PP5 / fear of disrespect
Here’s the fifth sequel of my Epicurean happiness guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness” (PP5)
SLAVERY (5) >> LET’S PUT OUR FEARS UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
Fear of Disrespect
We might not even realize we fear disrespect, because it permeates the foundation of so many human behaviors. Show me, you say? Here’s a smattering of examples:
* You begrudgingly put up elaborate Christmas decorations in your front yard and on your house because the people around you do and you don’t want to have to answer the question as to why you’re not in the Christmas spirit by saying, truthfully, “I’d rather sit and watch football and drink beer.”
* You buy mouthwash and wrinkle cream because you don’t want to be embarrassed by bad breath and aging skin and have people talk about your lack of self-respect and personal hygiene.
* You are far from obese but you want to lose just a few more pounds (I’m onto you though – you just want to say you’re a size 6 instead of an 8, yes? I’m right, aren’t I?).
* You want to hang your sheets and towels outside to dry because you love the fresh scent, but you don’t because it is considered uncouth in your gated community.
* The neighbors hear a nasty fight between you and your husband one night that includes the sound of breaking glass and slamming doors, but you both get up as usual the next morning and head off to church, holding hands, all the while gritting your teeth in order to keep up appearances.
* Your son drops out of Princeton because he was miserable there, but you don’t tell anyone because of what they no doubt would think about your parenting skills or your son’s lack of breeding.
* You lose your job but continue on with the same lifestyle to save face with your peers.
As you may have deduced from these examples, a fear of disrespect compels us to worry about what people think and say behind our backs; it may drive us to abandon our values; seek a higher social status; and live beyond our means — another reason to lay awake nights with worry and stress about our ever-increasing debt load. These reactions can’t lead to stress-FREEDOM — they are dead-end roads.
first sequel of my Epicurean happiness guidance
Here’s the first sequel of my Epicurean happiness guidance “From Pain to Pleasure: The Proven Pathway to Happiness”
SLAVERY (1)
You’ve probably never thought of yourself as a slave (unless you count cleaning toilets and ironing shirts). But you’re about to see how we’re all slaves — slaves to fear. I don’t mean fear of slimy swamp creatures and monsters in the closet, even of losing our jobs or becoming very ill. I’m talking about the same kind of fear Roosevelt referred to more than 75 years ago.
The fear we are slaves to is of something shapeless and cloudy inside our heads. The good news is we can break the chains of emotional slavery and find stress-FREEDOM if we:
* Understand how we got shackled in the first place
* Recognize that we’re the only ones who can set us free
* Have the tools to unlock the chains
* Commit ourselves to the task
We’ll define slavery in this particular context as:
A state of being deprived of freedom
Until we can break free from the chains of fear, we will continue to deprive ourselves of a pain- and anxiety-free existence. In other words, the life of happiness we all seek — a state of stress-FREEDOM.
WHAT WE’RE AFRAID OF
There are many slave drivers that have taken up residence in our heads, including fear of:
Pain
Loneliness
Disrespect
Failure
Poverty
Death
At first glance, you may scoff and say, “No, not me!” But if we examine the concepts further, you may adjust your thinking. This is a long list of questions, but it must be in order for us to fully explore our self-defeating behaviors.
Please answer with a “yes” or a “no”:
1. Do you regularly drink more than you intended to?
2. Do you dislike, and even try to avoid, criticism?
3. Do you worry about what others may be saying about you?
4. Do you believe some events are just a matter fate?
5. Are you comfortable taking risks?
6. Does someone in your life “have it in for you”? That is, does someone just not like you and want to cause you trouble and grief at every opportunity?
7. Do you sometimes berate yourself for spending too much on your wardrobe?
8. Do you change your hair color fairly often?
9. Do you want to have washboard abs?
10. Do you sometimes think of yourself as a loser?
11. Do you carry over credit card debt from month to month?
12. Do you envy others who are thin and trim?
13. Are you planning the-wedding-of-all-weddings?
14. Are you staying in an abusive relationship?
15. Do you pick up “dates” in bars?
16. Do you use hair growth formulas because you’re balding?
17. Do you whiten your teeth?
18. Do you occasionally get embarrassed by your spouse’s behavior at a party?
19. Are you afraid to be seen without makeup?
20. When another person dominates the conversation, name-drops, and brags about his accomplishments, do you respond in kind?
