The trick to becoming a happier and healthier person is to understand exactly how we contribute to our emotional and behavioral problems.
Sure, the world around us can be a difficult and challenging place. Yet most of our suffering and self-defeat are caused by chaotic dynamics in our mental and emotional processing. Up to this point, the human race hasn’t understood these dynamics clearly enough.
For starters, we want to expose the operations of our inner critic. That part of us assumes to be our voice of authority. It pretends to represent our best interests. But this part of us is inappropriately aggressive, and it is a source of negativity.
Another source of negativity is our inner passivity. This part is often represented by an inner voice of self-doubt. It is through inner passivity that we allow our inner critic to harass us, intimidate us, and hold us accountable. Inner passivity makes it very hard for us to self-regulate.
We also have a built-in flaw in our psyche. This flaw causes us to want to recycle and replay old hurts from our past. We are strongly tempted to replay over and over whatever is unresolved psychologically. We actually make unconscious choices to continue suffering in old, familiar ways with feeling deprived, helpless, controlled, rejected, criticized, and unloved.
There are other important contributors to our inner dynamics, and these include our defensiveness, our self-centeredness, and our psychological defenses.
Learning about these and other aspects of our psyche is tremendously liberating. We release ourselves from what is holding us back. When the negative is released, the positive—our birthright in joy and pleasure—takes its place. We discover our goodness, and realize our own unique, authentic self. Life becomes meaningful because we can feel our value. Now we know that we are doing our best.
The vital knowledge that reveals these inner processes is available in my softcover books and PDF files. They are available at http://www.questforself.com/. Remember, we can make no better investment than to uncover the blocks to the fulfillment of our own destiny.
