Recently I spoke to a group about “Gentle Self Management Strategies.” I began by asserting that we are each located in our own individual envelope of skin. Since this envelope of skin is our own, therefore, we own it at least temporarily for the duration of our life. The question is, what kind of ownership are we creating and experiencing?
Although we each have our own individual set of fingerprints and perspective that makes each of us unique, we are all essentially in the same business running our own lives. Thus, we are also all the same. We have varied sizes and genetics as well as unique life histories, yet we all share being born helpless and dependent, the same starting point. We also share the same ending, the death of our physical bodies. My focus in this booklet is the interval between birth and death. What is our managerial style? How do we use our ownership? What kind of a “trip” are we experiencing? How do we talk (think) to our selves?
For me, the issue of how we talk (think) to our selves has two main variables. One is the tone of how we talk (think) and the other is our choice of language. Insofar as tonality, I see the dimension as ranging from critical and judgmental to gentle and accepting with neutral in the center. The internal tone that we use is very important in determining how we feel. As an example, I can point to how my dog responds to my voice tone. When l say, “bad girl” in a harsh tone, she drops her ears and crawls under the couch. In contrast, when I say, “good girl” in a gentle tone, she wags her tail and lifts her ears as if she is wanting to hear more. I doubt that she has a linguistic concept of good or bad, but she certainly responds to my voice tone. I assume that the tones I use in talking (thinking) to my self would have a similar effect on my feeling state.
The other important aspect of how we talk (think) to our selves is our choice of language. Although everything we say is said with some tonality (harsh-neutral-gentle), what words or sentences we use is also important. In contrast to my dog, who probably reacts primarily to the tone rather than the words, we are much more aware of the meaning of words.
For example, when we say something like, “I can’t…,” we are likely to make this come true, no matter what the tonality. If, outside of awareness, we choose to use “I should…” we are likely to experience a sense of no choice. It would be more favorable if we change our “I should…” to “I could…” I will focus more on the importance of how we talk (think) to our selves later, but first I want to establish a context.
Although we have many facets or aspects of our selves, each of us adds up to only one person. In other words, we might act one way with a child, another way with a spouse, and a third way with somebody from the clergy. However, all the facets add up to one person. I am going to assume that is also true for you, the reader.
Since we are all alone (within our own envelope of skin), whatever we do, think, or feel is the result of what we decide. If you are in there by your self, then you must be managing your self whether you are aware of this or not. My favorite statement about this situation is, “Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have been left in charge of me.” Our being in control stems from the fact that we are each alone in our own envelope of skin. We have the same situation as when we get a ticket for speeding and we are alone in the car. We can tell the officer that we didn’t mean to speed or that we weren’t aware; however, it doesn’t matter. We get the ticket anyway because it was our foot on the gas and our hands on the wheel. Similarly, we may not be aware of our ownership or sovereignty; nevertheless, we are managing (steering) our selves.
Many readers will protest (their choice) that they are not managing themselves, which is a curious way to manage themselves. How is it that so many of us operate our selves from the position that we are a “victim of circumstances?” That is an intriguing question. One of the purposes of this booklet is to put before you, the reader, a way of thinking (talking to your self) about this issue so that you may use/spend more of your time feeling good now rather than holding your breath and waiting for external circumstances to change.
I want to point out that not only are we in the same business (managing our own selves between birth and death), but that we are also interested in feeling as good as we can as much of the time as we can. In spite of being in the same business and having the same goal, the strategies of how to run our personal business and methods of achieving happiness vary widely and give rise to all sorts of uniqueness.
In order to provide a contextual setting, I want to direct your attention to our cultural heritage. I would like to remind you that our founding fathers and mothers were puritans. As you recall, the puritans were not exactly a fun-loving bunch, noted for their gaiety and laughter. Just the opposite, they were noted for their piety and seriousness. Although they were interested in feeling good and experiencing happiness eventually, their timing was off. It seems that they were against enjoyment now and postponed the promised pay-off into the distant future, also known as heaven.
I think we still follow that heritage. We are generally interested in feeling better; however, it seems that there is always some obstacle that prevents our feeling good right now. Or, this is not the “right” time. We arc even likely to make our games serious. One of my favorite cartoons shows the little league coach yelling at his tiny baseball player s, “Okay. Knock it off. You didn’t come out here to have fun; you came out here to play baseball. Now get serious!” As youngsters, we were frequently admonished to “wipe that smile off your face” or “this isn’t funny, Mister” or “you’d better get serious and grow up.” No wonder we are still internally biased against laughter and whimsy. No wonder most of us become “groan” ups.
So take a look at what stands between you and feeling good. You will find the answer in the statement that begins with, “As soon as…” The most frequent obstacles or barriers that we see as preventing us from feeling good now are items such as money, relationships, kids, jobs, bosses, geography, weight, etc. What is amazing is that we always seem to have a reason so that we can’t feel good now. We will “as soon as….”
