INTRODUCTION: FEEL GOOD AND “DO GOOD”

If Mankind is to survive, we must develop a new manner of thinking … Einstein

            I am convinced that we (you included!) have every resource we need to feel good and do good.  I believe this because I have experienced directly and indirectly people who consistently do so.  For the most part, these are ordinary people.  They succeeded with ordinary intelligence, without money or position, and some, in spite of the worst imaginable physical limitations.  I concluded that if they have found a way, there is a way, and I can find that way.  I admire, perhaps even envy the ability of birds to fly.  I no longer flap my arms and try to fly because I’m convinced I won’t get off the ground.  However, if one day I looked up and saw one human flapping his/her arms and flying above me, I would get very motivated to become a “flyer.”   You see, I wouldn’t need to observe all humans or many humans flapping their arms and flying; I’d only need to see one.  Now, in addition to admiring the ability to fly, I also wanted to feel good and do good.  Since I have seen not just one person, but many who are convincingly authentic in attaining those skills, I have devoted much of my life’s activities to find what works.

Some years past, the then famous anthropologist, Margaret Mead, concluded that our common language constrains our thinking; it is so constructed that we emphasize the negatives in our lives.  By example, it is difficult to find simple opposites for single word concepts like “worry,” “setback,” and “resentment.”  Our language predisposes us to dwell on the negative to the exclusion of directing our thinking to the positive.   A mind focused on “worry” is more familiar to most than preoccupation with “optimizing.” “Setbacks” are familiar while one rarely hears of a “setforward.”  And when we “what if,” the imagined outcome is often the worst of many possible alternatives instead of the “most likely,” for example, getting on an airplane.   Heeding Dr. Mead’s advice, a group of mental health professionals invented the word “stren,” a word tool to recognize any vocabulary, idea, insight, wisdom, or experience that “strengthens” our well-being. 

I am a long-time stren collector.  This guide is the outcome of my collection of what works for people who have attained feeling good and “doing good.”    I have come a long way; my studies have been fruitful.  Each individual stren contributes to well-being; together, they create a newer manner of thinking that offers benefits far greater than the sum of its parts.  The newer way of thinking, abbreviated ANWOT, empowers us to take responsibility (response ability) for the direction of our life, to free our self from the blind obedience demanded by the innate and acquired controllers of our thoughts and behavior.   ANWOT promotes the development of our self and self-mastery skills.  Through this guide, I wish to share what I have learned that is effective and invite you to become my partner in benefiting from, and adding to, this collection of skills and wisdom(s).

Another well-known scientist/philosopher, Albert Einstein, concluded: “If mankind is to survive, we shall require a new manner of thinking.”  His insight leads me to a related conclusion: global peace will follow only when we, as individuals, first apply the newer way of thinking to wisely direct our own life’s experience.  This guide offers a vocabulary of words and strens that create a newer way of thinking; one that fosters peace-of-mind.  Practice in substituting the word-switches for words habitually used within our “first languages” develops an alternative manner of mental processing.  I believe that the state of the world we live in is a reflection of the state of our own inner world.  If we are to encourage peace-in-the-world, a prerequisite is that many more people need to attain peace within, to develop skills of self-endorsement and self-mastery.  
  
The most important conclusion from my studies is the recognition that as adults, we have the capacity to direct our thinking.  By strengthening this mental processing skill, thought control, we increase mastery of our feelings and our actions.  While our thinking commonly is the source of feeling “bad” and acting unwisely, it is just as powerful a resource to fulfill our wants.  Common goals we humans often share, to name a few, include happiness, security, well-being, peace-of-mind and peace-in-the-world, love, belonging, enthusiasm, and creativity.   These goals are most readily attained when practical skills and wisdoms are provided to the creative resources of our mind.

The process of freeing our self from the predetermined urgings of our genetic inheritance and blind obedience to our early nurturers has been called “becoming one’s own person.”  We have limited control of what fate and circumstance make of us through our first decades.  As we mature, we receive a marvelous gift, the immense capacity to strengthen our free will and become master of our own life’s experience.  Herein is our resource for self-mastery.  Updating our language for this newer way of thinking and effectively applying the wisdom here provided will grow feeling good and “doing good”.  

This guide is the collection of those basic practical skills and wisdoms, gleaned from the insights of others who have discovered what makes a difference.  The Guide’s most important innovation is the organization of these strens into a practical teachable and learnable system easily digested by anyone capable of reading.   Each skill and wisdom adds a bit of strength to our ability to become what we are capable of becoming.  The stren collection will add to your ability to reach your goals.

The collection of strens is offered on computer disk and/or E-book, free of charge, free of obligation.  The strens convey a number of discoveries, conclusions, and innovations, mostly originated by others, which I invite you to consider:

• A Newer Way of Thinking: Becoming one’s own person requires a newer way of thinking.  Most persons remain relatively “stuck” in the manner of dependency thinking provided by our first masters – our nature (genetic inheritance), and our nurture (the prescriptions of our upbringing).   Simple substitution of descriptive and analog words, provided in this guide, for the commonly used prescriptive and dichotomous words, learned as our first language, enlists new wiring patterns that foster the independent thinking of self-mastery.  The easy to make word changes that make a dramatic difference in the manner information is processed are identified and explained in the guide. 
• A Practical Teachable/Learnable System of “Strength” Building: Many persons have discovered tools that work to attain feeling good and doing good.  My contribution, as a collector of their insights, is the creation of a practical teachable/learnable system of skill development leading to self-mastery, i.e., managing our thinking and thereby our feelings and actions.  The system has five components – identifying and “mixing” the ingredients required to take control of our life’s direction, substituting the vocabulary of independent thinking for dependency thinking, applying the Mental Response Control Panel, adding specific skill-building “strens” that foster wisdom in our thinking, and identifying our own value system.
• “Yes, I Can”: First things first!  Freedom to choose is not automatic; the first step is a belief that we can make a difference.  Faith in the power of our self activates our motivation and energy.  Anyone capable of reading this can acquire the skills to feel good and do good.  The basic skills for self-mastery are identified and most important are readily teachable and learnable.  Most of the unhappiness and unsatisfactory experience of our lifetime is of our own creation.  The marvelous news is that we have the resources to make a difference, to set our own doable goals, and to become effective in attaining them.
• The Ingredients: The ingredients for becoming one’s own person are enough faith in oneself to try, work, patience, direction, and willingness to do some risk-taking.  These ingredients are present or readily available; steps to attain any lacking are provided in the Guide.  You (and most persons) already have the prerequisite skills to becoming one’s own person: the ability to use language and to think.  You have already acquired basic knowledge of yourself and the world about you, and you now have ready access through computer, Internet, and other sources to the wisdom acquired and documented through the ages. 
• The Mental Response Control Panel: We have eight choices available to us to deal with each life issue.  Most are nonproductive.  The Guide provides an easy method to identify and direct these choices.  The most common ones can be readily identified and mastered. 
• Values Clarification: Although we benefit from reason, most of our choices and actions rely on “faith” based assumptions about the nature of the world we live in.  Science does not yet (and perhaps cannot) provide sufficient facts for an absolute system of aesthetics, laws, religion, and other major life issues.  Therefore, unlike most contemporary guides to self-understanding, this guide contains strens that encourage you to identify and clarify your own value system.    
• Peace-of-mind, Peace-in-the-world: The conflicts and generally negative state of our community and world environment are largely a reflection of the conflict we have not resolved within ourselves.  Peace-of-mind is a step towards peace-in-the-world.  “Each one, teach one.”
• A “Living” Format for Becoming One’s Own Person:  This guide is an incomplete collection of strens.  However, its format lends itself to ready modification and/or addition of your insights.  The Guide creates the means for your wisdoms to be reviewed for merit and for you to “fill-in” what is missing from this collection of strens.  If you have been fortunate in your genetic inheritance and have had quality nurturance, viz. role models, and/or have educated your self to become your own person, you may have already acquired most of the skills provided in the Guide.  You will likely still find some new strengths and perhaps you would be willing to add to this collection.

 

Feeling good and doing good begins with becoming our own best friend, loving our self.  [Love thy neighbor as thyself.]  The initial strens deal with self-endorsement.  Thereafter, practical strens address “what to do”; theory strens explain “why it works.”  You will find the computer disk is incomplete; it is a work yet in process.  Wisdom is never perfected but a goal worthy of our efforts.  It is my hope that your suggestions, contributions, and additions will continuously enrich this fledgling collection of strens.

You will strengthen or add many skills through application of the Guide’s strens Examples are here identified:

You will become your best friend, lifelong.  Your love-making factory; Self-endorsement; Emotional Self-endorsement; Secondary endorsement; The Reasonable Best Measure of Self-worth; Our react button.

You will acquire a newer way of thinking suitable to grow mental freedom more so than remain dependent on what nature and your nurturers have programmed you to be.  By substituting a limited number of trigger-words for those embedded in our native language, you will process information emphasizing personal responsibility and problem-solving more so than remaining dependent, blaming others and/or yourself, and wasting your valuable energy through destructive aggression.  Strens: Introduction to the Vocabulary; Language; Either…or, Both…and; Cash in Your Anger; Seven simple steps to ANWOT; Good Aggression, see #7, #10.

You will recognize the eight mental response patterns (MRP) you have available to you and regularly apply the two productive choices that get you what you want.  Described in the strens on the Mental Response Control Panel (MRCP): The MRCP; MRCP Step 2; The Blaming MRP; Blaming.

You will acquire the wisdom required to direct your self-mastery to constructive outcomes.  The Guide’s collection of wisdom strens are for you to expand and customize to your unique life’s experience.   Sample strens: The stren stren; Life’s wisdom; Ten worthwhile addictions; Vignettes for self-examination; The Triple A stren.

You will recognize and affirm your faith in the values by which you make your life’s choices.  Recognize that our religions and philosophers agree on our most important values.  The Guide advocates no specific religion.  Most persons who study the strens will become more aware of the values that influence their actions and reaffirm them.   

Having attained the above skills, you will become a force for world peace.  The theory stren Good Aggression explains why we become our own worst enemy and the correctness of Einstein’s prophesy: we are the only species destined to create our own means of extinction.  Good Aggression proposes the specific doable steps that will redirect our energy to weapons of mass construction rather than WMD.

Recommendation:  From your computer, print off one or two strens.  Become familiar with the content.  Agree or disagree.  Put into practice what you agree with and/or substitute what you feel works better.  Keep the hard copy in a binder for later review.  Go on to the next stren.  Read ahead if you like but keep in mind that new skills require study and practice over time, especially when they are to replace patterns that have already become habit.