21. Do you ignore physical symptoms and avoid going to the doctor?
22. Are you reluctant to simplify your lifestyle in times of financial trouble?
23. Do you sometimes feel that you just don’t measure up, that you are not handsome or sexy or rich or smart enough?
24. Do you ever exaggerate your accomplishments or take sole credit for something you were only a part of?
25. Have you ever gone to a movie or out to a nice restaurant alone?
26. Do you tend to be offended by criticism?
27. Do you routinely cave in to pressure and then later want to kick yourself (e.g., drink more than you know you should just to be sociable at parties; agree to chair a committee when you know you don’t have the time to do a good job)?
28. Do you say “It’s just not fair” frequently?
29. Do you sabotage yourself, e.g., violate the terms of a weight-loss plan or drop out of a class you really wanted to take, for a flimsy reason?
30. Do you need to be right and to prevail in every disagreement?
31. Do you consistently blame other factors when things go badly for you?
32. Do you usually ignore the “small voice in your head” (your conscience) when it is saying something contrary to what you have made up your mind to do?
A “yes” answer to any of these questions does not automatically make you a slave, but you should ask yourself why you answered the question the way you did. Was it because you studied the benefits and consequences and then made a free and conscious choice after you determined it will help you along in your quest for happiness? Or was it because:
* You want your in-laws to know you are prosperous.
* You have an image of stylishness and attractiveness to maintain.
* You want people to think you are smart.
* You don’t want people to know how smart you are.
* You don’t want people to think you made a poor decision.
* You don’t want to die.
* You don’t want to be lonely.
* You want to meet others’ expectations.
* You believe the ads in magazines and on TV that attempt to persuade you of the importance of owning the latest electronic gadgets, driving a luxury car, transforming yourself into a silky blonde, drinking manly beer, being buff, thin, beautiful, well-dressed and fragrant.
* You must “keep up appearances.”
* You need to prove you’re “hip” or macho.
* The thought of meeting expectations — yours or another’s — is frightening enough to make you want to fail.
If you can see yourself in any of these statements, you are a slave to at least one fear, and probably more. This means you continually live in a state of stress, and when you are in a state of stress, you cannot find happiness. Only stress-FREEDOM can lead you to happiness. I’ll describe each of these fears in more detail so that becomes clearer.
<end of sequel 1 – to be continued>
stress-FREEDOM, pain, pleasure, happiness, Epicurus, Epicurean
culture/cultivation of stress-FREEDOM in Denmark
The goal: to live a happy life in stress-FREE contentment.
The means: expectation management, friends and family.
The culture of Epicurean stress-FREEDOM in being cultivated on a national scale in Denmark:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shepBx2ogJo
Proven Ancient Prevention against Modern Life’s “Stressors”
Stress is the consequence of the failure of an organism to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats, whether actual or imagined. The most common “stressors” include:
-
- pain
- a lack of control over environmental circumstances, such as food, housing, health, freedom
- social issues such as social defeat, relationship conflict, deception, break-ups
- major events such as birth, death, marriage, and divorce
- life experiences such as poverty, unemployment, exams, deadlines
Why are these very common issues and experiences perceived by many as threats? If they are so common, why are we not appropriately prepared for them? Is our failure to cope with the most common issues not a result of the malfunction of those whose responsibility it is to prepare us for life? Have our parents, teachers, educators and counselors all failed us?
Epicurus, the founder of the Epicurean school of philosophy and happiness-boosting life conduct, suffered all his life from a bladder pain that finally killed him. This fact, however, did not interfere with his pursuit of happiness, even though they had no pain relief medicines in 271 BCE.
So what was Epicurus’s secret? His “four-part cure,” in Greek “tetrapharmakos,” can give us a hint:
Don’t fear the gods,
Don’t worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure
But his anti-stress medicine could not be swallowed at once with a glass of water. His followers had to chew and digest it over many years in their communal educative life-schools. The effort must have been worthwhile since the Epicurean circles of friends flourished over 800 years from 300 BCE till 500 CE.
So how was Epicurus’s stress-prevention program practiced?
The Epicureans did not give up their possessions as the Pythagoreans did, since that would have prevented them from generously sharing their resources with each other. They did not rebel against the state and its institutions, as the Cynics did, since they relied on the state to protect them in exchange for performing their duties as citizens. (Epicurus himself went to Athens for his two-year term of military service at the age of 18.) They did not plot against rulers or attempt revolutions, as the Platonists did, since they believed that the exercise of political power beyond the bounds of their own self-administrative communes endangered their peace of mind, necessary for a good life in freedom and happiness. For the same reason they did not participate in state affairs, as the Stoics did. They kept a low profile according to one of their principles: “lathe biosas,” in English,” live unobtrusively” or “unnoticed.”