Since money was the first reason mentioned in the group I was speaking to, I focused on that topic first. I asked one of the audience members how much it would take and he responded, “I don’t know.” When I repeated my request, he finally came up with a figure of $500,000, adding, “after taxes.” I asked if that were enough if he had that amount annually, he quickly agreed that it would be enough. I then asked him to imagine that five years from now he would be guaranteed to win the Illinois lottery for $10,000,000. Next, I asked him how he would spend his next 5 years. Most people would spend their time holding their breath, waiting for the five years to be up. I then indicated that they would not have much practice feeling good, in addition to not having a good time during the five years. If they were not practiced at having a good time, they might be inept. Although this may sound ridiculous, my invitation is to have a great five years because not only is that a positive “gift” to self during the five years, but also great practice for feeling good once the money begins rolling in.
I also asked if anybody knew someone who had that kind of money and one of the audience members raised her hand and said that her boss was worth many times that amount, but that he was not happy. What it amounts to is that lack of money is one of the most common alibis for not feeling good now. I am not saying that money is unimportant, I am simply saying that since we are sovereign, we might just as well feel good before we have “enough money” instead of waiting, since most of us will never have “enough.”
Now let’s look at relationships, including marriage. A large segment of the population is unhappy because they are not in a relationship. As soon as they find the “right” person, they are going to feel better. ·What is very interesting is that another large segment of the population is unhappy because they are in a relationship (with a former “right” person) and as soon as they get out or it, they will feel better. When we look at it that way, we can create and experience some amusement. However, most of us are so serious that we do not see that possibility. We also are unlikely to see the possibility that we can use our sovereignty to feel good now, instead of waiting.
For example, if we are interested in establishing a relationship, it would be to our advantage to create and experience a good time in advance. Not only will that be of benefit to our selves immediately, but being positive and buoyant is most likely to facilitate a beginning relationship since most people enjoy being with an “up” person more than a “down” person.
If you happen to be in a relationship (including marriage) that you want to get out of, then have a good time now. You may have already decided to get out (maybe you have given yourself six months or a year before making the move), so the relationship is already a mess and you will not lose anything by using this time as an important growth period learning to feel good under difficult circumstances. Not only will this strategy benefit you immediately, but you likely will be less bitter and thus better prepared to enter the next relationship with a positive rather than a wounded attitude. I am pointing to an idea that is so obvious that most people fail to see it. Further, not only do they fail to see it, but it is also so unusual that many people will dismiss it as unrealistic when it is pointed out.
Another frequent reason for not feeling good now is that we are not at the “right” weight. A cartoon that makes that point well depicts two women talking. The first says, “I’ll be happy as soon as I lose these 15 extra pounds that I’ve been carrying around all these years.” The other woman says, “Let’s face it, you’re never going to be happy.”
One of the comments made by several members of my audience was that external conditions were very important. I agree that external conditions are important. However, accepting that external conditions are important does not diminish our internal sovereignty. What does that mean? I think that it is not only what happens to people, but what people do internally with what happens to them. What is crucial is how the individual perceives (thinks) and talks (thinks) to self about what happened.
As an example, I shared the following situation with the group. One of my clients came home from his first semester at college on probation. He told his father that college was very difficult, adding, “I don’t know if I can make it.” His father replied, “I didn’t think you were college material, why don’t you drop out now and save us a lot of money?” I can’t think of a much more unsupportive attitude, which had been characteristic of the father since my client was a youngster. If he had reacted (talked to himself) according to the usual script, my client would have felt terrible and dropped out. Instead, he told me that those were the most important words that his father could have said since he was determined to prove his father wrong. The net result was that my client went back to college and eventually made the dean’s list before he graduated. If he had wanted to be “normal” and drop out, he certainly would have had the perfect alibi. It is clear that he talked to himself (thought) in terms of proving his father wrong rather than talking to himself (thinking) that his father was right.
Here is another example that occurs to me. In an interview with Barbara Walters, Oprah Winfrey revealed that she had been raped when she was a young girl. This occurrence should have been sufficient license (alibi) for Oprah to have a poor self-image and end up without a job. Instead, she did not choose to let external circumstances or negative experiences stand in the way of her achieving one of the top spots in television. She must have perceived and talked to herself (thought) differently than what we would expect had she had a “victim” dialogue within.
If we look inside or listen to others, we are likely to hear what I call a license to fail, feel bad, or be non-productive. My license or alibi throughout the early part of my life was that my mother never told me that she loved me. I kept thinking (talking to my self), no wonder I had low self-esteem. As long as I focused on my license from the past, I did not change my mind about my self-image. In other words, I kept talking to my self (thinking) with limiting language in a critical tone. As long as I did, I functioned less effectively and did not feel good about my self. When I began to “lighten up” my tone and talk (think) to my self about possibilities, I began to function more effectively and feel better.
