The Failure of 'Just Do IT'

[zhoupeng]

Recently an incident occured in my office involving a co worker who had botched an assignment in which he was supposed to work with some clients. The boss screamed at him non stop for what seemed like ages with all sorts of personal attacks and the whole experience made him feel very bad. The reason for his poor performance was that he somehow unable to establish a good relationship with these clients and communicate with them well; it wasn't that he was not trying to do his job or that the clients were nasty people. This particular guy told me he often felt nervous and impatient when talking to clients, even when he knew the answers to their questions and theoretically understood, to minute detail, what exactly he need to do and say when meeting them. It was like there was some internal reason why he just couldn't execute his plan and the harder he tried, the more he came off as pushy, annoying and defensive- which just drives people away. At a loss, people were telling him to "Just Relax", "Have Patience and Be Polite", "Have Confidence", "Focus" and "JUST DO IT" but it is clear that this wasn't helping him. This is a recurring problem and has left him very despondent indeed.

 

"I just feel like something is broken in my programming", he said.

"I know what to do inside and out but I just can't do it, it's not a question of willpower as I have been struggling all my life and haven't given up but don't seem to get anywhere with it."

 

When I heard him say this I came to the realisation that I too, suffer greatly from "broken programming". I could relate to exactly what he was trying to convey and I understood how helpless it must make him feel to see a lifelong weakness choke him out whenever he tries to get past it by pushing through it. It is like pushing some buttons on a TV remote control and not getting the intended response- the physical button is there and you can push it as hard as you want but something in the circuitry is not working properly and this prevents the device from performing as it should. With a remote control people will (if they resist the urge to hurl it in to a wall) either throw it away and get a replacement or ignore the problem. Very few will try to find out what is wrong with the circuitry and get it fixed.

 

Are Humans like remote controls?? I will never be convinced that they are.

 

But it seems that I am in the minority: in this and many cases that I have seen, most people just conclude that the person has a problem and will keep telling him:

 

"Try Harder"

"Keep pushing"

"Just DO IT"

and "RAAaaAArrRRGGGGHH!!!!"

 

and when this approach does not bring immediate improvement,

 

"You have a Problem"

"You are just Flawed"

"You are No Good at this"

"Go somewhere else, we don't want someone like YOU"

 

Is life really that Damning for people who have the misfortune to discover that they lack natural talent in some areas? Conventional wisdom based on the currently prevailing goal-oriented-results-driven-scientific-method paradigm would suggest it is. An awful lot of people seem so ready to dismiss any problem that cannot be solved by their conventional theoretic knowledge as a lost cause.

 

I myself have many experiences with 'broken programming' and am sure practically everyone does too. But looking within and admitting these weaknesses is already hard for many people, let alone finding a way to work through them.

 

The 'Try Harder' and "JUST DO IT" approach works for people who do not have a serious blockage in the particular field in question. Telling somene to try harder when it just is a matter of effort is common sense. But in my experience "broken programming" is beyond that. It is almost like some kind of internal/energetic blockage that causes abberant behaviour in certain circumstances; it can hardly be controlled through willpower alone and causes all sorts of problems.

 

Has anyone experienced anything like this? If so, if you are comfortable about speaking about them, what do you feel would be a good way to deal with them besides "Try Harder" and "JUST DO IT"? I have picked up meditation and to some extent, religion again now that I feel that the phsical scientific method has its limitations.

 

It is a shame that people should be driven to hopelessness over their current limitations. I feel that human potential is boundless and is there to be developed. We just need to go about it the right way.

 

Any thoughts welcome. (And my apologies for the long post.)

[longrhythm]

I think you touched on something valuable in mentioning religion.

 

To me meditation is towards mastery of ones self. Religion is about surrendering to what is greater than ones self.

 

I have found in my experience that these areas of "broken programming" have only become surmountable by turning myself over to the mercy of a higher power. Self mastery is necessary to find those areas of "broken programming", because as you accurately observe, facing limitations is hard enough on it's own.

 

Personally, I have used meditation to ground me through the process of coming face to face with some very dark corners of myself, and deal with the challenges inherent in owning up to them.

