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When Do You Decide Enough Is Enough?
I’ve been wondering all day what makes one say “Enough is enough”?
When does one draw the line between what’s been going on in the past and what will happen in the future?
Where does the decisions to stop accepting old patterns, conjure up a long-awaited strength, and look for a better alternative, come from?
Does it come from our hearts, minds or souls? Or is it a mixture of all?
I recall in the past that whenever I didn’t listen to my intuition, which was telling me to do or reject doing something, I always ended up regretting it. Therefore, a long time ago, I learned that whenever there was a contradiction between my heart and mind, to always follow my intuition (i.e. heart or hunch).
The mind can be tricked yet it is there to serve a purpose. Most people across history have believed that emotions are there to delude us; that following them leads to misery. Therefore, mind has always been given the preference and the value to be labelled as ‘the decision-maker’ and the ‘manager’ of everything that has been going on in our brains.
Yet, what is science is proving nowadays is that the most authentic resource of our true preferences towards matters comes from our emotions. They are like miraculously individual inner compasses that are not lured or affected by opinions, appearances, benefits, etc. Each person has an inner compass that points in an independent direction that is not ruled by society or one’s mind. It talks to us through the inner hunches we may experience. That is why it is such a waste of resource and chance for authenticity to ignore those hunches, and follow what you think is ‘logical’, just because your mind is telling you so.
Listening to one’s mind is like relying on a traffic controller to shepherd your thoughts through directions it thinks they logically fit into. However, combining both, emotions and mind power, one can harness two key resources that can best lead us toward what we really want and align them with where we truly wish to go.
Our minds may force us to accept ‘realities’ as a given, and they may lead us to seek and follow a path that deep inside we may not want to be moving in. Our emotions never sleep or lie. They’re always there, and they tell us what our honest attitudes are toward things, yet we mostly choose not to listen to them out of fear to lose our way. Society has created this fear, but has it really allowed us to listen to our own intuition about things? Are we aware enough of our values and life purpose, to an extent where we’d prefer to listen to our inner compasses as opposed to just go with the flow or moving on autopilot?
I believe that no matter how much we may repress our inner hunches (intuition, true selves, etc.), they eventually come forward in a form of rebellion against our own brains and lives. This is where we may choose to draw the line between what we thought was good, and what we really want to be doing instead.
So what do you think? When would you draw the line and decide enough is enough?
Best Coaching Blog 2012
Hello everyone,
The School of Coaching Mastery is holding a competition of the Best Coaching Blog for the year 2012. I have been blessed so far with an increasing number of followers who really inspire me and motivate me to continue doing what I do best, Coaching and writing articles around my experiences in this field.
The reason why I participated in the competition is because I am hoping to attract even more traffic to my website and blog, and enrich my contacts’ list.
All of your comments, follows and Likes have made me feel that I’ve been in the company of all of you. What a great and motivating feeling it has been!
Therefore, I would really appreciate it if you’d take a minute to vote for me clicking the following button (which you can also find to the right side of the screen on my website http://www.wisdomwithinconsultancy.com and my blog wisdomwithinus.wordpress.com
Thank you! 
Ten Signs You’re Depressed But Don’t Know It
Depression affects so many people that it is often called the common cold of mental illness. The Centers For Disease Control estimates that 19 million Americans suffer from it. At some point in their lives, 10% to 25% of women and 5% to 12% of men will become clinically depressed. The sputtering economy and tenuousness of the job market doesn’t help: The Consumer Confidence Index just plunged to its lowest level since 1980.
Depression is no fashionable affliction. In it is real, insidious, and when in full bloom, debilitating. Yet far too many people are oblivious to their own deep sadness or simply refuse to recognize it. Emotional vulnerability? Verboten–especially among the achiever set. They’re less likely to ask for help than Tea Party members are to ask for a tax hike.
Ignorance and denial are not cures for depression. They are guarantees that when you finally own up to your sadness, it will kick you a hell of a lot harder than when you started suppressing it.
Here are 10 ways to detect depression early and let the healing begin.
1. You are over-confident and fearless.
Many people–and especially high achievers–cope with depression by acting in ways opposite to how they feel. (Shrinks call this “escapism.”) Engaging in daredevil pursuits, be it mounting a takeover of a rival company or quitting your job to open a restaurant, makes you feel invincible, when you’re really in the dumps. There is a method to this madness: The major cause of depressions–those not born of biochemical imbalances, of which there are plenty–is feeling out of control or helpless. Achievers loathe that feeling and fight like hell to deny it through action. But that, ultimately, won’t work.