As a consultant to people with problems, I hear a variety of alibis or reasons to be miserable. Many people lament coming from a broken home and make that the reason they are “screwed up.” It’s as if they hang a toilet seat around their neck and keep fingering it as their excuse for feeling bad and/or being ineffective. Other licenses that are in vogue are: “I was abused.” “My mother was a drunk.” “My father killed himself.” “My brother molested me.” “My parents fought all the time.” “My parents liked my sister better.” etc. I am not saying those events or circumstances are inconsequential or trivial. I wish they hadn’t happened. I wish you and I had had a better childhood. However, we did not. So let’s get on with now. Let’s consider putting away our licenses, alibis, and toilet seats and treat our selves well now! Why persist in what cannot be changed? Why not look at what we can change now our own minds in the present?
If we have a mind set (self-talk) that we cannot be happy until X happens, then we can also have a mindset that we can feel good even before X happens. I say this because we are in charge of our minds whether we are aware of that fact or not. There is nobody in here but me and nobody in there except you. Thus, you have your foot on the gas and your hands on the steering wheel of your vehicle your body and your being. Once again, you may create skepticism, but if you are not running your thoughts, feelings, and actions, my question is: Who is? I am afraid we are each stuck with our individual freedom whether we like it or not. We have no choice but to live “in choice” for our selves, since nobody else can do our breathing, thinking, digesting, feeling, or behaving, except our selves.
As you read what J have written, you are likely creating skepticism, agreement, or bewilderment. Which of these reactions will depend on your interpretation (self-talk) of what I have written, even though what I have written will remain constant no matter who reads it. As soon as I write about interpretation, this automatically brings up the notion of interpreter. Allow me to elaborate on this further.
Our interpreter is the part of us that tells us what is going on in our selves and in the world. I want to begin by asking you to imagine that you and I are going to have a conversation about a particular topic. However, I want you to imagine that I can only speak Japanese and that you can only speak English. Considering this, it is obvious that we are not going to exchange much content or information, no matter what the topic. Since we need an interpreter, imagine that we call Berlitz Rent-An-Interpreter and request an English-Japanese speaking person. We would not be interested in an interpreter who only spoke Italian and Russian.
Upon the arrival of the interpreter, we can begin to discuss a topic, say beekeeping. I say something about bees in Japanese; the interpreter does a translation (his best match) in his head, and then says something in English to you. I want to make two points very clearly. First, I do not know what he said in English and you do not know what I said in Japanese. Second, the translation process can never be perfect. There may be a fairly close match or there may be a considerable mismatch. However, because of the first point, there is no way for us to gauge the degree of matching for either one of us. We are left with the assumption that there is a reasonable match, which may or may not be the case. Similarly, when you respond in English and he translates that into Japanese for me, I do not know what you said in English and you do not know what the interpreter said to me in Japanese. Again, there is no way of checking the “accuracy” of his interpretation.
To further illustrate my point, I would like you to imagine that the interpreter learned his English from some American sailors. Thus, when he reports what I say, he is likely to add a considerable number of four letter words, even though I may have spoken expletive-free Japanese. You may assume that I am the one who is swearing even when I am not. In reverse, if the interpreter learned his English in a monastery, I could be swearing in Japanese but there will be no curse words in the English that you hear. If there are any analogies needed to help clarify a point, you may hear Biblical analogies even if I know nothing about the Bible. However, you may think or assume that I am a very proper Japanese gentleman with considerable knowledge of the Bible even though I might be rather coarse or vulgar in my speech.
If the interpreter knows very little about beekeeping, much of what we say may “get lost” in the translation, without our knowledge. Therefore, each of us may assume that the other one is not very well versed in beekeeping even though each of us may be an expert. On the other hand, if the interpreter is very knowledgeable on the subject, the information may “get amplified” so that we are likely to assume that the other one is very learned on the topic even if we are only average in our knowledge.
As you can see from this example, the interpreter occupies a pivotal role in our communication process. Also, that the degree of matching can never be checked even if the background is known. Thus, you can see what a crucial part the interpreter plays. You might say that we could check the validity of the interpretation by asking for other interpretations. However, it is immediately clear that what we will get is simply other interpretations. Perhaps with a large number of like interpretations we can get a consensus that can be translated as “Reality By Agreement” (one of my favorite book titles).
In the case where we both speak English, we do not need an interpreter from Berlitz. However, each of us already comes equipped with our own interpreter although our interpreter is invisible, even to our selves. You have an interpreter inside of you that tells you what I am writing. I have no way of knowing what your interpreter is saying to you 1 only know what I am saying to my self as I write this (make up what I am writing). The “match” may be close or very far apart.
Who is the ‘interpreter’? It is the voice that we hear constantly all day long as we talk to our selves. We have been hearing this voice so routinely as long as we can remember that we are no longer aware of it. This situation reminds me of how we lose track of the music in Muzak after we have been exposed for a period of time. We may suddenly become aware of a particular song and realize that we have been hearing music all the time, yet only became aware a moment ago. Similarly, if I ask you to close your eyes, be still, and listen to your voice, you may hear yourself say, “What voice?” Other possibilities include: “This is silly.” “I don’t talk to myself.” “What time is it?” “How long should I listen for my voice?” As you can imagine, the possibilities are endless. You may initially think that you are not talking to yourself, you are just thinking. Call it what you will, it is all the same and you are in charge of that voice (it is your voice), whether you are aware or not.
