Do You Want To Lose Your Weight?

Some people believe they create their own destiny – others believe the hands of fate control them. The same is true for organizations and communities. That second perspective leaves people frustrated and angry, feeling out of control and powerless. They freeze midway on the road to maturity. The results show in big and small lapses in ethics. One reason we’re seeing so many problems in the business world now is that as a society, we’ve lost our sense of ethics.

People who have stopped maturing and are stagnating at any given point of development may:

constantly try to protect themselves against punishment, obeying rules only to make themselves feel secure
exercise black and white thinking, seeing people as either ‘with them or against them’
feel little sense of control over their lives
aim for acceptance and approval by conforming

Abraham Maslow speaks of a continuum of needs people have to satisfy before they can reach full maturity, which he calls self-actualization. In order, these needs are:

physical survival
security
acceptance
achievement
self-realization

Each of these needs presents a challenge a person has to satisfy before they move on to a higher level of development. If they don’t succeed, they get stuck in a continual behavior loop at that level, and they don’t mature any further.

Immaturity leads to all kinds of problems, both for individual people and society as a whole. One of the first signs of this immaturity in a society is the existence of power hierarchies. Power hierarchies spur a complex host of problems, including: de-motivation, loss of health, low productivity, fiscal losses, bankruptcies and the manipulation of many for the benefit of a few.

Hierarchical values suggest that developmental immaturity is unavoidable: there are the rich and there are the poor, there are the employers and there are the employees, and these lines never change or blur. Not only companies support this theory, but entire societies: man has defined global regions as ‘haves and have-nots.’

We see examples of this on a daily basis in the news. We hear about CEOs who make extravagant luxury purchases or receive a ‘golden parachute’ in spite of the fact that their company is bankrupt. In politics, we see leaders rising to power suddenly, leaving social turmoil in their wake. We see more extreme examples as militant extremists plot and carry out crimes against humanity.

Those who fall behind and stay stuck in a lower stage of maturing will remain helpless against the tidal waves of destruction in the modern world. So much of this could be avoided if leaders in business, politics, education, and local communities would commit themselves to helping the people they influence to grow and mature, to move forward in self-development. It’s not enough to sit and think about the problem, to wonder what could be done to help people become more ethical.

There are so many personal development and training opportunities available, especially in the business world. Providing this sort of ethical consciousness training for employees isn’t just a matter of helping everyone to get along and be nice – it’s an investment that pays enormous dividends that benefit everyone.

Those who work towards the goal of self-realization for themselves and for those around them will mature. Those who mature will create a healthy new paradigm for business and society, and will ultimately thrive in the future.

What are the applications for anger courses? How does one know when an anger course is needed? Of course, I believe there are obvious instances where someone’s anger is so out of control that one need not even ask the question. What about the kind of unexpressed and suppressed, seething anger and frustration that seems to never really be released but is wreaking havoc in ones personal life and health?

One example is repeated accidents of various types. Situations where a person is constantly getting hurt and in many cases needing medical attention due to repeated incidents. A perfect example would be people who have ongoing auto accidents. Last year, a sheriff friend corrected me and said “they don’t call them accidents anymore, they call them car wrecks.” On some level a new distinction has been made about why people have accidents. Interesting and very worth pondering if you are one of those people who have had frequent accidents.

A few years ago someone I love was involved in a string of accidents. Many of the accidents involved cars, some involved various sports, and some included other people. If you know someone who gets into a lot of accidents, it might be wise to avoid traveling with them and especially avoid letting them drive when you are in the car. You see, you really don’t know the cause of all the accidents and consciously, neither do they, so you are at risk when they drive. That information is very worthwhile if you have teens who are driving or young adults who have already had a number of car wrecks. Unresolved anger may very well be the culprit.

As I looked back over my own history of auto accidents, I was able to pinpoint a time when I was going through a divorce, angry at an unfaithful husband, worried about providing a stable home for my child, had just moved, changed my city of residence, and changed my job. Do you think I was angry? Absolutely, and I was also in denial, telling myself and friends that I could handle it and it was all for the best. The problem is my feelings were all repressed and showed up in a string of car accidents where fortunately I was relatively unharmed. Thankfully, there were no passengers or other cars involved except in one where I was rear-ended. I did considerable damage to my car in each case, and my insurance rates skyrocketed for several years.

As a result, over time I became very conscious of how I was feeling whenever I got in the car. I remembered that in each case I had been angry earlier in the day due to a phone conversation with my soon to be “ex”, or I was frustrated with work and not making my numbers as a sales person. I was having a hard time with my real estate agent over problems with a house that had not been noted on the inspection and appraisal when I bought it but had surfaced soon after the closing – like a leaky roof that had not been disclosed to me, a single buyer who had just relocated. I felt very angry about the entire situation. The result is that I kept having accidents and I was starting to feel accident prone. I needed help and did not know it. I was angry and I was repressing it.