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Chapter 13 : BEGINNING THE JOURNEY
Once the characteristics have been focused on in a general sense, the next step is to personalize the process. In order to do this, begin by creating the concept of yourself with each of these characteristics to a very high degree. In other words, develop the idea of what it would mean for you to be very true to yourself, very positive, very self-confident and so on.
In creating this personalized target, use whatever means you may find to be most effective to do so. You might wish to visualize yourself in such a state, perhaps you might imagine how it would feel to be that way, perhaps you might think about what you would be doing if you were like that, or you might find some other way of creating this personalized self-concept.
Regardless of the means that you use, do the best that you can to develop within your mind the person that you are aiming to become. Again, if you do not establish the goal within yourself you will not get there. Realistically again, this process of target development will be ongoing. Once the personalized target for each characteristic has been developed write it down to enhance your own personal definition in each category.
The next step will be to assess - where you are at now. How true to yourself are you? How positive are you? And so on. As honestly as you can, examine yourself from the perspective of each of these characteristics, at this your starting point, to determine where you are beginning this process of change from. This self-assessment may be difficult and painful to do but the more accurate and honest you are, the more you will benefit from the process. As you assess yourself in each characteristic, give yourself a score out of 10 to indicate where you are now in comparison with the personalized target that you have created for yourself. Again these scores may be written on the same paper where you have written your personalized targets.
With these steps you will have established the starting point of the journey and, as clearly as you are able to at this time, you will have fixed on a destination. By establishing these two coordinates you are able to begin to develop a strategy how to go from point A to point B and can prioritize regarding in what order to address the various issues, obstacles, and challenges facing you along the way. You have already begun the journey!
In order to enhance your progress in becoming your True Positive self some daily exercises will be helpful. Since you are now committed to this agenda as your number one priority, an effective practice upon awakening each day is to have your first mental step to be a renewal of your commitment.
Therefore, when you wake up say to yourself :
Another day. Today I will give my best effort
to be true to myself, positive, self-confident,
independent, capable, intelligent, wise, proud,
honest, direct, creative, caring, committed to
positive relationships, comfortable with and
enjoying my sexuality, committed to ongoing
growth and development, and joyful.
While you need not say this out loud, feel free to do so. Repeat this commitment several times as you begin your day. Since each day is another part of your journey, by re-establishing your objective from the outset, you will be better able to focus your thoughts, energy, and being to this goal. You will be going in some direction each day and this simple exercise helps you get off to a good start to keep you going in this one. Come back to repeat this commitment several times throughout the day. Do this especially when you find yourself going into a negative emotional or thinking loop. This will enable you to regain your focus to get back on track in the right direction, to help you draw upon positive energy from within yourself to deal with the situation at hand, and to reconnect with your internal concept of the True Positive Individual and the rational and emotional associations which you have related to this concept.
This works!
Please understand that what I am describing is not an affirmation. An affirmation would be : I am true to myself, I am positive, etc. With what I have described you are not even claiming to be true to yourself or anything along those lines. You are simply stating that you will give your best effort in the direction of being your True Positive self. The problem with affirmations is that, particularly as you begin the process of self-transformation, you do not likely possess any of the characteristics to a very high degree. Therefore, if you were to state that you did, the inaccuracy of these statements would be recognized within you and undermine whatever transient comfort such false compliments would bring. In addition, since honesty is a fundamental element of being this type of person, lying to yourself does not move you forward on your journey.
Affirmations are simply coping mechanisms for people with low self-esteem to attempt to drown out the internal self-hating chorus.
A statement of renewal of commitment to the goal, on the other hand, is simply a statement of position and objectives. You could be the most limited and negative person on the planet but if you have genuinely decided to become your True Positive self, your recommitment in this direction is a factual statement which cannot be neutralized from within or without. Because it is based on truth, it is solid and therefore gives you a base from which you can build and go forward. Having a solid reality base to operate from is crucial when one is confronting confusion and obstacles. It can be life-saving.
In addition to repeatedly renewing your commitment to the goal, at the end of each day take time to do a self-evaluation to assess how you did in fulfilling your commitment and the net results of your efforts. This exercise will be more effective if done in a written format but doing so is not essential.
First of all, ask yourself if you did in fact give your best effort towards being your True Positive self and answer with a "yes' or "no". Best effort means an effort which you are truly proud of for that day, recognizing that this process of self-transformation is a marathon and not a sprint. On some days you may give your best effort and may not appear to have accomplished very much while on other days your best effort may enable you to move mountains. Remember- you can always give your best effort, and that without your best effort you should not expect much in the way of results. However, so long as you give your best effort in this direction, you will have the best life that you can possibly have.