Of course, you cannot recall what you experienced when you were two weeks old. The world around you was constantly changing just as it is now. However, you did not know the meaning of anything then because your interpreter was not in place yet. In computer terms, you had not been “booted up” yet. Those of you that have been around an infant know that you can discuss anything you want. The baby has no awareness of what is being discussed, be it love, murder, rape, sacrifice, robbery, or adoption. As you grew, you began forming your interpreter from the language and activity around you. By the time you were five or six years old, you had learned about 50 % of what you were going to learn in your life. You had learned many words although the word “vocabulary” was probably not one of them. You had learned a great deal about language, yet you probably did not know the meaning of the word, language.
Each person, because of their unique genetics and their unique experiences, fashions a unique interpreter. This construction was not accomplished in awareness of choice. It is similar to the way we learned to walk – basically, a trial and error process. We were not self-conscious or self-critical during this process. Incidentally, if we were to learn to walk with our adult self-consciousness and wanting to walk perfectly from the first step, we might never learn to walk.
We fashioned our interpreter in the same unaware manner from the language and incidents at hand. We mimicked our parents and siblings without any self consciousness. We “taped” our parental do’s and don’ts in our unique way. Older and younger siblings had their own version even though ostensibly they had the same parents. Shortly after learning to walk, we might touch something hot because our interpreter did not tell us not to. A year later, as a result of our experience with a stove and our parent’s remonstration, we might approach the stove, hear that internal voice (think), shake our head no, and back away even though the parent is not in the room. The interpreter spoke and we listened, automatically and unaware.
As we grow up, we absorb our particular version of “reality.” We learn many rules like: after your work is done, then you can play. As I mentioned earlier, we hear over and over again the importance of getting serious and growing up. Just as we establish patterns of dressing ourselves in the first few years, i.e., right leg in the slacks first, left thumb on top when we fold our hands, and a particular sequence in brushing our teeth, so we also learn thought patterns or mental sequences. Thus, if we have learned that we cannot play until our work is done, what happens when we are adults and our work is never done? If we still have the same thought pattern (self-talk) when we grow up, we will seldom be very playful. That seems to be one way to become a “groan up.”
We are likely to learn conflicting folk sayings. For example, “Haste makes waste” and “A stitch in time, saves nine.” One says do it right away and the other says don’t be in a hurry. With these two sayings in mind, we can be wrong no matter what we do, i.e., beginning a task early or late. If we are talking to our selves about constantly being wrong, that seems to fit the puritanical context that we live in where we are not supposed to feel good about our selves right now. Which one should we believe?
What if we did what we did and then applied the saying that was positive? We could be right (and feel good) no matter what we did. I know that is an atypical way of thinking (talking to our selves), but who can stop us from making it up that way?
What I am suggesting is that our interpreter tells us what is going on out in the world or what somebody means when they say something. The interpretive action (perception) is always inside, i.e., within our domain and thus within our sovereignty. We hear our interpreter make up what is going on and then we experience our interpreter’s story not the outside event.
Because our interpreter is invisible and generally functioning outside of awareness like the Muzak, we have a widespread cultural tradition that we are not involved in creating our experience, that we are simply “reacting” to our environment. This latter concept makes us the “victims” of our environment, even though we know better when we say, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” I also want to refer you back to the client whose father told him to drop out of college and to Oprah Winfrey’s story. These are two excellent examples of how the “normal” interpretation of events was not followed.
Perhaps another example will help clarify what I am talking about. A young married man worked as a coordinator in an organization where he had a great deal of interaction with a variety of people, most of whom were college graduates. Since he had not gone directly to college after high school and had only gone part-time when he began pursuing his degree, he seemed very sensitive regarding questions about his academic progress. He mentioned to me, “I feel so much pressure when people constantly ask me how I’m doing, how much I have left, how far along I am, or when I expect to graduate.” I asked, “How would you feel if you heard those questions as indications of interest rather than pressure?” He paused for a moment (while he was processing this new “look” or label), smiled, and said, “I’d feel much better. I think I’ll hear all those questions as interest from now on.”
As you can see, the way we label (interpret, perceive, think, or talk to our selves about) a stimulus in the environment, in this case a question, is a key variable in determining our experience. You can also see that we can change our experience simply by relabeling the stimulus because our perception belongs to us, we own our own perceptions. Relabeling is an example of talking to our selves (thinking) differently, also known as changing our minds. We do not have to wait for the environment to change (the questions to stop), which is our typical victim orientation. Unfortunately, our computer ( mind) works almost instantaneously and typically outside of awareness, which is why we can feel like our experience is what is “happening to us” without any involvement on our part.
