Fact versus Opinions

Many times we create confusion when we add our own opinions to facts and come
up with wrong conclusions.

For example:

FACT: Two people are whispering when you walk up. Suddenly they stop talking.
OPINION: They must be gossiping about me.

FACT: A new lady is appointed in my department.

OPINION: They will ask me to leave!

FACT: He has reported about me to authorities.

OPINION: They will blacklist me. I am now ruined & finished!

Many a times we tend to behave negatively due to our own adverse opinions. We
feel people per se are hostile & unfriendly. We become anxious & fearful for no
good reason in a situation which is relatively safe.

It is said: “Men are disturbed not by things that happen, but by their opinions of
the things that happen.”

Echo effect or Mirror effect

What kind of friends do you have? What kind of employees? What kind of
colleagues? So many times in life we get from others EXACTLY WHAT WE
EXPECT!

In short the way we see people affects the way we treat them and the way we treat
them affects the way they perform. This is called Pygmalion Effect (sometimes
called the “echo effect” or the “mirror effect”).

Expectations can influence behavior: therefore, a manager may get better staff
performance if he expects better performance. What we see reflected in many
objects, situations, or persons are what we put there with our own expectations.
We create images of how things should be, and if these images are believed, they
become self fulfilling prophecies.

The feelings and tones which surround us can be changed if we work to change
them by sending out the kind of signal we want reflected or echoed. We all have
an audience of individuals and colleagues whose day, including their moods,
feelings, and dispositions, will be influenced by the way we start it.

The Pygmalion Effect has met the test of scientific analysis.

• A study showed that experiments could raise the IQ scores of children, especially
on verbal and information sub-tests, merely by expecting them to do well.
• study showed that worker performance increased markedly when the supervisor
of these workers was told that his group showed a special potential for their
particular job.

Annoyed with someone?

Many a times we find an excuse for our failure, we blame the society, unfair
treatment, injustice etc. Resentment or bitterness is an attempt to make our own
failure palatable. However, resentment is worst than a disease. It is a deadly poison
which makes happiness impossible and drains tremendous amount of energy.

Resentment is also a “way” of making us feel important. Many people get a

perverse satisfaction from the feeling “wronged.”

It is an illusion whereby a person thinks, if he can feel resentful / bitter enough,

and thereby “prove” the injustice, some magical process will undo the event of
circumstances which caused resentment. Resentment is a mental resistance to or
non-acceptance of something which has already happened.

Resentment is an emotional re-fighting of some event in the past. You cannot win,
because you are attempting to do the impossible – change the past.

Resentment, even when based upon real injustice and wrongs, is not the way to
win. It soon becomes an emotional habit. Habitually feeling that you are a victim
of injustice, you picture yourself as a victimized person.
Habitual resentment invariably leads to self-pity, which is worst possible
emotional habit anyone can develop. A person begins to picture himself as a victim
and results in inferior self-image.

As long as you harbor resentment / hatred, it is literally impossible for you to

picture yourself as a self-reliant and determined person. Your resentment is not
caused by other persons, events or circumstances. It is caused by your own
emotional response – your own reaction. You can control it if you firmly convince
yourself that resentment and self-pity are not ways of happiness and success, but
ways to defeat and unhappiness.

Our failures in human relations

Most of Our Failures in Human Relations are due to “misunderstandings”.

We expect other people to react and respond and come to the same conclusions as
we do from a given set of “facts” or “circumstances.”

No one responds or reacts to “things as they are,” but to his own mental images.
Most of the time, a person “understands” and interprets the situation differently
from us. He is merely responding appropriately to what – to him – seems to be the
truth about the situation.

Ask yourself:

“How does this appear to him?”

“How does he interpret this situation?”
“How does he feel about it?”

Try to understand why he might “act the way he does”

In dealing with other people try to see the situation from their point of view as
well as your own.
Think of your problems as potential teachers
Most people would agree that one of the greatest sources of stress in our lives is
our problems. To a certain degree this is true. A more accurate assessment,
however, is that the amount of stress we feel has more to do with how we relate to
our problems than it does with the problems themselves. In other words, how
much of a problem do we make our problems?

Problems come in many shapes, sizes, and degrees of seriousness, but all have one
thing in common: They present us with something that we wish were different.
The more we struggle with our problems and the more we want them to go away,
the worse they seem and the more stress they cause us.

