  
September 8, 2005
After Hurricane Katrina struck
the US’s Gulf Coast, leaving an estimated $200 billion damage in its wake, countries from around the globe lined up
to offer material aid, cash and condolences.
The packages of aid ranged from small to large - from 60 Thai doctors and nurses
to 500,000 British military ration packs to 4 CH-47 Chinook helicopters from Singapore.
All told, around 90 nations
pledged some support. Many of them are flood-prone countries in the developing world, including Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which are still reeling
from their own natural calamities and hard-hit economies.
Laurence Simon, director of the Programs in Sustainable International Development
at Brandeis Univ.’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management, says it may not be “appropriate for [the United States] to be accepting these genuine offers from the poorest countries.”
“We could accept it graciously out of respect to the [hurricane] victims,” he says, “but we have to ask ourselves: Given
the resources of the US, might it be wiser to thank the poorest of the nations and encourage them to make use of these funds for the unmet needs of victims of the tsunami and poverty alleviation?”
Simon, who has worked in international
development, including disaster mitigation and recovery with Oxfam America, the United Nations Development Programme and the
World Bank since 1977, discusses the politics of aid distribution, the recovery efforts of last year’s tsunami vs. Hurricane
Katrina and the world’s reaction to the US ’ worst natural disaster in recent memory.
What do you make of the outpouring of aid from all parts of the globe?
I would expect many around the world were genuinely moved by the humanitarian crisis that’s
materialized.
Is this the first time emergency aid from the developing world has flowed into the US following
a natural disaster?
I’m not aware of a precedent, not on this scale. Nor am I aware of any other instance when aid was offered by the poorest developing nations. In my experience working with disaster relief, aid usually flows from developed to developing nations; it’s quite unusual for developing nations to be offering assistance
to us.
Does it surprise you that so much aid was pledged from poorer nations?
It does, especially by the
amount of aid from countries like Sri Lanka, which is still struggling to recover from the tsunami.
What was its offer to the US?
I had heard the offer was
a contribution to American Red Cross; I think around $25,000, which may sound small to us but actually represents a significant financial contribution given the needs within Sri Lanka.
Were these countries motivated more by shock or sympathy?
I couldn't begin to try to
speculate on their motivations. I think there is a very genuine concern for the plight of the people hurt by this.
Also, I believe the poorest countries are moved by the fact that so many of the victims of Katrina are marginalized citizens within
our own society.
Should the US be accepting aid from cash-strapped countries like Sri Lanka?
Certainly, for a country as
poor as Sri Lanka, if it had a unique contribution, it would be a nice gesture to receive it. Any contribution would be a
significant one. But if it’s merely an offer of cash, yes, we could accept it graciously out of respect to the [hurricane] victims, but we have to ask ourselves: We are honored by this gesture, but might it be wiser to make use of these funds for the unmet needs of victims of the tsunami?
I was a bit surprised [by Sri Lanka’s offer of aid] but more so by the statement I read from the [Bush] administration that these offers would be gratefully received. Still, I’m not sure it’s appropriate for us to be accepting these genuine offers from the poorest countries.
Historically speaking, how much do politics enter the equation when offering aid?
The US has a long history
of reaching out to countries hit by events of this magnitude and has been most generous, whether in slow disasters like drought or rapid ones like earthquakes. It’s been providing emergency relief despite its political positions or feelings.
Take a recent example: The
US provided a very significant response to the hunger crisis [during the mid-1990's] in
North Korea. We have given emergency relief to countries we don’t have diplomatic relations with over the past 30 years. We provided aid to Cambodia after the Pol Pot regime fell to Vietnamese troops.
But doesn’t U.S. aid usually come with strings attached?
Many people would argue there
is often a political string attached and there’s expectation of some sort of payback. We still hear of “tied aid” where the recipient is obligated to buy American. But in disaster relief, I think the US has been generous. It’s not as if a country is trying to buy some favors.
What were your impressions of the U.S. response to last year’s tsunami?
