Best After E-Book

Eini Neve

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 306

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Best After — Basic Instructions on Being a Human ought to be a part of every human being’s upbringing. No one should be withheld from information on how to cast a solid foundation for one’s mental health and maturation into an authentic adult. This book helps to improve self-worth, straighten distortions in thinking and update the outdated silent assumptions. The section on maturation into an authentic adult reveals that some of us are still in a sticky “pudding,” while some have budded into a “grain of sand”. A brief overview on personality disorders represents information that makes it possible to avoid difficult relationships. This book also helps in finding a purpose in life. That purpose can be found after one first learns to recognize one’s basic desires. The final section of the book describes secrets of positive people and the three types of happiness. The basis of this book rests on the classic literature in psychology.

Leseprobe

Contents

1   GETTING STARTED

1.1 Change through reading?

1.2 Self-worth and self-esteem

1.3 Empathy

1.4 Justice

1.5 Abandonment

1.6 Guilt

1.7 Anger

1.8 Grief

1.9 Depression

1.10 Relinquishment

1.11 Surprising brains

2   DISTORTED THOUGHT PATTERNS

2.1 Sixteen distorted thought patterns

2.2 Four thought pattern families

3   SILENT ASSUMPTIONS

3.1 Approval

3.2 Love

3.3 Achievement

3.4 Perfectionism

3.5 Entitlement

3.6 Omnipotence

3.7 Autonomy

3.8 Updating silent assumptions

3.9 Other silent assumptions

4   METHODS FOR STRAIGHTENING DISTORTIONS

4.1 The most important basic method

4.2 Weighing method

4.3 Schedule

4.4 Eating an elephant in pieces

4.5 Imagining and role-playing

4.6 Mercy method

4.7 Desensitizing method

4.8 Counting method

4.9 “Oh no, I can’t”

4.10 Properly criticized

4.11 Chain of reasoning

4.12 How do you tend to predict?

4.13 Voyage or arrival?

4.14 Happy-go-lucky honesty

4.15 Helping others and gratitude

4.16 Meditation

5   PIECES OF A PUZZLE AND FUZZY BOUNDARIES

5.1 A human being’s 16 basic desires

5.2 Distortions of basic desires

5.3 Social maturity

5.4 Fallacy of control

5.5 Segment of responsibility

5.6 Empathy, control, and responsibility

5.7 A small and big paint brush

5.8 Important pieces of a jigsaw puzzle

5.9 Reason and heart

6   FROM SATISFACTION TO HAPPINESS

6.1 Happiness

6.2 Six strengths and virtues of positive people

6.3 Choice

6.4 Authentic adulthood

6.4 Main ingredient

REFERENCES

1 Getting started

You will be able to cast a foundation for proper human existence and maturation with these teachings. This book is like a sack of concrete, which gets its water from your reading. From that wet concrete, you will cast an even slab floor as a basis for your mental health and maturation into an authentic adult.

Some cast their foundation on solid ground, while some have a plot that is more challenging. Perhaps a soft or wet ground requires pilings or a steep cliff plot extraction. Challenging construction sites belong to at least those who are dispirited, depressed, easily irritable, constantly angry, guilt-ridden, inefficient, or perfectionists. They need to work slightly harder, and the first part of this book is particularly for them. On the other hand, everyone benefits simultaneously from these early teachings.

This kind of foundation casting theory ought to belong to every person’s basic syllabus. Why? Because in roughly 40 percent of families, children get an upbringing, the damages of which are being solved late into their adulthood — if they even get solved. Stop and think about that number for a second. Don’t you agree that 40 percent is a huge number? Almost in half of the families, children don’t receive sufficient instructions for life. It seems mind-boggling that societies maintain such a blind spot and don’t try to stand in for this limitation, for instance, during the children’s compulsory education.

What price does mankind pay for the fact that nearly half of its people are missing the basic teachings of how to exist as a stable, contented, and mature human being? The price paid shows itself as bullying at homes, schools, workplaces, and on the internet. It manifests itself as mental health issues. It is visible from the early retirement numbers due to mental health reasons. Take for instance Finland, a small Nordic country with a population of less than 5.5 million, yet 16 people retire early every single day due to mental health reasons (Finnish Centre for Pensions; statistics 2012 and 2013). Early retirement figures due to mental health problems are similar in all the developed, Western countries. This a second point for you to consider. Aren’t such rates alarming? These high level early retirement figures don’t even include those who persevere all the way to the statutory retirement age despite their unhappiness and mental problems. These figures don’t include those who never retire. With that I am referring especially to those who are victims of self-destruction. These all are some of the indications that nearly half of the people haven’t built their houses — that is: themselves — on an even slab. It is hard to build when one doesn’t know how to do it.

