Your Erroneous Zones
The first book by Wayne Dyer, author of the multimillion-copy bestseller Pulling Your Own Strings and national bestsellers There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problemand Wisdom of the Ages,a positive and practical guide to breaking free from the trap of negative thinking and enjoying life to the fullest. If you're plagued by guilt or worry and find yourself unwittingly falling into the same old self-destructive patterns, then you have "erroneous zones" - whole facets of your approach to life that act as barriers to your success and happiness. Perhaps you believe that you have no control over your feelings and reactions - Dyer shows how you can take charge of yourself and manage how much you will let difficult times and people affect you. Or maybe you spend more time worrying what others think than working on what you want and need - Dyer points the way to true self-reliance. From self-image problems to over-dependence on others, Dyer gives you the tools you need to break free from negative thinking and enjoy life to the fullest.
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What Hacker News says
- I'm a jazz musician, and often used to do a lot of negative self-talk while playing in public. Like "Oh no, omg that was terrible, oh yuk, oh geez I can't play at all, oh that sounds awful!" etc. I read this book Effortless Mastery that mainly said, never criticize yourself on a gig—do that when you practise but never ever on gigs. So I stopped, and ever since have just had fun. The change was amazing.
I'm not sure but I think that affected my life in other areas too. Although I read a lot of self-help, psychology, new agey, etc books in my 20s, no one thing helped as much as that. I guess it's part of learning to love yourself. I was trained as a kid and young adult to treat others well, but never to treat myself well! The idea of yourself being one of these people you should treat well, never appeared. You can be so mean to yourself, say truly horrible things you'd never say to a friend or loved one, and hardly notice, if it's something you've always done. And I was bullied a lot at home and school, so treating me badly was something it was easy to also do myself, until I learned just to stop, to never do it. Then when you are kind to yourself, it's natural to be kind to others.
Some books I remember helping with this: New Guide to Rational Living by Albert Ellis (on becoming aware of your habitual thoughts and self-talk, and changing them for the better where necessary), Wayne Dyer's first two books Your Erroneous Zones and Pulling Your Own Strings (similar to Ellis), Louise Hay on loving yourself, SARK's first 8 books, everything by Robert Fulghum, A Life of One's Own and An Experiment in Leisure by Joanna Field/Marion Milner (psychological self-explorations). Emerson's essays. Also keeping a diary was very useful for seeing patterns, e.g. I'd describe some emotion for what seemed the first time, then see I'd described the same thing 10 times before!
- It sounds like you were into those things, now you're not. No big deal. So find something else you are now into and do that, maybe come back to those other things later.
I'm into a lot of different things, but only 1 or 2 at a time. I can't force myself to do something I'm not naturally into at the moment. I'm taking better notes now (started a couple of decades late) so when I go back to a subject months or a year later, it's all there waiting for me to continue.
You seem to be trying to force yourself, and seeing it as a problem with you that's it's not working. Be kinder to yourself! If you were treating someone else that way, trying to force them to focus on something they didn't want to, day after day, you would seem very mean, wouldn't you? One thing I've learnt is, we're taught to be nice to other people, but not to be nice to yourself, which is perhaps most important, as treating others well is difficult at best without that, and we're with ourselves 24/7. Treat yourself like someone you really love.[1] Sounds like you're blaming yourself, torturing yourself! The Albert Ellis' classic New Guide to Rational Living[2] was also very helpful to me, to become aware of how I was treating myself, what things I was saying to myself, and changing the negative things.
John Perry's essay on procrastination might be helpful too[0] – in short, have such a great list of To Dos that even if you're procrastinating by doing things much lower on the list, they still add up to an awesome life! I thought it was genius.
Good luck!
[0] http://structuredprocrastination.com/
[1] I think I got that from Louise Hay's How To Love Yourself.
[2] Also Wayne Dyer's excellent first 2 books Your Erroneous Zones and Pulling Your Own Strings cover similar ground, and might be more to your taste.
- "Your Erroneous Zones" -- Wayne Dyer.
- It's a Leftist recruitment article to get people feeling sorry for the poor who, SUPPOSEDLY, according to this article -- unlike most other humans, the poor are incapable of making good decisions, only bad ones.
I was living on the street as a teenager after making bad decisions and having my parents abandon me.
How did I start making good decisions (finally) ?
I quickly grew to HATE being poor.
That hatred of poverty helped me ask "okay, how do I get out of this, living on the street and having no prospects?"
I had independent means within 20 years (in my 30s) after that hatred of my poverty forced me to put more effort into what I did every day.
I was still making some bad decisions for a few years but over time I became very practiced at knowing what to choose (go to college? go in the military? get away from all my current acquaintances?)
Within a year of my peak of hating poverty I stumbled on the idea of having goals. I read "Your Erroneous Zones" by Wayne Dyer.
20 years later I had independent means (no boss, good income).
HATRED OF POVERTY. People who stay poor lack that.
THEIR RESPONSIBILITY. No one else's.
That article is a recruitment tool for Leftists, as in "we should feel sorry for the poor, it's not their fault."
Life will hold you individually responsible for YOUR DECISIONS.
So will the criminal justice system.
Articles like this one try to convince us that some people should NOT be held responsible for their behavior.
WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.
- I'm reading an outstanding book that addresses this issue. It's called "Your Erroneous Zones" by Wayne Dyer. The general theme of the book is "Break Free from Negative Thinking".
- I just started reading Your Erroneous Zones by Wayne Dyer, and the author has this to say about intelligence and happiness:
> Taking charge of yourself involves putting to rest some very prevalent myths. At the top of the list is the notion that intelligence is measured by your ability to solve complex problems; to read, write and compute at certain levels; and to resolve abstract equations quickly. This vision of intelligence predicates formal education and bookish excellence as the true measures of self-fulfillment. It encourages a kind of intellectual snobbery that has brought with it some demoralizing results. We have come to believe that someone who has more educational merit badges, who is a whiz at some form of scholastic discipline (math, science, a huge vocabulary, a memory for superfluous facts, a fast reader) is “intelligent.” Yet mental hospitals are clogged with patients who have all of the properly lettered credentials—as well as many who don’t. A truer barometer of intelligence is an effective, happy life lived each day and each present moment of every day. If you are happy, if you live each moment for everything it’s worth, then you are an intelligent person. Problem solving is a useful adjunct to your happiness, but if you know that given your inability to resolve a particular concern you can still choose happiness for yourself, or at a minimum refuse to choose unhappiness, then you are intelligent.
