We all want to be better.

It's a common thing in self-help and in therapy today to offer a variety of ways to be better - which actually boil down to not 'being' better so much as just 'doing' better.   "Chose!" "Decide!" "Manifest!" "Line Up!"  are all about doing better.

If you pick up a book to help you out with your desire to change, it might tell you that you 'are' a certain way.  For example, maybe you'll be labeled a victim, a reactor... as opposed to a leader, an owner.  You are encouraged to choose the better of the two and chose quickly.  Don't 'be' this way any more! 

Yet, how can you not be what you've just identified yourself as being?  This behavioral change is going to take a lot of managing and you are going to need to keep a close eye on your daily picks, managing what you think and how you act, watching what you do in order to measure how you are doing.

In my time working with people, coaching people in wellbeing and peace of mind and training coaches to work with others, I've become exclusively interested in another kind of change.  A change that is easy, natural, positive and sustainable -- precisely because it does not take effort to sustain.

That doesn't seem possible for some things does it?  You, me, we've all had experiences of trying to change and failing.  People around us have too. So I'm going to suggest that it's not that changing behaviors isn't useful; it's just the hard way.

What I've learned, especially through my work with the Three Principles, is that our behaviors follow our emotions and our emotions are the direct product of our thinking.

So whenever we are doing anything; we are only ever as good (behaviorally-speaking) the quality of our own thinking in any given moment.

In this paradigm, victim-hood is a outcome and not a personality type.  It is the outcome of a decision that is based on the quality of my thinking at any given time...

For example, if you call me and I answer, "Hello?" and the first words out of your mouth are "What the hell is wrong with you! Why do you do this to me everytime?!!!"

I might react in a number of ways. 

Indignant, angry, and reactive all spring to mind!  After all, I'm being victimized here. I've done nothing. Except answer my phone. Right? 

Well, this DID happen to me and I really learned something.  I heard the words and the anger and I was surprised and curious to see that my reaction was ... connection.  "Oh my," I thought, "he must be having a really bad day today."

Now, I'm no saint.  I'm perfectly capable of all the reactions under the sun. Ask anyone.  So why did I see this differently?  Had I been practicing thinking new and better thoughts? (I hadn't, just so you know.) Was I having a particularly good day? Was I meditating at the time and deeply serene? Was I really, really, trying to behave like a better person? 

None of the above. I just heard differently. I heard a human being speaking to me and it was obvious: He was in pain.

This is no behavioral change.

It is a change in behavior brought about by a new level of 'beingness' in me. At that moment.

This feeling of connection did not come from my advanced training in 'listening and reflecting back'.  It did not come from my positive affirmations. 

It was a simple moment when, literally without thinking, I was simply part of the dance. I was witnessing the ups and downs of all humans when we are caught up in our thinking and it was fine.

I understood we are only doing as well as we can, given the quality of our thinking in the moment. That is a place of deep, natural connection.

And I realize this is our most natural state. Not a learned one.

So all relationships improve, not when we choose to behave better, but when we focus more on our own deeper understanding of the nature of life for ourselves.

I was observing the fog over the ocean the other day.  In a matter of minutes the fog rolled in and the huge expanse of ocean simply blended away. Gone.

it was as if there was no more ocean.  Just grey all around.

You know the saying that just because the clouds are there doesn't mean the sun has gone?  We use that to try to buck ourselves up when things get hard.  It's a way of saying have faith - the sun will come back.  But really, why do we need faith? Faith is hard. Faith is a struggle. Faith asks me to believe what I don't believe and still be comfortable and happy.

But beyond that,  why do I need to know the sun is going to come back anyway?

Reflecting on the scene in front of me I thought -- not only is the ocean not 'gone' but the ocean is unaware of my perceptions and opinions of it.  It really doesn't give a monkey's if it is hidden or in plain site. Just as the sun doesn't care if the clouds roll over it. And the sky doesn't 'care' about whether it is experiencing a hurricane. It is entirely neutral.

Life is entirely neutral.

I on the other hand, am not. 

Ever watched a nature program and felt 'sad' when the lion tumbles and kills the pretty gazelle?

We add all the opinions and views about what we see.  The weather is a useful example of how we do this all day long.  When we have casual conversations about forecasts we are not talking about the weather, but about our opinions of the weather.  "It's going to rain AGAIN today," "It's going to stay nice ALL day," "It's going to be 20 degrees today!" are not facts, they are predictors of the day I'm about to have.

And I make them.

Human life is so interesting, isn't it?  It's natural to have opinions about things.  At the same time, there's that ocean. Just being there.

I'm certainly not experiencing the neutrality of life all day long. But I am glad to know that my own state of mind is ultimately is responsible for the quality of my life experience. 

I find that infinitely more encouraging than a life being blown by about by the four winds.

A peacefulness follows any decision, even the wrong one.  ~Rita Mae Brown

Here is the square root of our daily stress. Decisions.  We agonize at length over pros and cons, we have mind-maps and 'Why Trees' and 9-step models that help us over-cook the decision making process. 

Even small decisions that don't always have a huge impact, will be whirled through the endless spin cycle of yes/no/maybe/do you think...?

Did you know that studies have shown that it is no more effective to ponder a decision than to simply pick based on first impression?  It's about 50/50.  In fact, according to research Mark Tyrell turned me onto,  "many decisions you are better off not thinking about it."

I think we have so much trouble with decisions because underneath, we have turned the decision-making process wrong way round: toward ourselves.  We think the big impact of our decision will be whether we turn out to be right or wrong, rather than realizing that some decisions don't matter that much, some are reversible if you get them wrong and most are not really life-threatening.

