Thinking and Rethinking

An easy way to care less and focus more on the issues that really matter in our life is to start assuming we are wrong. I am deadly serious about this. We are wrong most of the time. Our beliefs are often misguided or distorted. Our conclusions are usually more hypothesis than fact. We are wrong most of the time.

It is an awesome spiritual practice to ask yourself, "What if I'm wrong?" Remember, our brain does NOT like to contemplate being wrong. This form of inquiry requires it to fire up extra cylinders and kick itself into a higher gear. No self-respecting brain wants to do that! Our initial response will most likely be something along the lines of, "I couldn't possibly be wrong about this!" Again, just to be clear, yes. Yes. We could be wrong.

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

Aristotle

We will need to challenge our mind - a powerful force that is well suited for denying anything that is inconvenient and will cause more work. When we ask this question, we may discover that indeed, we were right! That's great, but it will in no way grow or develop us. It will always be in the midst of discovering something wrong that we will get smarter, wiser and...better at playing the piano if we will humble ourselves and consider a different perspective.

What are you so sure about that you might need to rethink?

Evaluation and Communication

For a month’s worth of posts, I (Scott) am critiquing my own past blog posts. I’m viewing this as an experiment in being willing to admit when I’m wrong, change my mind, and to do so publicly.

The difficulty (or one of the difficulties) in honest self-reflection following a fight comes in creating the distance we need between our attempts at discernment and the underlying unpleasant experience.  In other words, our feelings tend to cloud our judgment.  We need to create space between the emotional trigger and the beginning of our process of deciphering the meaning of the event or fight.  

The problem is, we intuitively and instantaneously seek the meaning of our interactions, often before they’re even finished.  What did he (or she) mean by this phrase?  Or by this look?  He (or she) is so angry, and this has never happened before, does that mean this relationship is over?  

In other words, we begin the analysis in the height of the moment when we’re least equipped to draw conclusions about the true meaning of the moment.  What I mean is, we draw plenty of conclusions about what that moment means, but very few of them are true or accurate.  

How do we draw accurate conclusions about what has taken place during a fight?  

More tomorrow.

2021 Scott reflects:

I can’t even being to describe what a big soap box I could get on about “evaluation” and the role it plays in communication. 

One of my counseling professors drove me crazy. Any time I would bring up a scenario where I would ask, “What do you think is going on with this person?” He would completely ignore it- and, instead, begin a conversation about what might a person who is doing that thing I’ve described need.

In other words, the lesson I got out of this was something like: You’re not going to figure people out, people often can’t figure themselves out, but we can often see what people want or need from the world by how they act in the world. For me, that removes the judgment from the situation. I don’t focus on evaluating what the other person is doing- I focus on what their actions might indicate about their needs. 

I believe this is helpful in life in general. I don’t think we’re good at evaluating, though people are often very sure that they know why everyone does everything they’re doing. 

Let’s try to move away from that. We don’t need to understand people- we probably never will. But, instead, ask: are they leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that helps us see what they need from us? 

An Unnecessary Display of Force

For a month’s worth of posts, I (Scott) am critiquing my own past blog posts. I’m viewing this as an experiment in being willing to admit when I’m wrong, change my mind, and to do so publicly.

When we feel most out of control we are, at the same time, most likely to exert control in some other area through an unnecessary display of force.  

When we throw a tantrum over something unrelated to the core issue we rarely use the appropriate amount of force.  Houses should be cleaned periodically in order to maintain a healthy level of mental and emotional balance (the level of cleanliness needed is negotiated between the people who live in the house).  But, we don't address a lack of cleanliness with a tantrum or outburst when our core issue is cleanliness.  We simply have a respectful, adult conversation about cleanliness.  When the core issue is something else (such as grief), we unleash an ungodly amount of frustration over cleanliness simply because our body needs to unleash SOMETHING.  It'll take anything at all.  

This is what I mean by, "...an unnecessary display of force." 

Self-critique session:

I think, again, I was overcomplicating things (and still sounding like a jerk). I believe the essence of this post is: We should build some “mindfulness” time into our lives that forces us to assess what is really going on. When we do this, we can not only choose when to have crucial conversations but we can appropriately match the level of intensity to the type of conversation we’re having. If all we’re upset about is cleaning, then that should be a low intensity conversation even if we’re quite frustrated. The reason being, it’s just not a life or death issue.

If, however, we need to talk about something quite serious, we treat it seriously. We plan a time to sit down where both parties can be prepared and free of distractions. We increase the intensity- but we don’t yell to increase the intensity, we focus.

Picking the right moment to have a hard talk, and striving for the right “tone” goes a long way.