Ironically, and luckily, the opposite is also true. When we accept our problems as
an inevitable part of life, when we look at them as potential teachers, it's as if a
weight has been lifted off our shoulders.

Think of a problem that you have struggled with for quite some time. How have
you dealt with this problem up until now? If you're like most, you've probably
struggled with it, mentally rehearsed it, analyzed it again and again, but have come
up short. Where has this entire struggle led you? Probably it has led to even more
confusion and stress.

Now think of the same problem in a new way. Rather than trying to push away the
problem and resist it, try to embrace it. Ask yourself what valuable lesson(s) this
problem might be able to teach you. Problems can teach us to depend on Krishna
more & more!
Worrying yourself to death
When it comes to stress, illness and wellness, it is important to remember that
what goes on in your mind is reflected in your body.

People who continually worry and get stressed about their problems tend to
develop tense muscles, become tired easily or get headaches. When their mind is
stressed, their body becomes stressed too.

Dwelling on your mistakes and over-analyzing what could go wrong or what you
could have done differently only drains your energy and distracts you from what
you have to do.

Worrying only uses up energy and doesn’t really help your situation. Like acid,
worry will just eat you away if you let it into your life each day.

There are endless things you can worry about…service, safety, health, future, etc.
But let’s face it:
• Worry doesn’t change the situation
• Worry won’t help time move any quicker
• Worry won’t help you with your service
• Worry just doesn’t help in any way…
So don’t do it!
Reacting to criticism
So often we are immobilized by the slightest criticism. We treat it like an
emergency, and defend ourselves as if we were in a battle.

When we react to criticism with a knee-jerk, defensive response, it hurts. We feel

attacked, and we have a need to defend or to offer a counter criticism. We fill our
minds with angry or hurtful thoughts directed at ourselves or at the person who is
being critical. All this reaction takes an enormous amount of mental energy.

An incredibly useful exercise is to agree with criticism directed toward you. I'm
not talking about turning into a doormat or ruining your self-esteem by believing
all negativity that comes in your direction. There are many times when simply
agreeing with criticism defuses the situation, satisfies a person's need to express a
point of view, offers you a chance to learn something about yourself by seeing a
grain of truth in another position, and, perhaps most important, provides you an
opportunity to remain calm.

One of the first times I consciously agreed with criticism directed toward me was
many years ago when a devotee said to me, "Sometimes you talk too much." I
remember feeling momentarily hurt before deciding to agree. I responded by
saying, "You're right, I do talk too much sometimes." In agreeing with him, I was
able to see that he had a good point. I often do talk too much! What's more, my
non-defensive reaction helped him to relax.

Reacting to criticism never makes the criticism go away. In fact, negative reactions
to criticism often convince the person doing the criticizing that they are accurate in
their assessment of you.
Spiritual Thermostat – Maintain your own climate
Hammer it home to yourself, that the key to the matter of whether you are
disturbed or tranquil, fearful or composed is not the external stimulus, whatever it
may be, but your response and reaction. Your own response is what “makes” you
feel fearful, anxious & insecure.

Do not emotionally respond to the scare “bells” in the environment. You are an
“actor” not a “reactor”. We should not be like a ship that goes whichever way the
wind happens to blow. We must keep our ship afloat and stable. Our ship must not
be tossed and rocked and perhaps sunk by every passing wave, or even a serious
storm.

Many times apart from the actual minor stimuli in the environment we respond to
our own negative mental pictures. We impose our own negatives: This or that may
happen; what if such & such happen. Stop scaring yourself to death with your own
mental pictures.

We respond to these negative pictures as if they were present reality. Your nervous
system can not tell the difference between a real experience and one that is vividly
imagined. The proper response to worry pictures is to totally ignore them.

Our physical body has a built in thermostat, which maintains the inner temperature
at a steady 98.6 degrees, regardless of the temperature in the environment. The
weather around you may be freezing cold, or 110 degrees. Yet your body maintains
its own climate – a steady 98.6. It is able to function properly in the environment
because it does not take on the climate of the environment. Cold or hot – it
maintains its own.

Likewise you don’t have to take on the outward climate. Use spiritual thermostat
to maintain an emotional climate and atmosphere in spite of the bad emotional
weather around you.