 

However, not until I turned myself over to something greater than me did I feel able to transcend, did I see myself begin to overcome. We can find our boundaries alone, but we need more than ourselves to expand beyond them.

 

Just my two cents.

 

Recently an incident occured in my office involving a co worker who had botched an assignment in which he was supposed to work with some clients. The boss screamed at him non stop for what seemed like ages with all sorts of personal attacks and the whole experience made him feel very bad. The reason for his poor performance was that he somehow unable to establish a good relationship with these clients and communicate with them well; it wasn't that he was not trying to do his job or that the clients were nasty people. This particular guy told me he often felt nervous and impatient when talking to clients, even when he knew the answers to their questions and theoretically understood, to minute detail, what exactly he need to do and say when meeting them. It was like there was some internal reason why he just couldn't execute his plan and the harder he tried, the more he came off as pushy, annoying and defensive- which just drives people away. At a loss, people were telling him to "Just Relax", "Have Patience and Be Polite", "Have Confidence", "Focus" and "JUST DO IT" but it is clear that this wasn't helping him. This is a recurring problem and has left him very despondent indeed.

 

"I just feel like something is broken in my programming", he said.

"I know what to do inside and out but I just can't do it, it's not a question of willpower as I have been struggling all my life and haven't given up but don't seem to get anywhere with it."

 

When I heard him say this I came to the realisation that I too, suffer greatly from "broken programming". I could relate to exactly what he was trying to convey and I understood how helpless it must make him feel to see a lifelong weakness choke him out whenever he tries to get past it by pushing through it. It is like pushing some buttons on a TV remote control and not getting the intended response- the physical button is there and you can push it as hard as you want but something in the circuitry is not working properly and this prevents the device from performing as it should. With a remote control people will (if they resist the urge to hurl it in to a wall) either throw it away and get a replacement or ignore the problem. Very few will try to find out what is wrong with the circuitry and get it fixed.

 

Are Humans like remote controls?? I will never be convinced that they are.

 

But it seems that I am in the minority: in this and many cases that I have seen, most people just conclude that the person has a problem and will keep telling him:

 

"Try Harder"

"Keep pushing"

"Just DO IT"

and "RAAaaAArrRRGGGGHH!!!!"

 

and when this approach does not bring immediate improvement,

 

"You have a Problem"

"You are just Flawed"

"You are No Good at this"

"Go somewhere else, we don't want someone like YOU"

 

Is life really that Damning for people who have the misfortune to discover that they lack natural talent in some areas? Conventional wisdom based on the currently prevailing goal-oriented-results-driven-scientific-method paradigm would suggest it is. An awful lot of people seem so ready to dismiss any problem that cannot be solved by their conventional theoretic knowledge as a lost cause.

 

I myself have many experiences with 'broken programming' and am sure practically everyone does too. But looking within and admitting these weaknesses is already hard for many people, let alone finding a way to work through them.

 

The 'Try Harder' and "JUST DO IT" approach works for people who do not have a serious blockage in the particular field in question. Telling somene to try harder when it just is a matter of effort is common sense. But in my experience "broken programming" is beyond that. It is almost like some kind of internal/energetic blockage that causes abberant behaviour in certain circumstances; it can hardly be controlled through willpower alone and causes all sorts of problems.

 

Has anyone experienced anything like this? If so, if you are comfortable about speaking about them, what do you feel would be a good way to deal with them besides "Try Harder" and "JUST DO IT"? I have picked up meditation and to some extent, religion again now that I feel that the phsical scientific method has its limitations.

 

It is a shame that people should be driven to hopelessness over their current limitations. I feel that human potential is boundless and is there to be developed. We just need to go about it the right way.

 

Any thoughts welcome. (And my apologies for the long post.)

[Gerard]

...It is a shame that people should be driven to hopelessness over their current limitations. I feel that human potential is boundless and is there to be developed. We just need to go about it the right way.

 

Any thoughts welcome. (And my apologies for the long post.)

