A Method of Change
I recently asked myself what made people change, and what could motivate them to want to be different to the person they are today. The answer to motivation, I'm sure there are millions, but it was with particular regard to how that I was more interested in.
Interestingly enough I have found my answer within the very words that you're reading. What we all possess, somewhere within ourselves, is an idealized view of ourselves. The person we want to be. We know our own potential, no one but ourselves can be so intimately aware of our own boundaries and limitations, and more importantly what we could be.
It is this idealized version that I have tried to crystallize in my writings for the last month, and I do find that as things go up here, I start to really think about what I have just written, what they mean and what they require of me. I understand that often these demands are harsh, that the alterations that they demand are exacting, and will push me to my maximum limit. They will demand a self-discipline and focus that I have not traditionally ever found myself demanding of myself.
The other is from keeping my eyes open. There is an Islamic maxim that all people are your teachers, for anyone who teaches you one thing is your teacher, and there is no person alive from who you cannot learn one thing if you know what to look for. I try now to spend a few minutes critically assessing people and thinking about everything I now have learned to look for, in the form of an internal checklist. It clarifies the nature of the person in front of me, but it also readily clarifies for me my own nature and what I should be aiming to be, what flaws exist in my on behavior and how I should regard them, given how I regard them in others.
My writing has been a tremendous catalyst of potential change in me. I now have to put into effect all of its teachings, when my holidays end, and life in reality begins again with the start of the new term. Lets see how it goes.
Interestingly enough I have found my answer within the very words that you're reading. What we all possess, somewhere within ourselves, is an idealized view of ourselves. The person we want to be. We know our own potential, no one but ourselves can be so intimately aware of our own boundaries and limitations, and more importantly what we could be.
It is this idealized version that I have tried to crystallize in my writings for the last month, and I do find that as things go up here, I start to really think about what I have just written, what they mean and what they require of me. I understand that often these demands are harsh, that the alterations that they demand are exacting, and will push me to my maximum limit. They will demand a self-discipline and focus that I have not traditionally ever found myself demanding of myself.
The other is from keeping my eyes open. There is an Islamic maxim that all people are your teachers, for anyone who teaches you one thing is your teacher, and there is no person alive from who you cannot learn one thing if you know what to look for. I try now to spend a few minutes critically assessing people and thinking about everything I now have learned to look for, in the form of an internal checklist. It clarifies the nature of the person in front of me, but it also readily clarifies for me my own nature and what I should be aiming to be, what flaws exist in my on behavior and how I should regard them, given how I regard them in others.
My writing has been a tremendous catalyst of potential change in me. I now have to put into effect all of its teachings, when my holidays end, and life in reality begins again with the start of the new term. Lets see how it goes.
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