I think the initial reaction by [people in South Asia ] was a bit amazed, that
is, that the US’ initial response was so low, given the staggering need at the moment. But aid can be misunderstood. The US, i.e., will need to make an assessment of what the needs are before it throws money or material aid to countries. Still, I think the US was embarrassed by how little aid it offered initially.
Is it generally more difficult to send material aid vs. simply writing a check?
Outside of cash, the delivery
of emergency relief has always been very troubling. Commodities move slowly;
it’s a matter of several months, not weeks, in almost every major effort.
i.e., it’ll take usually
6 months for emergency food relief, once the international call is made. By that time, however, the famine situation or other emergencies on the ground are
usually so far advanced that we’re already seeing tremendous death tolls. If cash is needed, obviously that could be provided more quickly.
What about sending human resources? Cuba, i.e., offered to send more than 1,000
doctors.
If the US accepts Cuba’s offer of doctors, there should be nothing to stop them from arriving in a day or two, other than, of course,
diplomatic problems. How much closer can you get [than Cuba]? And no doubt Cuba would make
good on its offer. It has one of the finest medical-health systems in the Western Hemisphere; these would be very qualified
physicians.
The other issue is what the need is. Do we actually need doctors from outside the US? In any disaster-relief operation, you tend to be flooded immediately with personnel and things you don’t need. Sri Lankans, i.e., have a refined health-care system & [after the tsunami]
they began turning away offers of medical personnel because they felt they could cover their needs from within.
Have countries - the US included - ever refused emergency aid as a matter of pride?
The US has always prided itself on being able to fill its needs and I think it realizes that this disaster is on a very large scale. But the US has the resources and technology [to recover].
The major lesson, however,
from disaster recovery that applies here is that we want the victims of a natural disaster, who are often the very poor, to be better off than there were before. No one should be reconstructing the conditions of
poverty.
excerpt: Elizabeth
Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying, said, genuine anger communicated lasts about ten seconds, whereas dramatized anger, anger that's not addressing the truth of what the anger is about, lasts longer, sometimes years.
"Poor Me"
Dear Dr. Miller :
My child has a chronic medical problem which has some negative impact on his daily life. My concern is that he feels overly sorry for himself much of the time & he uses his condition to manipulate people.
How do I move him into a more
positive space where he can see all that he can do, rather than all that he can't do?
Your child
does have a genuine medical condition & he's going to have genuine emotions about it.
"Bad"
feelings are the psychological equivalent of pain, signals that something's wrong with
the person on a psychological level, that some needs aren't being met.
Children must learn:
- 1. to identify their feelings correctly
- 2. to express them appropriately
- 3. to identify the unmet
needs which give rise to the bad feelings
- 4. to control their behavior when they're having strong feelings
- 5. to take appropriate action to meet their needs
It sounds as if you want your
son to move directly from step (1) to steps (4) & (5), avoiding the expression of emotions which will enable him to know what he needs. He can't.
Are you denying your son's genuine feelings?
Negative feelings don't go away when they're denied; they become stronger and more persistent. They go away when they're expressed
to an understanding person and the needs they come from are met.
As the parent you need to empathize with your son. Give him a daily "whine time" when he
can express his frustration or sadness or grief about his disability.
Instead of providing
solutions and giving advice, just listen to his feelings. You'll be amazed that his need to complain may become less rather than more when he is truly listened to. Once you listen to him, you can help him through the steps above.
For your child to learn to handle his emotions in a healthy manner, you need to set an example. Unfortunately many of us adults were taught as children that bad feelings aren't okay.
They're not just okay, they're basic equipment for survival. What emotions is your son stimulating in you when he feels sorry for himself?
- Are
you angry at him? Look underneath the anger
for your other feelings.
It's okay for you to feel any or all of these things and even to express your feelings with tears or loudness and "feeling sorry for yourself," alone or to a friend.
As you go through all 5 steps,
you can get your own needs met. Then you'll be better able to empathize with your child and help him do what you have done.
Your listening is the tool to help your son move through the first 3 steps of identifying
and expressing his emotions and becoming aware of his unmet needs.
When this is complete, he'll
be ready to do the problem-solving represented in the last 2 steps. If he doesn't come up with ideas himself, you can help him find things he can do where he's on an equal footing with others rather than at a disadvantage.