 

This is my first thought after reading your post:

 

 

 

The "red pill" implies going outside the comfort zone. It ain't an easy way, it is actually harder than living like the unawakened since you are swimming upstream; however lucky the ones who have been offered the pills since most won't but taking the red pill won't guarantee escaping the world of illusory phenomena sentient beings are trapped in for eternity. Listen to what this hermit has to say:

 

 

0:21.

 

 

Less than the two horns of an oax. Wise words.

Edited February 27, 2010 by durkhrod chogori

[Mal]

To really help someone you have to understand the problem from their point of view + have a "solution" that will work from that perspective. Often the perspective may not be too different from your own and what works for you will work for others, so for many situations saying what you would do works well.

 

(You know when you are talking about an issues and the other person will say "Well I would do....")

 

But if someone else has a different perspective to you, many people can't see a situation from another persons perspective. So they continue giving the advice that works for them, and then blame the other when they don't or can't follow that advice. Basically "It works for me so what's wrong with you."

 

If you think about how difficult it is to identify our own broken programing and our journey to find a solution that works for us. Then add in having to identify the same in another person that you may not have a good understanding of. And finally trying to communicate that information in a way that they can understand. Well many people are to busy waiting to talk about themselves to make that effort.

 

Mmmmm does that make any sense

[Marblehead]

Hi Zhoupeng,

 

This is an important concept you are speaking to.

 

I have said before and I will say again, we must know our capabilities and capacities.

 

I feel for the person you spoke of. He has the capacities but he lacks the capability of putting what he has to good use.

 

Yes, we can, to a degree, expand our capabilities and capacities but they cannot be expanded beyond our potential.

 

If we are fully aware of our potential we will never have failure.

 

But, if we try something beyond our potential we will fail every time.

 

Peace & Love!

[elmer]

...It is a shame that people should be driven to hopelessness over their current limitations. I feel that human potential is boundless and is there to be developed. We just need to go about it the right way.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

to an extent, we are like remote controls.... ask anyone who's suffered from a stroke. once part of the brain is damaged, that part of their "human potential" is also damaged. look at Ram Dass, renowned yogi and spiritual leader of the 60's (?), who suffered a stroke and lost all his powers of eloquence/locution as his stroke rendered him hemiplegic and with expressive aphasia.

 

or... children who grow up in physically, sexually, or emotionally abusive households develop into adults with limitations to emotional growth or with the neurological wiring to seek activities and situations that perpetuate the same physical and emotional abuse they grew up with. activities and situations that should be "normal and good" for them, actually feel "foreign and uncomfortable." there's research that shows this not only on a sociological perspective but now from its underlying neurophysiological/chemical changes...

 

now, this doesn't mean these individuals can never, "improve" their situation. Ram Dass continues to speak and inspire those around him. through therapy, abused children are able to change their altered neurological patterns.

 

and... half the fun of life (for me) is to try to change the "boundaries" to my potential.

 

i feel like a pompous ass for saying this (partly because i've just come to the above realization now as i write this), but yea, some people will be limited mentally in what they can do. but i'm ok with that, because they can always "try" to improve it. after they're tired from trying, then maybe they should just change their environment so the "limitations" won't be so... awkward.

 

we all want to improve our abilities, but there's no way in hell that i'll be able to run a sub 4 minute mile (especially as i get older)

[Creation]

This is one of those threads that I felt brought up a lot of stuff in me with and I couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to say.

 

"I just feel like something is broken in my programming", he said.

"I know what to do inside and out but I just can't do it, it's not a question of willpower as I have been struggling all my life and haven't given up but don't seem to get anywhere with it."

I relate to this VERY strongly. This describes my relationship to most every societal institution I have come in contact with, especially the education system. This feeling of being broken is what turned my peripheral interest in Taoist philosophy and energy work into a full-time pursuit.

 

It really feels so unbelievably awful to be constantly feeling this way. The utter failure of 99 percent of the advice you are given (which indeed boils down to just do it) amplifies it.

 

How to change when just do it fails? What I am looking into is AWARENESS. But I don't even really know what that means.

 

I would love it if anyone else would share insights into this.

[tyler zambori]

What is an oax? OX maybe?

[Marblehead]

How to change when just do it fails? What I am looking into is AWARENESS. But I don't even really know what that means.

