Resistance and Personal Growth

I started thinking about some topics on Personal Growth, my thoughts go to why do we humans become Resistant to so many things in our life? Why is it that we do things which we know before we do it; will bring negative results and hurt us in some fashion? This started my research for some sound answers about our personal growth and how to improve our life in general and since I need all the help I can get; I wanted to understand me better and thought it might go well here....so I did a little digging.

You might be surprise that we should have learned so much of what we should put into practice long before now. By the age of seven:

The ability to inhibit personal impulses to abide by rules and the norm comprises a major developmental achievement and a central component of moral development and referred to the conflicts that come from the moral duty and the desire as the problem of will.

In this same study; such will power poses a difficult challenge for young children who have not developed inhibitory control and who generally think of positive emotions as what feels good from their desire of fulfillment and negative emotions as caused by not getting what one wants....oh, my...not just the babies......

The babies learn as they progress that you can also feel good from having obeyed the rules or having done things appropriately and they can feel negative emotions from breaking the rules....we know that feeling and we experience it on a very different level as we get older because the rules we break are a much greater severity to our human existence.

Why is it that we are so much like children? Why is it that we want what we want, if it makes us feel good, it give us a high, and makes us walk tall...we don't care the consequences, we just want it. We have "no resistance." It really isn't always the big things...but it can affect our life just the same and sometimes the little things become habits and grow into larger and more frequent things. The bigger diamond, the most popular car, the house furnished like a millionaire. The attention of someone who is already committed... The job that someone else has and is doing a good job with, but we don't mind talking negative about them so that we can get where we want....doesn't matter, it was the truth????

In other words we want our way; our way or the highway. We want what we want and most of the time, a lot of us, want it now. If it makes us feel good, we want it. it is usually not the candy, the ice cream or the junk food that brings us grief but we indulge ourselves in whatever it takes to make us feel "happy." Whether it does or not...we sometimes have no resistance....

Resistance is not the only thing we humans have tendency to ignore about our emotional make up. We ignore so many things that would make our life more full and affective. Why, the Lord only knows for sure, but there are ways for us to learn how to control our mind better and better serve our own needs as well as others.

So how do we, get everything joined together so that we think better and more intellectual and reasonable in our ability to control how we act?

"When we pull back and get, for a moment, the "bird's eye" view of life, it reveals meanings that are ungraspable by the narrow focus on our usual worm's eye view." by: Colin Wilson

Have you ever had an experience when you had a moment of greater understanding, a knowing, when your consciousness seemed beyond your usual? It is said that when this happens, you are thinking with your whole brain. The left brain integrates with the right brain, (the feelings and emotions) side and you have an increased energy flow between the two sides. This is thinking in a balanced way. This is what is called the New Age- a new level of maturity in mental development, an awakening.

If we learn how to arouse the whole brain, at will, our consciousness may be freely altered, to fulfill the task or situation at hand. This is like brainstorming a solution to a problem at work, or in our family or as with anything. When we have found a solution and no one figured it out .."we did it." It felt so good. When we learn that we have this capacity we seem to feel full of good fortune and great possibilities. Actually it is nothing out of the ordinary but essentially full consciousness and working at its full efficiency. Nothing actually feels any better than to know we have accomplished something beyond the norm. It is empowering.

Achieving Personal Enhancement

In one study, it is said that we have learned disabilities, the ones that set boundaries to our action and knowing. It also confirms that we do not have to remain as we were shaped by our hereditary body-mind and by the condition of our childhood or culture. This is where the "power of will" kicks in when we have found a goal or something we want to do or must do to make things better ourselves. Our brain is so made that it will adapt itself to the demands of our mind. Determination; if you will. For instance, the young mother who has been life alone to raise a child...she works, goes to school and gains a profession that saves her life and her child's. She finds the ability to do it all and make the grade at all odds.

Anger and Depression

When we are anger and depression in destructive ways, it can be the results of negative or unbalanced inner-speech that one may not be conscious of. For instance if someone practices self defeating behavior; they are not doing things in the right perspective even though common sense warns of the consequences. Why do smart people make such a mistake? This is behavior that keeps people from reaching their goals. It can include something as simple as holding a grudge or fear of loosing something if they make a change in their life to do things differently.

