Finding Our Own Medicine

I am a great believer in “finding our own medicine”, and these six requirements are an excellent example of this.

According to Psychiatrist William Glasser, a discipline must meet six requirement if it to help people grow:

• It should be non-competitive and be done, for the most part alone.
• It should be easy to do, should not require much mental effort (e.g., straining to be perfect turns people away from meditation despite their sound intentions).
• It should be a practice which does not depend on others for execution.
• It should be a practice which is done regularly, about on hour per day (or twice a day in equal amounts of time).
• It should be something that the doer believes will improve his mental/physical state.  He must see his own improvement, without needing and “expert’ or guru to tell him he’s getting better-in other words, in every respect it should build self-sufficiency rather than dependence upon another.
• It should be something which can be done without inordinate self-criticism or comparison to another persons progress. The individual hurts himself, and his developmental progress, when he thinks, “I’m not running as far, fast or gracefully as John,” or when he cruelly ridicules himself for the form or manner in which he sees himself doing the practice.