In fact, in your day-to-day life, some days it can be, how come am I surrounded by people whose personal interests are in making me feel bad about myself and my world?
Again- this a technique of control - used to try and prevent your growth.
Or seeing through their facade, of usually inadequacy.
Your success and ability to get on with your life, will in large part be determined by your ability to sift through all of this negative information coming at you.
Note- stifled and stymied are of old english vocabulary meaning - to be an obstacle to; prevent the advancement or success of; thwart-restrain or smother.
For the most part, there are people in our lives who want us to do well no matter what. Then there are those who may not necessarily want us to improve–our neighbors, friends, coworkers,family, and others. However directly or subtly, they will try and tell us that we are incapable of the change we seek or the improvement we want from our lives:
“You’ll never be able to do that.”
“That’s for other people, not people like us.”
"Why do you want to do it that way?"
"You can't do that"
" God didn't..."
You could add a hundred more if you tried, I'm sure.
Whether someone is trying to get you to buy something, or is afraid of you improving, is it because it will illuminate his or her own inadequacies.
If you allow others to influence how you think or feel, you will be in service of them and not in service of yourself.
Often a salesperson (no matter what their title is) will start by making you think there was something wrong with what you have now: If there were nothing at all wrong with it, then there will be no reason to hire them, or buy their idea/product. So, essentially, the trick is to make you feel insecure about the now, and then you'll pay something, and they reap the profit.
Let’s take an unscrupulous doctor as an example. If people generally followed a nutritional protocol, with good living - barring hereditary issues, and accidents caused by others- doctors would essentially be out of a job. Therefore an unscrupulous doctor may convince a patient that they are at greater risk than reality dictates, by batteries of tests, poor prescriptive practices, etc etc, in order to create more billable hours.
A few years ago, my habits had brought me to a health crisis (time to change the habits). Being really very unwell, and never keen on the poorly trained medics of the country- I finally was convinced by friends to see a doctor.
Now, this one was not a good physical example of her profession- a major warning sign- She proceeded to tell me that it was important that I come back often–for treatments, because I was an as-of-yet-undiagnosed diabetic who was on the verge of potentially dying.
This concerned me, as I was actually having trouble with even walking up stairs at that stage- so after a week of thinking I decided I wasn't ready to be told that I was terminal from someone like that.
So, scraping up my resources I went to another medical doctor and got proper tests done. Nothing showing- I am not dying from diabetes, but I actually have excellent blood sugar. The other issues resolved themselves with some other care, self education, and intervention.
In this country it often known that doctors and their laboratories engineer tests to suggest the unconfirmable- so they still have employment next week. It is a supposedly first world country.
It is important to understand that all around you there are people and forces that want you to feel weak, vulnerable, and inadequate. The best thing you can do to control and fight back against these forces is to sniff out and identify these people for what they are–and then avoid them.
People will continually strive to keep the person at a certain level, for fear of being left alone, or of feeling bad about their own lack of progress.
Question yourself-with 17 billion or so people in the world- do you want to be around the fearful, and the 'naysayers'?
Move on, relax and succeed. There are many many good people in the world to balance out the others.
pic courtesy of www.pdpics.com