 

I would love it if anyone else would share insights into this.

 

If you revive the 'Awareness' thread (it's here somewhere) with a post to it we could talk about that subject some more.

 

Peace & Love!

[tyler zambori]

I think you touched on something valuable in mentioning religion.

 

To me meditation is towards mastery of ones self. Religion is about surrendering to what is greater than ones self.

 

I have found in my experience that these areas of "broken programming" have only become surmountable by turning myself over to the mercy of a higher power. Self mastery is necessary to find those areas of "broken programming", because as you accurately observe, facing limitations is hard enough on it's own.

 

Personally, I have used meditation to ground me through the process of coming face to face with some very dark corners of myself, and deal with the challenges inherent in owning up to them.

 

However, not until I turned myself over to something greater than me did I feel able to transcend, did I see myself begin to overcome. We can find our boundaries alone, but we need more than ourselves to expand beyond them.

 

Just my two cents.

 

Longrhythm,

 

Isn't Taosim about aligning oneself with something greater, rather than transcending

anything? I immediately liked this way better, because it has more respect

for that which "needs to be transcended."

 

I never found it possible to turn myself over to the mercy of a higher power.

If you can't yet experience a "higher power" directly, then it is just a concept

to you, that's all. How can a mere concept direct your life? It can't.

 

I dunno, to me telling yourself you have to achieve self-mastery to get over

"Just Do It" by "just doing it" doesn't seem to work either.

 

I started getting interested in Taoism because of acupressure - I have this book called "energy Tapping," (which is not what I'm going with), in which the author said something about this business of being stuck. I don't have the passage in front of me, but he said something like this: When we have these issues that we can't change, even when we know exactly what the problem is and what we need to do, then it's an energetic blockage problem.

 

I have these issues myself.

 

I'm actually going on with a different approach - Jin Shin Do, because it seems

to make more sense to me to hold the acupressure points until they have a real effect,

rather than just tap quickly. I'm just getting started with this. I think this Teeguarden lady is a brilliant writer, and her books seem to be a good introduction to Taoism too - despite the Japanese name of the practice.

 

HTH!

 

Tyler

[SFJane]

 

It is a shame that people should be driven to hopelessness over their current limitations. I feel that human potential is boundless and is there to be developed. We just need to go about it the right way.

 

Any thoughts welcome. (And my apologies for the long post.)

 

 

Firstly, don't apologize for the length of the post. I love long posts personally. It was a very open and honest post and it resonated with me on several levels. You touch on many subjects from the subjective mind to the cultural memes.

 

I was a product of abusive upbringing. I got programmed on multiple levels from my fanatically christian and mentally ill parents. By the time I was fourteen I hated myself and my life. I couldn't do anything right. I failed even harder as an adult. Just detonated my life again and again.

 

My relatives thought I was hopeless. They felt that I would either be dead or in jail by the time I reached the age of 21. I just knew I was a failure. I couldn't even keep a job at a Dunkin Donuts without going off on customers, employees or my boss. I had no coping skills for any stress except to either assault people that pissed me off or sulk in my apartment and abuse drugs.

 

When I first met Taoist master Bruce Frantzis it was to learn chi kung and meditation. He explained to me how my own programming was messing with me. How every word that came out of my mouth revealed how badly I was programmed. Bruce was the first person who didn't tell me to just pull myself up by my bootstraps and think positively. He told me what to do. Go dissolve and deprogram yourself.

 

What else could I do? I certainly couldn't surrender my soul to a higher power, I am an atheist.

 

Using my understanding of the Eight Bodies of Being and the inner dissolving technique I was able to excise all of that programming. I located all my issues, one by one, and I got rid of them all by myself. I might also recommend Ba Gua. The main premise of meditative Ba Gua is to free your internal energy so that your insides freely interact with the outside and you embody the ability to change from one thing to another.

 

You can combine all three practices. Walk the circle, dissolve your Being of it's triggers and blocks and learn how to change from the inside out under your own power. I would hardly consider myself enlightened but I was definitely able to deprogram myself of all that BS that my parents programmed into me.