2. You’ve gone from one drink with dinner to three before appetizers.
“Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.” Bernard Shaw’s observation is as true now as it was then. Drinking alcohol is the most common tactic people take to self-medicate emotional pain. The problem with this strategy is that when you finally recognize the pain driving you to drink, you’ll have two disorders to contend with rather than one.
3. You’re obsessed with achievement in bed.
Have a limp libido? Going on a Hugh-Hefner-like tear may not lift your spirits. If you find you’ve traded serial monogamy for seducing any partner that will have you, there is a good chance you’re trying to keep depression at bay.
4. Conflicts quickly escalate into fights.
One common but exceedingly dumb way to dull the feeling of helplessness brought on by depression is to show people you’re nobody’s patsy. Get cut off on the highway? Run the bastard off the road. Have an idea shot down at a brainstorming session? Take the opinionated punk outside and pummel him. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll have enough bruises to distract you from your emotional pain.
5. You feel nothing.
Rather than be sad, many people would choose to forgo feeling altogether. But some people end up getting stuck in neutral–dooming them to invite the same pain again and again. Worse, this zombie-like approach creates anxiety in those around you and alienates those who care for you.
6. You can’t stop socializing.
Immersing yourself in group activities sounds healthy–and for many people it is. However, if the sole purpose is to keep you from wrestling with your thoughts and feelings, having a brimming social calendar is not the answer (and you probably won’t be all that fun a companion anyway). Like the toxic mortgage securities still stinking up bank balance sheets, you have to flush out the dreck before you can start investing anew.
7. You can’t concentrate.
Everyone suffers from scattered thoughts now and again. Those who are depressed but who possess too much control to act out recklessly may do so in fantasy. But how to distinguish a healthy daydream from potentially dangerous ones? Healthy dreams involve changes in your life that you can realize in a handful of steps. Unhealthy ones take you from middle-class to movie-stardom overnight.
8. You have trouble accepting praise or goodwill.
Martin Seligman, the psychologist who revolutionized our thinking about depression, studied the behavior of dogs that were given electric shocks. Eventually, they would lay helplessly in their cages, not responding to tugs on their leashes that would have moved them to safety from the shocks. The human corollary: If you find yourself ignoring favorable gestures or simple interpersonal warmth, chances are you’re not a malcontent. You’re depressed.
9. You work harder, not smarter.
When people are depressed, they have trouble seeing novel solutions to their problems. Instead, they do more of the same. The classic example is trying to exercise your way to happiness: If you already log a few hours a week at the gym, spending another 30 more minutes every day may briefly lift your spirits. But that relief is ephemeral. When it dissipates, get off the treadmill and get to the root of what’s bothering you.
10. You laugh and cry at times that don’t call for it.
In psychiatry, the concept “inappropriate affect” refers to behavior that is emotionally out of sync with the stimulus that prompted it. People who are depressed but do not know it exhibit a unique variant of this problem: They over-react to insignificant sadness, and ignore major league bad news.
This flavor of depression, a stepchild of alexithymia which causes a gross lack of appropriate feelings, can really make you feel out-of-control. I first came across it when one of my clients told me of taking his children to the movies: “I cried in the theater when a deer lost its mother,” he said, “but when my partner handed me the legal papers demanding a dissolution of our business, I threw them in my ‘In Box’ and proceeded to order lunch.”
Image via WikipediaAbraham Maslow, one of America’s most influential psychologists, observed: “What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.” Fess up to how you feel so you can fight on.
You’ll be amazed at how relieved you’ll feel when you do.
Nominate A Contender For Forbes’ List Of America’s Most Promising Private Companies
See also:
Five Ways To Overcome The Fear of Chasing Your Dream
How To Tell Someone They’re Wrong (and Make Them Feel Good About It)
Conflict Resolution
“We cannot make someone responsible for how we feel”. Gwen Randall-Young
This is a very useful clip by Gwen Randall-Young that inspires one on how to resolve conflicts in a positive and healthy way. The same negative pattern of dealing with conflict – regardless of all shapes and forms it takes – leads to the same results, i.e. not resolving the conflict and may even escalate the situation.
Some of the factors contributing to a negative pattern in resolving conflict are:
- Taking things personally.
- Reacting with anger, resentment and judgement.
Gwen suggests empowering techniques that help us gain control of a situation by targeting specific behaviors and setting boundaries around them.
Allow yourself to be inspired by her wise suggestions.
Related articles
- Helping Children Resolve Conflicts (education.com)
- Managing Conflict (everydayhealth.com)
- Free audiobook: Resolving Everyday Conflict (wordsofgrace.wordpress.com)
- 6 steps to resolve conflict (cbsnews.com)
- Conflict Management in the Workplace (slideshare.net)
- Conflict Resolution is a Handy Skill in the Workplace (ruralstops.blogspot.com)
