Of course it sounds as if it were the most abject fatalism to have to admit that I am what I am, and that no escape or division is possible. It seems that if I am afraid, then I am “stuck” with fear. But in fact I am chained to the fear only so long as I am trying to get away from it. On the other hand, when I do not try to get away I discover that

The moment we deny ourselves some gratification, we feel deprived. Part X appeals to our selfishness, telling us we should never have to feel deprived.

The only way to fight this is to have an equally selfish reason not to give in to our impulses. In other words, we need to find a reward in depriving ourselves. In the lower-channel, purely material

Dr. Mathew Dumont writes, in The American Journal of Psychiatry, that “apart from the rapid and violent content of the programs, there are incessant changes of camera and focus, so that the viewer’s reference point shifts every few seconds. This technique literally programs a short attention span.”

“... a person who is obsessed with the desire for perfect feelings tries to feel refreshed at all times. In fact, however, our daily feelings naturally flow and change according to internal and external conditions like the weather. A person who insists upon feeling refreshed is like one who hopes to have clear skies all the time. As soon as he sees

Morning Pages make us more graceful, but that grace is intensely practical. We are nudged to act on our own behalf, and if we balk, we are nudged again. The pages will nag until we are willing to take action. The pages inaugurate change, and they walk us through that change. We do end the bad relationship. We do get sober. We do lose unwanted weigh

Take Action

Unlike intellectual concepts, instinctual intelligence has no value until you act on it. Most of us have tremendous problems taking action. We passively wait, hoping to get into a state of mind where we will be more motivated, less afraid. This reflects a complete misunderstanding of success. We need to take action regardless of how we f

The massive behavioral conditioning we’ve all been undergoing since the advent of ubiquitous electronic communications technology has changed us radically. But this dramatic, if not epochal, change is underappreciated. It’s underappreciated because we’re living in it as it happens, like frogs in cold water that slowly gets heated up without the fro

The ego likes big, dramatic actions that seem as if they’ll magically change the future. This gives the ego a sense of power. Real discipline is quite the opposite. It’s made up of an endless number of small steps, each of which can seem meaningless on its own. The ego has to humble itself to keep going on a productive course.

Another barrier to change is perfectionism’s demand for certainty before action. Because perfectionism says you need to know that your goal is correct before you spend any time or energy on it, you can get stuck spending weeks and months trying to figure out if your goal is worth pursuing in the first place. The issue with making certainty a prereq