“19. Comfort: Human beings are driven by the desire for comfort. Always remember when you’re dealing with anyone, if you say or do anything that threatens their sense of comfort you’ll have a fight on your hands. Don’t push people psychologically. They’ll resist and push back. Use tact, slow down, take your time and introduce new ideas to them gradually, so they’ll feel at ease with you.”
“24. Environment: Correctly so, people are concerned with the health of our natural environment. However, what could be more important than our psychological/spiritual environment? Yet, few are concerned. There is never a right, healthy time to feel bad. Cheerfulness is a nice, healthy environment. People who spread pollution with their gloomy spirit should be avoided. They will pollute your spirit.”
“33. Questions: Maybe you have already noticed that people will ask questions, but almost never listen to the answers. Why? They are only interested in answers that confirm them and their way of looking at things. If the answer challenges anything about them, the wall goes up instantly. Of course, they will swear they really want to learn and are all ears. They most likely will be able to quote word for word what was said to them, but they never really heard a thing.”
I love these thorough and detailed explanations of how we can work under ordinary life circumstances. We can use everything at our disposal, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant, to break our mechanical states.
What I like about this principle the most is how almost comical it can be to watch your mechanical nature always try to jump ahead of your consciousness and say whatever it wants! When I first tried this exercise it shocked me to see how quick my mechanical nature was. Almost undetectable. This is a great principle to reflect on and a fun exercise that will always surely wake you up throughout your day.