In the last post, I talked about the mental structures that cause us to see situations as problems. Today I want to talk more about the promise and excitement of a freshness of life that comes from the new dawning. This topic will close the Zero Stress System by talking about the factor that determines how you’re decisions are made. Let’s recap first.

• We started by seeing that stress comes from a cluttered mind.
• A cluttered mind arises from a lack of clarity.
• This inhibits us from resolving issues through making a conclusive and committed decision.
• In the last post we discussed how the need to be right clashed with the desire to be happy.

Today we will examine the foundations of making a decision.

IBM used to be the choice of most buyers for companies buying computers. The old saying went;

‘No-one ever got sacked for buying IBM.’

photo credit: Extra Ketchup

What they meant was that IBM were safe and reliable. They may not have been the best or the most advanced or even the most suited to your purposes. However they were safe.

They wouldn’t go bust before you got your product. They’d be there if there were any faults. And everyone else could see that you’d chosen the biggest and best known company.

What goes unsaid though, was that no-one ever found fulfilment and excitement from buying IBM. No-one lived on the cutting edge and enabled great work.

We can see through history many, many times that the new upstart overturns the established heavyweight Champion.

Google trounced Yahoo, despite Yahoo rejecting the search algorithm that made Google what it is today.

Now this is tied to your difficulty to make a decision about an issue that causes you stress. The reason why we find it so difficult to come to a conclusive decision is because we are like a hunter chasing two rabbits.

As we discussed in the last post we want to be happy, yet also right. But more than that, we are split in that we seek to find a way to live that matches with our unique blend that makes us an individual, yet we want to fit in with convention.

We want to be special, yet normal.

We want to bring in our unique vision and have other people approve it before they understand it.

What I mean is that the world has built up a way of living from generations before us. So we grow to maturity with very little influence. And so we grow up as a unique being that has never before lived. And then we expect and are expected to fit into this world that evolved without our unique contribution.

Think about it. What are the chances of a system being built that will perfectly fit around a continual stream of unique beings?
photo credit: reborg

It is the uniqueness, the beings that don’t conform that create the friction that enables the system to evolve. In other words if you don’t fit into the system comfortably, and who really does, the flaw is with the system not with you.

You were not born to live within an artificial structure of what is possible, of what is right. You were born to give birth to a new structure, a new sense of certainty. Not to live within, but to expand the existing world. As Foucoult said, it is that which opposes the system that strengthens the system.

All of us to varying degrees have struggled to fit ourselves into what currently exists, like square pegs into round holes.

We are squeezed into school systems, corporate structures, religious codes and so on. Yet you are the seed of a greater tree. One that brings a new fruit to the world. Your vision is needed to expand our world past it’s old limitations.

This for many people is the problem. They want to do x, but they can’t because the old world structure doesn’t accommodate it, in the form you want to do it.

‘I want to do this, but I can’t…’ ‘I hate doing this, I want something more meaningful to me…’

The real problem is that you are trying to fit your vision into a structure that doesn’t enable it. To overcome the problem you must choose between your vision and the old structure.

It so often feels as if the old base is the safer, more comfortable and more stable base. For most of our history by far the most popular choice was that of convention. There seems to be the authority, certainty and strength in numbers.

But change is inevitable. And as life is unfolding we are discovering that no structure lasts unchanged. Every society, Law, religion has modified over time. Visionaries such as Copernicus and Gallileo have overturned doctrine despite being overnumbered in strength, authority and power.

The truth will always find a way of coming to the surface.

You now have to choose your foundation.

photo credit: Matti Mattila

Do you base your decisions on your vision, your inner wisdom, your internal compass of truth or on the safety of convention?

Safety or excitement?

Boredom or risk?

Do you live or do you exist?

Tags: Finding Yourself // 4 Comments »