Don’t think too much, don’t worry! Everything is going to be fine.
Saying that everything is going to be fine is like patching a leak in a boat with positive affirmations.
If you haven’t heard it before, here’s a parable of ‘The Drowning Man’.
This man was caught in a flood, desperately clinging to a rooftop. In his desperation, he prayed fervently to God to save him. At that moment, he imagined a divine hand reaching out to pull him. Soon, a man in a small rowboat appeared and reached out to the drowning man to help him. The drowning man refused to take his help, insisting that God would save him. So, the man in the rowboat paddled away.
No sooner, a motorboat arrived, where the drowning man was offered help to climb aboard. The man refused help again, saying that God would surely save him.
Later, a helicopter descended and offered the man to take the lifeline but he stubbornly assured his faith in God’s salvation.
Eventually, the flood rose above the rooftop, and the man drowned and died. He entered the afterlife where he finally met God and demanded an answer as to why he wasn’t saved.
God replied, “I sent you a rowboat, a motorboat, and a helicopter. What more did you expect?”
“Inaction cannot be replaced by Positive Affirmations.”
~Krescon Coaches
When there is a challenge in your life, how do you look at it?
Is it a challenge that you must address or is it something that will go away on its own?
I have heard many people on different platforms, be they physically on-stage or even on social media reels talk about positive affirmations. Indeed, these are effective but not without taking actionable steps toward your goal.
It’s almost like we take delight in gaslighting ourselves whereas reality paints a different picture.
“Visualization without action offers temporary relief from the problem you are encountering. The real problem is that the effect of reframing the mind does not last long.”
~Krescon Coaches
Goon: “Uh, you called, boss? I-I mean, uh, thou didst summon us, O Great Zeus?”
Maximillian Zeus: “Indeed I did. For you are to be among the first pitiful mortals to bear witness to the dawn of a new age.” He places a miniature of a magnetic weapon on a table board nearby, symbolizing the annihilation of the human race. “Soon all mortals will tremble once more at the fury of Zeus reborn!”
Maximillian Zeus is a supervillain character in the animated series Batman. He was a history professor obsessed with Greek Mythology. When things got rough, financially, he got mentally ill and started to believe he was the reincarnation of the God Zeus. Over time, the goons who worked for him had to play along to avoid conflict. His girlfriend, Miss Droukas was worried about his degrading behavior.
Miss Droukas confides with Batman: “He wasn’t always this way, you know. But then business got bad and he started handling cargo for the mob. After a while, with the pressure, and the tensions, things got confused. He’s not living in the real world anymore.”
Maxmillian was evading the problem at hand and felt comfortable in the arms of deception. The relief he experienced was indeed temporary but in his case, he spiraled into a kind of permanent self-deception. When he was finally stopped by Batman and admitted to the Arkham Asylum, his condition was perfectly evident in his words.
Maximillian Zeus: Walking the hallways of the asylum, passing by the various patients aka prisoners: “Now this is truly Olympus. Surely it can be no other place. There’s beautiful Demeter, goddess of the harvest. And double-faced Janus, lord of beginnings and endings. And merry Hermes, the trickster of the Gods. Now, at last, mighty Zeus is home.”
As you notice his words, Maximillian has lost his senses to an imaginary world where he revels in his new home in a straight jacket. Seeing all the villains in each room, he does not see them for who they are but rather replaces their darkness with something more pleasant.
He sees:
It was like his mind was used to being reframed into his world of self-deception even believing that Batman was Lord Hades, king of the underworld.
Therefore, deriving from the examples of the drowning man and Maximillian, we learn two lessons. Positive affirmations without actions are not solutions and continuing with this habit can only reframe the mind.
So, how does one move away from reframing their mind and delve into the habit of retraining their mind?
Picture a mahout who rides an elephant. Who is bigger in size? The mahout or the elephant? The elephant is bigger and yet the mahout is capable of controlling the elephant’s movements in the intended directions. How is this possible? The mahout trains the elephants since their infancy regarding gestures and interpretations.
What is happening here is practice over and over again. The elephant from its infancy has practiced and trained under the mahout for years, and so responds accordingly.
Similarly, consider the mind where positive affirmations are at the surface that cannot work unless you get into the repetitive habit of taking certain actions.
For example, instead of visualizing that you are compassionate, do one act of compassion in a day. Make it a habit to practice compassion each day.
“When it comes to RE-Training of the mind, it depicts more of Action.”
~Krescon Coaches
Let not your mind consume you in thoughts of sunshine while evading the truth and reality of life. Allow yourself to gradually set into the mode of facing challenges head-on while taking your time to retrain your mind.
RE = Repetition
Therefore, do not get into the repetitive habit of framing your mind within the confines of positive affirmations. Rather repeat the habit of retraining your mind to catch the misapprehensions that condition you to think a certain way.
“Oh, my problems will never leave, nothing will change.”
While this is a negative affirmation, remember that you must break this reframing of your mind as well. Work toward RE-Training your mind with actionable steps. By this, I mean, don’t just fool yourself into believing that things will get better and problems will get solved on their own. Know that actionable steps are necessary after you reach your Ground of Neutrality.
I shall end with this one single line that says it all.
“The path is made by walking.” ~Rumi
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