Tag Archives: Choosing feelings

“A Stanford scientist says a simple psychological shift can make you more successful”

A Stanford scientist says a simple psychological shift can make you more successful

The headline left me skeptical. A scientist tells about success?

The article proves to be all about self-love, and backs up everything I’ve said about that subject. It also speaks to the issues I face at this moment in dealing with my feelings and the way I treat myself.

I urge you to read it.

Related:
Chaos overwhelms the poor
A short route to agony
Life in the outer darkness
Self-comfort
Why racism no longer matters to me

Originally posted 2016-01-30.

In the forecast: Pain

(Originally posted 2016-01-16.)

A toothache can distract you completely.

For the past two months, I have now and then, with increasing frequency and duration, had mild toothaches in (I thought) one upper left tooth and one lower left tooth. They always went away; and that’s all I thought of it.

Then last Thursday night there was such severe pain for such a long time, that I lost several hours’ sleep and resolved to get those two teeth filled the next day. But that didn’t happen. The dentist said four teeth must be extracted; and the appointments the clinic scheduled for me are two weeks and four weeks away.

This means: for the coming month, I am going to be in pain of varying severity for varying lengths of time.

It may not be much, now and then; it may be a lot, now and then, and for quite a while now and then. But it’s unavoidable. It’s coming.

How will I choose to feel about it?

Will I accept it, or react continually against it?

Will I hate myself for being in pain? or possibly hate others?  Hate God?

Will I be crying out, “Why me?”

Or may there be other options?

Related:  A short route to agony

From my diary:

Continue reading In the forecast: Pain

Self-comfort

I have suffered with obsessive-compulsive disorder and genetically-based clinical depression all my life.  I first became medicated for these conditions, with SSRIs, in 1991, and the improvement was so drastic I never wanted to be without those medications again.

On or about December 6, 2015, however, it seemed as if they abruptly became ineffective.  I was not in a position to find a medical doctor competent to change them.  So, on the one hand, I’ve lived with clinical depression from then till now and continuing.  On the other hand, a positive is that in this state I’ve obtained certain insights that I never could have “seen” any other way.

One insight in particular would have changed my entire course in life, had I only learned it as a child.

It occurred in four steps.  The blue block quotes below are excerpts from my diary.  However, I recall that C.S. Lewis referred to diary-keeping as a “time-wasting and foolish practice;” that a diary is, “even for autobiographical purposes,” far less useful than one might suppose.  As to the first two steps below, I lost a good deal of time and effort searching for diary passages that didn’t exist.

In mid-December 2015 …

Continue reading Self-comfort

Self-management in the face of depression

I am extremely depressed this morning.  This may be a “monthly.”  I find myself hyper-self-critical; ready to take anything someone may say the wrong way; ready to snap.

I’m dealing with various issues in various places that may help explain it, but as opposed to engaging in excuses or blame, I need to deal with what is.

I was in Dunkin’ Donuts at 9:00 and chose to check the library schedule for this week; to chart out what days I would go to the library and what other days I would go to church.

Continue reading Self-management in the face of depression

“Seeing red” is real. But how does it happen?

The scientific reason your world brightens up when you do

This study affirms some common observations about color perceptions and emotional states. When one is enraged, the color red appears more vivid in one’s perceptions; when depressed, the color blue. When one feels elated, all colors appear brighter, and in times of severe depression color perception can all but disappear; the world looks black and white.  Or, perhaps, bleak and white.

The study attempts, and IMO fails, to attribute these things to the activity of neurotransmitters such as dopamine.  But there is no finding of direct action by such neurotransmitters on the color-perceiving apparatus of the visual cortex.

Continue reading “Seeing red” is real. But how does it happen?

Bootstraps

Psalm 150:6:  “Let all things that have breath praise the Lord.”

At the homeless shelter where I stay, we’re required to attend chapel every night.  Monday, for the first time in months, Jervis Ray preached.  His text was Psalm 23.  However, he was soon enough back to his same old same old, haranguing us that we’re not grateful enough for our “blessings.”  “God woke you up in your right mind,” with the use of two arms and two legs.

He calls us to praise God that our bootstraps aren’t like others’.  “There are lots of people in hospitals who don’t know where they are.”

That stung me, as my oldest brother will be soon enough in just that state.

Continue reading Bootstraps

What you “see” is what you’ll get.

This story from Ambrose Worrall’s The Gift of Healing[*] illustrates that not all prayer, however well-intentioned, will necessarily bring about the desired results. Some prayer may even interfere with obtaining the desired results.

Ambrose Worrall had been asked to intercede for a six-year old girl named Kay, who had developed encephalitis following measles. At the time he began, she was completely paralysed.

Continue reading What you “see” is what you’ll get.

1. About this book

THE WAY OF PEACE

Home 2. Meditation →

Matthew 11:28-30: Jesus said,

Come to me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; …
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

All my life, I have been concerned for people who seemed to me to have a harder lot than they deserved — who were loaded down with heavy burdens.

In time, I came to see that I likewise carried needless heavy burdens.

Life is difficult enough even without them. Jesus speaks here of a way to live without them. Life’s inherent difficulties cannot be avoided. Needless difficulties can be avoided, and one’s life will be far more pleasant as a result. I humbly believe I have come to understand what Jesus meant, and that is what I seek to set forth here. Continue reading 1. About this book

2. Meditation

THE WAY OF PEACE

← 1. About this book Home 3. Application →

Meditation is not the whole of the Way, any more than flour is the whole of cookies. If you want cookies, you must also have butter, sugar, and perhaps eggs, in addition to flour. Flour is essential, however. Likewise as to the Way, meditation is so essential, as to move me to say this: if you have any interest in learning the Way, and do not now have a discipline of meditation, you should start one now — right now — before even reading the rest of this book. Continue reading 2. Meditation