 

All my other brothers and sisters have similar programming and they continue to fail pretty hard at life years after the fact. None of them have the training that I went after. They pretty much still blame everything and everyone else for their problems and they sit around expecting hand outs because they can't get their shit together.

 

Using meditation to heal yourself is not easy to do but it can be effective. The way I see it you can either seek out other people to help you deprogram i.e. Cognitive or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. You can wait around for the gods to grant you a miracle. Or you can possess your own mind and use meditation to find your weaknesses and apply dissolving to remove those blocks at an energetic level until they are gone like they were never there.

Edited March 5, 2010 by SFJane

[Athanor]

Well, I'm not sure about how far this human-development can bring us, but I agree with you: we should develop.

 

I experienced a breakthrough (at least I felt like that) about conversation with strangers, telling things to them, during my college years. I had to do plenty of presentations in front of 20-200 other students. I found that the main difference between being nervous about speaking and being calm (or being able to handle my nervousness easily) was not how much I knew the fact I was talking about. The difference was how much I enjoyed talking about that specific thing in general.

The thing is that although someone might have a great job and might be really smart in it, it might still not be something he was meant to do. If one finds what one was "born to do" then it will be all positive. One still might have obstacles, but nothing what will make one sick. I was wondering a lot, what might be the divide: whether something is a problem to solve, or a sign to change direction? And I think it's the effect something has on your health. Every problem and obstacle makes you stressful, for stress is the natural consequence of facing something harsh or opposing something. But stress can be used to gain power and focus, for a degree. However, after this certain degree stress will get out of hand and cause more or less serious damage in one's health. This is the difference. If someone could become a public speaker then for him the stress what fills his first speeches can be handled and reduced later. But if someone can't handle it, then it's probably not the thing he should do.

It's difficult because sometimes we choose wrong right at the beginning, when we're young and don't know anything about life. And then we keep sticking to that choice, although it would be time to turn around for a long time.

 

The other thing is that development doesn't necessarily mean gain. Well, it should mean that, but in life, it doesn't always happen so. Sometimes we should build back from what we've already achieved to be able to develop. Spiritual development is a perfect example for it. Imagine that you've achieved everything you've ever wanted: big house with a pool, nice fast car, plenty of money, parties, lots of "friends" who are constantly visiting you, many things to do, many places to go, trips, travels, etc., a very joyful and eventful life with lots of experiences. Then you realize that you should also develop in spirituality. What do you do? You can't keep up this lifestyle beside spiritual development. You must cut back from parties, traveling, consuming and such, and change on your attitude to create the possibility for the further development. It seems like loss, and this bothers you, because you still evaluate the situation with a playboy's attitude. But later on, as your attitude changes after you start to focus on the new direction, you will find that it was actually a step forward.

[immortal_sister]

thank you so much for opening this thread and for everyone who has shared their experiences. this is a topic very close to my heart, it is something i have been struggling with deeply for the last several years. being told, "just do it" is extremely frustrating, i just don't know HOW most of the time. i feel that my path with meditation and qigong is helping though, one step at a time. i also recently found a new chinese medicine doctor that i feel is going to be really helpful as he is interested in treating me both from a physical perspective and an emotional one as well. when we have lived with distorted programming for most of our life, this is imprinted in our bodies, and manifests physically. or at least that is one conclusion i am coming to and see all around me. so i am hoping to work on all aspects of this at once. hopefully i can share my successes with you all in the coming year.

 

peace.

[markern]

 

 

How to change when just do it fails? What I am looking into is AWARENESS. But I don't even really know what that means.

 

 

Anthony de Mello wrote a book called Awareness taht I read many years ago and loved. He really drives in the key points about awareness again and again and again in a very insightful and funny way. One thing he said that struck me was "before enlightenment I was depressed. After enlightenment I still get depressed but it does not bother me that much and it does not last as long". I think, or rather know, the same holds for when you manage to be deeply aware way before enlightenment. All the same emotions will still come but with enough awareness they don`t bother you so much and they rarely stick very long. You also find a calm center in the midst of things so no matter how bad things are you can have some sort of happiness in the middle of it that is indestructable.