You can help
him figure out when asking for help is the best thing to do and when it's more appropriate to handle something
himself and become more independent.
A pessimist is one whose glass is half empty; an optimist is one whose glass is half full; you might add a time of thankful awareness of the full half, once he has had his "whine time" about the empty half.
Once his emotions are acknowledged, he'll be able to move on to problem-solving. If you and his other caregivers neither give in to his manipulations nor deny his feelings, but listening empathically and then help him work things out, he'll mature and become independent.
"Thus we can strive gradually to become more compassionate, that is we can develop both genuine sympathy for others' suffering and the will to help remove their pain. As a result, our own serenity and inner strength will increase."
Dali Lama
Friendship Survival
Genuine friends aren't only
priceless; they're essential to our survival and an important part of survival preparedness. Genuine friends
listen thoughtfully to our sorrows, laugh with us and celebrate
our joy and victories as though they were their own.
True friendship is far more
than regular association and cordial behavior. Once established, neither poverty, wealth, honest human failings nor distance can sever the bonds of true affection and mutual support . . . just call out my name and you know wherever I am . . .
A true friend patiently accepts our imperfections, ever ready to offer encouragement and hope during hard times. For such friendships to endure the test of time, vigilance, empathetic awareness and nurturing skills must be constantly employed. True friends overlook the imperfections in our communications skills, our sour moods or our quoting of scripture or silence, when that's all we can offer.
Too often,
friendship is taken for granted, confidences are
betrayed and gossip or complaining begins to fray the fabric of once healthy relationships. Only at the brink of disintegration are salvage strategies attempted.
Arrogant individuals, filled with themselves, usually relinquish close relationships with ease when faced
with the prospect of humbling themselves and begging pardon for offenses, or perhaps sharing their abundance with
a temporarily material-challenged friend. For these proud dysfunctional folks, running away is just a fact of life.
Blessedly, most functional
people realize that friendships require great emotional sacrifice and are willing to do whatever it takes to preserve them
in these increasingly turbulent and difficult times.
For friendships to survive,
we must be willing and prepared to head off misunderstandings, unfulfilled expectations and misdirected frustration. How many of us wish we could take back something we said or did to some innocent soul who just happened to be in the path of our inappropriately expressed anger?
All people, being human, periodically
experience an overload of negative feelings. Physio-therapists know that if these feelings are internalized they will endanger necessary life functions. Often a friend will release anger inappropriately and we take it personally, when in actuality, no harm was intended.
If one is filled with unconditional love and awareness, they understand that they aren't the target, but just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is especially true for a
physically ill person.
Their feelings are just sitting right on the top, ready to boil over and woe be to the person who agitates them in any way! This is a serious consideration for any person who suffers from the debilitating effects of environmental
illness, cancer, or a host of other life threatening diseases or conditions Being friends with such sensitive persons is a high calling and one that requires a great deal of restraint.
For those taught to suppress negative feelings as children, there's always the unconscious fear that if they ever show their "bad" side, they'll be found out and their feelings of low self-esteem thereby validated.
These folks need unconditional love, the stabilizing ingredient they never received as children. If these emotionally deprived individuals associate with others as insecure as themselves, true friendship ecomes a remote possibility.
It's pretty hard to interject
stability into relationships when both parties are hiding their true feelings and are volatile reactors, mirroring and reflecting back negativity. Thus, the cycle of anger perpetuates itself as each person, in turn, feels they are the target of unjustified criticism or rage.
To break this destructive
cycle, Christ taught humankind to turn the other cheek, forgive others as we would be forgiven and to love not only our friends, but our enemies also, thereby destroying our enemies by making them our friends. Anger can't subdue anger, only love and acceptance can.
The quality of friendship
we're able to express, will depend on shared values and other interests held in common. These friendships will vary in degree and intensity, from minimal courteous greetings
to lifelong supportive relationships.
The supreme test of friendship
is laying one's life down that another may live. While this extreme sacrifice is unlikely, we must be prepared to live for
our friends, which in most cases is difficult enough.