A negative, unhappy life attitude is widespread. If there was a common root behind such unhappiness, what would it be? I believe and will try to convince you while reading this book that at least one major cause for such unhappiness is deficiency in social maturation. Social maturation could also be called maturation into an authentic adult. Similar findings have been made before. For example, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck has earlier said something similar when he expressed that growth in mental health and growth in spirituality is one and the same thing. Spiritual growth and maturation into an authentic adult have, in fact, much in common. The main connecting factor is a highly developed ability to put oneself in another person’s shoes. Perhaps spiritual growth and maturation into an authentic adult is also one and the same thing.

Imagine that maturation into an authentic adult is depicted with a long segment, along which one moves as he matures. Then let’s put a negative, unhappy life attitude at the beginning end of that segment. From that segment end, we should drag ourselves towards the center, that is, towards healthier and happier regions. How is that done? First of all, we need to begin with the very basics. The very first basic item we need to focus on is a thought. Everything starts from refining our thoughts into a better shape. The next basic element is a silent assumption. Silent assumptions are our assumptions and beliefs about ourselves, other people, this life, and the world. Assumptions are therefore silent because they do not make much noise about their existence, but they show themselves, however, all the time in “everything”— in opinions, behaviors, and choices. Hence progression along the maturation segment requires also refining silent assumptions. We also need to develop our capacity for empathy, overcome our fallacy of control, and learn to carry the right amount of responsibility. This process is crowned with love, moderation, persistence, patience, and an order. At this point this all may sound a bit cryptic and maybe a bit laborious and even frightening, but everything will become clearer and easier as we move forward.

By sowing proper thoughts and actions, we eventually reap social maturity. Thus, we get a basic rule for mental health: the higher the social maturity level, the better the mental health. Just as well we could also say that the more authentic the adult, the better the mental health.

The starting end of the maturation segment inhabits also feelings of worthlessness. In case of a depressed person, those feelings may stem from this kind of thinking: “I never ever succeed in anything. I’m a total, worthless ‘loser.’ There’s no point in trying.” A lowspirited person may slander himself with slightly milder thoughts like “I have this flaw and that flaw. Then I have that flaw too.”

What makes a person feel worthless and insecure? For the majority of people those damages arise from the lovelessness of a home or a growth milieu. This lovelessness may have been highlighted by chaos and a possible abandonment or simply by threats of abandonment. Chaos is unpredictability, immoderation, and lack of continuity and an order. Where does this lovelessness come from? There are the same factors in the background from which you yourself may suffer: distorted thought patterns, distorted or outdated silent assumptions, and premature stagnation in maturation into an authentic adult.

Highly sensitive people may be more susceptible to depression under poor circumstances, but even then the main reason is the absence of love. The main ingredient in human maturation is, indeed, love. As long as the clearly recognizable undercurrent of love is always present, parents may be forgiven even for big mistakes in their child-rearing — and it’s a law of nature that every human parent makes mistakes.

It is unfortunate that some of us have to start from the very extreme end of the social maturation segment, while others have the better fortune to start closer to the middle. The more fortunate ones are those who have always been loved and valued, and who have learned good thought patterns from the get-go.

Nonetheless social maturation is possible for everyone because we all are capable of making changes in our thinking. Distorted thought patterns go always hand in hand with mental disorders. Furthermore, thoughts produce brain chemistry, even though at first it is really hard to believe and accept that. Everybody can modify their thoughts, if they want to. Thus everybody is able to alter their own brain chemistry. Thus everybody is able to heal their own mental health.

Teachings from the classics, newer books, articles and videos from the field of mental health have been collected in this book. Major source material is located in the References section, but otherwise very little reference is made to the sources in order to keep your attention on the topic. Existing knowledge yielded also new knowledge. Among the new and previously unpublished are the new distorted thought pattern “families” and the fallacy of control in social immaturity. Finally, these new observations had a great impact in how the final jigsaw is formed. That is to say, how negativity, depression, anxiety disorders, personality disorders, a maturation into an authentic adult, positivity, happiness are linked intelligibly to one another.

