A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… lived one of my mentors: Yoda. If you’ve never watched Star Wars, you may have no idea who he is. Yoda is a Jedi Master, probably the most powerful and wise ever, who also has the task of training young Jedi apprentices to tune into the Force, that is, the universal and eternal energy that permeates everything (very clear, right?!).
Don’t worry: I don’t want to tell you the whole saga, but I want to share with you some personal reflections that I have drawn from Yoda’s most significant teachings.
Let’s see them together:
1. “Do…or do not. There is no try.”
It is undoubtedly his most iconic phrase, the quintessence of his philosophy. It is pronounced by Yoda to exhort his pupil Luke who, hesitant and unsure, is preparing to face a hard task with a laconic “I’ll give it a try…”.
Luke actually tries, but when he’s almost there, he can’t. Thus, when Yoda demonstrates him that this arduous task can in fact be completed, Luke comments distraught: “I can’t believe it!” and the teacher replies: “that’s why you failed!”.
Yoda in fact knows that reaching an important goal requires determination, commitment and a deep confidence in one’s potential. A discouraged and renunciative approach is in itself a prerequisite for failure because it prevents one’s resources from focusing on purpose. It is like sending a contradictory signal to ourselves, sabotaging any possibility of success from within.
I know that the “believe in yourself” seems an empty motivational quote, but instead it embodies an absolute truth: if we have a dream, a desire, an idea to be realized, we must firmly believe that we can do it. We have to deeply believe in ourselves. We have to do it, not our parents. Not our friends.
The road to achieving one’s goals is always full of difficulties and obstacles. We can face moments of discouragement and unforeseen events. Plus we have to deal with people who try to throw us down. And if we do not believe in our potential and in the value of our ideas, those obstacles and difficulties will become so overwhelming that they will fill our minds and prevent us from reaching our goal. This is why believing in ourselves is so crucial: because it allows us to overcome everything that stands between us and our goal, it gives us an edge and, in the long run, it allows us to live a more peaceful life.
How to start believing in yourself?
From within. Don’t wait for people to say “good job”, “great idea”, “keep it up!”. Trust in yourself does not have to find its source in external recognition, because that recognition could never come. It’s about your mental approach to things: if you want to quit smoking, there’s no point in smoking every other day, smoking only in the evenings or on weekends. If you really want to quit, you have to quit. Same thing for your life: if you want to start believing in yourself, you have to start doing it. So first start recognizing your talents, your gifts, the things you are good at. There are certainly a lot of things you can do very well. Find them and write them down.
Sometimes we can only see beauty in others and forget to look for it in ourselves. What are you good at? What do you do better than others? What are you particularly proud of? Don’t limit the list to your professional aptitudes, but focus on all of your character aspects. And commit to finding something new every day. Awareness of one’s worth is the basis of any achievement. (Find more self-awareness questions here: Know yourself: the 21 questions for your growth).
2. “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
I have always liked this phrase because it emphasizes a very important aspect of fear: fear is not only an obstacle to the realization of our dreams, but it can become a door that leads us towards the wrong direction. If fear paralyzes our will, we actually feed the worst part of us, our dark side, that is the one we are not – even secretly – proud of: for example we could tend to be envious or perhaps apathetic; too aggressive or too submissive.
Fear can feed the side of us that, instead, we should fight. Imagine never starting to work on that project you care so much about or never making that career choice out of fear, perhaps because of people’s opinion or failure. In the long run, and without your necessarily being aware of it, your inactivity could result in a sort of frustration that will only accentuate the very aspects that you should correct instead.
You may become even more envious of those who succeed in achieving their goals, or you may accumulate so much pent-up anger that you become irascible. And so on. Basically: when we are not satisfied with our life we also worsen temperamentally.
It is absolutely normal to be afraid, we are all afraid of something, but what matters is to accept it and act anyway. After all, the best part of ourselves, our talent, our creativity, our skills need courage to come out. That is why it is so important to get out from our comfort zone, that area in which we have holed up for years because it makes us feel at ease. It is necessary because the moment we cross that border and experience that feeling of discomfort, we are actually taking a fundamental step in our growth. The truth is what really should scare us is continuing living a life that does not belong to us.
How to overcome fear?
Acting despite… That is, by making that decision, despite the risk of making a mistake. By breaking up that relationship, despite the fear of feeling alone. Starting to plan the realization of your project, despite the anxiety of not being up to it.
So: what is the first step you should take?
Fear cannot be overcome overnight. Be patient, but don’t let go. Accept that negative feeling as a normal part of your life process and move on. And if your anxiety is so strong that it does not allow you to live your life to the fullest, then ask for help: it is one of the most important choices you can make.
3. “Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is.”
