Dorothy Rowe’s Guide to Life - Dorothy Rowe

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was that you don’t have to do anything where you might fail. You entered only the races where you knew you would win. Many women spoke of how, by being hesitant and uncompetitive, they ensured they were liked. One woman said she feared that if she became self-confident her husband would cease to pay her the wonderful compliments which he did when he was trying to persuade her to attend some important social function.

      It is the fear of losing their advantages which stops most people from changing.

      The third reason which stops people from changing has to do with the nature of change itself.

      Our meaning structure is changing all the time as every moment we are encountering a new situation. However, most of the time we interpret the new situation as being just like an old one and so our meaning structure easily accommodates this new interpretation within the old ones. Certain of our ideas stay the same no matter what happens. As Jack Lyle, my psychology lecturer in Sydney, used to say, ‘The older we get the more like ourselves we become.’

      However, those ideas which form the ‘How I feel about myself’ dimension can undergo two kinds of change, first-order change and second-order change.

      In first-order change we simply move up and down on the dimension. Today you can be right at the bottom of your ‘good/ bad’ dimension because you’re worried that the work you’ve done doesn’t meet the necessary standards. Tomorrow important people praise you for your work and you go right up your ‘good/bad’ dimension.

      Second-order change occurs when we abandon a dimension as being salient in how we judge ourselves and put another in its place. You might have measured your value along the dimension ‘the best footballer in the world/the worst footballer in the world’ but at thirty you decide that, contrary to what you had always thought, life does not end at thirty and that you will now measure yourself on the dimension ‘the best football manager in the world: the worst football manager in the world’.

      Changing from a ‘good/bad’ dimension to some kind of ‘making the most of my life’ dimension is a second-order change. It is this change which is much more likely to ensure your happiness.

      However, a second-order change means that every other part of your meaning structure will change. Every part of your meaning structure is connected directly to every other part and when the central dimension of how you feel about yourself changes, your whole meaning structure changes.

      No wonder friends and family object!

      There’s great pleasure in being able to set your own agenda!

       CHAPTER 6 You and Your Priorities

      NOW TO the second part of your meaning structure which influences every other part of your meaning structure: what the top priority is in your life.

      This is something about which I have been writing and teaching since the early eighties. I find that people respond strongly to what I say about this, but in doing so they fall into three groups:

       1. Those who say, ‘I’ve always known that about myself and others. I just didn’t use the words that you use.’

       2. Those who say, ‘I’ve learnt something exciting about myself and other people. A lot of things have now fallen into place.’

       3. Those who, no matter how often I explain, cannot see that I am talking about the reasons why we do something and not about a classification of people into two types. They say, ‘I think I’m a bit of both.’

      The people who fall into the third group are usually those who all their lives have directed their attention to the world around them and away from their internal reality of thoughts and feelings. They haven’t developed to any great degree the skills of inspecting and assessing this internal reality and indeed they might feel that it is not right and perhaps somewhat frightening to do so.

      Also in this group are people who have completely lost touch with their own truth. They know what they ought to think and feel but not what they do think and feel.

      What this group of people is really saying is, ‘I don’t know what matters most to me.’

       If you don’t know what matters most to you, how can you make sure you get it?

      What matters most to all living creatures, from the amoeba to Homo sapiens, is to keep on living. The purpose of life is to live.

      I don’t know how an amoeba or any other insect, fish or animal species experiences living, but I do know that for us Homo sapiens ‘living’ is far more than bodily survival.

      We all do almost everything we can to survive physically as a body, but most of us would throw away our physical survival in order to survive as a person, that is, in order for our meaning structure to keep itself intact.

      Many of us, when our meaning structure feels overwhelmed by demands, conflicts and anxiety, reach for some deadly nicotine, alcohol, cocaine or heroin.

      Many of us, if our meaning structure did not want to be overwhelmed by shame and guilt, would fight and die for some cause.

      Many of us, if our meaning structure did not want to be overwhelmed by loss and guilt, would relinquish our lives in order to preserve the life of someone we love.

      Many of us, if our meaning structure interpreted its situation as, ‘I cannot continue to exist in these circumstances,’ would kill our bodies in the hope of preserving the integrity of our meaning structure. (More about suicide later.)

      You might never have found yourself in a situation where you had to choose between surviving as a person (an intact meaning structure) or surviving as a body, but every moment of your life you are in the business of keeping your meaning structure intact (or rather your meaning structure is in the business of keeping itself/you intact). The way you’ve tried to organize your life, all the habits you’ve developed, all your pleasures and all your fears have developed as the means whereby your meaning structure tries to keep itself together.

      Whenever you feel anxious it’s because something has happened which your meaning structure sees as a threat to its integrity. Whether it’s the passing anxiety of being late for a meeting or the drenching fear that awakens you in the darkness of the night, your meaning structure has seen a threat to its integrity. The threat is that of annihilation. You/your meaning structure will become nothing, a no-thing. You/your meaning structure will no longer exist and never will have existed.

      Let’s take this anxiety about being late for a meeting. With traffic being what it is today anyone can unintentionally be late for anything. Why is your meaning structure getting in a state?

      It’s not the lateness per se but what being late means to you. Your meaning structure knows exactly what being late means and doesn’t need to spell it out to itself, but here I shall.

      Suppose you said to me, ‘I just can’t stand being late for meetings.’

      I would ask, ‘Why is it important to you not to be late for meetings?’

      Here I am asking you for reasons, why you do what you do. I’m asking you to tell me, not what other people think, or what we’re all supposed to think, but what you think and feel. It’s an exploration of your own truth.

      Some people, about half of us, answer this question with something like, ‘Punctuality is important to me. Being late is such a waste of time.’

      I now ask, ‘Why is it important to you not to waste time?’

      ‘It’s inefficient.’

      ‘Why is it important to you to be efficient?’

      ‘Because by being efficient I achieve what I want to achieve.’

      When I ask, ‘Why is it important to you to achieve?’ it rapidly becomes clear that there is no further reason hiding behind this reason. This

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