Excerpt from Daily Cures, Wisdom for Healthy Aging by Connie Mason Michaelis
Dr. Phil, an American television personality, author, psychologist, is famous for asking the question, “How is that working for you?” As a counselor, he is asking people to consider if their thoughts and actions are getting the results they are looking for. If you are angry all the time, even though you may feel justified, it is not going to work for you in the long haul. Anger fixes very few problems and creates a lot of them. As we grow older, it is more important than ever to ask ourselves, “How is that working for me?” If you insist that you don’t need a hearing aid, but you can’t hear people on the phone, is that working for you? The bottom line is, if your inflexible attitude is creating a problem in your life, then it is not working for you!
Attributes that have served you very well in your life may no longer work for your benefit. I like to say the seed of your destruction is in your gifts. If you’ve been a successful, high-achieving performer all your life and you come to a point where you need to accept some help, what was once a gift can be a detriment to your life. Never let your persistence and passion turn into stubbornness and ignorance. Most type A personalities have difficulties accepting help. It takes a great deal of maturity to learn to let go of what you cannot control and recognize that what has served you at one stage of life may not serve you now. Hermann Hesse, Nobel prize winner, says, “Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.”
“The seed of your destruction is in your gifts.” Connie Mason Michaelis