Reverse thinking is
what the ancient Chinese sage, Lao Tzu (老子), suggested in his
immortal classic, Tao Te Ching (道德經), a book of poetry on human wisdom.
According to Lao
Tzu, reverse thinking begins with an empty mindset, which lets go of any
implicit assumption so that there may be room for clarity of thinking to
understand how your implicit assumptions can create predictions and
expectations in your assumptive world that never become your realities. Reverse
thinking is the antidote to any pre-conditioned thinking, which is implicit
assumption based on subjective predictions and expectations.
Consciousness
of the happiness mindset
Consciousness may
free yourself from the shackles of any automatic assumptive thinking that might
have enslaved you, keeping you in bondage without your knowing it. Are you the
master, or just a slave of your own life? Often times, we think we are masters
of our lives and we are in total control, but in fact we are no more than
slaves. You are the master only when you have complete control over your life,
or rather over your way of thinking. Remember, your subconscious mind controls
you with all your implicit assumptions. They make you act, react in different
situations and circumstances in life. With reverse thinking, you may see more
exceptions to whatever your pre-conditioned mind sees and says.
Happiness is the
essence of life and living. Therefore, almost each and every one of us is
always in quest of happiness because it is the meaning of our existence. In
addition, advertising, consumerism, and the media have all mesmerized us into
believing that happiness is one of the basic human rights we are all entitled
to.
The reality is that
Americans are becoming poorer, and many are living from hand to mouth.
Scientists have been asking for decades the exact same question about the
degree of personal happiness to an individual, and those who say they are happy
are only getting fewer.
The different
perceptions of happiness
Happiness is all in the mind. You have to be conscious of why
you are happy or unhappy.
You have both a
conscious and a subconscious mind. Simply put, your conscious mind does all
your active thinking: selectively recording whatever data and information you
want to remember, while purposely discarding whatever you consciously think is
irrelevant or inapplicable to you. Your subconscious mind, on the other hand,
absorbs everything indiscriminately that you are exposed to, and stores it at
the back of your subconscious mind in the form of assumptions, emotions,
feelings, and memories—they all have become the raw materials with which you
weave the fabrics of the realities of your life, making you happy or unhappy,
depending on how you perceive and relate them to your personality and life
experiences. That is why you have to be conscious of your thinking in order to
change your mind in order to change your perceptions of personal happiness—whether
it is a glass half-full, or a glass half-empty.
The bottom line:
according to Lao Tzu. you must have an empty mind to have totally different perspectives
of what happiness really is. If you wish to live to 100 and beyond, you must reverse your thinking to have an empty mindset to look at happiness very differently.
"You Just Don't Die!" shows you just that -- how to live a long life, if you just don't die, and be happy with Tao wisdom.
Stephen Laua
Copyright© by Stephen Lau
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