Many people are guilty of expecting more from friends than they, themselves are willing to offer. Magnifying small inconsistencies and faults in others, these disloyal friends rarely feel bad if they break a promise or abuse their friendships with excessive borrowing or other no-nos.
They may have good intentions, but those expecting rewards for good intentions will always be disillusioned. After all, isn't that what the road to hell is paved with? For friendships to survive, they must be nurtured with conscientious reciprocity, forgiveness and true charity.
Our choice
of friends says much about our survival in the temporal world and our place in the world to come. The friends
we gravitate toward vibrate with the same resonance and are dedicated to the same goals and dreams.
If our friends are ruthless,
spiritually indifferent, lacking in appreciation, petty or mean-spirited and yet, we still feel comfortable in their presence, it's because we're like them.
Whether our friends lift us
up or pull us down, God will not have a difficult time determining where we shall spend eternity . . . it will be with our best friends.
 2001 Laura Martin-Buhler
In the non-living
world, no entity has the need for self-esteem; inanimate objects simply exist as a combination of matter and energy void of consciousness.
In the biological
world, no entity except man has the need for self-esteem. Non-conceptual entities, from the smallest plants to the largest apes, exist in an avolitonal state: they lack the ability
to develop conceptual thoughts and self-esteem.
Human beings are
different. They need self-esteem and they need it desperately.
Self-esteem is a psychological need of human beings like food is a physiological need of human beings. Self-esteem is the feeling that one is worthy of living, prosperously and happily.
Man can't move
forward in life without self-esteem. The person who doesn't develop genuine self-esteem conjures up a pseudo self-esteem.
Genuine self-esteem is an effect. Its cause isn't the great ideas one has, the moral character one develops, or the effort one exerts in life,
although these will raise one's self-esteem.
Genuine self-esteem arises from consistently producing values for oneself and other people. Defaulting on consistent value production erodes one's self-esteem. And no one can give another person self-esteem through praises or other means.
Moreover, one can't
perpetuate self-esteem from past accomplishments.
Pseudo self-esteem is a desperate attempt to hide one's deep feelings of worthlessness. Defaulting on one's responsibility to continuously produce values culminates in the need to conjure up pseudo self-esteem.
Often, the person
with a pseudo self-esteem grossly inflates his or her worth or value, first to self and then to others. Pseudo self-esteem is a fragile barrier to protect the void in the soul of those who never evolved into a mature human being: a fully conceptual, value producing adult.
If a person fails to develop genuine self-esteem, the person feels compelled to hide this failure with a pseudo self-esteem. He or she can't live with out self-esteem. A person without self-esteem would probably commit suicide.
Those with healthy
self-esteem typically escalate value production to benefit everyone. Those with pseudo self-esteem usually escalate value destruction to harm everyone. There's no neutral ground regarding this psychological issue: a person either has self-esteem or a person fakes self-esteem.
And one can't always
tell by physical appearances which person has self-esteem and which person fakes it.
i.e., one person
who smiles very little and participates in very few in celebrations may appear to have little or no self-esteem. Yet, such a person may be profoundly happy, fulfilled and have high self-esteem.
This person might
experience the emotion of happiness far more often than he experiences sadness. Another person, by contrast, may smile constantly and actively engage in every celebration available to him.
Yet, such a person
may in fact harbor a profound hatred of self and life. This person might experience the emotion of sadness far more often than he experiences happiness.
A common trap regarding self-esteem consists of reversing cause and effect; i.e., a man might seek to win the love of beautiful women with his irresistible charm. Such a person might then attempt to boost his fragile self-esteem by bragging to others about his romantic conquests.
This is an example
of reversing cause and effect: the cause is attracting a lover; the effect is self-esteem.
In reality, human
beings generate self-esteem by continuously producing values that others need or want and voluntarily purchase. By doing so, one will earn genuine self-esteem, along with wealth, power and happiness.
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What Is Genuine Control?
By Deanne Repich, National Institute
of Anxiety and Stress, Inc.
Genuine control isn't something lost or gained according to what someone else says, does or thinks. It's within me in abundance at all times.
