No I haven't read much that focuses on this area. It is also missed out on in much of the happiness literature: that is how negative ideas seek negative confirmation in the data we absorb and focus on, in ourselves.

Rejecting greatness is one area and that can be easily made into a big arena and lots of fanfare. Reading or hearing about this area can be uplifting, inspiring and a few other things as well. On a smaller more human note though, hearing about how I am seen to be friendly by others or seen as helpful by others can also be rejected because I don't believe it. I need to write something on this area. :)

I am thinking of the Ladder of Inference illuminated well by Peter Senge in his Fifth Discipline Fieldbook as I consider this stuff.

Cheers for the moment

Peter in Brisbane

Hi Brian,

Thanks for this work you are doing.

I have one small niggardly thing around shadow that I believe is relevant here. Shadow is certainly things that we have rejected. However the shadow is often seen as the less salubrious aspects of our personality. Sometimes this is true. However often it is more simply about areas of our functioning that have been avoided or not paid attention to rather than avoided or rejected. And these areas are often to do with what is and what isn't avoided/rejected/frowned upon by our culture, our community our family or our peers. So one person might reject their capacity for poetry because in their family this was considered not part of being a man. Another person might reject hardness and decisiveness because they lived in a culture where the opposite was valued.

I make this point because the areas that are seen as shodow are so often, and I believe incorrectly, named as "dark" things or things that we have ruthless repressed. Thus the shadow is all about the area that Forbidden Planet visited. Our inner desired to kill, rape, beat, be full of revenge, be sociopathic, ruthless, self interested - which can also be true as these are culturally usually rejected (unless born into a war torn culture such as the Sudan or Eritrea) when as often he shadow is about areas of self acceptance, acceptance of others and a whole slew of areas that are really usually seen as "light" areas.

Anyway I am relating to your initial intro and this may all be covered in which case I beg mea culpa as this is a short response in the short notes section.

Cheers

Peter in Brisbane, Australia