Mirza Yawar Baig – Tyranny of the self
AI: Summary ©
The "forceful state" is crucial to maintaining a desired state and causing problems for children and adults. Demand for medication and avoiding falling short of class are key priorities. The "entitlement state" is essential to being self-aware of one's feelings and using them to develop their mind. Controling one's feelings can affect one's behavior and use them to change one's behavior.
AI: Summary ©
Now, brothers and sisters, there is somebody called
Ed Batista, and he has written some things
very eloquently, and he has coined this phrase
called the tyranny of feelings, the tyranny of
feelings, and he describes it as follows.
He says, the tyranny of feelings consists of
believing that my feelings are justified because they
are my feelings.
My feelings are justified because they are my
feelings.
My feelings at this moment take precedence over
all other considerations.
I have the right to express my feelings
any way I see fit.
And if I believe that you are causing
my feelings, you are obligated to modify your
behavior in order to align with my desired
emotional state.
Now, effectively it means that he says that,
as we said here, my feelings are supreme,
and if I'm not feeling good, and if
I believe that you are the reason for
that, then you must change your behavior so
that I feel good.
Now, Ed Batista says this very nicely.
He says that this is the state of
the infant, of the newborn child, of a
very young child, because that child is actually
incapable of taking care of itself.
If it is just left, it will perish.
So, it needs to attract attention, and it
needs to dominate the moment and force the
caregiver, whoever it is, to give it care.
So, the child will do anything that it
takes to get that attention and to get
that caregiver to do what this child wants.
So, this is the problem.
Now, therefore, however, the problem is when you
carry this forward into your adulthood.
With a young child, one understands this, but
with adults, this becomes a major problem.
Now, if you think about it, what does
this have to do, for example, I'll tell
you ways in which this is counterproductive and
bad.
For example, if you encounter a person who
disagreed with you, or if you encounter somebody
who gives you some adverse feedback, your teacher,
your parent, your superior, your friend, your colleague,
gives you some feedback about your behavior, which
is itself negative.
And they tell you that, look, this kind
of behavior is not good for you, not
good for anybody else, it's going to cause
you hurt.
The tendency of people is that I'm no
longer your friend, because you are not saying
things to me that I like.
I don't like this teacher because the teacher
is not giving me supreme importance, and so
forth.
So, you close the doors to your own
development.
You close the doors to your own learning.
I'll give you a short, a very, very
quick self-test to see whether you are
in this state of mind or not.
I call this the entitlement state of mind.
And the simple test is that when you
encounter, say, for example, an argument, you disagree
with somebody, what is your first response?
Is your first response, I don't like what
you're saying?
I dislike what you're saying?
Or is it to say, okay, so that's
one way of looking at this.
I have a different way of looking at
it.
And you are very objective about it.
It's like, for example, you suffer from the
inability to concentrate, you have a short attention
span, you have an attention span deficit, you
are unable to concentrate on a given matter
for a long period of time.
Now, just think about this, the words I'm
using, unable, short as versus long and adequate
deficit.
What does this tell you?
It tells you that there is a problem
and that your that problem lies with you.
It's with your inability to do something.
And therefore, what must you do?
You must take the medicine.
You are the one who has a headache.
So you must take the medicine to cure
your headache.
Meaning, if I don't have an attention span,
that will help me to succeed because we
know that in life, the only way to
success is by being able to concentrate and
stay with one thing, with one worthwhile thing
for a long period of time until you
achieve the goal.
Now, if you are not able to do
that, then it means that there is a
problem with you.
So what must you do?
Correct yourself, right?
Get some help if you can't do it
on your own.
But what is the usual response of the
world today?
No, no, no.
See, the fact that the children or whoever,
we tend to blame everything on children, which
is completely false anyway.
Children don't have long attention spans.
Therefore, teachers must reduce the duration of their
speeches.
Classes must be for a short period of
time.
Lectures must be for not more than 10
minutes and so on and so forth.
So you have normalized something which was a
deficiency.
It's like saying if somebody is unable to
do a particular task, say you have got
high jump, long jump, whatever, and somebody is
not able to do that, you should lower
the bar.
