Your battles are won or lost

According to Tsun Tzu, "a battle is won or lost before it is ever fought." You can make an analogy with yourself, by re-interpreting your sense of failure and anticipating whether you'll experience and personalize it or, learn instead to expect success.  Do any of these ideas sound familar?

1) That man (or woman) is "out of my league."

2) I'm simply wasting my time. That employer won't take me seriously.

3) Why have I entered this race? I know I won't finish. I have no stamina.

If you begin to approach a person or situation with a sense of low-confidence and esteem, you have not yet understood the reality you begin with begins with a clean slate, so long as you sincerely believe it does. Your inner child is self-absorbed and may not yet have developed the emotional strength to rise above negative memories or feelings. Its never to late to change.

Any sense of conflict starts in your mind and results from a perceived disagreement. You may decide to organize a group outing, a club meeting, a public event, a new job, a business deal or negotiate the evolution of a relationship. How do you feel if you don't see the same way as other people? Do you dream of the pending fights, separation, redundancy, reminsce how your previous situations resulted poorly or below your expectations? Maybe you think abandoning your latest plans would be advisable to avoid repeating history, humiliation and defeat?

Whether your battles are 'won or lost' is determined by how you learn to separate your feelings from yourself. You can work through your feelings and understand why you have them, which experiences they're based on. Working through the roots that are grounded in your hopes, fears, memories or wild imagination, is preferable to suppressing them. Learn why you may accept or reject your potential in any area of your life, based on conditioned values and expectations that are truly changeable.

All you have to do is recognize the impact of external influences and whether or not your own memories or visions of the future are compatible with your current self and abilities. Those battles worth fighting are those that will enrich you, enable you to face fears, and even benefit from your perceived weaknesses. Discover whether any inner battles you fight aren't even yours. Someone may have imposed their hostility or other inner conflict on you. Toss such negative emotions aside. After all, why adopt someone else's issues? Why waste energy better channelled elsewhere?

Strategies to get there your way

The notion of success takes shape in different pursuits during different periods of your life.  As you go along, you'll see yourself differently.  You can use the knowledge you gain to understand why you form particular judgements.  You may choose a course of action based on nothing more than intuition, but that may be your strongest feeling at that moment.  Each choice brings you closer to defining and experiencing new success.  You have to live with all the consequences.

1) Identify your desired outcome.  This idea may change over time, but if you have no direction to work toward, then you could easily be going around in circles or, exerting effort for nothing. The outcome you focus on needs to be measurable within an established timeframe.  Be willing to adapt after your deadline passes.

2) Research possible avenues.  Once you establish where you're headed, its useful to explore different routes to get there.  Who will you talk to? How will you earn money you need? What strategy will you use to approach prospective mentors?  Which suppliers or transport would help?  Examining your options can lead to trials and errors. You decide what works and what doesn't.

3)  Interact & brainstorm.  As you make your way through a jungle of options you isolate and other people also contribute to your reflection process, it will be easier to narrow choices for the action you will take.  Hard work and reflection will maximize your potential to progress.  Take advantage of your own process of elimination.

4) Commit & be consistent: When you devote yourself to a project, you're more likely to follow through.  Do what you feel is reasonable to increase your chances of success. At the same time, refrain from acting as though one idea of success has more significance than it really does.  If it doesn't work out as you envision, you will be better able to regroup your thoughts and refocus elsewhere.

5) Get "well-fed" and "exercised" emotionally: You'll experience rejection and praise as you share your ideas for achieving success.  Take it all in and choose to learn from it.  Don't be afraid to ask for love and reach out for encouragement from people willing to provide it.  This treatment will strengthen your inner resolve, help you rise above insecurities, doubt and fear.

6) Take responsibility for your action.  To focus on your own personal growth and achieving the kind of success that is right for you at this point, learn to be accountable for your insecurities and disappointments.  Then, you'll only have to answer to yourself.  If you take initiatives for somone else or, define your choices by people's desires for you, the success wouldn't really be yours.

