Negativity is not the source of your problem

[WoselTenzin]

Recently I flipped through a book written by Chin-Ning Chu entitled "Thick Face Black Heart - The Warrior Philosophy For Conquering The Challenges of Business and Life" and I came to page that caught my attention. It says:-

"Often we blame our negativity as the cause of failure in our work.  In fact, the source of our problem is not our negativities, but rather we have chosen uninspiring tasks that bring forth our negativities"

To me this is a new and different angle of looking at our negativities.  If what she says is true, then to stop bringing forth our negativities, perhaps we should just change our tasks or work on changing our tasks if it cannot be done immediately.

Is this view consistent with Dharma or adopting this view could mean running away from our problems? 

[dsiluvu]

It seems that this view will clash with Dharma philosophy and teachings.

From a Dharmic perspective it is not good to change your tasks. Why? Because bottom line is the negative mind or attitude is yours and will carry forward in your new found tasks. Example: If your mindset has a negative view about say house keeping, yes you will not enjoy it and probably hate doing it and thus you will end up doing a bad job and not achieve the desired results. But if your attitude is positive and you view any task as equal you will do a good job despite what the task is. It is not the task that makes you become negative, it is your view of the task that makes it negative. So bottom line is, it is your wrong view. It will also appear that instead of blaming your own negative mind set, you end up blaming your task or the people who gave you the task. What if it was your Guru? This could be dangerous...

Now in Dharma we always taught to challenge whatever comes our way and overcome it, not the other way round, change what comes our way to overcome it, simply because this is life... and we will never know what will come our way to test and challenge us in life.

This book is not Dharmic and written in view of samsarics way of thinking and operating hence I would advice you to take it with a pinch of salt. If we always change our task just cos we do not like it, we may find that we will be changing our task or goals very often just because we do not like it... sounds like a person running away instead of facing the problem which lies within. ANd in Dharma we are always asked to look within, to dig deep and root out the negative mindset... not the external.

Hence this concept is another method derived for one to excuse oneself, run away, or escape from one's own negative mindset. With a positive mind, nothing could be the wrong task, just the wrong attitude.

Hope I make sense...

[biggyboy]

In fact we are running from dharma if we change tasks!  If we cannot even do well on this particular task/job, how sure are we that we can do better with a new task or job?  If this traits is not be countered and changed, wouldn't this be carried on the new task or job?  And we run again for another and another?  Till when?  We have to take check and stop it by making it right and perfect it what we don't like to do.  The more we do not like to do it, we must counter that and do it till we like it.

[Jessie Fong]

"Often we blame our negativity as the cause of failure in our work.  In fact, the source of our problem is not our negativities, but rather we have chosen uninspiring tasks that bring forth our negativities"

I would like to think of it this way:

- we have to change our negativities, we cannot run away from this for it will always be part of us if these are not recognised and changed; recognise that which is causing our failure and act on it.

- the author said " ... we have chosen uninspiring tasks ... " therefore we should choose wisely and if that task if not inspiring, we choose another path

[Ensapa]

I think that philosophy is basically, a way of blaming others. It's a very samsaric way of handling problems and it probably wont work forever. If a situation is the source of negativities, then if we change the situation, the negativities would have gone away. But that is not the case as in many cases, people tend to keep switching from one situation to another and it never ends because the problem is not with the situation, the problem is with themselves. If we do not have an attitude problem to begin with, then there is no reason for it to come out irregardless of the situation. It is actually the recipe for failure...why? because if we adapt that mentality we will never own up to our own mistakes and we will never improve as we will only blame it on external circumstances.

If we blame others for our problems, we will never be able to solve them as we are not directly confronting the problem. If we do not confront the problem directly, how can we solve anything? Changing environments can only work so far because the main problem is not with the environment but with ourselves. We can only outgrow our environment, but not or never be negative as a result of it. To me, this is nothing more than an escape away from  the actual problem. What draws out negativity is not the situation but ourselves and our own negative habits and qualities that we fail to confront and modify. Escaping from a situation may work once or twice, but it will not work forever. What will make things work in the long run is to adapt to a particular situation and modify our bad behavior so that the situation will work out in the end.