In the beginning of each chapter there is a set of figures in which there is a square on the lowest level of a staircase and a circle on the highest. Those forms represent healing, development, and maturation of a human being. We start as a square and seek to become a circle. Flawless circles — perfectly well-balanced human beings — don’t exist or at least there are so few of them that we don’t need to burden our minds with that thought. All the more there are those of us who are angular at different degrees. Teachings collected in this book help to grind those corners and edges smoother.

There are many paths to the final step of almost becoming a circle. For instance, religion can be a route to some to a near circle, but it can also be a path that keeps a person in a square form. The very same thing can therefore act totally differently for different people and in turn one can reach a similar end result via different routes.

How is it possible that well-meaning religious or spiritual teachings of no particular creed can produce a square? There are probably many reasons for that. Abilities, maturity level, and silent assumptions of both a distributor and a recipient surely play a role. One reason worthwhile pointing out is also the fact that teachings often start from too far up. That is, quite often these teachings relate to building the first level or the attic. If the foundation has not yet been cast or it is askew or hollow, then well-meaning teachings intended to be noble, good, and promote positive thinking may evoke only annoyance and anger. If the foundation has not yet been cast or it is askew or hollow, an alternative may also be a superficial adoption of doctrines as a set of rules. This book starts from the basics how a person can first cast an even, solid foundation on to which it is safe and smart to build.

Teachings in the first part of this book are based on cognitive psychotherapy. A cognition is just a fancy word for a thought. Hence in cognitive psychotherapy, the focus is on thinking. Healing and maturation begin when a person observes his own thinking and silent assumptions, and insofar as he notices them distorted, he starts the straightening work. This is a very conscious action. A slogan for cognitive psychotherapy could then well be: Health through awareness!

Usually people have a false presumption that feelings automatically flood into their mind. However, the fact remains that you can’t feel low-spiritedness, sadness, bubbling joy, perplexing love — nothing what so ever — before your brain processes first what is happening around you. Your brain processes first everything you experience and sense, such as: smelling, tasting, hearing, seeing or touching; and one of the end results is a feeling or feelings. First you have to understand on at least some level what is going on before you can have any feelings about it. If you get a positive understanding, your thoughts are positive and lead to positive feelings. If your impression is negative, you think negatively and you will have negative feelings. Neutral impressions and thoughts lead to neutral feelings. Only reflexes remain outside of this explanation. They only swing around the spinal cord and don’t reach the brain.

Quite often people have also a false presumption that thoughts are born automatically. They claim they have to be automatic, because no one would think voluntarily negative thoughts and make themselves willfully miserable. The culprit is, however, a very firmly fixed habit in which case it only feels as if the thoughts form automatically. You may have some difficulty accepting this concept in the beginning, but you are in fact constantly at the controls. On the other hand, the fact that you are constantly at the controls is the hopeoffering fact. You only need to steer better, and that is a skill that can be fully learned and mastered.

1.1 Change through reading?

First off you need to be infused with a trust that it is certainly possible to heal from low-spiritedness, depression, and several other negative feelings and habits only by reading. This kind of understanding and healing through reading is called reading therapy, that is, bibliotherapy. Bibliotherapy is approved and accepted in science. Scientific research on the effects of bibliotherapy has been done, for instance, on the book Feeling good by David D. Burns. Researchers were only surprised by the fact that the effects of bibliotherapy were even better after three years than right after completing reading. This surprising observation found finally its explanation: people who participated in this research sought repeatedly upliftment for their spirits from bibliotherapy when they were faced with adversity. This kind of repetition worked like a booster shot. Bibliotherapy, which is based on cognitive psychotherapy, is exactly this kind of “plowing of the thought field.”

If you already know that you are depressed or you find it out when you do a depression test, for instance, on the internet, you may heal better through bibliotherapy. When bibliotherapy is compared to drug therapy, the outcome is better and very long-lasting. Statistically the difference in treatment success is significant.

