Pulling Your Own Strings: Dynamic Techniques for Dealing With Other People and Living Your Life As You Choose - Softcover

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Dr. Wayne W. Dyer was the bestselling author of 20 books and had a doctorate in counseling psychology. He lectured across the country to groups numbering in the thousands and appeared regularly on radio and television. He passed away in August of 2015.

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Dr. Wayne W. Dyer reveals how we all can prevent ourselves from being victimised by others and begin to operate from a position of power at the centre of our own lives. Asserting that we alone are responsible for how much we will be controlled by others, Dyer offers his practical plan for developing new attitudes toward the most common sources of victimisation and manipulation, such as family members and authority figures in the workplace.

For example, families can be tremendously coercive and demanding, but they can also be an immensely rewarding part of your life. Dyer shows how to cope with the negative side and contribute to the positive.

Also, in their working life many people stay in unfulfilling jobs because they feel constrained by their present experience or because they fear change. Dyer shows that by being enthusiastic and flexible, you can find the work that makes you happy.

In this modern–day classic, Dyer shows you how to stop being the victim in all aspects of everyday life and to take charge of your destiny.

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Excerpt

Declaring Yourself As A Non-Victim

There is no such thing as a well-adjusted slave.

You need never be a victim again. Ever! But in order to function as anon-victim, you must take a hard look at yourself, and learn to recognize thenumerous situations in which your strings are being pulled by others.

Your antivictimization stance will involve a great deal more than simplymemorizing some assertive techniques and then taking a few risks when otherpeople conspire to manipulate or control your behavior. You probably havealready noticed that Earth seems to be a planet on which virtually all the humanresidents make regular attempts to control each other. And they have evolvedunique institutions which are highly accomplished at this regulation. But if youare one of those being governed against your will or better judgment, you are avictim.

It is quite possible to avoid life's victim traps without having to resort tovictimizing behavior yourself. To do this, you can begin to redefine what youexpect for yourself during your brief visit on this planet. You can start, Irecommend, by expecting to be a non-victim, and by looking more carefully at howyou behave as a victim.

What Is A Victim?

You are being victimized whenever you find yourself out of control of your life.The key word is CONTROL. If you are not pulling the strings, then you are beingmanipulated by someone or something else. You can be victimized in an endlessnumber of ways.

A victim as described here is not "first of all" someone who is taken advantageof through criminal activity. You can be robbed or swindled in much moredamaging ways when you give up your emotional and behavioral controls in thecourse of everyday life, through forces of habit.

Victims are first of all people who run their lives according to the dictates ofothers. They find themselves doing things they really would rather not do, orbeing manipulated into activities loaded with unnecessary personal sacrificethat breeds hidden resentment. To be victimized, as I use the word here, meansto be governed and checked by forces outside yourself; and while these forcesare unquestionably ubiquitous in our culture, YOU CAN RARELY BE VICTIMIZEDUNLESS YOU ALLOW IT TO HAPPEN. Yes, people victimize themselves in numerousways, throughout the everyday business of running their lives.

Victims almost always operate from weakness. They let themselves be dominated,pushed around, because they often feel they are not smart enough or strongenough to be in charge of their lives. So they hand their own strings over tosomeone "smarter" or "stronger," rather than take the risks involved in beingself-assertive.

You are a victim when your life is not working for you. If you are behaving inself-defeating ways, if you are miserable, out of sorts, hurt, anxious, afraidto be yourself, or in other similar states which immobilize you, if you aren'tfunctioning in a self-enhancing manner, or if you feel as if you are beingmanipulated by forces outside of yourself, then you are a victim-and it is mycontention that your own victimization is never worth defending. If you agree,then you will be asking: What about relief from victimization? What aboutfreedom?

What Is Freedom?

No one is handed freedom on a platter. You must make your own freedom. Ifsomeone hands it to you, it is not freedom at all, but the alms of a benefactorwho will invariably ask a price of you in return.

Freedom means you are unobstructed in ruling your own life as you choose.Anything less is a form of slavery. If you cannot be unrestrained in makingchoices, in living as you dictate, in doing as you please with your body(provided your pleasure does not interfere with anyone else's freedom), then youare without the command I am talking about, and in essence you are beingvictimized.

To be free does not mean denying your responsibilities to your loved ones andyour fellow man. Indeed, it includes the freedom to make choices to beresponsible. But nowhere is it dictated that you must be what others want you tobe when their wishes conflict with what you want for yourself. You can beresponsible and free. Most of the people who wilt try to tell you that youcannot, who will label your push for freedom "selfish," will turn out to havemeasures of authority over your life, and will really be protesting your threatto the holds you have allowed themto have on you. If they can help you feelselfish, they've contributed to your feeling guilty, and immobilized you again.

The ancient philosopher Epictetus wrote of freedom in this line from hisDiscourses: "No man is free who is not master of himself."

Reread that quote carefully. If you are not the master of yourself, then by thisdefinition you are not free. You do not have to be overtly powerful and exertinfluence over others to be free, nor is it necessary to intimidate others, norto try to bully people into submission in order to prove your own mastery.

The freest people in the world are those who have senses of inner peace aboutthemselves: They simply refuse to be swayed by the whims of others, and arequietly effective at running their own lives. These people enjoy freedom fromrole definitions in which they must behave in certain ways because they areparents, employees, Americans, or even adults; they enjoy freedom to breathewhatever air they choose, in whatever location, without worrying about howeveryone else feels about their choices. They are responsible people, but theyare not enslaved by other people's selfish interpretations of whatresponsibility is.

Freedom is something you must insist upon. As you read through this book, youwill become aware of what at first may appear to be meaningless trifles ofvictimization imposed by others, but which are really efforts to seize yourstrings and to pull you in some direction that will end your freedom, howeverbriefly or however subtly.

Excerpted from Pulling Your Own Strings by Wayne W. Dyer. Copyright © 1991 by Wayne W. Dyer. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.