Also, sometimes these destructive ways and this self defeating behavior can be from repressed feeling or emotions that we do not want to remember..from a childhood disastrous event or a time of trauma at any time prior to the present. When something has happened that we do not want to remember or feel that pain again. We have anger or depression for many different reason and sometimes it is we are angry with ourselves and we take it out on others without getting a grip of what we are doing.

We have been told that we do not use all of our brain...studies show that probably about 90% of the brain's capacity is not being utilized and it is closed down due to neurotic repression and the 10% left is likely to fall into a robotic state. We act our life patterns that are predictable on day to day matter and only respond semi-consciously when things attract our attention. One instance is I think, when you got to work and do not even remember leaving home; or your got to work and do not remember which route you took...the unused 90% is susceptible to hypnotic influences and is driven by the environment and circumstances.

In other words; we need to wake up.....

Yes, I think we can obtain a "Higher Self", and so does Dr. Peter Shepherd and from his professional knowing; some of the material in this article is based upon. Dr. Shepherd states that man's nature is essentially spiritual but that it is no good seeking for spiritual things until you can distinguish the spiritual from the mundane. In other words we have to know who we are and understand ourselves and know why we act or do not act a certain way and, I think have a desire to act a better way...in what we have before...a more desirable way.

I wrote something recently that said we are more alike than we want to admit and Dr. Shepherd emphatically agrees in that each person is unlike any other being that exists, qualitatively different, and yet is subject to universal law, social and biological causes, and learned behavior that is common to all. This means action, describable and analyzable difficulties and illnesses and similarities of behavior that are discernibly "human."

I think that I have had a rude awakening myself because when I think about not having a full consciousness of my daily activities and what I am up to on a minute to minute basis.... we muddle through life really not knowing what our true potential is...even what we are doing...it is common place and we repeat our day to day actions, some out of habit. In other words we get into a rut of living our life.  We go about on a job we have done for years and we don't have to think much because we have learned or memorized it so well...we quit thinking and growing and becoming more...we become complacent.  We do things automatically, because we have always done them this way and we continue and therefore we do not grow into our full potential.  Those of us that have not already passed the potential stage.....only kidding..I do believe if we keep the mind active and ignited we will have the potential stage much longer and Dr. Shepherd did not tell me that....I am certainly counting on that and that is why I am writing.

If we want to improve knowing ourselves and have a knowledge of our higher self, and our higher abilities to do things better we must want to learn new ways to accomplish all the abilities we are born with. It is said that if we are to obtain a higher self we must first acquire qualities that we think we already have....but yet we deceive ourselves. For instance, I think that I have the quality of being truly genuine...I try to be, but what actually does that mean? I think that it means that I am true to myself but true to others as well. No fake, no put on, no false pretense, no judgment of others, true to others...no judgment....in fact genuine means that one is just about solid as gold...absolute....accurate....actual.....unaffected.... sincere....trustworthy...legitimate, natural and the list goes on. No we are not perfect but if one intends to be genuine...for instance...we do not put our consciousness into judgment of others among other things and we learn in the mean time to control many areas of our life that are contrary to what we profess to be. We learn how to use Resistance and apply it to our daily life so that we do not get ourselves into deeper trouble but learn to live on a higher plain of understanding.

I am thinking about continuing this project on how we can become a higher quality individual for ourselves and others to produce a desired ending result that will give us the high we need to sustain us in our endeavors without leaning toward self defeating actions instead.  I have found this intriguing and find myself wanting to find that place of higher existence and profound ability to obtain everything that I am meant to obtain.  I believe that this could help any individual who wants to learn more about themselves and have the knowledge to persevere on the road to a more successful life. 

Dr. Peter Shepherd, Kochanska & Askoson, 2006, Zelzo & Mueller, 2002, Harter & Whitesell, 1989, Arsenio and Lover 1995