The tides advance; the tides recede. Winter goes and summer comes. Summer wanes and the cold increases. The sun rises; the sun sets. The moon is full; the moon is black. The birds arrive; the birds depart. Flowers bloom; flowers fade. Seeds are sown; harvests are reaped. All nature is a circle of moods and you are a part of nature and so, like the tides, your moods will rise; your moods will fall.
It is one of nature’s tricks, little understood, that each day you awaken with moods that have changed from yesterday. Yesterday’s joy will become today’s sadness; yet today’s sadness will grow into tomorrow’s joy. Inside your heart is a wheel, constantly turning from sadness to joy, from exultation to depression, from happiness to melancholy, yet you will remember that as today’s dead flower carries the seed of tomorrow’s bloom, so does today’s sadness carry the seed of tomorrow’s joy.
And how will you master these emotions so that each day will be productive? If your mood is right, the day will be a failure. Trees and plants depend on the weather to flourish but you make your own weather, yea you transport it with you.
And how will you master your emotions so that every day is a happy day and a productive one? You will learn this secret of the ages: “Weak are he who permits his thoughts to control his action; strong is he who forces his actions to control his thoughts.” Each day, when you awaken, you will follow this plan of battle before you are captured by the forces of sadness, self-pity and failure –
If you fell depressed you can sing.
If you feel sad you can laugh.
If you feel ill you can double your exercise.
If you feel fear you can plunge ahead.
If you feel inferior you can wear new garments.
If you feel uncertain you can raise your voice.
If you feel poverty you can think of wealth to come.
If you feel incompetent you can remember past success.
If you feel insignificant you can remember your goals.
Henceforth, you will know that only those with inferior ability can always be at their best and you are not inferior. There will be days when you must constantly struggle against forces which would tear you down. Those such as despair and sadness are simple to recognize but there are others which approach with a smile and the hand of friendship and they can also destroy you. Against them, you must never relinquish control –
If you become overconfident you can recall your failures.
If you overindulge you can think of past hungers.
If you feel complacency you can remember your competition.
If you enjoy moments of greatness you can remember moments of shame.
If you feel all-powerful you can try to top the wind.
If you attain great wealth you can remember one unfed mouth.
If you become overly proud you can remember a moment of weakness.
If you feel your skill is unmatched you can look at the stars.
Henceforth you can recognize and identify the mystery of moods in all mankind and in yourself. From this moment you prepared to control whatever personality awakes in yourself each day. You will master you moods through positive action and when you master your moods you will control your destiny. You will become master of yourself. You will become a great man.
亲爱的姨姨：
The tides advance; the tides recede. Winter goes and summer comes. Summer wanes and the cold increases. The sun rises; the sun sets. The moon is full; the moon is black. The birds arrive; the birds depart. Flowers bloom; flowers fade. Seeds are sown; harvests are reaped. All nature is a circle of moods and you are a part of nature and so, like the tides, your moods will rise; your moods will fall.
Just passively letting your life happen may make it more difficult to accept yourself. Part of accepting yourself is engaging in activities that help you like yourself. Think back to those times when you weren’t concerned about your acceptability. What kinds of things were you doing? How were you spending your time? To accept and like yourself means that you approve of how you are living your life. If you aren’t accepting yourself, you probably don’t like the activities you’re engaged in. You are feeling dissatisfied. A way to increase your self-acceptance is to become more actively engaged in your life. Look for those activities and relationships that give you the most enjoyment – not necessarily the most enjoyment you could possibly have, but the most you can get from your choices at the moment. Try new things, perhaps things you have always wanted to try but didn’t because you felt you couldn’t do them. Try them with the attitude that you want to know what it would actually be like to do them. You may find that they are enjoyable and that you want to continue them. You may find that they are okay, but not worth continuing. You may find that you don’t like them at all and feel fine about crossing them off your list of things to do. Trying and getting real experience is a way of feeling better about yourself and gaining more confidence in your abilities.
Judging yourself by what others have accomplished is a sure way to lower your self-acceptance. Have you noticed that you never compare yourself to people who seem to aspire to less than you do and that you always chose those people who are the top performers or the most popular as your yardstick for success? Are you as good as your friends, your roommate, your brother or sister, your parents or Joe Blow? And how about trying to be like “normal” people are? (And who or what determines what is “normal”?) Can you only be good if you’re better than someone else? When we use other people as our yardstick, we aren’t taking into consideration our own personal limitations or talents. For example, if someone seems to be more articulate than you, you can respond in one of two ways: You can become upset and depressed by telling yourself that you should be as articulate as that person or you can recognize and accept the fact that there are probably a lot of people out there who are more articulate than you at certain times and under certain circumstances and that is okay. It doesn’t mean a thing about you. Playing the comparison game is a dead end street. By doing that you are probably missing some other qualities by which you can judge your own worth, like your honesty, friendliness, caring nature, dedication and so forth. And really, people don’t value you for how much you are like someone else. They do value you for the ways you are being you.
The idea that you should always be able to attain your goals as long as you work hard enough is another factor interfering with self-acceptance. You will reach many of your goals and should give yourself credit for having done so. Some of us have trouble seeing our successes because we focus so much on our failures and many times the failures come after a lot of hard work and personal suffering. It seems that all that hard work should pay off in our having reaching the goal we set out to achieve. It is hard to accept that a given goal may be out of our reach and that may be because of many factors, including the fact that we may not have the talent or skill needed to reach the goal. Of course there may be other factors in operation that make the achieving of that goal at that time impossible such as living environment concerns, Russian language problems, far away from family, extraneous stressors or any number of other factors acting alone or together. The real trick to self-acceptance is to see that the goal is unattainable, at least for now and shifting your focus to accomplishing what you can accomplish under the circumstances. That could include evaluating your original goal and deciding whether or not to continue with it. It also means giving yourself credit for what you have accomplished and what you have learned from your experiences.
Having standards that are impossibly high is a third way you can not accept yourself. It may not come as a surprise to you that most of us are more demanding of ourselves than we are of others. Somehow we can tolerate the fact that other people fail, that they aren’t always kind, that they’ve done things they aren’t proud of, but we have difficulty accepting those very human aspects of ourselves. The need to be perfect is another way to set yourself up for failure and enhance the feeling that you are not acceptable. We all make mistakes. Accepting less than perfection simply means recognizing the limitations inherent in being born a human being. Learn to value who you are rather than who you could become. To quote Linus, a sober and often worried character from a popular comic strip, “The world’s heaviest burden is a great potential”. Wouldn’t it be overwhelming if we always had to do what we imagine we could do? Nobody has the time and energy to do all of that. We must make choices about what we will pursue and do them the best we can under the circumstance (which aren’t always ideal, by the way).
.jpg)
.jpg)