When thinking about the computer as an analogy for the mind, there are two stages that I go through as I use my computer for “making up” this booklet on self-talk (think). First, I put in a “boot” disc known as the disc operating system (DOS). lt has the function of setting up the computer to accept and utilize a word processing program. Next, I take out the “boot” disc and put in the word processing program. The way the word processing program functions is based on the information from the “boot” disc.
As infants develop into children, the change over from “booting up” to “processing” is not as clearly defined as in computers. The initial stage (the first 1-5 years) can be seen primarily as the “booting up” process as I mentioned earlier, sort of getting the mind ready to think about more complicated ideas. Over the next few years, there is a blending, less “booting up” and more “word processing.” I picture the adult primarily as in the “processing” function with very little modification in the disc operating system; although still very dependent on the way we were “booted up.”
This perspective may help explain why we have such a consistent victim orientation, especially in regard to our feelings. Just as the Japanese-English interpreter’s background was important, so is our early experience during the “booting up” phase. Let me refer you back to our early experience when we were initially forming our interpreter from the position of being relatively small and helpless. We were not only told that we were “too young, too weak, too short” etc., we also experienced living at kneecap level where our parents could easily pick us up on their schedule, not ours. Also, we could not pick them up, no matter how hard we tried. The contrast was very obvious. We could not get the lid off the peanut butter jar nor could we reach the cookies while the “giants” called parents performed these tasks with ease. We were not old enough to stay up past 8 o’clock. We could not tie our own shoelaces while our parents performed this task speedily for us several times a day.
During this formative time, do you think it is possible that we formed a mental pattern in our interpretive framework that we were inadequate or “not enough?” Do you suppose that because of this practically universal experience that we now have a virtual epidemic of low self-esteem or poor self image? Is it possible that during our “booting up” phase we learned that we were environmentally operated? This perception (thought) was accurate then, when we were being picked up and moved around, but may not be useful now that we are moving our selves around. If parents read this and reflect on how they did the best they knew how, they can talk to themselves (think) more positively and feel much less guilty about their offspring’s low self-esteem.
I think wide spread low self-esteem is not only possible but also very likely the norm. If we have not updated our interpreter (modified our “boot” disc), we are likely to view (and talk to) our selves as “not enough” and further, that we have not improved enough or accomplished enough to really enjoy our selves. In other words, right now is not a good time to feel good, we have to wait until the world is the way we want it to be before we can relax and be whimsical as we go about our daily activities. If we are not waiting for the world to “get right,” we are likely to postpone feeling good until we “improve.” Since the “improvement” is not clearly defined, we are probably not going to know when we have achieved our goal. One of my clients described this situation as the “receding goal posts of life.”
Going back to the talk I was giving, in order to give the audience a little taste of their patterns in this regard, I asked them to say the following sentence to themselves: “I feel warm and loving toward my self.” I followed this with another sentence, “I am a unique and precious being.” I asked each of them to say this internally and then asked for their reactions. You, the reader, may want to repeat the two sentences internally before proceeding further.
In any event, the reactions varied as one might expect. One person said, “It sounds too corny.” Several people nodded their heads in agreement at this comment. I suggested that what he meant might better be described as “unfamiliar.” Another person said that they would like to believe the statements, but they did not seem to fit. Again, several people nodded. At this point, I asked how they would feel if I asked them to say, “I was stupid to do that” or “What’s wrong with me?” One person laughed and said, “Now that was familiar.” There was considerable agreement about this reaction.
It seems that we have been trained (programmed) to be harsh and self-critical rather than accepting, gentle, and loving within. Our interpreter frequently tells us that we are not “doing good enough.” As I have mentioned in another of my booklets, one of my clients said, “I am my own worst enemy.” Isn’t that a sad state of affairs to have an internal critic with the enemy located within? No wonder we do not feel good very much of the time. No wonder so many of us attempt to medicate ourselves with pills, dope, food, or booze to reduce the pain of not being okay with the one person we are always with – our selves.
For a moment, think back to the imaginary situation where we required an interpreter because I spoke Japanese and you spoke English. Recall how the interpreter’s background with sailors, monks, or bees, played an important part in how he talked. Similarly, each of us learned our English in our own unique setting with our own unique genetics and life experiences. However, we have little or no awareness of the particular biases we have developed.
For example, I did not know that knives and forks were optional utensils for eating until I was 20 years old and went to a Chinese restaurant and saw somebody eating with chopsticks. I was open mouthed at the person’s dexterity and only then did I expand my awareness of the range of eating implements. Before that time, I “knew” that knives and forks were the “only” implements for getting food to the mouth, only I did not know that I “knew.” All of a sudden, I no longer saw them as exclusive. I did not know what I had learned (outside of awareness) until I became aware of the alternative.
In our puritanically oriented culture, we not only have the physical evidence of our early incompetence, but we also get corrected and admonished a great deal. If we are brought up in some religious circumstances, we might hear that we were born in original sin and that we were made out of dust. How is that for a great beginning? We start out “bad” and then it is downhill from there.