 

I also always find that when I manage to bring mindful awareness to any any issue, thoughts or emotions, the solution that after some time comes by itself always beats my planned attempts at changing things. For example if I am scared of something I might look into the thoughts that seem to cause the fear and critique them in a systematic way and this often helps a lot in removing the fear and becoming confident instead. But without fail, every time I have successfully brought awareness to the fear and been able to let go in the sense of accepting that it is in fact there and then just let it play itself out, the realease of fear and the following confidence and the perspective on the whole situation that arises is always better than when I did it in a structured manner. It all sticks deeper somehow and is a better "whole". First I had to go through accepting the fear and letting it be there for quite some time so it is not easy. But still it is much quicker usually than fighting with it for a long time. As one gets better at this one eventually starts to bring awareness to and "disolve" such negatives very fast, sometimes instantly. One also creates a space around whatever is running through ones mind that makes it much easier not to be completely cought up in it and makes it quite easy not to act on impulses.

 

I have found that for this to be anything other than a hard struggle it is essential to build some sort of awareness through meditation, breathing etc. This level of concentration and awareness makes it a hundred times easier to do. Unfortunately I haven`t been able to practice much of these lately because of grounding issues but working on changing my cognition through rational analysis also works very well.

 

Sometimes I have found that when my programming makes it almost impossible to "just do" what is needed it helps to have the steps clearly laid out. Either through thinking it through very thoroughly myself or having precise instructions. I just to be unable to dance in any sort of way. I was scared of it and thought I did not understand it. So I studied intently what others did and experimented until I had a clear logical understanding and then just did that. So after having danced a little bit in this controlled way I let myself go and found that I had great rythm, could dance creatively and more "advanced" than most and got complemented by girls for my dancing frequently.

 

I find this interesting because it shows that I naturally had all the skills and they were very "close". I was just shut off because of fear. Fear did not allow me to feel in relation to dancing and it would have been this ability to feel in relation to it which would have made me just get it from the start. The fear closed me into my logical frame of mind and it has a hard time understanding dancing. But I also find it very interesting that I eventually figured it out logically once I put enough effort into it and through this could go back to feeling mode. Both ways can work but my way was needlessly long.

Edited March 5, 2010 by markern

[Birch]

"Just do it" for me has a bitter taste. There are some things I just don't want to "just do."

 

I grew up somewhat broken (or gnarly) at the hands of people who figured they were both doing their best and loved and cared for me, even if that meant in practice breaking my will and subduing me on several levels (they had variable successes ;-)) In resonance to the pain this ultimately caused me and them, I continued on for a few years doing my own "breaking and remaking" of myself (some people call this the "personal development," "self-help" or the "therapy" industry) with the clear goal of finally fitting in somewhere. This done, I believed I would feel happier about myself. But I never quite got there

 

Thankfully along the way I fell into Tao and I-ching qi-gong and KAP and TTB's and a whole bunch of other things and I can't say which of those things exactly helped the most but it's been a hell of a lot more useful than the other stuff I've tried. Maybe because many of these modalities ask us to accept ourselves BEFORE attempting to change anything?

[Orochi]

I think you touched on something valuable in mentioning religion.

 

To me meditation is towards mastery of ones self. Religion is about surrendering to what is greater than ones self.

 

I have found in my experience that these areas of "broken programming" have only become surmountable by turning myself over to the mercy of a higher power. Self mastery is necessary to find those areas of "broken programming", because as you accurately observe, facing limitations is hard enough on it's own.

 

Personally, I have used meditation to ground me through the process of coming face to face with some very dark corners of myself, and deal with the challenges inherent in owning up to them.

 

However, not until I turned myself over to something greater than me did I feel able to transcend, did I see myself begin to overcome. We can find our boundaries alone, but we need more than ourselves to expand beyond them.

 

Just my two cents.

 

 

Great post.

