Reading thru this chapter really opens up a lot on my thinking of how many people failed in their relationships. We often couldn’t see thru the upset and anger of why our other half is actually behaving this way without judging them. So we can immediately reconnect with who they really are.
Just an example, if your spouse is feeling pressure from work, and is venting his or her frustration, it doesn’t mean that your marriage is over, but it’s a sign to be more attentive and to put your focus on supporting this person you love. After all, you wouldn’t judge the stock market based solely on one day when the dow-joes average plunges twenty points. By the same token, you can’t judge a person’s character by one isolated incident. People are not their behaviors.
There are 5 elements that demonstrates how our master system of evaluation works.
First is the state we are in while we are making an evaluation. There are times in life when somebody can say one thing to you and it will make you cry, while other times the same comment makes you laugh. What’s the difference? When you are in a fearful state, very little sound can scare the shit out of you. One key to make superior evaluations is to ensure we are in a resourceful state of mind and emotion rather than in a survival mode.
Second is the questions we ask. What determines whether you ask someone out for a date? Your evaluations are deeply affected by the specific questions you ask yourself as you consider approaching this person. If you ask yourself a question like “wouldn’t it be great to get to know this person?” as compared to “what if they reject me?” “What if i get hurt?” then of course these will lead you through a set of evaluations that results in passing up the opportunity to connect with someone you are truly interested in.
Third will be our hierarchy of values. Each of us throughout our lives has learned to value certain emotions more than others. We all want to feel good. We want pleasure and avoid pain. But our life experience has taught each of us what equals pain and what equals pleasure. This can be found in our guidance system of our values. For example, one person may have learned to link pleasure to the idea of feeling secure, while someone else may have linked pain to the same idea because their family’s obsession with security caused them never to experience a sense of freedom. Some people want to succeed but they avoid rejection at all cost. Conflict value like this can cause someone to feel frustrated or immobilized.
Fourth is Beliefs, Some people have the belief that if you love me, you will never raise your voice at me. This rule will cause this person to evaluate a raised voice as evidence that there is no love in the relationship. This rule may have no basis in fact, but the rule will dominate the evaluation and therefore that person’s perceptions and experience of what’s true. Other such global belief can be “if you are successful, then you make millions of dollars” or “if you are a good parent, then you never have a conflict with your children”
Fifth is reference experiences that is in our brain. Is it bad compared to the worst situation you have ever heard of? You have unlimited references you can use in making any decision. References shapes our beliefs and value. If you grew up in an environment where you felt you were consistently being taken advantage of as opposed to growing up feeling unconditionally loved how might this color your beliefs and values the way you looked at life or people or opportunity. I have seen people with broken home growing up believing that love doesn’t exist and they doubt every relationship that they have. Worried that their partner will cheat them.
“Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.” – George Bernard Shaw
We must remember that, I am the source of all my emotions. Nothing and no one can change how i feel except me. If i find myself in reaction to anything. I can change it in a moment.”
“Take away the cause, and the effect ceases.” – Miguel De Cervantes”
There is a story of a man, who walk pass a river and he heard a woman calling for help, drowning in a dangerous river. He leaps in, and pull the drowning lady to safety. As he is still catching his breath, he hears another 2 person drowning in the river, back he when into the river to save the other 2. Before he get a chance to think, he hears four more people calling for help! Pretty soon the man is exhausted, having rescued victim after victim, and yet the screams continue. If only he had taken the time to travel a short distance up river, he could have discovered who was throwing all those people in the water in the first place! He could have save all his effort by addressing the problem at its causes rather than its effect.
Hope you find your true self today and always focus on the cause and not the effect.
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