http://www.rmcat.com/fffbook/ Living in the 21st Century but still with the genetics and hard wired behavioral patterns of the Cave Man. What are you really after in life? Some of us might say LOVE, others MONEY and still others might be brutally honest with themselves and say POWER. Yet it isn’t really love, money or power that we seek. We seek these things only because we think they will bring us happiness. That is what we are all really after—simply happiness! We are happy when we are loved and we can give love, when we are physically safe and materially provided for, and when we see a positive future ahead of us. My late, great father said to me as a child, “Son, you got to have a roof over your head and something in your belly before you can even think like that.” Well, as was so often the case, my father was correct, even if as a child I did not understand the extent of his wisdom. But now, at age 56, I have had my own experiences in life and I have seen that it is also a “spiritual roof” that we need to put over our heads and “spiritual nourishment” that we need to put into our bellies as well. My personal experiences I speak of include youthful love, abandonment and betrayal, peace and extreme violence, and in my younger days even being the head bouncer in a rough cowboy/biker bar while during the day I was a high school math teacher! Later I became the three-piece-suited entrepreneur who took an idea and made it into a technology-based company that did very successful business with some of the world’s largest corporations. I thus have had the chance to see how various types of people work and think, but most particularly, how predators work and think, be it in the barroom or in the boardroom. The simple conclusion I reached was that predatory people are fundamentally motivated by the same psychology no matter where you might find them. You may be dealing with some level of predators in the office—perhaps a boss or a middle manager or even a co-worker. You may even have a personal and intimate relationship with an “emotional predator.” Many of us simply do not have the tools or experience to see when we have been chosen as victims by such predators and why. Indeed, we may only feel the pain and frustration and internal conflict that the predator causes within us, which may obscure all else. Countless times I have seen people, often unknowingly, allow themselves to be bullied by one form of human predator or another. Indeed, it is often the “better people,” those who are the more empathetic, sensitive and genuinely compassionate, who often seem to attract the predator’s eye first. Yet, being empathetic, compassionate and having a measure of sensitivity to the conditions of others are among the finest of virtues. They are the very source from which the greatest spiritual strength flows. These qualities contain the greatest potential power that a person can possess. When we cultivate this spiritual strength and learn to use it, we can raise a shield at the predator’s first attempt to attack our happiness and our internal self-image. That shield is a mirror of “finely polished steel,” and one sees only their own reflection when they look into such a mirror. Hence, the bully sees the face of the bully. He no longer sees a potential victim but only the weakness in his own reflection. To polish that shield to its full potential, we need to first understand how the bully thinks. We need to understand what he as a bully is really after, and why. The predator’s thinking patterns are essentially the same no matter where you find the predator—in the office, in the barroom or in the street. Once we understand the essence of the predatory mind, we must peel away our own layers of self-deception or “self-misdirection” that we may have constructed to insulate us from a clearer and more authentic view of ourselves. We need to realize that we have been given a “sixth survival sense” that is shared by others in the animal kingdom but from which our socialization often has estranged us. We must allow ourselves to see that while we are far from perfect, we do have an inner strength that lies dormant within most of us. The capacity to actualize that power is given to all of us, but it is only through our own effort that we can effect the actualization of that inner strength and power. There are really only two basic ways to rule a society: through fear or through rational hope. The same is true of the individual. We can allow ourselves to be ruled by fear, or we can determine that we will rule ourselves through our own positive self-worth combined with rational optimism. In achieving this we can let go of life goals or “necessary” achievements that are not truly our own but which have been overtly or covertly “assigned” to us by others. You alone must decide your path to happiness, because it is your life and no one else’s. This is not an easy task, but then little of value in life is ever achieved easily, is it? I have not completed the journey down my own path yet, but I do know that my path is the one I have chosen for myself. In this book I share with you the mental tools, the knowledge and the “weapons of the mind” that I have found effective in the spiritual combat of life. We are all spiritual warriors in a very important sense. Hence, we must learn to think like warriors and to develop the courage of the warrior. The true spirit of the warrior lies not in attacking and plundering the village, but in defending it from those who would. “Know your self and know your enemy and you will be safe in one hundred battles.” · Sun Tsu, The Art of War (circa 200 BC) The Frog Brain and the Self-Image Living in the 21st century with the body and brain wiring that evolved over thousands of centuries We are living in a 21st century world with the bodies and “brain wiring” that were developed over hundreds of thousands of years. Since before mankind left the caves, our species has fought a continual battle for survival. Hence, fear and stress have always been part of our environment. But in our modern world, our evolutionary reactions to stress and fear are less appropriate to the daily problems we now face in our modern lives…either at our jobs or in our personal relationships. Our biochemistry reacts similarly to the boss chewing us out over a mistake in the office as it did eons ago when we were faced with the danger of taking down a Woolly Mammoth with stone-tipped spears. Our human evolutionary path has left us with some less than truly functional responses to modern life with its new and different forms of conflict. When we understand this, then we have set upon a path that will change our world- view, enhancing and protecting our personal self-images and thus our ability to achieve our goals in this brave new world we live in. In this way we will begin to take back control of our lives. The author has been a bouncer in biker bar, a High School Math teacher and a successful entrepreneur in the software development field. He is internationally recognized as an authority on adrenal stress. PTSD and it’s effects on our minds and bodies. But his conclusion is, from the barroom bully to the boardroom bully, it all fundamentally the same and we are all made of the same clay. But most of us have been socialized out of our survival natures. These powers lie dormant in most yet they are tremendously effective tools to for us to discover within ourselves. From business to romantic relationships we handicap our selves through our ignorance of our own genetic gifts and or ability to overcome fear. http://www.rmcat.com/fffbook/ Stress, PTSD, Self-Improvement, Self-Discovery, Self Actualization, Peyton Quinn, RMCAT
Source: http://www.ArticlePros.com/author.php?Peyton Quinn
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