Nonetheless some depressed people benefit from drug therapy or their healing even requires it. Sometimes drug therapy is also a good way to settle down a brain so it is able to receive therapy, which will put thoughts into new grooves. If you are currently in psychotherapy or receiving drug therapy, bibliotherapy may speed significantly your healing. In other words, different treatments are not conflicting, instead they support each other. This, too, is an outcome from a scientific study.

Drug therapy will not be dealt with in this book after this. You are only left with three reminders about medications:

Alcohol and drugs don’t work as antidepressants. They worsen the mood further so there is an excellent reason to call them depressants. At the same time, they can be called stoppers of social maturation.

If your antidepressant doesn’t seem to have an effect, it is not your fault. None of the practitioners are so omniscient that they can prescribe with certainty the right medication and the right dosage from the get-go. Recovery may require several experimentations.

Every single person on this planet needs continuous medication and that means eating proper and real food. Processed foods don’t represent quality fuel.

Did that previous section produce a thought in your mind that you are a case that needs drug therapy, and there is no way you can heal simply by only reading this book? If you truly thought so, your thoughts produced feelings. Did those feelings include despair, cynicism, annoyance, or even hate? We move constructively forward if you replace that possible previous thought with a new thought: “This time I won’t jump to conclusions right away. I will also restrain myself from making objections after every single sentence.” If you said that new thought to yourself whole-heartedly, it produced at least a weak flicker of hope, that is, a feeling that will suffice perfectly well as a prime mover. With that flicker of hope, we will investigate next the truth about self-worth.

1.2 Self-worth and self-esteem

Self-worth and self-esteem are often used interchangeably. In this book it is seen that self-worth is the very core and self-esteem is more of an icing on top of it. You may feel that you have high selfesteem, that is, you know that you are quite good and competent and perhaps you are even very successful, but at the same time you may have a nagging feeling that you are not loveable and worthy. Such a nagging feeling exposes the core, low self-worth. You can never have genuinely high self-esteem if you feel you don’t have high self-worth. Therefore, we will focus here on self-worth instead of self-esteem. Self-worth is often also referred to as dignity. Self-confidence is, in turn, a belief and trust that one succeeds in works and activities, which one is undertaking.

How does self-worth show itself in practice? It shows itself in thoughts, speech, humor, silent assumptions, choices, behavior, maturity, satisfaction, and happiness. Because it shows itself in choices, thereby it shows itself, among other things, in a choice of a career and a spouse or in a choice not to have one. It shows itself through general health, because it has an effect how good care one takes of oneself. It shows itself through mental health, for instance, in a depression or even whether or not a person develops a personality disorder. Hence it shows itself in everything.

Let’s assume that two drivers aim to drive exactly the same distance in the exactly same horrible blizzard. One of them is very skillful and experienced in driving, but his self-worth is low. The other one is a mediocre driver, but his self-worth is high. Unexpectedly the ride of that skillful driver ends in a snowbank, whereas the mediocre driver arrives to the destination. The difference is that the mediocre driver drove with caution because he was carrying a valuable cargo. Thus self-worth shows itself even in an end result of a short drive. Therefore, self-worth should be the most important thing for you here and now.

If a person is unhappy, dispirited, depressed, easily irritable, constantly angry, guilt-ridden, inefficient, or a perfectionist, he invariably has low self-worth. Thus he feels worthless, loveless, and he has low respect towards himself.

The more severe the depression, the stronger a person believes in his worthlessness. According to research, 80 percent of depressed people feel even repulsion towards themselves. According to this same research, depressed people feel deficiency, for instance, in their intelligence, appearance, success, and popularity.

For starters, high self-worth is not based on these abovementioned qualities. High self-worth is not even based on massive assets. Many loved, famous, talented, good-looking, and wealthy victims of self-destruction provide us evidence for that.

High self-worth is not built on acceptance and success, but low self-worth is. People with low self-worth observe themselves through the eyes of other people. They ponder constantly what other people may be thinking about them. The measuring stick they use for their self-worth is external achievements, material possessions, and quality of human contacts. In addition, people with low selfworth wear magnifying glasses as their eyeglasses. When they look at the world through those glasses, every insignificant mistake, imperfection, limitation, or deficiency gets magnified into an overwhelming failure.

