I
meet a lot of people who come into my office afraid, sleepless and unhappy
because of their legal problems. Those
new or repeat clients frequently leave in a much better state of mind. Many of the clients say that they “feel
relieved”, “at peace” or “calmer” after meeting with me for legal counsel. I often spend as much time on the client’s overall well-being as I do gathering information to address the
technicalities of their legal problem.
If my client is facing a hearing or an important conference, they need
to be able to sleep, be confident and healthy to maintain their professional
practice, family and focus in order to present themselves as they truly
are.
A
client who is fatigued from lack of sleep and worry may not be perceived as truthful and competent. So with that in mind, I want to share some
practical philosophy that I think you may find worthy of consideration. If it is, perhaps you might suggest my blog
to a colleague or friend for their thoughts.
Over
the years I have seen repeated examples of my belief that the way you think
about the world and yourself can have a huge effect on the reality of your day-to-day
life as well as your future.
Just
as you can make yourself ill through thoughts and beliefs, you can do the
opposite. How can you really change an ingrained belief? By convincing yourself of a new possibility
with indisputable facts that lead to an irrefutable fact.
Abraham
Lincoln fought depression his entire life.
Abe Lincoln once said something to the effect of… “I’ve come to the
conclusion that a person is about as happy as he makes his mind up to be.”
Dogma
is defined as a viewpoint or system of ideas based upon insufficiently examined
premises. Eckhart Tolle wrote this about
dogmas:
Dogmas—religious, political, scientific—arise
out of the erroneous belief that thought can encapsulate reality or the
truth. Dogmas are collective conceptual
prisons. And the strange thing is that
people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a
false sense of “I know.”
Nothing has inflicted more suffering on
humanity than its dogmas. It is true
that every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reality will eventually
disclose its falseness; however, unless the basic delusion of it is seen for
what it is, it will be replaced by others.
What is this basic delusion? Identification with thought.
An
excellent example of dogmatism making scientists look foolish was in the late
19th century where many physicists dogmatically believed that all that could be
known about physics was encapsulated within Newtonian physics. Of
course, along came Einstein and Neils Bohr who shredded that Newtonian
dogmatism. In medicine it was the
dogmatic view that stomach ulcers were a result of lifestyle. An obscure doctor in Australia after years of
dedication, proved to the world at large that H. pylori was a bacteria that caused
gastric ulcers and such ulcers could be treated with antibiotics.
Today,
I hear and read entirely too many dogmatic opinions and statements. There is very little creativity and
innovation. In fact, some people vilify
intellectuals and intellectualism as though that were a fault. We need a lot more intellectualism and a lot
less dogmatism.
A
concluding but important tenet that is found in all sound philosophies and
religions is that every person should be grateful for what they have and not
obsess on things they do not have. If
you stop from time to time and take a mental inventory of what you do have and be truly grateful for it, you won’t fall prey to a negative outlook.