Next, give yourself a rating for that day for each of the sixteen characteristics of the True Positive Individual. Imagine how the True Positive you would have handled the day which you faced from the perspective of each characteristic and then rate how you did in comparison. Next, as you rate yourself for each characteristic, think about your day from that perspective and consider if you had any noteworthy achievements or difficulties that day relevant to that characteristic. For example, you may note an achievement in that in a certain situation you were very direct with someone with whom you usually avoid saying exactly what you think. Or as a difficulty, you may recognize that in a certain situation you were significantly lacking in self-confidence. On any given day you may have several achievements and difficulties or perhaps just one of each. You should, however, have some achievements and difficulties on most days. Even small steps forward in any given characteristic should be noted and should be happening if you are giving your best effort. If you are not having any difficulties, it would indicate that you are not challenging yourself enough and are staying too far within your safety zone.
In addition, if you wish you may keep a diary or journal-like record of your day to record the events or thoughts that you might have had that day. Although this can be a very useful exercise, again I do not consider it to be essential.
By beginning each day by renewing your commitment to the goal of becoming your True Positive self, by restating this commitment periodically through the day, and then by confronting yourself at the end of the day to see how you did in fulfilling this commitment, there will be an effect upon your behavior.
At various moments through the day you will find yourself in situations where you will have obvious options available to you to go in the direction of being your True Positive self or not. The reality of confronting yourself at the end of each day will spin off to have you effectively confronting yourself on a moment to moment basis. Again, the purpose of the exercise is to have you continuously focused on being your True Positive Self. If your mind is focused on having you become this person then that is exactly who you will eventually be.
Because of this focus the initial effect of your ongoing self-evaluation will be that you will notice a greater degree of consistency and fewer major swings in your self-evaluations because you are taking control of your life. Overall, you will notice a gradual ongoing improvement in your self-evaluations as you address your issues and challenge yourself more and more to become the person that you can be.
Along the way, you will raise your standards. When that happens you will realize that the ratings that you had been giving yourself were too high and as a result your self-assessments will go down. Do not be discouraged when this happens. Although your self-assessments will have gone down, in fact because your standards will have gone up, this change will represent significant positive growth on your part and help you evolve that much further forward.
Persistence and consistency are the keys to the achievement of results. There are
no days off on the journey to becoming your True Positive self.
So, at this point much has already been accomplished. You have identified the fundamental objective of who you want to become during the course of the rest of your life, recognizing that the True Positive you is the healthy optimal version of yourself which enables you to maximize the fulfillment of the positive life agenda. You have made a commitment to this objective, are giving your best effort each day in this regard, and furthermore are using a method to assess yourself and enhance your focus to help you achieve this goal.
This is the starting point. Without all of the above in place you should not expect meaningful results. On the other hand, simply doing what has already been described consistently for the rest of your life will have a tremendous positive impact upon your life and health. But there is more. Up to this point, my focus in this book has been on the nature of life, evolution, natural selection, and the destructive impact of domestication upon living things and our species in particular. I have attempted to present this information in a logical manner in order to provide a rational foundation to operate from and a rational goal for an individual to aim for as it strives to uncivilize itself to regain a state of health and aliveness.
It is my observation that the perspective put forward in the preceding pages is not commonly presented elsewhere, be it in therapeutic or non-therapeutic literature. To make it perfectly clear, let me restate it. Humans have become slaves, domesticated animals. Civilization, which has a fundamental anti-life agenda, has been the ideological vehicle of their domestication. To be alive and healthy and to enhance the probability of self-preservation and successful self-replication one must assume ownership of one's life and reject the life-destroying values of civilization and live in accordance with the laws of nature, to become a wild animal again. Such a position implies a fundamental rejection of many elements of what our civilized reality promotes. It is understood that having such an agenda is not a route to wealth and popularity. Any philosophy that operates within the construct of civilization is still approaching the problems of humans from within the box, or in this case more accurately within the cage.
To be able to think and reason outside of the cage is a challenging state of mind to strive for and an even more challenging way of life to achieve. Much updating and alteration of thinking is required to be able to have one's rational approach to reality be in that mode.
We are all saddled with ten thousand years of propaganda promoting civilization and attacking our animal essence. It would be unrealistic to expect any living individual to truly liberate itself completely of such thought structures within its own lifetime.
However, the rational aspect of Rational-Emotional Integrative Updating involves just that. Its goal is to have the individual focus its reasoning faculties on attaining the state of mind of the undomesticated human ape. A consistent analysis of one's thoughts and challenging of one's logic system throughout one's lifetime towards this end is required. Going rationally in this direction implies a discovery of new mental territory or perhaps more accurately a rediscovery of lost mental territory. You will find few others going in this direction.
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