Saturday 17 October 2020

Call a friend who sees the good in others

A first little problem arises, however, when the decision made for us was a bad decision. What to do when this happens? Whose fault was it? What should happen next time? Should we ask more advice from that persons, should we ask them to make decisions for us that should be ours anyway? Or should we ask those who have made the wrong decision to be more skilled the next time? A second bigger problem arises when who made that decision for us is the manipulator of our life and therefore, the last person in the world we should call to make decisions for us. This is one of the many typical situations of codependency in which any answer to the questions just asked will be wrong. Any reaction of the codependent to a situation like this just described will be wrong. This is because the situation arises on a logical fallacy, which neglects the main problem: to focus on alternatives that are proposed as the only possible ones without being so. Machiavelli observed that the King of France has had the warrior pope at his mercy for more than once yet he never used this fact to his advantage. According to Machiavelli, this was a poor move on the part of the French king, and he was right. In 1512, France was driven out and completely lost whatever power it had over Italy. The Medici family, with the help of Pope Julius, brought in an army to conquer the city. The great lesson here that Machiavelli was trying to impart is this: Never allow people to be in a position where they could screw you over because eventually, they will. History has shown time and time again that no one could ever resist that kind of temptation. Example: When you're delegating tasks to your subordinates, don't do it so that one of your underlings will end up possessing so much power in his hands. As a rule, whatever authority you bestow upon others should never be enough for them to undermine your power. With the Medici family back on top of the ladder, Machiavelli was not only out of a job but he was also captured and tortured. According to historians, the real reason why the Medicis had him captured was that they wanted to discredit Machiavelli.

I got this sense that what happens on one side of the planet affects the other side. So I got this sense of connectedness--that we are all connected in some way. Making it into space requires years of training and hard work at the highest levels of academia, military, and government. Those who succeed become part of an elite group of heroes and heroines celebrated by contemporary culture and lionized in history articles. So it's no surprise that most astronauts, Ashby included, are driven by ambition and achievement. The glory of spaceflight motivated Ashby for many years. But after that first mission, Ashby felt that he had fundamentally changed. He started looking for a deeper path to fulfillment, one centered around the greater good rather than his personal goals. Other astronauts who have traveled into space report a similar transformation. Their values, according to one study, shift from self-focused ones like achievement, enjoyment, and self-direction to self-transcendent ones, like unity with nature, belief in God, and world peace. Each moment took the soul across a threshold of personal consciousness into a non-personal, yet more pure consciousness. The external physical circumstances that I would have previously called reality still seemed to occur, yet it was experienced in a way that was profoundly different. These events seemed to be somewhat paradoxically, occurring from a universal consciousness that was apparently simultaneously being experienced by a singular self. As the intense pain from the heat eventually decreased just a bit more, a sense that was beyond the mind arrived. It was a recognition that required no intelligence. I don't have words to describe the experience and sensation of the felt knowing that the intellect isn't able to understand. However, after a few moments, the knowing came and offered a name for what I was experiencing. If it could have been put into words, it would have been an ineffable perfection of love. Then, another profound knowing or realization came. The knowing had nothing to do with personal intelligence.

In other words, the main problem is that the person who had to make the decision did not make it. But suddenly the main problem will be hidden behind the false one: if whoever took the decision, without having to do it, was or was not up to it. Self-Esteem and Self-Love Mean Avoiding Conflict We give importance to the esteem and love of others, less importance to self-esteem and self-love. We repress the conflict for fear of losing the support or approval of other people. It might seem we are linking two separates topics in this title but the connection between the two statements will be more evident very soon. Healthily living the conflict implies two main points: In many conflicts, one part should win, and the other part should lose. As the self-esteem of others seems more important than ours, we don't really like winning in a conflict as it possibly will damage the self-esteem of another person so, in consequence the quality of our relationship. We should say we prefer losing but. That's because his previous writings (Istorie fiorentine) threatened to show the public the true nature of the foundation of the Medicis' power. When Machiavelli was released, he quit politics and instead, begun writing his popular article, the Prince, in 1513. Alright, so how was all that history relevant? It was this succession of events that inspired the Prince. Machiavelli wrote his philosophies based on what he had observed firsthand. Not only was he a man ahead of his time, but he was at a position that made him privy to the entire history of the Florentine families. As such, he knew and understood the very source of their power base. During his time, Italy was being passed into the hands of one leader to another. At a short span of time, a lot of great men rose to power only to be kicked out of the throne before the seat was even warm. Because Machiavelli was not on the seat of power himself, he was able to see things that the conquerors themselves were not able to.

