Stupid Physician?
Imagine going to a physician and getting yourself examined for an ailment. At the end of his assessment, the good doctor prescribes three green pills at night and two yellow pills when you awake, to be taken every day for one month. You respond, “But, doctor, shouldn’t I take two green pills? How about a few purple ones? And why do I need to take the yellow ones in the morning? You know I might forget…” Any self-respecting GP should kick you right out of his rooms if you were to question his judgment and prescription in that way. After all, you came to him for help, and he’s the physician, right? Do you know better? Is he stupid?
Here’s why people go to experts and then don’t follow their advice: Their self-esteem, self image and belief systems, along with self-sabotage caused by guilt, are like the governor that was put on the Land Rover that I drove in the army – it prevented the car from exceeding a certain speed. Our limitations are self-imposed, and that is why we persist in limiting our own progress. We find reasons not to take actions that will set us free. We seek evidence to maintain our dominant beliefs. We develop blind spots so that we don’t see the obvious and we ask questions that will demand answers that support our claims. So we make sure that we mess the recipe up in order to deprive ourselves of the cake, which we insist we want with all our hearts.
Is our position then one of hopelessness? Is there a way out of the mental prison that our conditioning has so carefully constructed over the years? Can we bend the bars of cynicism and self-delusion? Can we smash the locks of mysticism, defeatism, pessimism, and apathy, or are we doomed to languish forever in the slough of mediocrity and despair? We can we develop bulletproof determination, rock solid confidence and unlimited expectation, coupled with optimism, self-acceptance, ambition and genuine humility.
We can break free and make all our dreams come true. We need to find experts whom we trust and on whom we can rely, and then buttress ourselves with a support system of friends who are more advanced, evolved, and ambitious than we are. We have to start a kind of mental rehabilitation in order to reverse our negative brainwashing and that takes guts, determination, and perseverance.
In my life, it was the Success Motivation International (SMI) self-development programs of Paul J. Meyer that I listened to repeatedly and then taught others that initially set me free from negative conditioning at the age of 34. You learn more when you teach something. Over twenty years, I have immersed myself in teachings that are based on responsibility, freedom, discipline, capitalism, and the Objectivism of Ayn Rand. I surround myself with people who are smarter, more successful, richer, and better than I am. And so I can continue to grow. I have a long way to go yet, but I keep on pressing forward. I no longer question and second-guess experts. I am consciously incompetent. I know that we have to be like trees and grow until we die if we are to truly self-actualize and reach our full potential. The stronger we get, the more we can help those who are weaker.
Paul J. Meyer’s motto is my adopted motto: “Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass.”
Robin J. Elliott www.DollarMakers.com
posted by Robin J. Elliott at
10:49 PM
