"Those who are constantly at war with others
are seldom at peace with themselves."

– Unknown

I ran across this insightful little quote the other day while looking through one of my earlier books, From Chaos to Calm: Dealing with Difficult People Versus Them Dealing with You! and was surprised to find that, despite having included it in the book, I had never included it as one of my weekly selections. In some ways, this is the bad news because it has not been available to you, the reader, as a source of inspiration. However, it's also the good news because I can now bring more information to the meaning of the quote, and thus hopefully increase its value.

For example, we now know that people who are "constantly at war with others" are also consistently coming from the lower 20% of their brain (their fight or flight response) and are thus limited to the degree that they can truly bring the wisdom of clarity, confidence, and creativity to an issue. They may be very accomplished in the skills of attack or defense, but are likely to be less adept at engaging others, inspiring trust, and building consensus. It's possible that people such as this tend to look at all disagreements as "a war," and thus tend to see a discussion as a battle that either must be won or avoided (again, fight-or-flight).

Further, this week's quote goes on to hint at the war that is going on within them as well, in that they are "seldom at peace with themselves." This means that the courage, wisdom, and ability to engage others to effect positive change that flows so naturally from peace and serenity (and emanates from the neocortex or upper 80% of the brain) is likely to not be available to them.

I speak to this at length in my book, Life from the Top of the Mind, in the chapter on "serenity" that has its origin in the Serenity Prayer. For example, on p. 145, I write:

"Of course, as the Serenity Prayer suggests, we must first access this state (serenity) in order to “accept the things we cannot change.” Further, we must have chosen serenity and acceptance in order to have the courage to change the things we can (remember, serenity is the precursor to all acceptance, courage, wisdom, and change). This makes sense if we look at the concepts of serenity, acceptance, courage, wisdom, and purposeful change in terms of how our brain works, i.e., all of these qualities emanate from the “Top of the Mind” (or the neocortex). Therefore, if we are willing to create a purposeful sense of serenity, we will then be in the appropriate part of the brain to decide where to focus our energy, i.e., whether to accept what is happening and move on, or try to change it."

Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, those who are "seldom at peace with themselves" are also seldom coming from the wise, compassionate, creative part of their brain, and this explains why they have trouble connecting with others, especially those with whom they disagree.

Therefore, I suggest we see these people not as frightening obstacles to our success (which will only throw us into our own fight-or-flight reaction) but instead as frightened individuals who are sadly stuck in the brainstem, and thus deserve our compassion versus our resentment. This reminds me of two other quotes I have used in the past...The first is "Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die." from Malachy McCourt, and the second is "Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul . . . where there is compassion, even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless." stated by Eric Hoffer.

Therefore, if our goal is to be at peace with ourselves versus at war with others, maybe we should view life not through the poisoned lens of judgmental resentment, but instead through the "antitoxin of the soul," or the eyes of compassion, because in doing so, we ensure that we are coming from the clear, confident, and creative part of our brain in a way that is purposeful, makes a statement about who we are, and in a way we would recommend to someone we love. Not a bad criteria for how we live our lives, don't you think?

Take care and God bless, Dr. Bill