A narcissist is someone who is consumed by the superiority of themselves over others.  Those who consider all others around them as idiots.  They look at others with contempt.  This person culpably fails to appreciate the perspectives of others around him, treating them as tools to be manipulated or idiots to be dealt with rather than as moral and knowledgeable peers.

This failure has both an intellectual dimension and an emotional dimension, and it has these two dimensions on both sides of the relationship. The narcissist himself is both intellectually and emotionally defective, and what he defectively fails to appreciate is both the intellectual and emotional perspectives of the people around him. He can’t appreciate how he might be wrong and others right about some matter of fact;

and what other people want or value doesn’t register as of interest to him, except derivatively upon his own interests. In fact it is a type of moral ignorance.

The opposite of the narcissist is the altruist. The altruist sees others around him, even strangers, as individually distinctive people with valuable perspectives, whose desires and opinions, interests and goals are worthy of attention and respect. The altruist yields his place in line to the hurried shopper, stops to help the person who dropped her papers, calls an acquaintance with an embarrassed apology after having been unintentionally rude. In a debate, the altruist sees how he might be wrong and the other person right.

A narcissist almost always kisses up and kicks down. He is obsessed with hierarchy and disregards others who are at a low pecking order.

He often has little idea how he appears to them. This leads to hypocrisies. He might rage against the smallest typo in a juniors document, while producing a torrent of errors himself; it just wouldn’t occur to him to apply the same standards to himself. He might insist on promptness, while always running late. He might freely reprimand other people, expecting them to take it with good grace, while any complaints directed against him earn his eternal enmity. Such failures of parity typify the narcissist’s moral short-sightedness, flowing naturally from his disregard of others’ perspectives. These hypocrisies are immediately obvious if one genuinely imagines oneself in a subordinate’s shoes for anything other than selfish and self-rationalising ends, but this is exactly what the narcissist habitually fails to do.

If you catch yourself constantly complaining about others, their inability, stupidity, and inability to rise upto your levels; Everywhere you turn, are you surrounded by fools, by boring nonentities, by faceless masses and foes and suckers and, indeed, jerks? Are you the only competent, reasonable person to be found?

It’s time to get some help…….

There is an old Zen story. A man is in a rowboat on a foggy lake. He notices through the fog that a boat is coming towards him. He tries to row away from the boat and yells in the direction

of the boat for its occupant to change direction. The boat continues on its straight course toward the boat. Finally, the boats collide; the other boat was empty of any occupants. It was just drifting. It was moving mechanically through the water. We, according to what Gurdjeiff explains in his Work, are moving mechanically through life. People, at least most people, won’t yell at a radio that doesn’t work, so why yell at people who are just as mechanical as the radio? Our problem is that we think people, including ourselves, are conscious. This idea that we are machines and therefore not conscious of what we do or why we do it, was said in a different way by Mark Twain, who commented, “When one remembers we are all mad, the mystery disappears and life stands explained.”

What i am saying is, when something goes wrong we tend to blame others or the situation and end up in the state of internal turmoil.

“Empty boats are everywhere”

Acting from an awareness gives you space to choose your response. This is much more effective than just reacting. The phrase, “she/he made me mad,” for example becomes a complete non-starter. Nobody can make you anything. You get to choose your response, and it helps to put a little space between the thing you’re responding to and your response.

Whats’ your ‘Attitude’?

There are many ways to define attitude, I find the three checkpoints below to be the most helpful. They make it clear not only what your attitude is made of but also how it affects what you do.

1. How You begin?

Before heading for a long distance travel or vacation, I expected a relaxing and enjoyable time. This is the first piece of your attitude: it is what you expect before something happens.

For me, I expected good things. Someone with a more negative bent—at least in relation to traveling—would predict rough times ahead.

2. How You Experience It?

The second piece of your attitude is the way in which you gauge your experience.

Do you notice what is going wrong? Going well? Somewhere in between?

When I go out for dinner with my family or friends I always lookout for the reactions or responses of people who I accompany. In one such instance I was particularly drawn in by an experience. A friend noticed how noisy the restaurant was, how disinterested the waiter seemed, how dull the ambience was, and how bad the food tasted.  During the same party another friend sitting next to me said he loved the atmosphere, the ambience and the taste of food at the place.  He said he is a regular here and loves the service here.

Two attitudes looking for very different things and providing two different experiences of the same place.

3. How You Leave?

The last and equally important role your attitude plays occurs at the end of a situation or experience. At this point, your attitude affects the way you sum things up.

I was watching a competition-based reality show the other night and, when two people were sent home, they were given the chance to talk to the camera one last time.

They were asked what was their experience being part of the reality show. One reflected on the friendships he had made and the good times he had had spending time with fellow competitors of the show.

The other was angry and frustrated. For him, the experience was a waste of time. He felt that the jury was biased, the competition rules were too twisted and favoured a few and somehow everyone seemed to be conspiring to get rid of him from the show. Attitude strikes again.

Watch your ‘Attitude’

If you ever want to change your attitude and be positive, you must first observe and make note or keep log of your responses to the 3 questions i.e., How you begin?; How you experience? and How your leave?

If you find yourself being overly negative, you now just have to change the way you ‘respond’.

When you fight……..

When you fight you give life to what you are fighting with.  Whatsoever it may be – quit smoking, waking up early, breaking a habit or in a relationship.

That is what you observe when you are in an argument with someone.  The more you get into the fight the more energy and enthusiasm you provide the other person to stay
in the fight.  The best way is to not fight it, allow it to pass and
see that it dissolves very quickly and you are able to make the change.

It applies to every habit you want to change or work on.  Try it…