Many years after reading how to be my own best friend, I sometimes think that I am my own best enemy by spending so much time recriminating myself about something I did the night before rather than enjoy the moment for what it was meant to be. I am one of those people who reads books like this now and then not only to see how I might handle life but to see what I disagree with in books of this genre.
Newman and Berkowitz's book reminded me of how I can still be in better control of what I do and by inference be my own best friend. It also reminded me that if the feeling of being lousy is because I continually put myself down for no real reason, why not just change my mindset and think positive. The funny thing is that here I am advocating positive thinking for others; I might as well apply that fully to myself! The book also appeared to have more psych-babble than it had thirty odd years back. Perhaps that is because I have since learned to develop some good common sense from life experiences without just picking up every "how to" book on the market.
There are solutions to living through problems and that may just be facing those problems and dealing with them square on without being intimidated by the size of the issue or the nature of the problem. That may be easy to say if I were taken to court for a law suit connected to a broken marriage or worse. The best thing is not to get myself to repeat the same mistakes that bring the same results but to get on living.
If I don't like chatting on the internet, than I should discontinue doing that, for example is what I am trying to say. Why bother compromising how I think because someone else finds that chatting is more productive and I don't? So I have given myself a time limit as to how much time I spend answering emails and the like so that I don't feel I am a victim of the system, so that I don't feel guilty about it.
Then I started to enjoy the occasional contact because I knew that it was something that I could control and not be controlled or conditioned by. The same might be said for people who have a variety of habit-forming behaviours and yet continually do it but feel bad afterwards. When it came to bad study habits, I learned to solve them to avoid the bigger problem of not getting promoted. Thank goodness I never had a drinking, smoking or drug problem!
