Six Core Self-Mastery Guidelines

Discover a robust set of self-help guidelines — principles causing one to continuously improve, day by day, week by week, month by month and year by year. This page highlights six guidelines to personal self-mastery.

The Transformational Mind Set: Six Guidelines For Self-Mastery

By Murray Johannsen

The following principles form the basis for a robust self-help philosophy—one that reduces thinking and acting like a victim.

Self-Mastery Guideline 1: Understand The Mind “I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” — Vincent van Gogh The mind is like a car, it don’t’ go if you don’t know how to run it.

If you ask the average person:

What the major components of mind are, few could tell you.

How to change a belief, they won't know.

It you pointed out that:

They are acting defensively; they would get angry, but wouldn't know what you are talking about.

They needed to change, they might agree but don't know how.

All of these problems have a root causes—lack of understanding how the mind really works.

Self-Mastery Guideline 2: Unlearning is as Important as Learning "When I was a young boy I saw something beautiful near the farms' tool shed. Asking my mom what it was, she said. "That's a spider web." How beautiful it was glistening in the sun. Then I saw something a fly; stuck, struggling, trapped—it could not escape." Morale of the Story: We are that fly—caught in web of limiting beliefs. M. Johannsen

Limiting beliefs and false expectations are particularly insidious since they typically go unrecognized.

Limiting Beliefs

A limiting belief functions like an invisible straitjacket. It starts with words like, “I can’t” or I’m no good at.” Or someone says, “I can never learn a foreign language.” And guess what, that person is correct—they can’t because they believe they can’t.

A better way so saying this might be, “I choose not to learn a foreign language (best) or a rationalization such as, “I don’t have the time to learn a foreign language.” Of course, if something was important, one would make the time. For example, people always find time to go shopping at the mall, but there's never enough time to read a book or exercise the body.

False Expectations

Expectations are beliefs about the future—some are true, some are not. Some of these expectations affect only myself, still others affect millions. A classic example of large scale false expectations had to do with the subprime crisis, which really began before the freeze-up of the credit markets in August 2007.

Up until the 3rd quarter of 2007, homeowners falsely expected the value of their homes to continue to appreciate. And bankers thought that foreclosure rates would not increase. Yet, by February of 2008, Business Week reported that American housing prices had fallen by 9% nationally and that the rate of decline was increasing. By September of 2008, housing prices continued to fall in the UK and the US. while the federal government was nationalizing or merging weaker banks into smaller ones.

So it is important to be able to unlearn limiting beliefs that keep us from reaching our goals and false expectations that contribute to delusion.

Self-Mastery Guideline 3: Grow Your Ego Know Thyself—Inscription found at the Temple of the Oracle at Delphi (also attributed to Socrates, Plato, Thales, & Pythagoras)

Some Ego’s are Mature— Most Aren’t

Many suffer from a little understood condition known as arrested development. For some, this condition strikes after high school graduation, for others, it begins after college. Just because someone is smart doesn't mean their Ego is mature.

There are many PhD's who are operate at a low level of emotional intelligence. Maturity is very hard to define. It’s something that would eventually lead to Maslow’s self-actualization or Eastern self-realizations.

I remember a few years ago doing a training program for a three partners who grow their business from the original three to 133. When it started, one person did the accounting, one did the engineering and the other did the accounting. Twenty-five years later is was still this way. The President was still functioning as an engineer, the CFO was thinking like a book keeper and the Director of Manufacturing was still most at home running a CNC machine.

 

Self-Mastery Guideline 4: Purify and Unify the Unconscious We need to know what we don't know. — Unknown.

Within the unconscious lies many answers and many problems. As Freud and Jung and many other psychologists have pointed out, we have to deal with unconscious forces if we are to continue to grow the immature Ego.

Purify the Bad Programs

Life installs some bad programs into the unconscious, often when we are very young. For example, a mother speaking to a child in a moment of anger, “You will never amount to anything!” can contribute to insecurity that lasts through life. A father who cannot show love to the daughter, produces a woman who cannot find it in her relationships. Unfortunately, many of these programs are not easily changed.

Unify the Parts

There are parts of the mind that run almost as independent programs. This is not all bad, but sometimes is in not all good. Sometimes these complexes can run bad habits.

For example, many smokers find the decision to buy cigarettes largely unconscious—made without really thinking about it. The same phenomenon applies to drinking, overeating and other habituated behaviors.

Self-Mastery Principle 5: Set-up Robust Communication Links Between the Ego and the Unconscious Be All The You Can Be —Advertising Slogan, U.S. Army

The mind is not as unified as one might think. There are boundaries between its different parts. It's link there are two shores separated by water. On one shore there is the Ego, On the other shore there is the Unconscious. And for most people, there is no bridge between the two. To bridge the two, you have to set-up linkages.

Establish Uplinks

One metaphor for communication between the two is the Ego is "up" and the Unconscious is "down." Therefore an up link is what we do to hear unconscious messages; and how you listen to what your unconscious is saying is very important.

Set-Up Down Links.

What you say to yourself, what you see in your mind is also very important. The Unconscious listens closely to the Ego—what the Ego thinks about tends to happen.

Self-Mastery Principle 6: Improve Yourself Daily Rome was not built in a day. — American Saying

It’s just a simple step, but sometimes the first step is the toughest. I am reminded of a saying, “Procrastination is the natural enemy of self-help.” Most individuals procrastinate throughout their entire life. They say they will get around to it, but they never do.

The young may find this hard to believe, but the old know this to be true—as one ages, it becomes hard and hard to make meaningful changes in one’s life. Without strong program for personal improvement, we tend to sink into the quicksand of routine which prevents us from doing things better.

Additional Readings:

The Developing a Leadership Philosophy

Copyright @ 2008 by Murray Johannsen. All Rights Reserved