Tag: Beliefs

What part does culture play in you becoming you?

Culture is the culmination of the Social Norms we learn  and perpetuate, as we develop and grow within a Society.

  • My Culture – Your Culture – Our Culture – Their Culture
  • We are Social animals, tribal and we grow up in a Culture, created by those already there.
  • We are taught beliefs about reality by those in the Culture. Those beliefs, including those that become unconscious biases, become the lenses, through which we perceive reality.
  • My Reality – Your Reality – Our Reality – Their Reality.
  • No!
  • My representation of Reality – Your representation of Reality – Our representation of Reality – Their representation of Reality.
  • No-one knows reality, we know only, our REPRESENTATIONS of Reality

Those representations of course, become our Truth.

Ahh Truth, what is that again?

        Click here to see:- truth define document

Culture does in a major way then, through what we are taught within it, influence how we each represent reality.

Culture~ exists wherever human beings come together, bounded by a continent, a country, a city, a district,  a village, a pub, a club, a political party, an organisation / workplace, a spiritual way of being, a religion, a church, a school, a University, a Team etc.

A major driver of how it comes about, is our social brain. 

We are primarily social animals, herding, tribal creatures, wired with a strong desire to fit in. (Proven perhaps by the few who do not🤪)

Do we really desire to fit in?

Do we really need to conform?

 

We learn cultural norms from others.

The norms are laid down within us as, patterns of thinking, values / beliefs (lenses through which we perceive reality and consequently build our representations of it) and patterns of behaviour (habits), triggered by cues present in  any given context e.g. the Brit’s propensity to queue.

Those beliefs that we learn of course, impact the representation of the reality we live in.

  • Can you change the beliefs you learned from your culture / background / upbringing?
  • What happens to your representation of reality, when you change the beliefs / lenses you learned?
  • Did you ever find changing your beliefs  / lenses, changed who you socialised with?
  • Did you ever find  changing your environment e.g new job, new locale, caused  you to change behaviour, in order to fit in with the new culture?
  • What about beliefs, any change?

What is the impact, of my beliefs on my reality?

He does not believe, who does not live according to his belief.  

 Thomas Fuller

How do your beliefs impact the  perception you hold about reality?

  • Little or not at all?
  • They have some effect?
  • High?
  • Total. My beliefs absolutely define how the reality of my life is, the good aspects, the not quite so good and the most challenging?

Think again about the journey of you becoming you.

We are Born

We begin to learn and form beliefs about  reality, from direct experience and from what the big people around us teach us to believe. We are very trusting of the big people😯😀

We learn to believe in our beliefs as they help us build a representation of reality.

We learn to trust that representation of reality, because it “works”. We look through the lenses of our beliefs and “see that it is so” and then learn of course, “I am right” and now defend our representation of reality, as if our very life is threatened.

 

 

 

What we ‘see’, becomes true for us, our truth.

We form Points of View, views from a Point!

We sense threat when others disagree with our view on reality (because our representation is, you know, actually real-‘Duh’ 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️)

Our Amygdala floods the body with cortisol and adrenaline, and we are in ‘fight-flight-freeze acting as if our very life is in real danger  with our mature thinking, Prefrontal Cortex  shut down! 😖

As this happens over and over again, we are learning that if people disagree with us, we need to win the ‘battle’, otherwise the emotion, the feelings we get in our body, will not be good🤯. The brain learns by repetition and this reinforces the belief ‘I am right.’

So it is, that we become defined, not by the reality that is ‘out there’, rather we are defined by what we believe, what our lenses, perceive…

It is that perception and our consequent representation, which becomes true for us.

Thus we become what we believe, e.g. Needing to be perfect, not good enough, better than everybody else, confident, not confident, able to listen, not able to listen, bullied, bullying, nervous, certain, over-analysing, taking everything personally, etc etc.

  • Unless?
  • Unless what?

We change our mindset about changing beliefs?

Change your beliefs – Change your life

A question to ask yourself

Is your mind your master? Or Are you the master of your mind?  

 

Reframing; think about it in a different way.