Before we proceed to the real truth about self-worth, let’s lighten the mood with this saying “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you, if you realized how seldom they do.” EleanorRoosevelt is considered to be the mother of this saying. Wayne Dyer, in turn, has said “What other people think of me is none of my business.”

You can’t earn your self-worth from what you have accomplished. Accomplishments, significant contacts, and status symbols bring satisfaction, but they don’t increase your genuine self-worth. The first bigger adversity brings crushingly down self-worth built on such external trappings and trimmings. An adversity is, indeed, a litmus test for the genuineness of one’s self-worth.

The time has come for you to hear the truth about your selfworth. This truth is that your worth was determined already at that moment you were created, that worth is immeasurable, and that worth remains. You are in your full worth always. You may think that you are being imposed with some religious definition. On the contrary, this is a very rational, practical definition based on a free choice. Happy and well-balanced people have chosen exactly this definition. They are constantly in their full worth no matter what happens to them. They feel worthy even if they lose their jobs, experience bankruptcy, are abandoned, or get seriously ill.

Undoubtedly you have heard criticism during your lifetime. Perhaps criticism is even a mild statement in your case, if you have been a target of nastiness, shouting, slander, bullying, and denigration. Most probably you have heard something negative, if you’re now dispirited or depressed and have low self-worth. You may have never thought about it, but you have the power to choose how you allow other people’s criticism affect you. Because you have the power to choose how you react, in the end, only you yourself can pose a threat to your self-worth. Understandably you may resist this idea. You may say “You have not been there and listened to those constant malicious remarks like I have. I have listened to how I know nothing, I will never learn anything and how I am a total ‘loser.’ When you hear enough of it, there’s no other option but to start believing in it.”

It is wrong and sad if you have received that kind of treatment. Your mood will improve from this tremendously as soon as you learn a new way to receive criticism. When you used your old way, criticism made you either sad or angry. Once you adopt a new way, your mood stays more neutral, and you won’t get as much of a dent in your self-worth.

Most of the people become sad from criticism. Perhaps this applies to you too. In case it does, then you automatically assume that your critic is absolutely right. Without much thought, you jump to a conclusion that, indeed, you were wrong or you did something wrong. If you are depressed, you magnify the importance of that criticism with your distorted thought patterns. For instance, you may think that you are a “loser.” You may also think “A fumbler like this shouldn’t try anything in the future.” You may also magnify the importance of your mistake by thinking “once the word starts to spread, no one will ever employ me.” With your distorted, negative thinking you lift your mistake on the podium and focus all the spotlights on it — and you feel depressed. Towards your critic, you may be passive, shiftless, and evasive. Quite possibly you withdraw from the situation.

Some people relate to criticism by getting angry. Even some of the depressed people choose this angry approach. Maybe this applies to you too? When you receive criticism, you immediately get defensive. You may heap accusations on your critic because you assume that the best defense is a fire-and-brimstone offense. At the same time, you persistently refuse to admit that you could have in any way done a mistake. If you admitted to it, at the same time, you would admit that you are a worthless person. For a short moment you may feel triumphant if you managed to slate your critic. In the long run the end result may be a rupture in your relationship. When that happens, then you may feel really unhappy.

There is yet another way to meet criticism. This third way is a good way because your mood remains calmer and more contented. This is a way that is already used by those with high self-worth. When you face criticism, decide first if that criticism is right or wrong. Because it is quite possible that that criticism is not justified. If your critic is wrong, there is no need for you to hurt your feelings. It is his mistake, not yours. If, instead, you realize that you made a mistake, you still don’t need to feel sad or upset about it because we all make mistakes. You can’t be expected to be perfect. No one needs to be perfect.

It is easy to admit having made a mistake when you don’t mix the deed with the doer. A mistake is not the same thing as the person who did it. When you sever this wrong connection between the deed and the doer, mistakes no longer crumple your self-worth. After you have recognized your mistake, you can do your best to fix it. The less you waste your time and energy on guilt, the more efficient you are in solving the real problem.

If up to this point receiving criticism has caused you a huge drama in one way or another, it is certainly very difficult for you to believe that it could be something this simple. The stronger you are used to thinking that mistakes determine your self-worth, the harder it is for you to adopt this truth. Still, move gradually and with confidence towards this third, more tranquil way. Your quality of life will improve from that move considerably. In 4.10 Properly criticized we go through this with even more detail.