Genuine control isn't about trying to make people like or love me. It's about liking and loving myself and allowing my inner beauty to shine through.
Genuine control isn't something that comes from manipulating the external environment - other people, events and circumstances. It comes from changing my internal environment - how I perceive and act.
Genuine control doesn't result in feelings of powerlessness, anxiety and self-doubt. It results in feelings of empowerment, contentment and increased self-esteem.
Genuine control doesn't drag me down. It lifts me up.
Genuine control doesn't come and go depending on how I'm feeling at the moment. It's within me at all times, even if I choose not to realize it or use it.
Genuine control doesn't mean attempting to make others do things my way and think the way I want. It means making my own choices and thinking for myself.
Genuine control doesn't mean looking outside of myself to determine who I am. It means looking within myself and appreciating who I am.
Genuine control doesn't mean single-handedly transforming economies, business climates and political realities. It means transforming my
internal reality (myself), which in turn positively affects the whole.
Genuine control isn't about predicting the future - my grades, my income, my relationships, or a thousand other things. It's knowing that
whatever happens I can choose how to perceive and react to life's events.
Genuine control doesn't mean trying to change someone else's feelings. It means that each person's feelings are his or hers alone, just as my feelings are mine alone.
Genuine control doesn't mean never making mistakes. It means understanding that making mistakes (& learning from them!) is essential to my success.
Genuine control isn't about feeling the need to change other peoples' preferences and opinions. It means developing and respecting my own.
Genuine control doesn't mean attempting the impossible and feeling disappointed that I didn't achieve it. It means attempting the possible and congratulating
myself on each small success I achieve.
Genuine control doesn't mean telling others how to spend their time. It means choosing how I spend my time.
Genuine control doesn't mean other people, events and situations determine my feelings, thoughts and actions. It means that I choose how to feel, think and act.
Genuine control isn't about trying to stop the rain, the snow, or the sunshine. It's about making rainbows, snowmen and sand castles. :)
Genuine control isn't about attempting to change what other people think, do and feel because I know what's best for them. It's about deciding how I react to what others think, do and feel because I know what's best for me.
Genuine control doesn't mean controling all of life's events. It means interpreting life's events in a way that promotes my growth, happiness and well-being.
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Getting free from the prison we've erected around ourselves.
One of the most harrowing pictures I ever saw appeared in Newsweek. The camera caught a glimpse into a life
that had, in many senses, vanished before it even began.
A child, who couldn't have been more than 3 or 4 years old, was carrying building materials. We would call him
a pre-schooler; in today's Sudan, he - and his parents - are slaves.
He can be
purchased by just about anyone; someone looked at him & saw two arms that will grow larger and stronger. It's not likely
that they saw a mind or a soul.
In the Newsweek
interview, the child had no idea of the name of his country or his village. Looking at him from my home in Jerusalem, I mourned
for his childhood far more than he did. I silently wished that he'd somehow be able to return to himself and learn that he's more than his two strong arms.
In the course
of our lives, we close doors to higher and deeper selves and sometimes forget that we, too, are more than earners, spenders and travelers through life.
Our thoughtless enslavement to mindless routine can leave us without much of a relationship to our souls. In a materialistic society, it's
all too easy to view others as competitors. As toddlers we observed that when you have 3 cookies and give one away, all you have left are two. From that point onward
we're afraid to give.
The problem
is that the soul, unlike the body, thrives on feeling giving, giving feelings and on the love that is its offspring.
We also
tend to become so self-involved that the God we all intuitively knew as children (children almost always believe in God, unless they're taught not to) becomes more and more removed from our moment-to-moment consciousness.
We act as
though we're more than mere creations. This alters our sense of dependency on the Creator and the concomitant realization that we're beloved recipients of endless free gifts. We end up amoral, with
no one to account to for our lives.
Like the
child in Newsweek, we don't know where we are or who we could be.
The solution
is teshuva, which means "return" (not "repentance" or "becoming more religious").
Thru teshuva we learn to re-establish a relationship as God's creations. It's a way in which we learn who we are and where we are.
How does
it work? There are 3 primary steps. Let's go through them one by one.