[Mushi]

Recently an incident occured in my office involving a co worker who had botched an assignment in which he was supposed to work with some clients. The boss screamed at him non stop for what seemed like ages with all sorts of personal attacks and the whole experience made him feel very bad. The reason for his poor performance was that he somehow unable to establish a good relationship with these clients and communicate with them well; it wasn't that he was not trying to do his job or that the clients were nasty people. This particular guy told me he often felt nervous and impatient when talking to clients, even when he knew the answers to their questions and theoretically understood, to minute detail, what exactly he need to do and say when meeting them. It was like there was some internal reason why he just couldn't execute his plan and the harder he tried, the more he came off as pushy, annoying and defensive- which just drives people away. At a loss, people were telling him to "Just Relax", "Have Patience and Be Polite", "Have Confidence", "Focus" and "JUST DO IT" but it is clear that this wasn't helping him. This is a recurring problem and has left him very despondent indeed.

 

"I just feel like something is broken in my programming", he said.

"I know what to do inside and out but I just can't do it, it's not a question of willpower as I have been struggling all my life and haven't given up but don't seem to get anywhere with it."

 

When I heard him say this I came to the realisation that I too, suffer greatly from "broken programming". I could relate to exactly what he was trying to convey and I understood how helpless it must make him feel to see a lifelong weakness choke him out whenever he tries to get past it by pushing through it. It is like pushing some buttons on a TV remote control and not getting the intended response- the physical button is there and you can push it as hard as you want but something in the circuitry is not working properly and this prevents the device from performing as it should. With a remote control people will (if they resist the urge to hurl it in to a wall) either throw it away and get a replacement or ignore the problem. Very few will try to find out what is wrong with the circuitry and get it fixed.

 

Are Humans like remote controls?? I will never be convinced that they are.

 

But it seems that I am in the minority: in this and many cases that I have seen, most people just conclude that the person has a problem and will keep telling him:

 

"Try Harder"

"Keep pushing"

"Just DO IT"

and "RAAaaAArrRRGGGGHH!!!!"

 

and when this approach does not bring immediate improvement,

 

"You have a Problem"

"You are just Flawed"

"You are No Good at this"

"Go somewhere else, we don't want someone like YOU"

 

Is life really that Damning for people who have the misfortune to discover that they lack natural talent in some areas? Conventional wisdom based on the currently prevailing goal-oriented-results-driven-scientific-method paradigm would suggest it is. An awful lot of people seem so ready to dismiss any problem that cannot be solved by their conventional theoretic knowledge as a lost cause.

 

I myself have many experiences with 'broken programming' and am sure practically everyone does too. But looking within and admitting these weaknesses is already hard for many people, let alone finding a way to work through them.

 

The 'Try Harder' and "JUST DO IT" approach works for people who do not have a serious blockage in the particular field in question. Telling somene to try harder when it just is a matter of effort is common sense. But in my experience "broken programming" is beyond that. It is almost like some kind of internal/energetic blockage that causes abberant behaviour in certain circumstances; it can hardly be controlled through willpower alone and causes all sorts of problems.

 

Has anyone experienced anything like this? If so, if you are comfortable about speaking about them, what do you feel would be a good way to deal with them besides "Try Harder" and "JUST DO IT"? I have picked up meditation and to some extent, religion again now that I feel that the phsical scientific method has its limitations.

 

It is a shame that people should be driven to hopelessness over their current limitations. I feel that human potential is boundless and is there to be developed. We just need to go about it the right way.

 

Any thoughts welcome. (And my apologies for the long post.)

 

 

Wow, this really hit close to home with me. I have been feeling this same sense of failure in a way for as long as I can remember. I admittedly screw up alot of things. Even when I know how it should be done, I have trouble actually executing it. Many people have also told me that I am not trying and I need to work harder, but how is that possible when your mind and body literally feels like it just hit an invisible wall? You can see what needs to be done on the other side, but you cant reach it...I'm STILL trying to figure this one out :/ It has gotten to a point where I feel almost afraid to try things anymore, so I tend to give up sooner. Natural talent really does play a huge role in society these days. You either have it, or you dont. If your in the "dont" category, then society has no use for you...It's sad really

[King Kabalabhati]

Sorry if I'm irritating people by bringing this up in several threads, but has anyone had success with hypnosis in dealing with bad programming? I'm using self-hypnosis as a tool alongside qigong, so I can't say what is helping what, but I have a feeling it's a good method for relaxing and building confidence in positive change. I've been improving