Bill Harris tells us that awareness is the key to everything. By this he means that awareness allows us to respond to situations instead of reacting to them.
Successful people are not people without problems, they are people who respond effectively to their problems. They have to deal with bad weather and heavy traffic, they have debt, they have issues in their families, but instead of panicking, they take an honest look at the situation, look at what they can do to improve it, accept what they cannot control, and move forward in confidence knowing that all will be well in the end. How does one develop this awareness? It comes in seeking the truth.
I was recently studying How to Handle Conflict and Manage Anger by Denis Waitley with one of my classes in preparing them to enter the workforce. We often think of anger as something that just happens. Many people believe that other people make them angry, that situations make them angry and the best that we can hope for is to control our anger well enough to get through life without allowing it to cause serious damage. This is not the truth however. Our emotions are generated by our thoughts, and we control our thoughts. We feel anger when we feel threatened in some way. According to Waitley, it could be our need to be loved and appreciated, our need to be in control of our lives, or our need to feel self-esteem that is threatened. If we can take a step back and look at why we feel this way and at what we can or cannot do about the perceived threat, we can respond effectively.
Anger can actually be a very good thing if we learn to respect it and to listen to it. We can also get ourselves into perilous situations by denying or resisting anger. If we are dealing with an ineffective employer who treats us unfairly, for example, we normally feel anger. We could deny our feelings and create negative stress in our lives. We could react and scream at our boss, thus ending up unemployed. We could respond in many other destructive ways, all of which would have negative consequences. We could, however, listen to what the anger is telling us, which would be that we are feeling threatened for some reason. We can then study ways to deal with the situation effectively, leading to growth in self-awareness and our ability to negotiate with unreasonable people. This could improve our workplace, or even lead us to better employment.
Life is not easy. We all face challenges, but if we are seeking truth in every situation, knowing that there are lessons to be learned and that all will be well in the end, we can live lives of peace. Bill Harris is a strong advocate of meditation and points out that people who meditate effectively are able to look at what is happening in their lives, why it is happening, and find ways to deal with it effectively. Whether or not we choose to meditate, we can always seek the truth in every situation. This leads to awareness, and awareness really is the key to everything.