It is, of course, possible that you are afraid of criticism for the fact that you feel you need other people’s approval in order to be happy. Then you dedicate all your energy to pleasing others and you never get to be your authentic self. In addition to wasting life in a “wrong skin,” people don’t necessarily warm to your pleasing because they think that the most interesting people are people who have found their own authenticity.

Already reading the preceding paragraphs with insight will grow your self-worth with huge leaps. Your self-worth will grow further when you learn more about distorted thought patterns, silent assumptions, straightening these distortions, maturation into an authentic adult, and character strengths and virtues of positive people as you read this book further.

You may have already consciously or unconsciously tried to improve your self-worth with a wrong method. Next we have to go through that method and then send it to a hazardous waste disposal facility. The name of this method is improving one’s self-worth by belittling others.

Imagine that the height of your self-worth is “three feet.” Then imagine next that you have a really good friend and you think that your friend’s self-worth is “ten feet high” because he is a really qualified, talented, smart, successful, good-looking, cheerful, and a popular person. A primitive way to strive for equal heights is to attempt to pull your friend from “ten feet” height down to your “three feet” height. In order to do that, you think or even say out loud these kinds of things “But I am still better than he is in mathematics.” You waste your energy trying to rake up your otherwise splendid friend’s inadequacies so that you yourself can feel more worthy. This kind of route is a dangerous route of envy. Sooner or later your friend at least senses that you are pulling him down and you end up without his excellent company. Therefore, notice how you try to lift up your self-worth. The right way is that you yourself rise naturally to that “ten feet” height by loving yourself and by not being boastful, and you don’t pull others down to “three feet.”

Besides low self-worth, the origin of envy consists of a silent assumption that we live in a very finite world. The universe, however, expands every moment, and water corresponding to a million bathtubs full of water rushes down Niagara Falls every minute. Have you ever wondered why that spewing of water doesn’t stop? How on earth has there been enough water corresponding to those one million bathtubs a minute for already about 12,000 years, and the falls don’t even show signs of slowing down? If you have never thought about it, it may be that you think from a standpoint of scarcity, not abundance. Belief in scarcity is emphasized differently in different cultures, and it conditions us to feel that if someone has something then we are automatically left out and without it. Thus, for instance, in Finland, people made magic in the old days at Midsummer in which they seized growth vigor from their neighbor’s fields to their own fields by collecting dew. The thought model behind this was that there is only a certain quota of growth vigor, and one must capture his own share even if it meant hurting someone else in the process. It never occurred to those magic makers that there is sufficient growth vigor to be passed on to everyone. It takes an even higher maturity level to think that everyone benefits when everyone is successful. It takes yet even higher maturity level to think that it is for my benefit if my neighbor is successful, even though I myself am not successful right at this moment.

Scarcity with certain things is surely true. For instance, fossil fuels are finite, but that is only a good thing because it is totally senseless to use them when the Sun is shining more energy in one hour on our planet than the whole humanity uses in a year. It would be possible for mankind to solve energy management and other problems that truly limit humanity’s success. Hence a silent assumption of scarcity is first and foremost and only in our minds.

Scarcity and abundance share a similar pair of standpoints as fear and trust. People are often motivated with fear, when instead people should be motivated with trust.

If we go back to those “ten feet,” what is it like to be up there? Up on that height, the following saying is in force “When you are big, you dare to be small.” From “ten feet high,” it is already easy to praise and encourage others, rejoice the success of others, admit to one’s own mistakes and, if need be, ask for help with an open mind. From that height, one also dares to show one’s feelings.

Your self-worth improves when you truly internalize the concept that we all are, from the very beginning, at least at “ten feet high.” Ten feet is a constant from the beginning of life until its end. If one thinks himself of being only at “three feet high,” one is wrong. That “ten feet high” neither can be worn away shorter, nor can one climb any higher. Even receiving the Nobel Prize won’t add the height even for a hundredth of an inch. No matter how you choose to live your life, you always have the same “ten feet” height of self-worth.

