IS YOUR POSITIVE SELF-IMAGE REAL?

A few years ago I heard a lecture by a Buddhist monk. It was about Buddha's teaching, meditation, yoga, but also about other topics. The Buddhists (my knowledge here is very rudimentary, by the way, so please don't debate religion etc.) pay a lot of attention on controlling their actions, their words and their thoughts and making them positive. According to Buddhism, positive life experiences result only from positive actions (and negative life experiences from negative actions) . Karma and stuff.

Now this monk has been talking about the challenge of directing attention to positive action throughout the day for a long time. The goal ist to do that without this affecting the entire perception and without prohibiting other activities. Here's his suggestion on how to do that:

Imagine that you can give your brain different tasks and a part of your brain gets the task to monitor your actions properly. A small part of your brain that's been splintered off with a special mission, so to speak. So this part of your brain gets the special task of monitoring your behaviour and giving you a signal as soon as the whole thing moves in a rather negative direction and your self-image is no longer correct.

To visualize this, the monk suggested that this part of your brain should take the form of a small man or woman sitting on your head for the day. One should, sort of, walk around with a small imaginary person on one's head who supervises the action. I have tried it and experienced that it really worked for me and I have noticed how often I say, do and think things that are not positive during the day.

Admittedly, this is a bit shizoid, but it is also an exciting view of oneself. My feeling is that most people see themselves quite positively. This is the way I am and I have found it really remarkable how often small evaluations are made or how certain statements tend to lead people away from each other instead of bringing them together. So the self-image is often not quite right.

Especially the last aspect is such an elementary component of good leadership. Leaders motivate their employees to exchange ideas, especially beyond their own area of responsibility. Limitation often arises from fear of loss, complexity or competition. In my ideal conception of corporate and work culture such a thinking has no place. Nevertheless, the little man on my head showed me that I also have to work on it.

What do you think? Write me your opinion!