Confession
The
first step is confession to God. In concrete terms, this means examining our lives and honestly admitting to our mistakes and to the possibility of having wasted opportunities for growth.
One
method of doing this is to divide your life into eras (childhood, teen years, young
adulthood, marriage, career, parenting, middle-age, etc). Spend time with a notebook going
over each era. The question you should be asking yourself is:
"What
did I learn from this?"
not:
"How
did I feel?"
nor:
"Whose fault is it?"
which are ultimately irrelevant
to our process.
We can examine the effects of our positive experiences - e.g. When I volunteered in the special ed camp, I learned that people are beautiful in more ways than I had ever known.
Or the effects of negative ones - e.g., When I see my mother's face today, as I review what happened when I was 16,
after I said what I knew would pierce her as deeply as a knife would, I know how empowering destruction feels and how damaging
it is for all of us.
This process
can take a few hours and might be wise to divide over several days. When you finish, review what you've learned. When you look at the negative things you have done, look for patterns.
Is
impulsivity the reason that you made bad choices? Perhaps the culprit is an insatiable need to find validation. (Remember, if this is the case, we're not out to blame anyone. We're out to discover our highest and most authentic self.)
Once you
have a sense of what the patterns look like, you can confess not only the actions that you now regret, but also the underlying causes of choosing those actions.
With teshuva,
God opens doors that we may have locked years ago, erasing the negative impact of our choices.
The purpose
of this confession isn't to tell God something that He doesn't know. It's to help us regain our identity, by seeing ourselves as we are and asking God to help us heal the damage we've done to ourselves.
We can't erase the imprint of our choices, but God created teshuva even before He created the world. It's the one creation that isn't locked into the rule that "time
only flows in one direction."
When
we do teshuva honestly, God reverses time and opens doors that we may have locked years ago, erasing the negative impact of our choices.
Regret
The second
step is regret, which entails a disassociation with negative patterns to the point where they're demystified and repugnant. Let us look at two scenarios to understand why regret is so essential to the process of return.
Scenario 1:
Howie was a relentless hunter. As a college student, his prey was any girl who attracted him. As he grew older, he realized
that he wanted the stability of married life and settled down with Bev.
Last week
he met Mark, his old roomie, in the airport waiting area. They both were headed to Detroit on a plane that was delayed. As
they caught up with each other and reminisced about their college days, Howie waxed nostalgic about his macho conquests.
Scenario 2:
Same beginning as Scenario 1, but with one critical difference: One evening after the kids had gone to bed, Bev opened up to him and told him how other men had treated her like an object and how she had never trusted anyone until she met him.
That night
Howie couldn't sleep. He realized how much disillusion and distrust he had sowed and how much pain he had left behind him.
When he
met Mark later in the week, the last thing he wanted to bring up was his past. It was something he had to deal with and the
time and place was certainly not the airport lobby.
Regret leads to release from the prison of self-limiting behavior. Guilt leads to paralysis.
Regret and guilt aren't the same thing. Guilt creates paralysis. Regret creates redefinition.
Guilt is passive - e.g. I can't deal with this right now. I think I'll eat chocolate and go to sleep.
Regret is active (eventually Howie called his rabbi and asked
about what the next step should be).
Regret leads to release from the prison of self-limiting behavior.
Guilt goes nowhere and is so unpleasant that we tend to blame anyone available - just to liberate ourselves from its violent grip on our souls.
Resolution to Change
The 3rd
step is making changes within you that are so real that the old patterns will slowly fade. Eventually the day will come when old choices are just
plain unappealing. This is analogous to our no longer biting a friend who annoyed us as was our practice at the age of two.
How
do we change our patterns? There are various ways that are recommended by different sages over the course of the centuries. None of them
are meant to be "The Only Way."
Use whatever
works for you and recognize that as you change, methods that worked at one time in your life may not work forever. You'll need to change methods now and again.
