Self-contained, not self-centered or selfish.

Sometimes waiting for insight is made easier by just writing about anything.

Several times over the last few days, I've written about ideas that just didn't seem to mesh with this blog. After all, the main idea is to give some new take on happiness in a way that helps others while discovering something new for myself.

In the meantime I have been doing my research and getting new credentials related to the work I want to end my living years with. I recently became a Certified Hypnotist and I am now planning the next by working on becoming a Consulting Hypnotist (formerly called Hypnotherapist).

My career has come full circle. I became interested in hypnosis when I was fourteen and now, 50 years later, I have been certified.

With that in mind I read Jack Elias book, Finding True Magic: Transpersonal Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy/NLP. While reading Jack's book, I discovered a whole string of words that finally triggered the writing bug.

Learning is exploring space, time, sensing, thinking, images, language, memory, emotions, feelings, choice, perception, relating, actions and reactions and, cause and effect. Learning is playing with our minds.

This simple list of words is what this blog is all about. Using these tools to understand and manage our selves.

The self-contained mind recognizes that it is responsible for how it interprets what it senses and feels and how it reacts and acts. Your are confident in your choices and abilities.

When you respond to those around you, your initial reaction may be to feel pain, but because you control your reactions, you realize it may not even be about you.  The world is not pain-free. You must work and live with other human beings.  They may not be aware of their effect on others because they are so tied up in their own pain.

The self-contained mind is neither anxious nor full of regret. The self-contained mind has forgiven others and themselves for past trespasses and is so focused on living in this moment that the future bears no fear.

We do not expect to have to manage someone who is in a mood. Nor should we expect other's to manage us because we are in a mood.

We re-arrange our thoughts, perceptions, attitudes by changing our perspective. Our belief is that being flexible is much better than being right. We are prepared to make unusual comparisons by relating uncommon concepts.

If you were taught that only one shape , for example the circle, was good and all other shapes including triangles, squares, rectangles were evil that would constantly influence your thinking. You would always be trying to find good circles and learn to deny or discount other shapes.

So it is with our model of the world.  Even science and mathematics are models. They limit and shape the way scientist direct their attention.

Quantum science, or the science of energy, has created a model which is different. A quantum is a small bundle of energy. Accordingly, a quantum scientist defines everything in terms of energy. And the mathematics follows suit. There may be equally valid ways of looking at living matter, but in the mean time our vision is bound by existing knowledge and popular theories.

I find it surprising sometimes that scientists, mathematicians and professors talk as though everything they know is absolute certainty.  It is as thought they are not aware that they are simply creating models of life, as though there models were real not based on their limiting rules, perceptions and attitudes.

A model is not real. It is something we create to look like the real thing but is limited by our ability.

How many mathematical equations can hold up a bridge? 

And, even with all their knowledge of bridge science and mathematics, bridges still manage to collapse.

The self-contained mind is will to explore emotions and feelings. Feelings and emotions have a purpose. They are there to indicated that something we are doing in our minds needs to change or that we need to take some action to correct our physical reactions. Too anxious or too much regret signals change is needed.

This is my perception and my model of world. You have choices to make and many responsibilities to take for your actions.

If there is one constant in life, it is change. Each moment lived is a moment never lived before and never to be lived again. 

All models are subject to change. The self-contained mind is well aware that flexibility is better than rigidity.