“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.”
Ebenezer Scrooge, to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, in Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Of all the sources of mental anguish, one of the most devastating is the feeling that the person we are, has fallen far short of the person we could have become. “It’s my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me. . .” (Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet). In extreme cases, a deep discrepancy between our real self and our ideal self, can lead us to question the very value of our existence.
“Roy Baumeister, a professor at Florida State University, found that people who committed suicide often weren’t in the worst circumstances, but they had fallen short of the expectations they had of themselves. Their lives were not matching the stories in their head.”
Eric Barker, Barking Up the Wrong Tree
What is overlooked by many suffering from deep feelings of inadequacy, is the immense capacity we possess for change. We are not prisoners of our past choices, and it is possible to radically alter both the person we are and the path in life we are following. In this video we explore the phenomenon of quantum change, which is personality change that occurs in a rapid and dramatic fashion.
“Personal revolutions do occur. I have had the privilege of witnessing their emergence more often than I had expected.”
Michael Mahoney, Constructive Psychotherapy
