Rather to be “right”, or have what you want?
Have you heard the expression “We create our own reality?” Have you wondered what it meant? Or have you perhaps written off the expression as meaningless new age tripe? “You create your own reality” is an idea that attempts to hand you back your power within a cultural model that does not support you having it, despite the traditional western romance with the “independent self-made man.”
The Power lies with you.
Who holds the most power to impact your experience of your life? You. While depression and anxiety can make it hard to feel the truth of this, “you create your own reality” is true in a number of ways, two of which I will explore here. First, you always have the opportunity to look at the things that happen to you in your life from a viewpoint that supports your growth and empowerment, rather than your feelings of helplessness and victimization. Second, if you develop within yourself the ability to pull back and really see YOU in relation to the world, you can develop the capacity to make choices and take actions that create the life and relationships you want , rather than simply reacting to, and playing the cards that the world deals you. Your greatest opportunity for having the life you want resides in the power within YOU, to see and change the way YOU operate within the world.
Don’t fight the problem, find the solution.
How does the way in which you act upon the world around you, on your workplace, your partner, your children, elicit from them a way of being that can nourish you? What behaviors do you bring forth in others through their responses to your behaviors? One of the most basic ideas of systems therapy is that it is often the actions you take to solve your problems that actually create your problems or make them worse. Most of us are blind to the mechanism I am describing because the actions we take to solve our problems SEEM to make so much sense. Here is an individual example:
Historically, if a person were overweight and wished to be thinner, the common practice was dieting. It seemed to be a straight forward strategy that made sense, and people have been at it for years! Some still are, even though there exists an enormous body of research indicating that for most people, the long-term result from dieting is weight gain, not loss. There are a number of reasons why this is the case, reasons that include: triggering of feelings of scarcity in the individual, biological programming, feelings of shame about one’s diet-performance raising the drive to use food for comfort, and metabolic backlash. The point I am making, is that most commonly what looks like the obvious solution to a problem generally makes the problem worse.
The pattern holds true for interpersonal relationships as well. Most people use their energy to attempt to directly control or influence their environment and the people around them, in an attempt to get what they want. Unfortunately this is an almost guaranteed recipe for reenforcing the behaviors you most don’t want from the people you are attempting to influence. The strategy ends up having just the opposite of the intended effect:
Parents concerned with engendering independence in their children try to push them towards autonomy before it is developmentally appropriate, creating high anxiety velcro-children in the short term, and a long term systemic unease in the child about their own capacity for self-reliance.
The high-desire partner in the relationship pursues the low-desire partner for more sex with a variety of strategies: quilting, hinting, bribing, complaining, etc., only to find that the net result of their campaign is an even lower desire in the other, who feels too squashed under all the pressure to generate an authentic wanting.
Well-meaning parents try to keep their teens safe by imposing rigid structures of surveillance and control, only to discover that they have created home environments that elicit the very hiding and sneaking behaviors that get teens into dangerous situations. They have also derailed an atmosphere that encourages the kind of open dialog that IS a protective factor for teens.
People prone to domestic violence victimization don’t stand up for themselves in the face of small personal-boundary violations at the start of the relationship. The hope is that by capitulating and soothing, things won’t get worse. Instead the message is sent that “I am not a person who stands up for myself,” opening the door to the pattern of escalating boundary violations that can lead to violence.
The variations are endless.
Turn your focus on yourself.
You are the only one you have any real power over. In using that power, where are you creating what you most don’t want in your life? It is hard work for most people to see themselves clearly. And when you finally realize how you are reenforcing the very things you are trying to fight, it is even harder to see how you might bring yourself to the situation differently, in a way that elicits more of what you do want. The trick is to focus on yourself, most of the energy you currently spend on trying to change the other person. Change yourself and you change them. Bring yourself to the interaction in a new way, a manner that is conscious of the way in which you are creating half of the interaction, and the other person will not be able to sustain being the self s/he has always been for very long.
This same law of interpersonal relationships holds true for countries in the world community, by the way. You might want to take a moment to think about how ours is operating in the world arena.
I hear many people say, “But it isn’t fair! S/he should WANT to 1) have sex with me more often 2) do more housework 3) go on family outings. 4) treat me with more respect. Perhaps it seems easier to stew about justice than look at yourself. “It’s wrong for him to be that way! It isn’t fair or nice!!” Perhaps it feels less threatening to the self to focus on the other person, than take responsibility for actually trying to get what you say you want, and change your own way of being. Everything on that list at the beginning of the paragraph may be “capital T” true, but is your stance helping you get what you want? The moment the energy of “should” enters the conversation, you are shooting yourself in the foot. “Should”, and “have to” take the room for choice out of the equation, and it is human nature to balk at that. You can be guaranteed that if there are “shoulds” in either the words or energy that you are putting into your personal relationships, you are reenforcing the very behaviors you most don’t want in the other person, or you are driving those behaviors underground only to pop up in other, even more unpleasant, forms elsewhere.
Why would you be resistant to the idea that the one with the power to give you the life you want is you? It’s too much responsibility? I might fail? That leaves no one to blame? It isn’t fair? S/he should be the one who has to change! Would you rather be right, or get what you want? For many people this question might be asked, “Would you rather maintain your identity as ‘wounded and downtrodden,’ or get what you want?”, or “Would you rather guard your image, or get what you want?”, or “Would you rather save yourself/someone else some embarrassment, or get what you want?”
Can you develop the capacity to see where you are sabotaging yourself? Can you develop the flexibility to operate from a place of creating what you want, rather than resisting what you don’t want? That is where the life you long for is waiting for you.