Reframing:- I believe this is one of the most powerful ‘tools’ I have learned on my path.🦉

A very old Chinese Taoist story describes a farmer in a poor country village. He was considered very well to do, because he owned a horse that he used for ploughing and transportation. One day his horse ran away. All his neighbours exclaimed how terrible this was , but the farmer just said “maybe.”
A few days later the horse returned and brought two wild horses with it. The neighbours all rejoiced at his good fortune, but the farmer just said “maybe.”
The next day the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the wild horses; the horse threw him and he broke his leg. The neighbours all offered their sympathy for his misfortune, but the farmer again, just said “maybe.”
The next week conscription officers came to the village to take young men to the army, they rejected the farmer’s son because of his broken leg. When the neighbours told him how lucky he was, the farmer replied “maybe.”

The meaning that any event has depends upon the ‘frame’ in which we perceive it. When we change the frame, we change the meaning. Having two wild horses is a good thing until it is seen in the context of the son’s broken leg. The broken leg seems to be bad in the context of peaceful village life; but in the context of conscription and war, it suddenly becomes good.
This is called reframing; changing the frame in which a person perceives events in order to change the meaning. When the meaning changes, the person’s responses and behaviours also change. (Grinder, 1982) There are many NLP books that will take you into reframing and how to do it in many contexts, too numerous to mention here

The reasons you’d want to know about this are:-
• Another frame will generate other ways of thinking about an issue
• Even thinking about reframing an issue or problem will help in generating a solution

What is this about?
It is a useful strategy in generating flexibility of thinking, in order to resolve issues and problems, both within yourself and with others.

How can we use this insight?

Calling someone too ‘unfocused’ for example. A reframe to enable you to work with the person in a better way, is to maybe think of them, being useful as a ‘wide angle’ lens, bringing more into the ‘picture’, broadening and  deepening understanding  of the whole context, through doing that perhaps.
Or let’s say you perceive someone in your team as obstructive, then a possible reframe may be, actually when you need a dam to stop a flood happening , obstructive is good. Or if you need a ‘solid wall to push against, then obstructive is good. Or more literally you can use them with permission, as a solid sounding board for new ideas.

This insight really can help you change your beliefs 😀

  • What / who is ‘bothering’ you at the moment?
  • How might you reframe that?

 

Why do I do what I do? Part 2

 Part 1 Why do I do what I do?

Part 2   (Quite Long 😐 )

Following on from Part 1, this provides a little more detail on the levels

The Logical levels detail

Figure 1 Logical Levels

Environment
When considering human behaviour, it is important to note that it will always occur within an environment. The environment will affect behaviour and of course behaviour will affect the environment. Examples are people behave differently when locked up in a penal institution and also, if you consider the World-wide organisation Greenpeace, it is constantly telling us our behaviour as a species is having major effects on the environment.
Thus there is a link between where we are and what we do. We can consider also that working within, for instance, a large corporation, puts us in an environment where certain behaviours are expected, allowed etc. You may also consider that technology / tools / infrastructure are part of the environment.

Behaviour
So knowing there is a strong two-way link between environment and behaviour then we can look to see if the environment is appropriate and conducive to the behaviour desired.
It must also be very clear at this level, what specific behaviour(s) is/are being addressed, they need to be described.
The next level to consider is given when we ask the question does this person, or group of people know how to behave in the desired way?

Capability / Competency
Now we are at the level of competency, again there is a two-way linkage What we know how to do will affect our behaviour and the feedback we get from behaving in specific ways will increase or maybe decrease our competency levels.

A good example is when we learn to drive. When faced with having to behave as a driver does for the first time, we recognise that our competency is low and we need a lot of assistance to learn the desired behaviours, until they become locked in as unconscious competency.