Even if we are not exposed to some of the more fiery religious views, we are frequently told that we are in charge of our parent’s feelings and that we are doing a lousy job. I base this on the often familiar statements that parents tend to make. “You make me so mad I could scream.” “You make me sick with worry when you don’t call.” “You are driving me up the wall with your whining.” “You hurt my feelings when you don’t appreciate how much I’m doing for you.” These are some samples; you may add your favorites. What a perfect basis for “booting up” low self-esteem. Also, be aware of the probability that those statements were made loudly and harshly. Recall how my dog reacted to that tonality.
Just imagine how a five year old responds internally. Five years earlier, he wouldn’t even know the meaning of any of those sentences. Now, he has been around long enough (in a very dependent state) where he not only is likely to have the usual interpretation (I must be very bad if I am making my parents feel bad), but also is now being programmed regarding one’s impotence with feelings since the parents are the role models and do not “seem to be” responsible for their own feelings. Their modeling is that of a “victim” of their child’s behavior. Add to this the fact that the parents’ love is vital to the child and, for the most part, the child is trying very hard to win approval. In spite of this effort, he still will frequently get feedback that he is doing a poor job and that he needs constant corrections and admonishments.
Does it begin to make sense that we might have a not OK view of our selves? Can you understand how the interpreter is likely to pick up a negative bias against self during this time? Just as the Japanese interpreter learned his English from sailors or monks with no awareness that he was learning curse words or Biblical analogies, we are also likely to be programmed with a negative view of our selves and a negative way of talking (thinking) to our selves. We think it is the only possible view, just as I thought knives and forks were the only way of eating until we see something different.
Unfortunately, when we are exposed to the possibility of viewing our selves positively, we inadvertently have acquired a bias against loving our selves. In other words, our “boot disc” does not allow for positive “programming.” We are told about the extreme case, narcissism or egotism, which is held up as worse than being no good. We may even try to reassure our selves with, “I may not feel very good about myself, but at least I don’t think I’m better than anyone else.”
We are coached to write our letters avoiding “I” and told not to talk about our selves or we will be blowing our own horns. In our effort to avoid the sin of being what is called egotistical, we lean over backwards to the point where we miss loving our selves in a gentle and quiet manner. If we appear relaxed and content in the midst of this ever changing world, we are accused of being indifferent or uncaring. In other words, caring for ourselves is seen as uncaring so we are supposed to do upset until the world straightens out. I guess this is just another case of “as soon as….”
We learned these cultural values and traditions just as we did language, by exposure, trial and error, and association during our “booting up” period. We learned thinking (talking to self) before we knew the word thinking. I don’t think the “culture” is trying to mold us, we just take in much of what we are exposed to and make it a part of our interpretive framework. We are frequently unaware of other possibilities. We are used to hearing people from other areas speak with an accent and assume that we do not have any. If we came from and lived in a totally homogeneous linguistic community, we would not know about accents (nor chopsticks). I recall an Australian speaker saying, “I know you Yanks will occasionally have a bit of a problem understanding me, but you must remember that you are listening with an accent.” What a switch! Is the “accent” located in the speaker or listener? Perhaps both, depending on your point of view.
If we are not aware that we have an interpreter that tells us what is going on out there and what so and so said, we are likely to assume that anybody who sees or hears something different, is not only wrong but needs to be educated. Another word for this kind of education is correcting the other person and explaining what really happened or what was really said or what was really meant. The person who hears this educational effort frequently has an interpreter that is somewhat allergic to being corrected and attempts to correct the corrector. We can call the ensuing interaction an argument.
We are likely to reserve this corrective process for particular people (and perhaps especially, our selves). For example, we are much more likely to enter into this activity (arguing) with a family member than we are with people that we do not know well. Even though we do not usually correct our friends, we have little hesitation when it comes to our spouse (or our children). I think you may have a glimmer of one of the reasons that marriages frequently become unenjoyable.
Perhaps an example of how our interpretations (the way we talk to our selves) determine our experience, reactions, and behavior may be in order here. Imagine that you are observing my wife, Mary, and me in the following interaction. We are seated in the same room reading the newspaper when she looks over at me and says, “Marlowe, I notice that your belt is out another notch.” When I ask my client or you, the reader, what she has done, many people will say that she has just nagged me about my weight. I point out that this is an interpretation, that all Mary has done is push some air past her vocal cords. She happens to be speaking in English patterns, the same patterns that I am tuned into. If she were speaking Japanese, I would not know what she said.
When the waves in the air molecules reach my ears, the rest of the process is all mine. My interpreter will perceive (instantaneously decide), admittedly outside of my awareness, what she said. My interpreter will quickly translate the meaning of her words and I will assume that what I hear from my interpreter has a one to one relationship with what she said (and meant). Remember, there is no check on the accuracy of the interpretation.