Method 1: Daily Accounting
This
method was developed by the 19th century Baalei Mussar (ethicists):
1. Once
you identify your patterns and you sense which traits are the underlying cause of your errors, learn as much about the trait
as you can.
i.e., if
you find that time and again anger has been the cause of misjudgments that you regret profoundly, try reading Rabbi Zelig Pliskin's book "Anger: The Inner Teacher."
If there
are several problematic traits, you may have a lot of reading to do.
If you
spend serious time in transit, listening to the many tapes available [see http://www.aish.com/audio/] on almost any trait may be a very worthwhile investment.
The point
of gathering information is to find a sentence that really resonates. This should become your mantra, so to speak. Using
anger as our example, the phrase "Don't be reactive. Be the person you want to be" may speak to you. (It speaks to me.)
If you
wish to work on several traits, you'll have several sentences.
2. Get a notebook. (That makes you feel good already!)
If you're working
on 4 traits, begin by structuring 4 pages as follows:
-
On the top of the page
write your key phrase.
-
Underneath it, divide
the page into seven sections, leaving a large margin on the left side of the page.
-
Write the days of the week on top of the
7 sections.
-
In the left-side margin,
write the name of the traits you're working on - e.g.
(Notice
that I have presented the traits negatively other than positively. The first one on the list is the trait that matches the key phrase on top of the page.)
3. Every day of "week one," look at the key phrase first thing in the morning. Repeat it a number of times.
At
the end of the day, pencil in the number of times you forgot that phrase in the course of the day, by writing one dot for
each error.
Even
though you're not dealing with traits 2 - 4 as intensely this week, review your day and write in the number of slip-ups that
have taken place.
4. The next week, put the first trait on the bottom and move the second trait to the top, so that within a 4 week
span, you would have had each trait as the central one on the list.
5. Does it seem childish? Yes! Does it work? Yes & with startling rapidity. Within 40 days, you'll begin to
see dramatic results, even with traits that you've lived with your entire life. Of course if you don't continue the process,
the results fade, but it's an amazing method.
Method 2: Maimonides' Method
1. Picture
yourself in a moment of failure due to your inability (or lack of desire) to overcome whatever negative trait(s) are the source of your difficulties.
Now picture
yourself responding to the same situation in an entirely different way. It's important to actually visualize these two scenes so that the emotional self, which is moved by imagery, will be as involved as the intellectual self.
2. Ask a critical question: Since the gap between how I'd like to respond and how I actually respond is so great,
what can I do concretely today to narrow the gap?
i.e., if I tend to fly off the handle when my plans are ruined by other people's choices, today I can decide that no matter how upset I am, I won't raise my voice.
Although
I haven't yet come close to saying only the correct response, or judging people favorably, this is, however a good first step.
3. Be careful to see that the steps are small enough to be comfortably attainable and big enough to actually generate change.
4. Once you are at home with the first step, be sure to take a second step.
5. Go beyond where you'd like to be; i.e., if your problem is anger, aim at serenity, not merely at "not losing my temper."
There are
2 advantages to this method. 1, is that it works, with rare regressions. Secondly, you're working from the "outside in," which
allows you to be less defensive than if you had to confront your devils directly.
The
"disadvantage" is that, as you can see, this requires a long-term commitment.
Method 3: Turn to God
The 3rd
method is radically different than the other 2. It's the method recommended most by the Hassidic masters.
Turn to God directly, openly, passionately, in your own language.
Don't focus
on yourself. Don't chart your behavior. Turn to God directly, openly, passionately, in your own language. Ask Him to free you from the prison you've erected around yourself.
Tell Him
where you've been, what you've done and how you now know that you've done great harm to yourself and to others. Tell Him about
the times you have tried to change and failed and how you now acknowledge that He loves you and has given you life and that only He can help you.
Make this
a daily practice in which you include Him in every aspect of your journey.
The last
month of the Hebrew calendar, Elul, is called the Month of Compassion and Forgiveness. It's a time when we have more capacity to draw close to the Almighty than any other month of the year.
It's a time
when we can return. As Rosh Hashana approaches, let us use the time to also approach other people with compassion and see them in the way that we ourselves would want to be seen by God.
Let us ask
forgiveness from those whom we have wronged and by doing this, fill our world with compassion and grace.
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