8 vital lessons from psychologist Wayne Dyer

Wayne Dyer was an American psychologist and book writer well known for his excellent quotes., which reached the depths of their readers and served as inspiration and help to many. His books were of the genre we call self-help and deal with self-improvement and personal growth. Among the best-known titles we find “Your erroneous zones”, “Your magical zones” or “The sky is the limit”.

Wayne started from a vision of transpersonal psychology, considered the fourth force in psychology. This branch of psychology incorporates the spiritual dimension as an essential aspect of the person, due to the role it plays in the search for a more transcendental meaning of reality and life. Personal development and self-realization are considered as ultimate goals in life, in contact with something that goes beyond the person –hence the term “trans” (beyond) “personal” (of the personal)–, which it is the unity with the world, within which we find a meaning to our identity and reason for being.

Life lessons from the great Wayne Dyer

Without any more preambles, We are going to know the best phrases of Wayne Dyer and an explanation of the meaning of each one.

1. “Doing what you love is the prelude to success in life”

Wayne said that to be successful you have to do what you are passionate about.. It will not matter how much it costs to achieve it, because passion will make you never stop fighting for it and throw in the towel, and as we know, practice makes perfect, so it is much more likely to be good at what one likes do that in what not.

Let’s give an example, one can dedicate himself to a great profession, which has a fairly high average salary and is very well recognized socially. Now, if one does not feel motivated by it, it is likely that among all those who dedicate themselves to the same profession, this one will never stand out and be one of the greats.

However, giving another example, one can love to do something that is said to be “without a future”, but his passion and perseverance will make him not leave it. Therefore, it is likely that sooner or later you will be able to reach other people who will perceive your captivating passion, and you will be able to earn a living from it. According to Wayne, what is in short supply is not the opportunity to do something, but the determination in oneself to put forth the effort necessary to achieve it.

2. “If you believe it will work, you will see opportunities. If you think it won’t, you’ll see obstacles.”

People have what is called “selective attention” and “subjectivity”, which basically means that we pay attention to what we want and that, very often, confirms our preconceived ideas in order to save us from the effort of having to question and change them. and that, furthermore, we all do the same with the things we experience, so reality as it is ceases to exist and each one has his own, his subjective reality.

Wayne believed in this and how heavily it shapes our lives and the things we do. In this sense, if we have a goal in our life and we are convinced that we will achieve it and we are able to visualize it, from the things that happen along the way we will select those that confirm success, constantly finding opportunities to achieve it.

On the contrary, if we are not capable of believing that we will achieve it and we take a negative perspective, it is most likely that we only look at the things that confirm our failure, to accumulate experiences until they seem enough to throw in the towel.

So, in the end, the ones who decide our successes and failures are no more than ourselves. Even from the refusals and obstacles we receive, we can decide whether to give ourselves more courage and make ourselves stronger or give up and weaken.

3. “You already have everything you need to experience complete peace and absolute happiness right now.”

Similar to the above, Wayne stressed the importance of subjectivity and used it to explain happiness. Emotions are still subjective experiences that human beings experience, and mistakenly, many believe that to feel a certain emotion, we need such a thing. That could not be more uncertain.

Emotions are within ourselves, and what Wayne was saying is that at this precise moment, you already have everything you need to be happy, you just have to search within yourself.

This is one of the great premises of meditation, of the notion of the “here and now”, in which we only need to connect with our interior to realize that happiness, peace and fulfillment are qualities that we already possess but that we must find. , and that they are actually inside us, and not outside, which is where we usually look for it.

4. “When you judge others, you don’t define them, you define yourself”

Starting from the comparison of the crystals of some glasses, The power of perspective is that according to which, depending on which crystals we each have, the shape and color of what we see changes. In reality, no one has the power to see reality as it is, in fact, as has been said above, absolute reality does not exist, we each have our own. Because we all have different crystals, and what we see inevitably passes through them. Our previous experiences, our thoughts, all of it changes the way we see things. And to add up, the only thing we know is what we have been able to experience for ourselves.

For this reason, when we see someone and judge them, we can only do so under our own parameters. We cannot reach the interior of the other person, we can only project what is within ourselves to the outside. Hence, we attribute what we are to others. As the saying goes, “the thief thinks that everyone is like him”, which fits very well with this idea that Wayne wanted to convey. Just like when something seems incomprehensible to us, because we could never do it.

5. “Find the light in others, and treat them as if that’s all you see in them.”

Like the figure of yin and yang, absolutisms do not exist, but we all have a positive and a negative pole, a part of light and a part of darkness. However, we can choose which of them to listen to and which of them to respond to. The fact is, we increase the part to which we allocate more responses. This is based on the classical conditioning principle of behaviorism.

Applying this principle to ourselves, if we decide to pay attention to the most positive part of people, it will grow larger and appear more frequently when obtaining more response. In addition, it will also increase our well-being. This is also one of the bases of neurolinguistic programming (NLP). Therefore, if you can choose what attitude to take in a situation where you can be nice or you can get angry, if only for your own good, choose to be nice. You will be a happier person, and you will make others better people.

6. “Miracles happen suddenly. You must be prepared and open”

Since when do miracles come with advance notice? Then they are no longer miracles! But what is a miracle? Is it not precisely that which is unexpected, which comes by magic?

Well yes, miracles are really nothing more than sudden opportunities that we find on our way and that have not been planned in advance. And the truth is that miracles are not something so strange and infrequent, in fact, miracles are continually happening to us, but we are so focused on the past and the future, that the present goes unnoticed and we don’t even see them.

So that they don’t pass us by, we have to live connected in the present moment, with our heads set on the present moment, and being receptive to everything that the world is presenting to us. In English, present means both “present” and “gift”.

7. “Stop acting like life is a rehearsal. Live as if today was your last day. The past no longer exists and the future is yet to be created.”

In fact, the present is the only moment that exists.. The past is nothing more than the moments that, at the time (great be the redundancy) were present. Or not even that, according to Wayne the past does not exist, and is only the thought of what we believe it was, a set of memories that are intermingled with the present, and from which we build a story. And it is intermingled with the present because there are studies that show that memories are not true but that we build them, and that depending on what present conditions we try to remember, we will narrate one past or another.

The future is nothing more than what will be present, since it does not yet exist. So it doesn’t have any importance, other than focusing on making the present the best we can, since this is the only level on which we can act. Having a great present is the best way to remember a great past.

8. “Happiness is not something that life gives you. Happiness is something you bring into your life.”

As we have clarified, Wayne was right in believing that happiness came from within and was projected to the outside, contrary to what many of us think, hoping to find happiness on the outside to bring it within. This is a fundamental change in perspective, because feeling happy is easier than we think, since we already have it, we already have everything we need to be happy..

Being happy is a choice that we have to decide to make consciously, it is to adopt a change of perspective towards life, to be aware of our thoughts, of what we see in the world, and a decision to want to see and feel the best of that reality we live It is to be proud of the yang, instead of being sorry for the yin.

Actually, we can decide to start being happy at the moment we want, and it can be from now, right now.