According to a current of Greek philosophy, the goal that man must strive for in his path of interior perfection is liberation from passions. Philosophers identified the attainment of this state with the term “ataraxy”, which can be defined as imperturbability. He who becomes insensitive to the call of instinct becomes master of his own world because he is no longer subject to the domination of the passions that often blind one’s actions.
One of the drives that we should learn to control is attachment. “A piece of cake!”, you might say… No, in fact it is not. However, we should remind ourselves that attachment is not a sign of love, but of insecurity. We can love a person with all our heart, without obsessively attaching ourselves to him/her and without wanting to have total control of his/her time, thoughts and actions. Love is not possession. Indeed, the highest manifestation of love is letting our loved ones be free to be who they want to be. A healthy dose of jealousy is fine, but if we find that we are jealous to a maniacal level or that we have become full time professional stalkers, we should probably revise something in our relationship. Excessive jealousy is detrimental to any type of relationship. Nobody wants to feel like a slave. Love is taking care of each other, wanting to build together, but it is not imprisonment. Love is smoothing some character edges for the happiness of the other, but it is not turning into a different person.
How can you do it?
“Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose” reminds Yoda to Anakin… It is crystal clear that Yoda does not refer exclusively to romantic relationships, but to attachment towards those who are particularly dear to us. However, his response can inspire anyone who would like to be less possessive. The key is learning to “let go”: leave your partner a little more free to be with friends, for example. Leave him/her free to be him(her)self, without looking for faults in every single gesture and every single word.
In short, learn to live the relationship with more lightness. After all, if your partner has chosen you and is happy to be with you, there is no reason to keep him/her in “chains”. It is right that he/she continues to cultivate passions and see the people he/she loves. Being together should make life better, not make it worse. And if your jealousy derives from something else, perhaps from incorrect behaviours, well then it is essential to remember that a true relationship needs mutual respect in the first place.
4. “Wars not make one great.”
I believe that this quote should be placed on the cover of history books. They have always taught us to admire the leaders, the conquerors, those who enlarged their empires by annexing territories and accumulating wealth. But why don’t they also teach us at what price all those “triumphs” were achieved?! So let’s try to call things by their name: the annexation of a territory is the result of massacre of the vanquished people, of sadistic torture, of enslavement, of the systematic rape of women, often implemented as a war strategy. Wealth is accumulated by violently plundering, appropriating manu militari of what belongs to others, imposing war tributes. As long as a conqueror is defined as “great” in the books, we will have a distorted vision of history capable of arousing a dangerous spirit of emulation in the new generations.
So, “wars not make one great”. And it is not only true for the world out there, but it is also true for our own little world as well. We may not be able to do much to stop all the wars that are happening right now, but one thing is certain: we can do a lot to avoid poisoning our lives with the family wars. Unfortunately, family disagreements are commonplace, between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, brothers-in-law, brothers, wife and husband. Sometimes we are faced with delicate situations for which there are few solutions, if not the dispute; but many other times conflicts rise from simple character differences, misunderstandings and nonsense that over time become boulders and affect the balance of entire families. Well, in those cases, if we can avoid the “war”, then let’s do it. It is about our serenity and that of the people we love.
How can you avoid a “war”?
Whenever possible, with dialogue. Words have the power to unite, to heal, to bring together. If there are the conditions, if after all nothing so serious and irreparable has happened, trying to restore serenity within the family is an act of extraordinary maturity. The point is to be honest with yourself: sometimes it’s your wounded pride that’s at war and not you. One day you may regret making those silences crystallize, not calling that person again, pushing someone away or forcing those you love to do so. Now you still have time. Whoever raises the white flag has not necessarily lost, sometimes, on the contrary, that person is the real winner…
5. “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”
Two of the great questions to which science has not given an answer: how did life arise from a mass of inanimate molecules? And how did the living beings become aware of themselves? Not even Yoda, in reality, provides the solution, but implicitly places the seat of man’s consciousness and awareness on a transcendent plane, which goes beyond and survives the death of the physical body, in a body that we could generically define etheric. In other words, death is illusion, life and self-awareness are eternal. I am deeply convinced: we are much more than the sum of our organs.
Within us there is a light, a spark, a flash of eternal energy where our awareness resides. It is behind the appearance of our physical body that our true essence lies. We have just forgot that.
How do you find contact with your inner self?
By looking inside yourself with honesty and courage and wondering if you are becoming a better person, if you are correcting your flaws, and if some of your behaviours are overly instinctive. Too many times it is thought that it is enough to pray or participate in religious rites to be better, but spiritual evolution is achieved above all in daily choices, in the decision to submit one’s actions to the critical examination of reason, in a way to act in accordance with what we know is right.
♥
“May the Force be with you”
Master Yoda