Have you heard the expression “We create our own reality?” Have you wondered what it meant? Or have you perhaps written off the expression as meaningless new age tripe? “You create your own reality” is an idea that attempts to hand you back your power within a cultural model that does not support you having it, despite the traditional western romance with the “independent self-made man.”
The Power lies with you.
Who holds the most power to impact your experience of your life? You. While depression and anxiety can make it hard to feel the truth of this, “you create your own reality” is true in a number of ways, two of which I will explore here. First, you always have the opportunity to look at the things that happen to you in your life from a viewpoint that supports your growth and empowerment, rather than your feelings of helplessness and victimization. Second, if you develop within yourself the ability to pull back and really see YOU in relation to the world, you can develop the capacity to make choices and take actions that create the life and relationships you want , rather than simply reacting to, and playing the cards that the world deals you. Your greatest opportunity for having the life you want resides in the power within YOU, to see and change the way YOU operate within the world.
Don’t fight the problem, find the solution.
How does the way in which you act upon the world around you, on your workplace, your partner, your children, elicit from them a way of being that can nourish you? What behaviors do you bring forth in others through their responses to your behaviors? One of the most basic ideas of systems therapy is that it is often the actions you take to solve your problems that actually create your problems or make them worse. Most of us are blind to the mechanism I am describing because the actions we take to solve our problems SEEM to make so much sense. Here is an individual example:
Historically, if a person were overweight and wished to be thinner, the common practice was dieting. It seemed to be a straight forward strategy that made sense, and people have been at it for years! Some still are, even though there exists an enormous body of research indicating that for most people, the long-term result from dieting is weight gain, not loss. There are a number of reasons why this is the case, reasons that include: triggering of feelings of scarcity in the individual, biological programming, feelings of shame about one’s diet-performance raising the drive to use food for comfort, and metabolic backlash. The point I am making, is that most commonly what looks like the obvious solution to a problem generally makes the problem worse.
The pattern holds true for interpersonal relationships as well. Most people use their energy to attempt to directly control or influence their environment and the people around them, in an attempt to get what they want. Unfortunately this is an almost guaranteed recipe for reenforcing the behaviors you most don’t want from the people you are attempting to influence. The strategy ends up having just the opposite of the intended effect:
Parents concerned with engendering independence in their children try to push them towards autonomy before it is developmentally appropriate, creating high anxiety velcro-children in the short term, and a long term systemic unease in the child about their own capacity for self-reliance.
The high-desire partner in the relationship pursues the low-desire partner for more sex with a variety of strategies: quilting, hinting, bribing, complaining, etc., only to find that the net result of their campaign is an even lower desire in the other, who feels too squashed under all the pressure to generate an authentic wanting.
Well-meaning parents try to keep their teens safe by imposing rigid structures of surveillance and control, only to discover that they have created home environments that elicit the very hiding and sneaking behaviors that get teens into dangerous situations. They have also derailed an atmosphere that encourages the kind of open dialog that IS a protective factor for teens.
People prone to domestic violence victimization don’t stand up for themselves in the face of small personal-boundary violations at the start of the relationship. The hope is that by capitulating and soothing, things won’t get worse. Instead the message is sent that “I am not a person who stands up for myself,” opening the door to the pattern of escalating boundary violations that can lead to violence.
The variations are endless.
Turn your focus on yourself.
You are the only one you have any real power over. In using that power, where are you creating what you most don’t want in your life? It is hard work for most people to see themselves clearly. And when you finally realize how you are reenforcing the very things you are trying to fight, it is even harder to see how you might bring yourself to the situation differently, in a way that elicits more of what you do want. The trick is to focus on yourself, most of the energy you currently spend on trying to change the other person. Change yourself and you change them. Bring yourself to the interaction in a new way, a manner that is conscious of the way in which you are creating half of the interaction, and the other person will not be able to sustain being the self s/he has always been for very long.
This same law of interpersonal relationships holds true for countries in the world community, by the way. You might want to take a moment to think about how ours is operating in the world arena.
I hear many people say, “But it isn’t fair! S/he should WANT to 1) have sex with me more often 2) do more housework 3) go on family outings. 4) treat me with more respect. Perhaps it seems easier to stew about justice than look at yourself. “It’s wrong for him to be that way! It isn’t fair or nice!!” Perhaps it feels less threatening to the self to focus on the other person, than take responsibility for actually trying to get what you say you want, and change your own way of being. Everything on that list at the beginning of the paragraph may be “capital T” true, but is your stance helping you get what you want? The moment the energy of “should” enters the conversation, you are shooting yourself in the foot. “Should”, and “have to” take the room for choice out of the equation, and it is human nature to balk at that. You can be guaranteed that if there are “shoulds” in either the words or energy that you are putting into your personal relationships, you are reenforcing the very behaviors you most don’t want in the other person, or you are driving those behaviors underground only to pop up in other, even more unpleasant, forms elsewhere.
Why would you be resistant to the idea that the one with the power to give you the life you want is you? It’s too much responsibility? I might fail? That leaves no one to blame? It isn’t fair? S/he should be the one who has to change! Would you rather be right, or get what you want? For many people this question might be asked, “Would you rather maintain your identity as ‘wounded and downtrodden,’ or get what you want?”, or “Would you rather guard your image, or get what you want?”, or “Would you rather save yourself/someone else some embarrassment, or get what you want?”
Can you develop the capacity to see where you are sabotaging yourself? Can you develop the flexibility to operate from a place of creating what you want, rather than resisting what you don’t want? That is where the life you long for is waiting for you.
| gaelenbillingsley_rathertoberight.doc |