Mental And Emotional Factors In Living A Natural Life Span

6. Mental And Emotional Factors In Living A Natural Life Span

We humans have a tendency to be very upset if the world does not go as we want it to without considering how realistic our expectations and wishes are. Pleasant emotions are essential to health, but nothing will undermine overall well-being so quickly as distressing emotions.

Emotional states are our responses to life situations born of our disposition, most of it beneath the level of consciousness. Emotional responses reflect our maturity and bearing.

6.1 Self-mastery essential to emotional equilibrium

Unless we have developed a framework of a philosophical overview—one that gives rise to reflection and a deliberately charted course in our affairs, we’re likely to be buffeted by the winds of every emotion that arises. Emotions arise as responses to situations—they are mechanisms for dealing with external affairs, for directing our reactions and actions, attitudes and personal indulgences.

Emotions are powerful influences for dominating our course in life. Emotionally-directed individuals arc all too often enervated and debilitated when their expectations are not met.

Self-mastery means that we are aware of our feelings that tend to push us hither and yon but, more importantly, we ascertain by rational contemplation the elements that tend to drive us, and logically assess and contrive that course which will yield us the most benefits with the least expenditure of resources.

Self-mastery is absolutely essential to well-being and long life in a social/economic environment as exploitative as ours. People who hang their emotional well-being on everything “going their way” will be shattered when adversity occurs as it often does in our society.

The surest way to develop self-mastery is the realization that you are in total control of your affairs relative to all that is outside of you. Once you’ve trained yourself to stop, reflect and chart a course relative to any matter that rears itself, you can then take a philosophical approach to everything that affects you—and you can help your clients develop a similar attitude.

6.2 Security of life and its means are essential to health and long life

Most humans are provident. As provident creatures, we like to know where our next meal is coming from, so to speak. We want to know that our immediate and long-term future is provided for. Unless we’re sure, most of us worry and fret, to our great detriment. Worry is an enervating lapse into emotional solutions to our concerns rather than rational ones. Worriers are not only inimical to their welfare but to the well-being of those whom they touch as well.

Long-lived peoples live in a largely unexploited situation where the needs of life are. assured by rather easily expended productive efforts. The simple life does not give rise to the concerns that a complex industrial society engenders.

Unless we have a philosophical attitude that encompasses plenitude and scarcity, one that prepares us to cope with the vicissitudes of our society and economy, we’ll have many emotional crises that tear us apart.

In dealing with your clients, try to ascertain their social and economic disposition. Most people are beset by economic worries that lay them low. I’ve witnessed many a businessman turn grey almost overnight from a business that was going awry due to an adverse marketplace.

Try to inspire and motivate your clients to develop a philosophical approach to social and economic problems and, on the other side, make themselves self-sufficient to the extent they can.

6.3 Social and environmental compatibility are essential to well-being

Humans usually adapt to fit in with the social and environmental circumstances that develop them. Thus we see societies all over the world whose members usually have the same outlook and disposition. We go to India, Japan, China, Tibet, Arabia and any number of other countries and we observe a great diversity of peoples and economies. Though poor by our standards, most Asians do live rather secure lives amongst their peers. The average Thailander or other Asian in a tropical/agricultural economy lives reasonably assured of the needs of life. The relationships of individuals in their societies are rather stable at the community level at least. In America, we have a rather unstable society that drives a substantial part of its members to disposition and escapism as a means of coping with or blotting out the reality of the ugly head of economic and social adversity.

In our society we are more likely to be driven by economic concerns than by human consideration.
There are so many individuals in our society who will commit inhuman and inhumane acts in behalf of self-aggrandizement that it agitates and aggravates almost our entire social structure.

Societies and economies oriented to serving everyone and their needs are essential to optimum well-being. At the very least, they must not tend to deny their members the rewards or products of their efforts.

In our society that is so disruptive to individual and family stability, we must make extraordinary efforts to harmonize with the circumstances that befall us.

6.4 Community of peers in life pursuits essential to highest well-being

“Man is not an island unto himself” has been sagely observed. This is in accord with our gregarious disposition. Humans, need other humans for their best welfare. Alone we wither. There is little motivation in life where meeting our own needs are concerned. As gregarious creatures we are mutually concerned about the welfare of others on a natural level. Within aggressive societies such as ours, our natural disposition becomes vitiated and perverted.

For our highest well-being we should all seek those of similar interests and disposition. It is especially comforting to live among those of similar intellectual and economic interests. We see religious societies wherein its members are stable and self-assured. We see intellectual circles in which members find mutual reassurance and satiation of drives and interests.

The world’s longest lived peoples live on their own land for the most part and are subsistence gardeners/ farmers/orchardists. Their interests are heavily weighted, to agrarian societies.

We should, for our best well-being, situate ourselves within the context of others of similar interests and pursuits.