Fighting The Fool
One of the most useful personal development patterns I have found over the
years is something that like so many other useful things originated from In
Serein.
So let us begin with a quote.
"Fools, all of them.
And me, of course. I couldn’t help but laugh then. Lord of Darkness, indeed.
Lord of Fools would be a far more fitting description. Perhaps I could find a
suitable translation in the ancient language and use it for my title, and as a
new family motto.
Now I should not have thought that.
Indeed, I should not think at all, for what could a fool be thinking of
but further foolishness?
Get a hold of yourself, I commanded then, shook myself like a dog and entered
the house."
Lord Lucian Tremain, IS 2-7-1
That quote, "I should not think at all, for what
could a fool be thinking of but further foolishness?" is the key to so many
things, so many situations, so many times when we "lose it" and enter into what
we now call "fool states" - disturbed states of mind that do NOTHING but create
more and more foolishness.
The longer it goes on, the more foolish the thoughts become, in
a direct cause-and-effect relationship.
Indeed, fool's thoughts are your first warning that you are
about to enter a spiral of foolishness from which there won't be a return for
quite some time.
The outcome might be anger. Or it might be a deep depression. It
might become a migraine, or it might be you doing something very, very foolish
that you will live to regret another day and which you then will use again to
add to the evidence of your own foolishness.
What is a fool thought?
Clearly, it is something you would NEVER think if you were well,
healthy, happy and content with what was going on in your life.
Examples are:
-
God hates me.
-
No-one loves me.
-
I can't do anything right.
-
This will never work.
-
I'm useless.
-
It's all my/their/her fault.
-
There's no point to any of this.
-
I can't stand it anymore.
-
I'm such an idiot ...
... and all the others of the same ilk.
All of these sort of fool thoughts ONLY occur when we are
stressed out and our thinking becomes progressively more disturbed.
In happier and healthier states of mind, these thoughts would
not occur; and even if they did, you would just laugh them off as a meta-model
violation or a Korzybskian insanity.
The dangerous thing about these thoughts which are GENERATED BY
the fool states of disruption and disturbance is to take them as ordinary
thoughts or to try and apply logic to them, try and talk your way out of it.
You can't talk with a fool, don't you know.
You can try, but only nonsense will spout forth and it just gets
worse. It starts with "I'm an idiot, I can't get anything right ..." and if you
let that run, you might end up with, "The world's a better place without me. I'm
going to kill myself."
The only way to deal with fool thoughts is to catch them before
they become a raging river of insanity and all control is lost.
The first incidence of fool thinking, if you can spot it, should
be like a bright red alarm light that you must now STOP and do something else,
calm down, take a step back, shake yourself like a dog like Lord Tremain did, or
get a drink of water.
This first incidence shows you that somehow you got stressed
during what you were doing, and you are starting to lose control of common
reason, yourself and the situation at hand.
Life Repercussions Of Fighting The Fool
If you sit back for a moment and consider some of the worst
decisions you've ever made, and it really matters not if you want to think about
personal issues, or professional things, you will find without a shadow of a
doubt that these were made from fool states of high stress when reason and logic
had abandoned the building.
It is a fact that the reason people are getting consecutively
more stressed out, the older they get, and that's because as they are around for
longer, they are fire-fighting more and more foolish decisions which have caused
chaos and havoc in their lives. Some people end up fire fighting the whole time
in the end, with never a moment's respite, because of past decisions that have
landed them in totally untenable situations.
Really, our lives should become easier and more elegant the
older we get, as we have now so much more experience and wisdom to draw upon, to
make much better decisions - but it is the fool that scuppers that, time and
time again.
If you haven't tried this pattern before, you won't know just
how USEFUL this is.
When I get into a fool's state these days and I notice this
pretty much right away, and I step away from the situation for a time out in
order to restore my powers of reasoning, as well as my perspective forward and
backward in time which collapses entirely during a fool state, I am often
terrified what might have happened if I hadn't stepped away.
The DREADFUL decisions I would have made!
The cost in fire fighting these, the time spent trying to
recover the situation, the added stress of that - it is literally scary.
This simple pattern, of spotting your own versions of foolish
thoughts, that, on a good day, you absolutely KNOW are just nonsense of the
highest order, and stepping away for a moment to regain your equilibrium, taking
a deep breath, and making sure you de-stress FIRST and before taking any further
action, or even thinking anything else (for what would a fool be thinking than
further foolishness, right?), can turn your life around.
That is because every single time you catch that, and just stop,
you are not making bad decisions that are going to haunt your future from that
instant forth.
You are giving your future a breathing space, if you will.
That breathing space where we are for once, not fire fighting,
but things are working out the way they should, and actually do, is the
springboard to any form of success which might follow later.
It is also a huge sigh of relief in and of itself, and may well
open the doors to bigger and brighter futures than you could conceive of right
now.
The Anti-Fool Pattern
So remember these basic ideas.
A fool cannot think anything else but further foolishness: you
CAN'T think your way or argue your way out of a fool state. It'll only get worse
if you try.
As soon as you find yourself thinking like a fool, STOP. Step
away from that console, that person, that room, that project, that object, that
situation. You are in no position to know what would be for the best at this
point.
Calm yourself down. Do EFT, breathe deeply, get a glass of
water, switch on your Ipod and listen to that or do whatever you know will work
for you and do NOT allow yourself to think about anything other than your next
holiday in the sun or happy kittens for at least one minute.
Do NOT return to the console, the situation, object, person,
etc. until you are yourself again - reasonable, rational and centered within and
without.
If it happens again, proceed as above EVERY TIME. Don't let
yourself become a fool. There's no merit in it, and it isn't necessary.
In Conclusion
This is a very simple and basic thing to understand about
ourselves, namely that once we starting thinking foolish thoughts, we can't save
ourselves with thinking any longer from that moment forth.
I have found when testing this pattern with all sorts of people
that they were readily able to spot their own favourite fool thoughts, because
they were usually triggered in the same situation, and quite predictable,
actually.
The people who tested this pattern found it remarkably easy to
spot the entrance to the kingdom of the fools, and to put in a sharp reverse
thrust from the start two out of three times, and right away.
They have reported that this has affected both their work as
well as their relationships very positively, and that some outbursts have ceased
to occur at all. It becomes easier with practise as well.
Something that excited me very much was the general consensus
that using the Anti-Fool pattern PREVENTED all manner of unpleasant things apart
from bad decisions - including full blown anger tantrums, domestic violence,
depression setting in and lasting for days, and even stomach upsets.
Finally, and this what I like the best, the people who have
tried this pattern have found that their self beliefs began to change quite
significantly.
Once ideas such as "I'm such an idiot" or "No-one can love a man
who has no hair" are no longer dealt with as some form of important "truth"
about oneself, but relegated strictly to disturbed thinking due to stress AND
then even used to set a de-stressing sequence of events into motion, they quite
profoundly lose their hold on the person in question.
Which is excellent news for any person's unfolding future,
indeed.
Silvia Hartmann
March 2007 |