We are petrified of getting it wrong. Plus, we have a tendency to think our decision scorecard is the mark of our intelligence. Our fear of feeling bad about ourselves and looking bad to others is paralyzing.  Western society prizes logical abilities and in general 'gut feel' gets relegated to the sidelines, only to be brought in in a pinch or a last resort after all of the avenues, fall-backs, consequences and pitfalls have been examined and exhausted. 

It's worth looking to see if drawn out, over-thought decision-making is causing you sleepless nights, or taking up lots of your mental space.

The mind was meant for greater things than data analysis and endless agonizing.

I am not sure it will shock any of you to know that we are raising a new generation of stressed out kids.

What I didn't know was the depth of where they go to release that stress.  I think imagined the reasons why a child might reach for pills and alcohol.

What I did not imagine was stressed out kids who think that a viable option for dealing with stress is through harming themselves.

They call this de-stress practice
"cutting"

As I researched the topic for the show on The Truth About Stress, I discovered a dark fact on the forums and boards on the internet...

Children of 12, 13, 15, screaming for help to find a way out of their stress.

"I'm stressed OUT and I don't know what to do!  I've tried everything - I've been cutting myself to relieve the stress" 

Cutting themselves? To relieve stress?  At 12 years old?

My heart beat in my throat as I read those almost exact words many times over.

And here is the worst part.  Knowing what we know about how stress is created and how it does not come from something outsides ourselves - imagine  cutting yourself to relieve the pain of your own thinking...

It's like thinking you need to shoot yourself with one hand so you'll stop hitting yourself with the other.

Cutting, drinking, drugs - all the myriad of "solutions" to the everyday problem of hugely over-wrought thinking.

Let's understand the nature of our own minds so we stop using them against ourselves

I'm not suggesting that any of us are harming ourselves because we are somehow wrong or stupid.  We   Each of us has come to understand the nature of life, to take distance from our problems, to see things from that shade outside of ourselves before we could see anything differently.  Yet now we have our own children and look what we are passing on to them.

Some of these children will never become distant from their problems in the natural course of a life. They will give up hope long before then and give up on life

Failing to teach what we failed to learn

Remember the days when GPA was EVERYTHING, when getting into the University of your choice felt like a matter of LIFE AND DEATH, and if you broke up YOU WOULD NEVER LOVE AGAIN?

These dramatic, all-or-nothing beliefs were part of our thinking too at one time. Now we know better. Or do we?

As I shared my love, care, my experience and my perhaps more 'philosophical' point of view with some of these young people I wondered, how many of us have mastered our own understanding enough to really teach the children? 

By the responses I saw, I'd say we are failing to.

And what will happen if we don't?  I shudder.

Then I remember why I do what I do.
****
More on this topic in the radio archives
Spiritual Parenting with Ami Chen Mills Naim author of The Spark Inside

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© 2010 Elese Coit
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Thank you.

Over the course of my life I’ve given in to defeat many times.  I’ve given up.  The thing I noticed this week is that I am often walking a finer line than I think on this, because giving up never feels like throwing my hands up in desperation and sinking to the floor in a heap:  it feels more like simply not getting around to something.

Giving up sneaks up upon us in insidious forms: like simply not making time,  like putting things off until tomorrow.

Last week I was noticing how many times I heard people say, “life just got in the way," as the reason why they didn't do something they said was important to them. (like writing that book).   But how does that work?  Can life really insert itself between your fondest dream and your daily calendar? 

I just don't believe life gets in the way.  I don't believe there is no time.  I believe we never take the time to chose.

We too easily consent to wasting our lives on details.  We spend little thought time on what's important, much less prioritizing what's important.

I also don't agree that the reason we don't is because it’s scary or too hard. On a basic level there is an unwillingness to train ourselves mentally.  And maybe there is just too much tolerance for our minds' own wanderings.  We consent to a  reactive state of helplessness which gets us out of the task at hand, but kills our longer-terms dreams.

The way out can be to engage others in our game.  To not allow ourselves to work alone, to disappear, to become the victims of our own lazy thinking.

Having spent a week with a group of fellow writers, I notice that it actually works quite well.  We all encouraged one another.  We all admitted where we were blocked and then took a step together.  We set the timers for 45 minutes and then said "Go!".  And we worked. 

At any point in life, there are a multitude of choices, and for most of us in this writing group, we can clearly see two paths ahead: one involves making some hard choices, the other allows me to lag behind, and then ultimately to give up and blame it on life, the kids, work, and being just too busy.

Which to choose I wonder?

I spoke with Eldon Taylor today.  It’s such a privilege to be with him (you can listen to the show here).  There were so many things I loved about this show, that it is really hard to pick one.  But here goes... it's  Eldon's four keys to becoming self-actualized.

Before I give you those, if the word ‘self-actualization’ rings odd for you, here's the idea: the entire point of exploring the inner self and how we work mentally is so that we can express who we are, rather than rehearse who we think we need to be.

When we don't understand how our own cogs turn, we are little more than organ grinder monkeys (who get lots of bananas).

This must be a bit of a theme in what I do, because this week is not the first time one of my clients came to the realization that very little mattered in life if they couldn't be themselves while living it.  He called it, "Standing for Who I Am."

The realization that I didn’t want to spend the bulk of my life managing my personalities and masks (work, home, mom, athlete...) was a complete turning point in my life too.

While it’s possible to have success and never reconcile the different parts, for me it looked like ‘empty success’.  In other words, you get there, but then you don’t recognize the person who is looking back at you in the mirror.  Not all that satisfying.  Not very meaningful.

So, if you like the idea of feeling satisfied and having meaning, here’s the four-point plan from Eldon

1. Guard against what goes in
2. Get inside yourself
3. Change the context
4. Remember you are a miracle

What do you think?  Please feel free to leave a comment or drop me a note at [email protected]