If I am “normal” and have been married over 30 years, I am statistically most likely to hear her comment in a negative light. As soon as I do, I will experience her as my “adversary” and I will likely add a little extra acid in my stomach. I haven’t said anything back to her; I am simply sharing the results of my internal translation with you, as well as the internal consequences (acid) that I have created for my self.
The question is, do I have a choice, are there other possible interpretations? Of course there are. One possibility is that I could hear her comment from a positive framework. I know this would be atypical or “abnormal,” but nobody could stop me. For example, I could react internally with the idea that Mary is really observant about what is going on with me, thus, she must really care about me. Again, I have not reacted externally, I am simply feeling good inside. The latter interpretation (friend rather than adversary) would be a definite advantage to me and could also result in a positive input into the relationship.
For example, if I make the second interpretation and I were on my way to get another cup of coffee, Mary might ask me to get her a cup also and I would be likely to respond, “Sure, would you like anything to go with it?” On the other hand, given the same situation regarding the request for coffee and my having taken the “adversarial” interpretation, I might respond, “Get your own damned coffee!” You can see that what I talk (think) to my self about (inside me) is what I experience and “put into” the relationship. Further, I am likely to be “right” eventually because the situation is similar to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I treat her as friend, the relationship is likely to be positive since I am 50% of the relationship. If I treat her as an adversary, the relationship is likely to deteriorate.
Of course, many people will be interested in what Mary “really” meant. I will take the position that what she means is not of primary importance because I will make (and experience) my own interpretation, no matter what she “really” meant. Further, I will probably be unaware that there is no check on the accuracy of my translation.
Because of your “invisible” cultural tradition, you may be surprised when I wrote that what she meant is not of primary importance. Allow me to expand on this. Remember that I asked you to imagine being an observer of this interaction between Mary and me. Additionally, I would like you to imagine that you have an instrument that is something like an EEG machine that you can use to determine Mary’s true feelings. In the first instance that I want you to imagine, you hear Mary make the comment about my belt being out another notch and then you hear me say, “Dammit, Mary, I wish you would stop bugging me about my weight!” You hear her say, “Marlowe, I was only teasing you, I felt especially close to you.” You hear me come back with, “You sure picked a good topic to tease me with, you know how sensitive I am about my weight.” Internally, my self-talk (interpretation) is, “Now I’ve got her on two counts, not only did she insult me, but now she is trying to lie her way out of it.”
At this point, you put the truth machine on Mary and it turns out that she is telling the truth, she really did feel close to me and was only teasing me in a friendly way. What she is doing in her envelope of skin is not in my awareness. What I am aware of is what I am “making up” inside of me. In my picture (interpretation) of Mary, she is “on my case” and that is all there is to it. The more she protests, the more certain I am of what I have made up. Remember, there is no check on the accuracy of the translation. I may think that I am reacting to Mary’s statement, but I am only reacting to my interpretation of her statement (i.e., what I think she meant).
Take the other possibility. Mary has made her comment and I am sitting there with a smile on my face. You put the machine on her and it reads “hostile and sarcastic.” You look over at me and whisper, “Marlowe, she’s being sarcastic, how can you sit there with a smile on your face?” My response could be, “I appreciate your input, but I am more interested in feeling good than I am in being right.” Again, what Mary is making up is important to her, but what I am making up (translating) is important to how I feel, and I am responsible for how I feel, not Mary.
If I keep on “making up” good things about Mary, I will be the primary beneficiary because I will feel better inside. In addition, Mary will also benefit since I am less likely to engage in “correcting” her. I will treat her as a friend rather than an enemy. I know this example is a bit lengthy, but I think it is an important issue and I did not want to leave out any possibilities.
Perhaps a shorter version is the situation where the girl friend grabs the “roll” around her boyfriend’s waist and says, “What nice love handles to hold onto.” He grins, thinking she is so cute and adorable. After they have been married for a few years, she does and says exactly the same thing and he says, “Bitch, would you stop bugging me about my weight!”
Same behavior, different “story” (interpretation) about the behavior. You can see how the interpretation changes with the tradition of seriousness in marriage, any kind of jesting is out of place and seen as correcting or attacking.
Another group where correcting is very popular is with children. We will frequently talk to them in a very patronizing manner as if we had a corner on the wisdom of the ages while they had a corner on ignorance. Not too long ago, I was seeing a family: mother, father, and teen-age daughter. At one point when things heated up, the father made an official pronouncement, “Listen, young lady, I’m still your father.” That statement was probably not a revelation to the 15 year-old daughter, but it serves to demonstrate that the father “treats” his daughter as if she were stupid. What else could she be if she had not figured out who was her father by the age of 15?
A classic cartoon depicts a middle-aged woman seated at the kitchen table with a telephone held to her ear. She is saying, “I don’t care if it is your life, I’m your mother.” Again, great news. We parents are likely to talk to our kids the way we were talked to by our parents, who likely had the assumption that parents know best. What we forget is that our son or daughter is the world’s expert on what it is like to be him or her, something we can never know except by speculation (and what we “know” is still speculation).
