It’s an interesting phenomenon that the bar is being raised in human achievement and the development of our enormous potential.
In the field of athletics, records continue to be broken. In the field of science, new frontiers are being explored and previously unimagined discoveries are occurring almost daily. Some behaviour and responses that were once considered normal and acceptable have become completely unacceptable and even abnormal. History is filled with accounts of extreme, cruel and abhorrent treatment of fellow humans that once was condoned but now is considered barbaric and uncivilized.
In the area of interpersonal relations, there have been significant strides made in our understanding of how we function psychologically and how we communicate. There’s been significant research done on how we, as humans, relate to each other — so much so that we have volumes written on “what we do” and “how we do it.” What’s puzzling is that it’s still not widely accepted that we can, as individuals, make significant changes in our behaviour. Much of the world is still unaware that we have choice in our responses to each other. Most of us have been raised to see life, and thus experience life, as happening to us. We’ve accepted that we’re stuck with our personality traits and behavioural patterns and that’s that. How many times have you thought, said, or heard, “That’s just who I am,” “I’m shy,” “I’m impatient” or “I’m a perfectionist”?
We have the power to change our experience.
We don’t need to be at the whim of outside events or other people’s state of mind. We can choose.
Within each of us lies a profound source of wisdom and compassion, our innate health, that’s always available to us.
With this new insight in hand we can now “raise the bar” on our sense of well-being and calm, on the quality of our relationships, on our commitment to deepening our experience of life. We no longer need to settle for behaviour that doesn’t serve us because we no longer are willing to accept life as an outside-in experience. We are no longer stuck with our old habits or judgments.
So let’s set some new records in our sense of well-being and in the quality of our relationships. No telling how high the bar can go.