To better understand homeostasis, consider your home’s heating system. Here again, self-kindness, self-acceptance, and self-compassion will serve your efforts; getting down on yourself will halt your progress. Is there any wonder anyone would avoid such a path? When you understand the “voices” behind laziness, you’re more able to navigate through it. When you understand the source of your resistance, you can navigate around and through it. endobj Get proven strategies to activate your highest potential. Iroegbu, P. (2002); Beyond Materialism and Spiritualism. Descartes, R. (1960). Your friends and family may prefer the “old” you. Our willpower has a kind of fuel tank. This single belief stops learning, destroys creativity, and inhibits personal mastery. A preview of this full-text is provided by Springer Nature. Keeping human beings in a state of homeostasis takes billions of interconnecting electrochemical signals coursing through our brains, nerve fibers, and bloodstream. It can fit on a single page. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities. endobj The path of growth often means taking on more demands and responsibility; it can mean a more difficult life. Let’s say Peter’s peer group tends to be sedentary. Laziness is something every person wrestles with to varying degrees. Teffo, LJ. Metaphysical Thinking in Africa The African Philosophy Reader. Big trouble! Abraham Maslow highlights thirteen characteristics of self-actualization he observed in individuals with positive mental health. In Toward a Psychology of Being, he writes: We grow forward when the delights of growth and anxieties of safety are greater than the anxieties of growth and the delights of safety. Those who achieve personal mastery learn how to avoid extremes. Even if the known is not ideal or even desirable, it’s familiar to us. Oyeshile, O.A. All great athletes have rituals for getting into a peak state to perform at their best. After a while, we lose access to the state of mastery. “I tried,” he tells himself. ��X����z��~a��{4#�ι�N�ML�T�boB͍}�/#mg��V�9��릻� �ȭHi p�����~D�����Icf�9�j����j�"�� See: How to Adopt a Beginner’s Mind to Improve Learning and Creativity. Discovering a great talent within yourself that demands nurturance can be exhilarating, but it can also bring feelings of danger and responsibility. Sometimes, choosing safety is wise and appropriate when it helps us to avoid more pain than we can bear in that moment. Peter stops running and slowly walks home. It gets depleted when our energy supply runs low. No matter what road to mastery you walk, you need a healthy reserve of physical energy to help manage stress, overcome resistance, and follow through. A clear vision will serve you in whatever areas you’re seeking growth and improvement. Feelings of shame and guilt, however, only delay our progress because when we feel bad, we tend to reinforce bad habits. You’re more likely to experience feelings of happiness or euphoria, of a zest in living, serenity, joy, and calmness. Self-mastery introduces a series of lessons for the new age. Developing a daily practice is perhaps the most powerful ritual in itself. If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. Africa today is enmeshed in a deep developmental crisis arising not only from economic stagnation, which has made nonsense of the traditional laws of demand, supply and production, but also from the crisis of social order which is rooted in the absence of a stable political order. Here are ten self-mastery secrets for breaking through resistance and building momentum on your path to higher self-actualization. One reason many of us fail to actualize more of our potential is that we lack a personal development plan. This guide is designed to assist you on your path. © 2008-2020 ResearchGate GmbH. Embracing this destiny leads to freedom and fulfillment. For example, let’s say a 40-year-old man named Peter has lived a sedentary lifestyle without any exercise, stretching, or movement for many years. We must know in our hearts that we have the potential to actualize and the will and grace to make it so. Self mastery is often defined as self-control, the ability to exert a strong will against our impulses to steer our future to one of our choosing. Come to enjoy practice for practice’s sake. They may admire your changes; your efforts may inspire them. Be playful and find ways to make your practice something you enjoy doing (while still accepting the fact that it will bring discomfort at times). Roux (eds.) When you grow, you’re different. You feel confidence in your ability to handle the inevitable problems along the way and the stresses and anxieties that accompany them. Fatigue creates its own form of resistance. 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