Be By Design: How I Be Is Up To Me by Christine McKee, a psychologist by profession, is an engaging book about the complex human engineering which includes both the conscious and unconscious mind. The author's description of the unconscious mind is an exhaustive delineation of the mind as a repository of information, emotions, body regulator, habit formation, instincts and energy conservation.
McKee makes readers conscious of deeply held beliefs, relationships, role-playing, attitudes toward life and limiting beliefs. The most important of these imbedded parts of the unconscious mind are the limiting constraints, which tend to be self-imposed. Examples are the need to settle for less, avoid controversy to fit in, or a resigned attitude to struggle minimally for anything better.
McKee covers the unhealthy flight or fight responses people have to unmet needs, stress, pressure and perceived inadequacies. The body's reactions to these responses includes heart ailments, drinking addictions, compulsive eating, bulemia, decreased circulation in the digestive tract, assaults on the immune system, reduced sex drive and a plethora of negations too numerous to list.
The author's approach toward dealing with these negations forthrightly is to step back and analyze them dispassionately. This creates an opportunity to learn from past responses while taking full responsibility for strategies to move forward. Part of the solution to these problems is seen in the ability to achieve self-empowerment and to manage the classic comfort zones of familiarity which serve as stumbling blocks to positive changes to improve our overall situation.
McKee defines the comfort zones as career, family, relationships, spirituality, health, fitness and personal development or growth. Traditionally, people use fear as an excuse to stay inside their manufactured comfort zones. The author's approach is to take on each comfort zone dispassionately and develop the strategies needed to overcome the limiting aspects.
McKee utilizes a multi-step intention model to move people from inertia to action. These simple steps involve identifying our intention or goal, analyzing our belief systems or impediments to reaching a higher order, obtaining the needed tools or objects to reach a higher order, identifying the requisite behaviors needed to move the agenda forward and diarizing progress on the intended outcome.
Be By Design: How I Be Is Up To Me is an important manual of living that identifies systematic ways to cope with life more positively in order to overcome the classic stumbling blocks of human life. The presentation transcends the traditional flight/fight modes to provide practical accommodations for seemingly intractable impediments to improving our current condition in life.
Article comments