An Expanded Point Of View

Roll up!

The "Drive-for-Pride" rolls on, with the bus's destination clearly marked, "SELF-ESTEEM." We're shaking the bushes for every teaching that might fall out having to do with personal confidence, pride, self-esteem, the life style sciences, group dynamics, and coaching.

I'm looking for a good three or four day program with top accreditation, and if I can't find anything to suit me, I might have to come up with my own. Why pay someone else to prove I already know what I know. How hard would it be to print out a certificate? My printer's out of ink at the present moment, but a quick trip to the store, I could be up and running within the hour.

Being in the business, as I am, and as I've been for the last month, I'm brimming with self-help tips, pointers, and teachings. I should be jotting some of my ideas on a yellow pad, really, because otherwise I forget them. Then I have to start over. Like this morning, I knew the ideas were there, but I failed to write them down yesterday.

So that would be one of my first tips for today. Get a pad of paper, and if you have an idea, however wacky it might seem, put it down. Then you can come back and look at it at a later time, and perhaps it will be an idea that you then could expand and work with. It doesn't have to be an official Hallmark blank journal or an expensive notebook with numerous dividers. Just any old pad of paper that you can keep handy would be adequate.

Then work with it not with the idea of writing a beautiful book, like the Book of Kells, something that will end up in a museum, but as something that's just full of your scribbles. It's for your own use, to expand your mind, your point of view, and simply to help you.

Maybe you'll have a few insights on wisdom, let's say. You might jot down the first few thoughts that come to you about wisdom. Like, "Am I wise enough to know anything about wisdom?" Indeed, you are!

Or you could make a list following a simple beginning like, "Wisdom is..." What is wisdom anyway? There's a tooth called Wisdom. So you could say "Wisdom is ... a particular tooth no one wants in their mouth." It's some weird tooth that's a late bloomer. It's up in your head, like a slow developing stalactite, caused perhaps by too much calcium in your diet. There's a steady drip drip drip while you're sitting up, then when you lay down it hardens. There's one definition of wisdom.

Wisdom is a fun subject. We have the wisdom of the wise. But which came first, the wise or their wisdom? And who's to judge if wisdom is wise? Who sets the standard that something is wise in the first place? And how did he or she get that position? Was he or she a wise child? A prodigy? Or like me, just someone who accidentally blurts out things that are taken as wise, then you suddenly find yourself with a hundred hangers-on? Did the first wise person print his or her own certificate?

I think of wise men as being old men with extremely long beards, who do a lot of traveling at Christmas time. They're wise enough to know what you might want for a present without ever having known you or laid eyes on you. They look at a star in the sky and say, "The star up yonder is telling me..." X, Y, and Z. But the rest of us, who aren't so wise, see the same star, make a wish and roll over and go to sleep.

And all that's just on one topic, wisdom. You may have written it down and it'll do you some good. I'd like to say something wise, then immediately copyright it and sell coffee cups and T-shirts. That'd be a fun way to make money. If you have wisdom, you could be rolling in it, if you've got an entrepreneurial spirit and are willing to exploit it.

Life's handing it to you anyway. You're in that position because of that fact. There'd be no exploiting it if everyone realized it, but we get professional purveyors of this because the ones who know it are a minority. The entire self-help industry is an unnecessary racket in one sense, because the true stuff is all stuff we instinctively know. We just don't know that we know it. So they're there to cash in on our self-imposed ignorance. There's a thought for the day!

To have an expanded point of view is to realize what life's all about ... It'll be good for your mind and your spirit, and everything about your outlook. And you can save a lot of money too.