Free yourself from disillusionment

In the case you didn't dream someone did you wrong in a past relationship, it may have actually happened.  You reinforced this by accepting the treatment, and you need to be guided back to a state of reality where you can learn to understand that nobody has the right to do you wrong.  To internalize this truth would prevent you from evolving from the role of 'the oppressed' to 'a role of an oppressor' or 'instigator,' who may feel existence is meant for willful force and injustice.

The abrupt release of mental anguish may enable your feelings of bitterness and disillusionment.  Thinking questions like, "Why?", "Why me?" and "Why then?" may not be readily answered inside.  You may not find empathy or sympathy in your entourage.  If your friends and family simply shrug their shoulders, then they may utter under their breath, "you made your bed, now you must lie in it."  They may focus on them, reminiscing of past relationships where they have also suffered, even going as far as to stress that they were much worse off than you.

A sense of disillusionment may shatter your perceived limits of suffering.  You may have finally admitted to yourself that you'd reached the limits for your suffering, and this prompted you to leave your partner, sever a friendship or, a business partnership. Then, you may have discovered that you could suffer more, in consequence of distancing yourself from the person.  You may ask yourself whether suffering really has no limits, unless you decide 'that enough is enough'.

Many people live a life where a sense of Earthly happiness may not seem to compensate for what was suffered.  You may envisage a future where you reunite with past lovers or friends or, find a relationship to supposedly make-up for what didn't work before.  These kinds of hopes may have given meaning to your recent suffering, sacrifices and losses.  Yet, you may not be mentally prepared for a lack of immediate, improved replacements for people and circumstances which you lost or cut out of your life.  Liberation begins inside yourself, like an enticing dream.  Learn to understand what you endured and why.  This will bring you freedom and wisdom. 

Gone too far?

If someone you know or love goes too far and tells you more than you desire to know or, asks you more than you desire to share, is this an invitation to redefine your boundaries? Which subjects have you identified as taboo? You may be the sort of person who tends to probe too far into other people's personal matters. Perhaps its time someone stepped up to the plate and told you when to quit.

Most people have subjects they see as shameful, humiliating and cause them to feel uncomfortable. Some may be more obvious, especially if they relate to low confidence about outward appearance or self-image. Take note of subjects that aren't mentioned even casually. How would you know if you've gone too far or whether you're at a point where you should put your foot in your mouth?  Consider these sample subjects which also reveal reasons why it would be advisable to learn to be more tactful:

1) Earning capacity: financial matters can be sensitive areas for people who have been conditioned to measure self-worth based on the size of bank accounts and investment portfolios. Low-esteem may be revealed when a person never seems to feel satisfied with a paycheck. If a person is willing to get involved in risky dealings as a way to obtain more money, this may seem to enable him to feel better, but its only like putting a band-aid on an unhealed, psychological wound. Playing into this person's ego is a losing battle. Flattery about what materialistic people have, or what they’ve done, may never be satisfactory. This topic may be interpreted as a personal challenge or threat to perceived self-importance.

2) Family skeletons: that illegitimate or adopted relative, third or fourth marriage or divorce (i.e. "what happened to the last one?"), illegal or unethical situation, or the "black sheep," in the family, are probably not ideal subjects to bring up during a dinner party, gossip or even to discuss privately. People generally do not desire to share their 'dirty laundry.' Many more people prefer to "let sleeping dogs lie" or forget what they can. Keep clear of such unmentionable ghosts.

3) Education (or lack): hypersensitive people may feel guilty about not getting accepted into their school of choice or even being rejected from or failing out of specific programs. Do yourself a favor, avoid these potential sore spots. Don't dwell on another person's perceived academic failures. Feeling insecure about test-taking and denying results is what these people may do. The bad memories may symbolize hang ups and threats to social or professional mobility.

4) Jail-time: conversation about past jail time and possible reasons for incarceration, what treatment was endured in prison, portrayed in the news, questions about guilt or innocence, don't deserve to be mentioned. Remind yourself certain topics are best avoided so as not to offend.