So when observing behaviour and noticing it is not what is desired, we need to ask, does the person or group of people, really have the knowledge, skill, capability to behave in the desired way? In fact are they able to utilise the environment (technology – tools – infrastructure)

We now need to consider what the person or group of people believe in order to understand the reasons behind exhibiting specific behaviours or just as commonly not exhibiting those behaviours

Beliefs
As we get down into the level of beliefs then we are getting close to the essence of the person and it is interesting to note that if you wish to discuss beliefs with a person or group constructively (and this is one of my beliefs 🙂 ) then you need a high level of rapport and the language tonality is probably gentle.
As people grow, they form beliefs about all sorts of things including what are good and bad things to do at work. These may be influenced by colleagues, previous Managers, Fathers, Mothers, schoolteachers, people in public life, personal experience, all sorts of things. What’s important to consider here is, beliefs will affect whether we want to learn new ways, whether what is being proposed makes sense (we check the new proposal against our beliefs of, for instance, good and bad, if it makes sense then the behaviour will possibly follow). Switching beliefs is sometimes called generating Buy-in and is extremely important if we want to change behaviour. Another check we will do at this level is ‘How important is it that I do this’? If I believe its important then I’ll do it…” My boss and her boss in a room all day telling me about it, makes it important in my judgment”
To summarise, if I believe something then I will look for evidence to support that belief (and find it by the way 🙂 )..and behave in ways that support the belief. So fundamental to new behaviours is beliefs that back them up.

Note:- New beliefs may need to be switched to, from old long held beliefs. Nice easy thing to do? Eh, maybe it will take some focused attention 🙂

Identity
The identity level or level of I, is where we ask the question What does this mean to me, or about me, how does this make me feel? It is I who hold this set of beliefs and have these competencies / skills and behave in these specific ways in particular environments.
This is where the power game and EGO live and it has a powerful effect on what people will and will not do in terms of behaviour. Thus if we are asking a Leader to behave in a specific new way and he/she thinks that makes me feel like I’m not trusted… then they may say they’ll do it but the observed behaviour will be they don’t really…maybe we get lip service..
We must pay a lot of attention to this level for change to be a success

Spiritual / beyond identity / life purpose
The final deepest level is the spiritual level.

Let me share an experience I had, as an example.
In the early 1990s in Solihull town square, I saw a group of people singing and playing guitars, they seemed to be very happy and smiling. It is pouring rain but they don’t seem to mind. Other people (including me 🙂 ), singly and in small groups are rushing by, looking for shelter, not paying the first group any attention. This first group, it turns out are committed religious people and if you like,  are different to the others at this deep fundamental spiritual level. In other words, they have a purpose, who they think they are is different, the beliefs they hold are different, about good and bad things to do, what will work, what won’t work, what will happen in the future etc. etc…Also what they’ve become good at is different and of course, as I observed, the behaviour is certainly different from the norm in a rainy town square.

I would also point to the purpose in Mother Theresa or Ghandi, both seeing God in poverty and distress.

Let me end with another picture of the  Dilts’Logical Levels

 

Thinking about your behaviour, in some specific contexts:-

  • Think of a behaviour you perhaps don’t do so well?
  • Which level might hold the key? 🙂
  • Where a behaviour is expected of you and you don’t really do it, what are your beliefs about it?
  • What would it mean about you if you really did do it?
  • Where your behaviour could be perceived as negative, what is ‘driving’ that?
  • Just notice the behaviour of others, (at work or with family / friends) what might be at the root of those behaviours ? Perhaps seek their intent behind behaving this way. 🙂

Relationships, can we measure how effective they are?

What if we had a way to monitor the status of important  relationships?

 

 

Figure 1 Measuring the ‘quality’ of Relationships

What Figure 1 shows, is a way to judge or map, the relationships we have. Note:- this will be your perception of the conductivity of the relationship and not necessarily the other person’s and it may not be the ‘truth’about the relationship, since it is a perception / belief.

I’m sure as you think about the various relationships you have, you can place them somewhere on the scale of -2 to +2. The idea is once you have the relationship mapped initially, then you can do something to improve it from say -2 Anti to -1 unhelpful. This could be useful when, for example, you consider the network you have built / are building, in your workplace / career.

It may be an idea, to never let  the others see what your perception of the relationship is 🙂

  • Why are relationships and the quality of them, important in the journey of you becoming you?

Make a list of the important relationships in your workplace.

  • What is the current status of each of them?
  • What actions are needed to move negative or neutral, in a positive direction?
  • What actions are needed in positive relationships to sustain them?