Dreaded WWOPT Disease Paralyzes - The Affirmation Spot for Friday July 18, 2008
We hear a lot about diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, and even hypothetical epidemics like bird flu. Because of their impact and ubiquity, these conditions deserve the attention they receive.However, there is a condition that afflicts more people than all of these diseases combined. In fact, it's very likely you will be impacted by this condition, or its side effects, several times today. It can stop your life cold.Symptoms include sweaty palms, a racing heart, self-consciousness, stress, headaches, and life paralysis. This condition affects poor and rich, famous and obscure, young and old. No one is immune.It has prevented more great thoughts, limited more potential, destroyed more possibilities than anything on the planet. The condition is "What Will Other People Think (WWOPT)?"Perhaps because our society is so enamored with popularity and status, many of us are deathly afraid to do anything that might be seen as being "out there". We prefer to stay safely in the herd. Thinking the herd's thoughts. Following the herd's lead. Parroting the herd's conventional (and usually disempowering) wisdom.This is one of those instances of a positive attribute being turned against you. Humans are social creatures. Most of us have a strong need to be part of a group. These instincts help us cooperate and collaborate to get things done.That attribute must be balanced, though, by empowered selfhood that can break from the group and create something unique and special - something all your own. That's one of the main reasons you are here - to contribute your uniqueness to the universe.When that process is short-circuited by WWOPT we become paralyzed in our lives.
- "That dress is a little crazy and I like it, but WWOPT?"
- "I don't agree with the politcal mainstream, but I can't express it because WWOPT?"
- "I want to wear a bathing suit at the beach, but my body's not perfect and WWOPT?"
- "I want to be a romance author, but WWOPT?"
- "I'm not happy in my spiritual life, but I can't change because WWOPT?"
- "My wife and I want to sell our possessions, buy a mobile home, and travel America, but WWOPT?"
The mass media uses this instinct against you to create a kind of subconscious servitude to what's trendy, acceptable, and popular. It really is a form of not-so-subtle mind control. It establishes boudaries of what is acceptable and what is not (at least in your mind). It's very powerful and gets more so every time you fail to establish a powerful selfhood as a counterbalance.It seems OK because almost everyone you know is also stuck in WWOPT. We often provide negative encouragement by using WWOPT to convince our friends to stay where they are (where we are) - comfortable and uninspired.Here's what you can do to treat WWOPT. Sometime today - I can almost guarantee it - you're going to have a thought or an idea that brings you momentary satisfaction at the thought of pursuing it.If you're afflicted with WWOPT, your self-talk is going to shoot down your idea. It's going to tell you all the reasons that would never work and it's going to employ WWOPT as its closing argument in squashing your dream. Or, maybe the idea survives your self-talk long enough to be shared with a friend who dismisses it as "crazy talk".You could feel stupid for even thinking such a thing. You know the drill because you've done it a hundred, a thousand times before. You chastise yourself. You feel your happiness drain away as your dream dies...the victim of WWOPT.Or instead, as soon as this happens, and every time it does from now on, you can choose a different path. You can shout (not literally unless you want to because you're no longer worried by WWOPT), "I have a right to be me and to think for myself! I am choosing to pursue my dreams!" Say it to yourself two or three times, if that's what it takes.Put your internal and external naysayers on notice that you are not going to be stopped by WWOPT anymore. Once you break through that fearful barrier, you will see it was nothing but smoke and mirrors.You're going to explore what it means to be you, to think like you, and to act like you. That's what you're here to do, my friend. Success comes not to those who wait with the herd, but to those who step out on their own and create something different.Oddly enough, the herd really loves to follow someone like that. :o)Stay inspired!Ray
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