HOW often have you heard the phrase ‘Life can be funny’?
I suppose we use the phrase when life throws stuff at us that we weren’t expecting to happen, or when something jumps up out of the blue and quite simply knocks us out.
Another saying that I love is – “If you always do what you always did – Then you will always get what you always got”.
So if I break that sentence down, then there is an obvious suggestion that if life isn’t working for us we should consider paying a lot of attention to doing things in the opposite way to the way we have always being doing them.
The problem here is that old habits are hard to break, but, if the pain is severe enough then that in itself can be the springboard to move forward and embrace change.
Without going into detail, there is a whole therapy built around this. It is called Gestalt Therapy and involves the study of our behaviour in the present moment.
There is also a whole section of art called ‘Gestalt art’ which is well worth (and great fun!) looking at in ‘Google images’.
If nothing else, it may encourage us to examine other sides of our character, suggesting that perhaps there is a bit of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in all of us.
For instance if someone has a very ‘giving’ personality then a little bit of restraint might be of benefit to their lifestyle.
I often wondered if the song ‘A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down’ in the film Mary Poppins has a deeper meaning to it. A little bit of doing things in the ‘opposite way’ to which we normally would do things might be just the tonic required.
There are numerous examples of this down the centuries. For hundreds of years mankind thought that all sailing vessels had to be made of wood (because wood floats!) whereas the super tankers that now command our oceans are made of steel.
It was always suggested that water was the best way to fight fire but again in some cases it is best to fight fire is with fire.
I remember going on my first skiing trip and being told by my instructor that the best way to stay upright was to lean down the valley by putting my weight on my lower foot. (I thought he was stark-raving mad!!).
When I saw the steep incline below me, my mind was telling me to resist and to lean back which was totally the wrong thing to do. My instructor was correct and I was best advised to simply ignore my mind and follow the simple advice which again was (surprise, surprise!) the opposite to what I was thinking.
The purpose of this article really is to suggest that our thinking minds may not always serve our best interests both at an individual and collective level.
A great example of the collective level was that for thousands of years, mankind believed that the surface of the world was flat.
To this end there are many pictures of terror and doom as to what might happen should one fall off the edge. The fear was genuine because the beliefs were genuine.
We now know that those beliefs were misguided and thus we are now very comfortable flying anywhere in the world. Why are we really comfortable? Because we know it works!
The point being that we should be extremely careful about our beliefs as they can often prevent us from achieving a successful outcome.
An ‘open’ observing mind can deliver a lot more success, peace and happiness.
Next week I am going to write about – How our beliefs can limit us