A prerequisite for high self-worth is that one loves oneself. When one loves oneself, one also takes a good care of oneself. The thought of loving and caring for oneself may cause confusion in some readers because we have always been warned of self-love. A dictionary gives such synonyms for self-love as egotism, self-importance, selfconceit, and self-glory. For this reason, some people seem to have a misconception that loving oneself is conceited, puffed-up, arrogant, and sick. The fact is, however, that it represents health to treat oneself lovingly without a wrong kind of humility or superiority, fully aware of both one’s strengths and weaknesses. Even if all the other people around you place most peculiar conditions in order to love you, you don’t set a single condition. You get to love yourself unconditionally, exactly as you are at this very moment.

Loving yourself is the master key that opens the door for a healthy self-worth and to maturation into an authentic adulthood and into an authentic self. From this day forward, start your days by saying to yourself that you love yourself. Say it and mean it. If in the beginning you don’t believe it, in time you will. Don’t give up. Say only shortly that you love you and don’t make any additions like “because I’m such a good and compassionate human being.” All these extras make your love immediately conditional, but your love towards yourself is completely unconditional. This is under a five second investment that gives an incredible yield.

There is yet a very practical and easy-to-grasp definition for self-worth: low self-worth is born when you bully yourself with unreasonable, untrue, and negative thoughts; fairly high self-worth sees daylight when you already fight back against these distorted thought patterns; and high self-worth is a state at which you have already forced your distortions into a fall. These distortions of thoughts and silent assumptions are dealt with in the next chapters of this book. First you will learn to recognize them and a little later you will learn effective skills for straightening them.

What does even that previous very practical and easy-to-grasp definition of self-worth reveal to you? It, too, tells of love towards oneself. A human heart opens up more and more to love as one’s capacity for empathy develops. Thus next we must learn about empathy.

1.3 Empathy

Empathy is an ability to step into someone else’s boots and observe the events from the boot-owner’s standpoint. It is not necessary to sentimentalize as long as one sees things from the other person’s standpoint and understands how that other person feels. This is called cognitive empathy. Affective empathy includes also an ability to feel as the other person feels. In this case, the person capable of affective empathy has feelings that correspond to the feelings of the person who is the subject of empathy. Those who have sympathy feel only their own feelings that prevent sensitivity to the other person’s real situation, even though the people who sympathize may be very sorry, worried, and sad on behalf of the other person. Gentle and understanding concern of another person is, in turn, called support. Empathy is not sympathy or support. Empathy means that one forgets himself for a moment, and is fictitiously but as truthfully as possible, someone else or even an animal.

In the light of this knowledge, that emotional cousin whom everyone describes as being empathetic may perhaps rather be sympathetic — or perhaps he is both empathetic and sympathetic. This same wonderful cousin is also always ready to support others in the face of adversity. Then on the other hand a slightly standoffish mechanic was clearly empathetic when he showed up with his tools at his neighbor’s house to fix his neighbor’s car. When he arrived he said: “I figured the breakdown of your car was the last straw for you, since you haven’t had it easy lately.” The neighbor exclaimed: “That is exactly what I was thinking! I already thought that I’ll crawl under the covers and never come out again.” Therefore, it is not a question of sentimentalizing, it is not a question of helping either even though this mechanic ended up helping his neighbor, it’s a question of stepping into someone else’s boots, so that the boots’ owner can exclaim: “That is exactly what I was thinking!”

Obtaining a capacity to empathize is not easy. It takes work. In other words, one needs to practice it. An excellent way to improve one’s empathic capacity is by imagining and role-playing. Those are methods and methods are not otherwise discussed until in Chapter Four of this book, but imagining and role-playing for improving one’s empathic capacity are dealt with here and now. Why? Because improving mankind’s capacity to empathize is one of the main objectives of this book. Growth in mankind’s empathic capacity is important, if not the most important factor for the survival of this planet and humanity.

Empathy doesn’t mean that you have to agree with the person whose standpoint you are using in observing the situation. You only need to see why this other person thinks, says, decides, and acts as he thinks, says, decides, and acts. Therefore, the requirement for empathy is by no means impossible.

You may think that this kind of slipping into someone else’s boots doesn’t have an effect on anything. In reality empathy is very important for the individuals themselves and for the whole society. When it comes to an individual, empathy is an ingredient of life, which is absolutely essential, if one wishes to mature into an authentic adult. Empathy is important for society because prevailing practices would be much better, fairer, and healthier if all of us improved this noble capacity. How do you think a lack of empathy is reflected in your life and in society right now?