5) Extramarital affairs: unfaithful people may crave intimacy and struggle to find it. They often lack self-control, ethics and good sense. Ironically, men and women tend to use sexual gratification as a getaway route from their problems. A selfish person won't care about feelings of others and that behavior is displayed in an unfaithful situation. Selfish behavior may stem back to as early as early adolescent days, when selfishness is typically developed and not reversed. It’s not up to you to straighten people out. Gossip about what they are or aren’t doing won’t help either.

6) Romantic history: Referring to past lovers, be they your own to a partner or those of other people, this really is inappropriate if initiated by you.  Why not let bygones be bygones? Who a person is with now is where the focus lies.

7) Positions on controversies: religions, life, death, and politics may be tricky areas to talk about with people because of very strong beliefs that are linked with allegiances. Older or sick people may not wish to discuss health or mortality. Rather than probe for positions or debate what you judge as a better view, steer clear of matters where you already know people support or oppose topics strongly.

8) Highly-successful friends or siblings: the ‘success syndrome’ is a phenomenon where society conditions us to compete incessantly for attention and appreciation. You may think success means earning a lot of money, making the right connections, and achieving social power through advancing in business or one of the traditional professions.  If your siblings or, siblings of friends move in different spheres, and envy or resentment abound, its better to change subjects.

9) Business ventures gone bad: If you know someone who has known business difficulties or failures, you may feel as though you’re walking on broken glass. People may see their business as an extension or projection of their person or self-worth. Failure may hurt on the level of losing a much-loved child or pet. If the person blames him or herself, it makes sense not to focus on it. If a person doesn't look you in the eye when you brink up bankruptcy or other, related issues, then its best you don't go shooting off phrases about the state of affairs “half-cocked.”

10) Unemployment: lack of income is often linked to dignity and pride. Unless you know a person well, or are offering a position, touching on this subject isn’t kind or appropriate. Its not usual practice to inquire about things like, “how long have you been now without a job?” or, “doesn’t that feel weird being a lay-about?” or, “how long can you still collect government assistance?”

If you're lucky enough to know people personally before you engage in conversations, you likely already have insight into subjects that cause them discomfort that you would strategically avoid. When people bring up subjects, feel free to folow their lead, but be mindful of the nature of your beliefs and how strong they may be. Learning more about yourself will make it less likely you'll confront people about painful or awkward situations.  Self-control helps shape your etiquette.

Bit more than a gator could chew!

When you dream of security, you may assume that police officers will be well-enough equipped to keep the peace.  As a policeman with no animal training,  how would you coax a fierce, over-sized alligator without a chair? As the two meter long creature decides to park itself in the middle of a busy highway and hold everybody up, you might think this would pose a new challenge to traditional highway patrol.  If it was you in uniform, could you keep your cool and also calm the public chaos?

In San Antonio, Texas, such a gator incident occurred on April 30, 2007.  Of course, no police procedures to deal with wild alligators lay hidden in the glove compartment training manuel.  Since these creatures are protected, quick drawing a pistol like they do in the "wild West" wasn't going to be an option.  The gator appeared moody and territorial, and didn't like the idea humans and their machines had taken over the highway.  What the gator himself was doing on the highway, wasn't verifiable.  He clearly wasn't volunteering any explantaion.  

Just when the policeman thought he might have been getting though, using basic verbal psychology, and cautious hand gestures, the huge gator moved to assult the police car, and bite a chunk from the bumper.  That certainly put the policeman in place. He didn't wish to get bitten.

Once a group of police officers arrived as reinforcements, they effectively employed a lasso and metal poles to coax the alligator into a drainage ditch leading to a neaby lake.  That was more than the creature could chew.  Witnesses described the scene as, "comparable to fumbling comedy." How often do you see a group of serious policemen challenged and overly-cautious to keep the peace with one troublemaker? 

State game warden David Chavez couldn't explain why a gator would be drawn to noise on a busy highway.  This act appeared to be out of its character, unless the animal was curious perhaps or, seeking a true, drier change of scenery?  Pollution and environmental devastation have been known to cause disorientation in animale sensory perception.  What is clear is that the spectacle offered rare photo opportunities for anyone close enough and gutsy enough to take a shot.