This is what they did: The happiness-seekers lived together in communities where they could individually and collectively promote each others’ progress on their pathways from pain to pleasure. They studied intensively Epicurus’s therapeutical writings and memorized the most important precepts so they had them ready at hand the moment the specific philosophical-psychological pill was needed. They gave each other feedback on their progress and those who were more advanced helped the others in the way modern life-coaches and trainers do through lectures, discussions, conversations, and practical activities.
How can an Epicurean lifestyle prevent each of life’s main “stressors”? Through the education and continuous practice of stress-busting, happiness-boosting attitudes towards all the issues related to pain, fear, frustration experienced today as social defeat, relationship conflict, deception, break-ups, births, deaths, divorce, poverty, unemployment, exams, and deadlines.
I will take up these issues individually and describe how Epicureans dealt with them over eight centuries and how we can deal with them today.
Satisfy Your Need for Subsistence by Following an Ancient Pathway Towards Stress-freedom
Did you know that unsatisfied needs cause stress and pain? Have you heard about a 2,300-year-old tried and true method for choosing happiness-boosting satisfiers instead of happiness-busters?
I define need as a condition requiring relief; anything that is necessary but lacking. To avoid stress and pain people must satisfy their needs. Fundamental needs are universal, that is, the same in all cultures throughout the ages. We all have the same fundamental needs for subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, identity, freedom and transcendence.
Need-satisfiers may vary among cultures and times, but one aspect is universal: The way in which we satisfy our needs can boost or bust our happiness. Oxygen, nutrition, shelter, clothing and sleep are satisfiers of the fundamental need for subsistence. What kind of nutrition, shelter or clothing we use to satisfy our need for subsistence varies largely from culture to culture and from individual to individual.
We all need the six major classes of nutrients: carbohydrates, fats, minerals, protein, vitamins and water. What we eat, however, is largely determined by the perceived palatability of foods. A simple diet of water and bread, fruits and vegetables is easy and cheap to obtain. Stress results when we adopt ideas (prompted by our family, friends, authorities or the all-pervasive advertising industry) that only a certain kind of sweetened and carbonated beverage can quench our thirst or only expensive and sophisticated dishes satiate our hunger.
Working long hours and getting stressed by peers, supervisors and customers can be the result of a false belief in having to pay the mortgages for a house which is far bigger than needed for sheltering us from the frost or heat. And billions of dollars are made by another industry entirely based on our inappropriate estimation of our needs and our false belief that we may obtain happiness through status: the fashion industry.
Hundreds of scientific studies furnish thousands of proofs for the rightness of an ancient philosophical school whose members dedicated their lives to the pursuit of happiness: the happiness-school communities of the Epicureans that flourished for 800 years between 300 BC and 500 AD in the Greek-Roman world. Their recipe was simple: The good life is a simple life lead in the safe circle of like-minded friends, satisfying our natural needs in a simple and appropriate manner. Their pathway to happiness was to follow simple pleasures that cause no harm to themselves or others, carefully avoiding activities or even thoughts that might lead to pain or disturbance.
What they did to reach the state of simple happiness is something we all can do:
- ask whether our fundamental need for subsistence is met by the appropriate satisfiers, i.e., whether we are overfed, overclad or overhoused
- readjust the satisfiers to the need: Eat and drink simple food and beverages, wear simple clothes and live in houses that are not bigger and costlier than necessary.
The result will be an immediate and substantial decline of our stress level and at the same time an upsurge in our sense of control, stress-freedom and self-respect. In other words, an instant increase of our happiness.
Today scientific research endorses the tenets and the lifestyle of the ancient Epicurean happiness experts, and they can be safely copied for making individuals truly happy and saving our natural resources at the same time.
You can make a first step today on this ancient and proven pathway from pain to pleasure by aligning your need for subsistence with tried and true happiness-boosting satisfiers, like opting for appropriate housing, clothing and food. If you need support or additional resources for the next steps, just browse the Internet for the happiness-boosting Epicurean pathway from pain to pleasure, from stress to stress-freedom.
ezinearticles to spread the word on Epicurean Happiness Guidance
I was told to write articles and publish them on ezinearticles so that I can reach a larger number of stress-freedom seekers. I will try this in the next days/weeks and will report on the results here.
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