I'm sorry, but this philosophy does not make sense either in the secular world or from a Dharma perspective. If this philosophy was right, then people who change jobs every few months will be billed as very successful in their lives. On the contrary, they are billed as losers. People who run away from a Dharma text, center or teacher that challenges their comfort zones never get anywhere with their practice as well.

[Dorje Pakmo]

Recently I flipped through a book written by Chin-Ning Chu entitled "Thick Face Black Heart - The Warrior Philosophy For Conquering The Challenges of Business and Life" and I came to page that caught my attention. It says:-

"Often we blame our negativity as the cause of failure in our work.  In fact, the source of our problem is not our negativities, but rather we have chosen uninspiring tasks that bring forth our negativities"

To me this is a new and different angle of looking at our negativities.  If what she says is true, then to stop bringing forth our negativities, perhaps we should just change our tasks or work on changing our tasks if it cannot be done immediately.

Is this view consistent with Dharma or adopting this view could mean running away from our problems? 

Dear WoselTenzin,
I’ve read this book before and the teachings in this book are mainly to teach people to walk out of their comfort zones.  Daring to challenge and not be ashamed to be different from the norms recognized and acknowledge by the common society.

"Often we blame our negativity as the cause of failure in our work.  In fact, the source of our problem is not our negativities, but rather we have chosen uninspiring tasks that bring forth our negativities"

I would translate what she meant from the above quote as this:
When we fail at work, it is always easier to blame it on our NEGATIVITIES such as CARELESSNESS, PROCRASTINATIONS and LAZINESS, etc. But the actual truth is that, we NEVER REALLY DID SET A GOAL that is worthy of us getting our butt up and go at it until we achieve RESULT no matter rain or shine to begin with! We didn’t view that TASK as IMPORTANT! We didn’t give the TASK a MEANING. Hence whether we fail or not it isn’t important to us because we view it as just work. And we will always fail, because we didn’t think it’s meaningful to do what we are doing. When we fail, it’s simple; we either blame it on others or ourselves.
The key is to do something MEANINGFUL. To give our work MEANING, understand why we are doing it. I do not think the above quote is meant for one to run away from problems, since most of her teachings in the book are to tell people to face their problems without fear and even control an opponent who casts fear. It’s a good book to read but may cause some deep inner arguments if one is too accustomed to the norms and "goodness" of the common society.

[brian]

This is an interesting topic. My thought is as follows, negativity is not the main source of our problem but it is ignorance is the main problem as without knowledge one cannot make a good decision and will just keep attracting negativity as mentioned in this thread. I feel one have to gain the knowledge to correct one's attitude towards be it work or daily life. By then, this will lessen the problems that we will face. Just my two cents worth.

[negra orquida]

I like what Dorje Pakmo said. when i reread the paragraphs, it IS actually a subtle way of telling ppl to change their mindset. instead of placing blame on us (our negativities) directly, the statement shifts the focus on the choices we make, which depends on how we make decisions, how we think! if we want to change the way we make choices.. then we'd need to change how we think...

Nowadays when we make mistakes or if we do not perform as well as we could, we are so "humble" to admit that "i was not mindful, i was careless, i am slow, i am blur, i am lazy, i am no good, i am selfish..." this is actually a form of defensiveness.

In fact, the source of our problem is not our negativities, but rather we have chosen uninspiring tasks that bring forth our negativities

I do not see this statement as blaming others, in fact this statement still puts the responsibility of our negativities and problems on us because we are the ones who chose the uninspiring tasks.  What is the definition of uninspiring tasks?  if it is something mechanical or routine, or "boring", menial, tedious... why did we choose it in the first place? is it because we thought it was easy? if that was the case, then does that mean we were lazy and wanted the easy way out and hence chose an easy but uninspiring task? wouldn't that mean that our negativities influenced our decisions and as a result reinforces our negativities?

I have a friend who always complained about her line of work. she resigned from one company, went on a break and complained about not having a job. then she goes back to the same industry in a different company, and complained about work again. this is an example that even if you change the task, it doesn't change the negativity.

[Dondrup Shugden]

""Often we blame our negativity as the cause of failure in our work.  In fact, the source of our problem is not our negativities, but rather we have chosen uninspiring tasks that bring forth our negativities".


What a very different way of looking at our negativities. Interesting comments to have a look at our mind and what level we are at.