From Chapter 14 Dealing with Anxiety and Building Self-Esteem<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is estimated that in the course of a lifetime at least one in four Americans will suffer from a debilitating degree of anxiety or worry severe enough to meet the criteria for the medical diagnosis of an anxiety disorder\u2026but even those who never suffer from a pathological or disabling state of anxiety will, at one time or another, experience excessive levels of worry and anxiety that serve no useful purpose and do nothing but undermine their happiness and interfere with their happiness and interfere with their ability to accomplish their goals.\u201d P. 263<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amen to that<\/mark> Honesty as an antidote to low self-esteem or inflated self-confidence<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fearless and honest self-appraisal can be a powerful weapon against self-doubt and low self-confidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notice that anxiety and self-doubt are closely linked. Self-doubt really seems to be related to thoughts such as “am I good enough” “what if I can’t do such and such” “what if they don’t like me” Which then leads to anxiety. All of these things, according to the Dalai Lama can be resolved by combining the first set of strategies mentioned above (only worry about those things with a solution) as well as combining an honest appraisal of yourself. An honest appraisal does seem to require an acceptance of limitations which can be daunting in itself, but the alternative is having the perspective of “I’m just not good enough” which will then lead to unhappiness. Acceptance and humility are largely at play here.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n On the otherhand, what about arrogance. It’s hard for me to see that others recognize their own arrogance. And if they do, it seems rare they want to do anything about it. Yet, there are some who, while going through their own self-exploration, may begin to recognize it in themselves. <\/mark> <\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ve known quite a few arrogent folks. And the predominant factors I’ve observed are that they are arrogent because they feel like they are experts in something or they are super accomplished at something. I loved the Dalai Lama’s anetdote to this. Recognize how much you don’t know. I’d go one step further and say – then try to learn something new and see how hard it is. It’s quite humbling.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s important to notice here that the arrogence of others can cause others unhappiness, but the focus in this section is the unhappiness that arrogence causes the arrogent one. Arrogence often leads to unrealistic expectations which then leads to disappointment. Again the solutions is honest self-assessment. Learning humility.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n Thanks for reading. Next week I’ll summarize and write some final remarks. Would love to hear from you. Have a happy weekend.<\/mark><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From Chapter 14 Dealing with Anxiety and Building Self-Esteem \u201cIt is estimated that in the course of a lifetime at least one in four Americans will suffer from a debilitating degree of anxiety or worry severe enough to meet the criteria for the medical diagnosis of an anxiety disorder\u2026but even those who never suffer from … Continue reading The Art of Happiness – Excerpts and Reflections 11<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1075,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[113,112,285,286,2],"tags":[298,293,273,274,297,287,279],"class_list":["post-1098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-hope","category-non-fiction","category-philosophy","category-writing","tag-anxiety","tag-cutler","tag-dalai-lama","tag-happiness","tag-self-esteem","tag-suffering","tag-the-art-of-happiness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.trishmcgee.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/IMG_2447-rotated.jpg?fit=1512%2C2016&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trishmcgee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trishmcgee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trishmcgee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trishmcgee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trishmcgee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1098"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.trishmcgee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1100,"href":"https:\/\/www.trishmcgee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098\/revisions\/1100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trishmcgee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trishmcgee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trishmcgee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trishmcgee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The Dalai Lama\u2019s answers to this.
\u201cIf the situation or problem is such that it can be remedied, then there is no need to worry about it.\u201d P. 268 Focus on the solution.
\u201cAlternatively, if there is no way out, no solution, no possibility of resolution, then there is also no point in being worried about it, because you can\u2019t do anything about it anyway.\u201d P. 268
Tall order. Again. How?<\/mark>
\u201cHaving proper motivation and honesty are the keys to overcoming those kinds of fears and anxieties.\u201d p. 270
This needs some translating.
What do we often feel anxiety about? Let\u2019s consider a few examples.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s on your list?<\/mark>
<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
The range of self-esteem from low to \u201cover confidence\u201d or arrogance. Self-image. How does one distinguish between arrogance and valid self-confidence? \u201cOne could think in terms of the consequences of one\u2019s attitude \u2013 conceit and arrogance generally lead to negative consequences whereas a healthy self-confidence leads to more positive consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is an antidote to pride (conceit)? \u201cOne antidote is to reflect upon the diversity of disciplines that you may have no knowledge of\u2026I think honesty and self-confidence are closely linked\u2026the more honest you are, the more open, the less fear you will have, because there\u2019s no anxiety about being exposed or revealed to others\u2026\u201dp 280 Furthermore, when it comes to over-confidence, honesty about one\u2019s true capabilities comes in to play. Those with inflated egos are often no happy or are disappointed when the fail to achieve something that was realistically out of their grasp to begin with.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n