What I have tried to point out is that our interpretation is our product, not the product of what is going on out there, even though the outside activity may be the stimulus that invites our interpretation. And as such, our interpretation may not be a perfect match with what is going on out there. Furthermore, there is no way of checking how much difference or error there may be in the matching or translation process.
Incidentally, when I used the word “stimulus” in the preceding paragraph, I want you to be clear how we are different from a telephone answering device. The device is a stimulus-response mechanism. When the phone rings, the device has no choice, it will answer. Ten years from now, the machine will respond to the ringing with the same message. We, however, are “stuck with” choice, we may or may not answer the phone, the choice is ours, not the stimulus of the phone ringing. The fact that the phone rings and we pick it up does not mean that the ring made us pick it up, the ring was simply information that we weighed and decided to respond to by picking it up. We are a stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) system, where the organism (us) will decide what to do about any information in (or invitation from) the environment. We can pick up the phone on any ring and answer it in any number of ways. Or, we can choose not to pick it up and feel either worried or glad that we did not answer.
Now, on to the last group that I want to discuss in regard to the correction process. I am referring to how each of us deals with our self. Because of our early programming, we are likely to direct our critical judgments internally against our selves. Additionally, we are so accustomed to this internal dialogue that we are not any more aware of it than Muzak most of the time. We frequently lacerate our selves for what we did not do and we should have, or for what we did do and should not have. There is no escape from this scathing searchlight. No wonder many of us will say, “I am my own worst enemy.” I recall Pogo saying, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Paraphrased more personally, “I have met the enemy and it is I.”
Is it any wonder that when I ask people to say “I feel warm and loving toward myself,” that they are likely to react with, “That sounds corny,” or “I wish I could believe it.” We recognize that positive statements are different and unfamiliar, somewhat similar to the mild shock when one sees someone else using chopsticks for the first time. Without going into a step by step method for “lightening up” on our selves (there are many programs for that), what I see as vital is the awareness that our “booting up” process is the basis for the unfamiliarity and why we do not implement many of the steps that we already know. What is important is the awareness that we can change our minds, that we can modify the way that we talk to (think about) our selves.
I hope I am expressing the importance of our self talk (thinking) in a way that highlights how central our self-talk is to our experience. Perhaps one last cartoon may be useful. The first frame shows a high school boy sitting on his bed saying to no one in particular (just himself), “Somehow it seems that I can never really find what I truly want to be happy.” In the second frame he says, “Before I met Lisa, I was so lonely.” In the third frame he ends with, “Now that I’m with Lisa, I feel so crowded.” If we were to “see” the sentence that he says to himself in the first frame as a “sort of legal sentence,” it would be easy to “see” that he was simply serving his initial “sentence” in the second and third frames. He is in a similar position to the convicted person, who has to serve the sentence of the court. His “sentence” in the first frame sets up his lifetime unhappiness, regardless of his dating situation. What if the boy were aware of his “sentencing” and knew that he could change his mind and commute his sentence? He might take better care of himself.
I do not know how you are talking to your self; you are the only one who knows that. In any event, I hope you are making up some value from reading this booklet. If you have been operating with a harsh self-management strategy (due to a critical and judgmental interpreter), I hope you will begin to lighten up in your administration of your self. Most of us are not aware that we have “sentenced our selves” to impossible standards (or have impossible expectations of the people around us) or that we have programs for postponing feeling good about our selves until everything settles down. Even if we are aware of the impossible standards, we don’t seem to know what to do about changing. If that is the case, no wonder we do not feel very good about our selves most of the time. If the only time we can feel good is when we have achieved the impossible (or all our work is done), then it is no wonder we do not spend much time in a warm and loving attitude toward our selves.
What is important to know is that our interpreters are educable, that we can commute our sentences. Just as we could teach our Japanese-English interpreter some Biblical analogies and get him to cut down on his swearing or vice versa, we can also focus on becoming conversant with a gentle and loving attitude towards our selves. Even if we have been excelling at self-criticism, we can begin “playing around” with a softer terminology and a more accepting tonality or attitude. I have discussed the concept of change at greater length in the section entitled “Change And Changing.”
Our lives consist of a series of moments called NOW. It is important to be aware that the past is gone and that although we are a product of our past, we are not a prisoner of the past. We can see our footprints when we turn and look backwards, footprints that we cannot change. However, we are not limited in the direction we take for our next step. We have 360 degrees of freedom. An analogy that I enjoyed when I heard it is, “Yesterday is a canceled check, tomorrow is a promissory note, and today is the only cash we have, so spend it well.” I encourage you to use your “cash” for positive self-talk (thinking). You will be the first and most immediate beneficiary. In addition, you will interact with those around you in greater harmony as well. You have the rest of your life to “play” with your “lines” in your self-talk.
SO, LIGHTEN UP!
(c) I990, I993, M. Erickson, Ph.D.
Thoughts Marlowe Thought 