerous at worst.

Wherever you are in life right now, that’s where you are. If you like the results you are getting from what you are doing, keep doing that. If you don’t, point yourself in a new direction. If you keep finding yourself spinning back around to your old heading, just say “Well, looks like I’m not going where I want to. What needs to change?” and point yourself back in a new direction. Yes, it’s difficult. But it’s worth it, and actually an easier way to live in the long run.

Right now, Alex is working on a series of posts in which he describes Benjamin Franklin’s method for personal change. One of the greatest things about regular self examination using this method is that it keeps your mind focused on the things you want, while you still recognize the things in your life you need to work on. You just recognize them… you don’t lay around wallowing in your failures, but you also don’t deny them.

So wherever you are in life, that’s where you are. Accept that which you’ve attracted/created up ’til now, and have the courage to begin working on changing those things which you can.

Which in the long run, is really only yourself.

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Lyman Reed is a blogger who (mostly) writes on personal development and spiritual growth topics. You can read more from him at Creating a Better Life.

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