Thursday, March 4, 2010

Look First to the Iceberg in Your Own Eye ...

... and then you will be able to remove the ice crystal from your brother's eye.*

The Art of Manliness has been running a good series designed to help us boost our resiliency. This is part 4 but it doesn't suffer from being read as a stand alone article.
Have you ever reacted to something with an intensity of emotion that didn’t seem to match the circumstances of the event? The logical part of your mind is telling you that’s it’s not that big of deal, but you still feel really angry/hurt/depressed/anxious, and you can’t seem to turn off the emotion.

These kind of “overreactions” can leave us feeling pretty frustrated. They hurt our relationships and keep us from making progress in our lives. Not only do they lead us to dwell on things longer than we should, but we end up making poor decisions in this emotional state. These kinds of incongruous reactions keep us from responding resiliently to our problems.

So what causes these mismatched reactions? A collision with an iceberg, an iceberg belief to be precise. Water is pouring in your hull, but atop the deck you don’t really understand what has happened. All you know is that you’re sinking-fast.
This article does a great job of helping all of us to begin to identify those iceberg beliefs ("iceberg beliefs are fixed and frozen ideas about the world that we hold deep within us") and learn how to work through them.

*With apologies to Matthew 7:5.

4 comments:

  1. Ever have the Holy Spirit grab your head and point your eyes at the screen while yelling "SEEE!!!!!"

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  2. Oh, constantly! You'd think I'd be deaf by now. :-)

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  3. WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT, YOU WOMAN, YOU!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?


    :)

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