January 2018 – How did You become You?

Beliefs we may learn early in Life

In the journey to becoming you, a major influence is the beliefs we form early in life.

For example, a belief held by many people that holds them back in life is “I’m not good enough”. Think about beliefs you learned as a child. See the information below

When did you learn these / beliefs / lenses?

How old were you?

The following is a synopsis from Transactional Analysis (TA) on childhood scripts known as injunctions and drivers

Figure 1 The Drowning Man

See detail http://www.activatetherapy.co.uk/single-post/2017/05/01/On-being-a-lifeguard

TA identifies twelve key injunctions which people commonly build into their scripts. These are injunctions in the sense of being powerful “I can’t/mustn’t …” messages that embed into a child’s belief and life-script:
• Don’t be (don’t exist)
• Don’t be who you are (Don’t Be You)
• Don’t be a child
• Don’t grow up
• Don’t make it in your life (Don’t Succeed)
• Don’t do anything!
• Don’t be important
• Don’t belong
• Don’t be close
• Don’t be well (don’t be sane!)
• Don’t think
• Don’t feel.

In addition, there is the so-called episcript:
“You should (or deserve to) have this happen in your life, so it doesn’t have to happen to me.” (Magical thinking on the part of the parent(s).)

Against these, a child is often told other things he or she must do. There is debate as to whether there are five or six of these ‘drivers‘:
• Please me/others!
• Be perfect!
• Be Strong!
• Try Hard!
• Hurry Up!
• Be Careful! (is in dispute)
Thus in creating his script, a child will often attempt to juggle these, example: “It’s okay for me to go on living (ignore don’t exist) so long as I try hard”.
This explains why some change is inordinately difficult. To continue the above example: When a person stops trying hard and relaxes to be with his family, the injunction You don’t have the right to exist which was being suppressed by their script now becomes exposed and a vivid threat. Such an individual may feel a massive psychological pressure which he himself doesn’t understand, to return to trying hard, in order to feel safe and justified (in a childlike way) in existing.
Driver behaviour is also detectable at a very small scale, for instance in instinctive responses to certain situations where driver behaviour is played out over five to twenty seconds.
Broadly speaking, scripts can fall into Tragic, Heroic or Banal (or Non-Winner) varieties, depending on their rules.

Now think about this:-

What might you have ‘Learned’ as a child, that maybe holding you back today?

What if you could change the belief? Create a new lens to look at reality, what would that belief be?

What do you now have to learn?

Remember when you hold a belief about something, you are right! And you have evidence to back it up.

The beliefs talked about above are not easy to change, just begin by noticing when they ‘Kick in’.

Perhaps practice changing a less deeply seated belief and notice what thinking comes up when you do

E.g. I can’t walk into a room of ‘friendly’ strangers and talk to someone

Change the belief and you will be right about the new way! and build evidence to back that up.

#feelthefearanddoitanyway. I will come back to this Hashtag

Beliefs & Evidence

An interesting thought, once you form a belief about something, you will always find evidence to back it up, otherwise it would be stupid to be holding the belief. (A caveat here is the world of science, where discipline and conditioning says, that you start with the evidence and then work from that to build support for a hypothesis).

For most of us though, we develop ways of looking at evidence so that our belief is preserved, we filter out what does not fit and filter in, if you like, more of what supports the belief (it is not seeing is believing, it is believing is seeing!) Remember my definition of a belief, as a lens through which we perceive reality 🙂

This insight is in my view, fundamental to becoming the real you. Beliefs that we currently hold about ourselves, will need to change, on the journey to becoming the real you. 🙂

Let me give an example that may strike a chord. In school, in front of the class, the teacher says “you’re hopeless at maths, you’ll never be able to get this, will you?” Your reaction may be a polar response of, I’ll show her and you set your intent to become brilliant at maths actually, or you say to yourself, “she’s right I am useless” and then you begin gathering the evidence to prove it. Each time you get a wrong answer or low mark in an exam it’s just proving to you that you are right in your belief that you are rubbish at maths. You never really ‘see’ the fact that some of what you are doing is good!

Whether you believe you can or you can’t do something, you are right! Because, as I have said in a previous post, the biggest belief we all have is I am right! 🙂

What is the belief about yourself, that holds you back the most?

When did you ‘learn’ it?

How old were you?

What if you learned a belief now that really helped you ?

What would that be?

The Second Presupposition

The second presupposition
The presupposition is that, “We each map the world according to our beliefs and the map is not the territory”, this is also fundamental when thinking about how did you become you

We each have a map and those maps are as different on the inside as we are different on the outside (how we look), because of the different things we have experienced or learned in life. You cannot assume for instance that just because you know something, or think another will do something specific in a particular situation, that they know it too, or they will do as you expect.
o When I get stuck, in my mind, with something i.e. I keep ending up in the same thought pattern, it is as if I’ve run out of map symbols or indication of a road to take me forward.
o Someone else though, with different experience and learning can share a possible way to handle the situation, from their map and thus my map is enhanced.
It is the maps, I believe that really differentiate us as people. For instance most self-made millionaires, (I’m not one yet) do not use the word failure or believe they fail at anything, instead their map may work as follows:-

o Do something (e.g. invest in a new area of business)
o Look at the results (get feedback)
o Make decisions about what to do next based on experience
o Act on those decisions
o Loop back to second bullet
– If the results are not as you want them, a decision you might make is to get out of this business

• You look on this as a sensible decision based on the evidence you found at this time
• Ask what have I learned from this?
• Move on to something new with this experience under your belt now
• You have not failed, just did stuff that eventually did not work out and learned from it.