You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, another astronaut has said, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, `Look at that, you son of a bitch. Ashby flew two more missions to help build the International Space Station. Then, at fifty-four years old, he left NASA. Like many other astronauts who have experienced the Overview Effect, he decided he wanted to contribute his experience and talent toward something bigger. Ron Garan, for example, established Manna Energy Ltd. Based on his experience in space, Ashby spent a lot of time thinking about the future of humankind and the earth. You cannot view the thin blue arc of our atmosphere from space, he has said, without developing a great concern for the protection of that fragile band of life and a desire to contribute to its preservation. Given that the planet will one day perish or become uninhabitable, he realized, humankind will need to move to another one in order to survive. It had to do with the degree by which I had renounced myself as an individual person. The fire that was burning in me was also burning away everything that was not this love. There came immediately, another knowing that this incredible love had automatically filled up the open space which my personal absence had left. At least one more knowing arose in the next few moments: this fiery love burned fear as one of its favorite fuels. It was magnificent by design. A few moments later, now standing in the middle of the room savoring the spark of light in a piece of furniture, I heard a fear issue from the mind. It was I am afraid. A vision came of the fear, as a small, bite-sized, energetic cloud, being held inside my mouth. It felt like an invisible meal or offering. Immediately, I swallowed the fear and had a vision of a tiny fear cloud dropping down into my heart.

If the conflict is not resolved, the relationship may break forever. Within codependency, those two assumptions are too difficult to manage as the greatest risk is precisely to put risks into the relationship. In the codependent's mindset, breaking relationships means opening doors to the fear of being alone and abandoned. In codependent relationships, therefore, the conflict must be managed in a more complex way, it must be more indirect and subtle. Explicit anger must appear as little as possible so that the conflict slips towards guilt and sadness. However, considering that it is impossible not to get angry, anger sooner or later appears quite explosively if not exactly in a dramatic and theatrical way. This is the typical anger management mentioned in the personality tests passive aggressive profile, that is to say, a locked up and suppressed anger which, event after event, frustration after frustration, grows more and more until it explodes, often in the most unexpected moments, thus leaving all observers quite surprised. When we observe attacks of aggressive passive anger in another person, our first reaction is not to understand how an element that seems so minimal and negligible may have generated such furious anger. In fact, we are not considering that small element as nothing more than the last straw that made the vessel of the codependent overflow, or to put it better, it blew the vessel up. This anger management takes on a very precise role in the relationship between codependent and narcissist: The victims of narcissists accumulate offenses, humiliations, frustrations, and sooner or later, let themselves go to an attack of fury. He studied where leaders triumphed and where they failed. Through this, he came up with the ideal characteristics of a great conqueror - one who will not only rise to the top, but stay on top. He believed that unification of the Italian peninsula was impossible unless a leader had all these ideal qualities including cunning, duplicity, and ruthlessness. Initially, Machiavelli was rooting for the Medici family. He actually believed that they could unite Italy and rule it with an ir0n fist. Their family was used to having power in their hands, the children were all groomed for ruling, and they possessed the necessary wealth and resources. However, to Machiavelli's dismay, when he begged the Medici heir Lorenzo di Piero to unify Italy, he didn't listen. All he ever wanted was for Italy to be united and for a rightful leader to sit on the throne. That said, he believed that for a potential Prince to get to the throne and stay there, he should know how to play the game and not be played by the game. He should be merciless, deceptive and not be bound by ethics.

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