Now, what happens when you lower the bar?
The whole standard drops, right?
But this is what we have made as
the norm in our society.
And that's why society is the way it
is.
So instead of that, what you must say
is that the standard remains where it is.
If I am unable to concentrate, I must
think about and say, what can I do
to concentrate?
How can I take it forward?
How can I develop my mind in such
a way that I am able to concentrate
on one thing with great intensity to resolve
it?
That is the way to go, right?
Instead of, as Ed Batista says, the tyranny
of feelings.
Now, very important also to understand that a
feeling is something that is mine.
I own it.
And if I can own it, what does
it mean?
It means that nobody else can make me
feel this way or that.
If I am sad, glad, bad, mad, it's
because I choose to be sad, glad, bad,
mad, not because somebody else made me sad,
glad, bad, mad.
Nobody can make me do this or make
me do that.
They can do whatever they want to do.
They can say whatever they want to say.
And short of physical attack, they cannot make
me feel sad or happy or whatever, unless
I choose to fall into the trap that
they are setting for me.
So I'm not a puppet.
I'm not a puppet.
I'm not going to hand over my strings
to the puppeteer outside.
I choose my behavior and I choose that
behavior.
I choose how to behave based on my
intelligent decision, which is based on my wisdom,
which is based on what I have been
taught and what I learned and so forth.
Now, that is the thing to think about
and do and say, this is what I
want to do and this is what will
help me.
So the tyranny of feelings, therefore, is a
very big problem.
Now, another reason it happens is because we
have learned or we have told ourselves that
we are helpless and that whatever happens to
me is because of somebody else.
Now, that is the mental state we have
to get out of and come back to
saying, what I feel, my feelings are my
feelings and they are my feelings because they
are my feelings.
Nobody else can make me feel this way
or that way.
The issue, however, is to understand the difference
between feeling and the expression of those feelings.
So it's not the question of, for example,
if I feel angry, I feel angry.
This is a novel feeling, nothing wrong with
feeling angry.
In cases where you should be angry, if
you don't feel angry, there is a problem.
But however, my choice is how do I
choose to express that anger?
Am I going to rave and rant?
Am I going to beat up people?
Or am I behave in a dignified manner
and tell people, look, this behavior of yours
is very irritating.
This behavior of yours makes me angry, makes
your customers angry.
So you might like to think about changing
that behavior.
So can I have a dialogue with somebody
while I still retain my anger?
And my anger is a good thing, it's
not a bad thing.
But what becomes bad is if I express
this anger in an inappropriate manner.
That is very important to understand.
So that is why it's very important to
be self-aware and say what is happening
to me.
Now usually we are told to suppress those
feelings, but suppression is not awareness.
Suppression is actually a lie because you are
saying to yourself, I'm not feeling this.
But as long as you keep distancing yourself
and saying, I'm not feeling, I'm not feeling,
you can never control it because then you
are, well, you know, according to you, you're
not feeling.
So what is there to control?
However, the fact remains that you are feeling.
And unless you accept that and own that,
yes, I am feeling angry.
I am feeling affectionate.
I am feeling sad and depressed.
I'm feeling excited.
Unless you own the feeling, then you have
no control over the feeling.
So what I own, what I name, I
control.
What I don't own, what I don't name
or can't name or won't name controls me.
So if you want to control your feelings,
you have to own them and you have
to name them and say, this is what
is going on in my heart just now.
And then now reasoning comes into play and
you say, well, why am I feeling that
way?
You reflect on that.
Think about that and say, now what is
the conscious decision that I want to take
going forward if I don't like the way
I'm feeling?
If I like the way I'm feeling, that's
fine.
But if I don't like the way I'm
feeling, then how do I change that?
By what actions should I take?
And then look at the pros and cons
of the action, pros and cons of the
methodology that you intend to do.
You don't want the solution to be worse
than the problem.
So that is the whole issue of the
tyranny of feelings, which I believe is one
of the biggest problems that we are facing
today.
I ask Allah to help us to do
that which is pleasing to him and to
save us from that which does not please
him.