We learn just as much, in my opinion, probably more, from the things that do not work in life as we do from the things that do.
If you look at the example above, as probably most of us would when the results are not as we desire, then you would be using the words fail, failure, no good, bad, then making the failure mean you are a failure and no good at business, hence forming a belief or several beliefs about yourself.

How do you think about the above?

Do you Fail or Learn?

Can you change your beliefs about this?

The Journey

It is said we need three things in life
• A purpose
• A place
• A time
The issue is we need all of them together and as I write this BLOG, I believe I have the three:-)
I have a vision for the world that everyone on the planet is able to find their purpose and be in a position to carry it out in the right place at the right time. I also believe that when this happens we will have created ‘Heaven on earth’.

We are all on a journey called life. For most of us the first significant event on the journey, was our birth and the last will be our death (it is said the two best days of your life? Day you were born, day you find out why) Right now in this moment, as you read these words, you are somewhere on that journey. No matter where you are, this BLOG is being written to help you become more aware of the journey, yourself and what you can do to help yourself.

Interestingly some aspects of the journey will be similar to the journey of others and some will be very different. What I aim to do In this BLOG is give you some insights and knowledge to help you understand a little about yourself and others in the world, in a straightforward pragmatic way, so that your journey is even more fulfilled.

There are a couple of pre-suppositions I’d like to introduce straight away viz:-
– We are meaning seeking, pattern making beings
– The brain is a pattern-making organ with an innate desire to create novel connections (David Rock & Jeffrey Schwarz)
– We each map the world according to our beliefs and the map is not the territory

These two statements form a workable framework for change within us if we desire to make it.

The first presupposition
“We are meaning seeking, pattern making beings”
This is saying that we seek meaning in almost everything we encounter, whatever comes across our path as a child, a youth and an adult, we ascribe meaning to it. For example someone you care for (or not) does not return a call you made to them. You may create one or several of these meanings or another one of course
• It doesn’t matter
• It doesn’t mean anything at all
• They must be very busy
• They don’t like me any more
• I’m not worthy of a reply
• I’ve really upset them
• That’s their bad luck
• Who cares
• Etc.
The meaning we ascribe probably has many dependencies, not the least of which is what has happened in the past about non- returned phone calls, what experience we have locked in our brains about non returned phone calls! I will come back to this point. The other interesting thing is, we act as if what we just made up is true.

On Patterns

We make and lay down patterns of behaviour and thinking, for example, cleaning our teeth, crossing the road, waking up in the morning, driving a car, tying our shoelaces, shaking hands, eating with knives and forks, solving puzzles, showering, handling rejection, handling criticism, telling ourselves we are good / no good, remembering names with faces, sawing a piece of wood, riding a bicycle, swimming, etc. A lot of our waking life is taken up following patterns that we have learned; many of them are in fact followed below the level of consciousness, such that we are not even aware of following them. If you think about it, we would be pretty exhausted if we had to pay conscious attention to these things each time they came up.

This is both a blessing and perhaps holds us back. I for instance found that part of my strategy for handling criticism was in the main laid down probably before the age of five. Let me give you an actual example from my life. ‘One day a lady manager called to let me know, that I had not done as she had asked in preparing a set of reports. This fact was absolutely true; however my reaction to the criticism was not what I expected. I felt very emotional, on the verge of tears and was finding it difficult to speak. I just wanted to curl up and for the call to be over. That evening I asked my beloved, Gill, (also a coach) to help me understand what was going on. What came out was that the tonality used by the Manager reminded me of the tonality used by my primary school mistress as she tried very hard to teach me how to tie my shoe laces properly. I was about four and a half years old and could not follow what she was showing me. What I discovered in rethinking about this episode was, I am left- handed, she was teaching me in a right- handed way and getting exasperated, hence her tonality. I, on the other hand was just frightened and associated her tonality and my fear. Thus when I heard the tonality in the present with my manager, it also recovered the feeling of fear and hence my reaction. What I was able to do with this insight was disconnect from the emotion and deal with my manager as an adult.

Reacting to what is happening now 80 / 20 rule
The above story highlights the insight that our reaction to what is happening in the present moment, is usually based 20% on the present and 80% on what we recall, usually subconsciously, from the past (#rubberbanding). Actually we are following a pattern as I previously mentioned, the pattern is either useful to us or not. If it is not useful as in my example above then we can choose to change it. This will be covered Later in the BLOG under the broad heading ‘Relationship with self’

My wife Gill said she couldn’t like me!

Trouble at BLOG, Gill tried to like one of my posts 🙂 then found she had to login to WordPress (Blog editor) to do that ..messy. Or she could choose to log in to her Google gmail account and this enabled her to like me 🙂 🙂

Tricky this BLOG stuff .. not sure if another prerequisite to liking is maybe you need to sign up to get updated by email when a new BLOG (eh this one) gets posted.

I think you need to sign up to leave a comment…

A BLOGGING we will go, a BLOGGING we will go, hey ho ma daddy oh, a BLOGGING we will go 🙂