from slavery to stress-FREEDOM
What is the gist of the roadmap my guidance from slavery to happiness through stress-freedom,
my friend G asked me yesterday on the phone.
I told her to wait for a few weeks until my e-book will be finished.
But she was very impatient and asked me whether I could make short outline of it in my blog.
So here it is:
First of all you have to know where you stand, at what level of slavery.
When you feel stressed out you usually have no idea about where it comes from and you start blaming your social and physical environment, instead of taking a good look at yourself.
“An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Some who is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on himself. ” (Epictetus: Enchiridion)
Now to get to know oneself has always been a risky adventure:
Socrates was put to death 2400 years ago just because he tried to spread the habit of reflection and it has been a risky but promising first step ever since to ask the questions like:
What is my role in this situation?
What is my contribution to the stress I feel?
Where do my ideas come from?
Who influenced my system of values?
Have I ever reflected on whether my value system is congruent with my personality, my goals?
Who has contributed to the design of my life-path?
Whose live am I living?
A good starting point is a time management training course. It is an opportunity to realize how many hours out of 24 hours you are living your own life and how many are the results of plans and designs made by others. This way you can see very fast whose slave you are.
Being a slave does not necessarily mean to be unhappy all the time. There is a feeling of childish irresponsibility which makes slavery attractive for a large number of people, probably the majority. The road from slavery to freedom involves reflection; reflection involves effort, because we are not trained to reflect. Our schools train us to read and write and do some arithmetic but they do not train us to reflect on our fundamental needs or on the sense we can give to our lives. For this reason the road from slavery to liberation and to authentic happiness has always been chosen and trodden only by a minority of courageous and determined women and men.
Comments
Leave a Reply
FREE Report about stress
Download instantly your copy!