You Don't Know Who Someone Is Until You Fight Them
This was a line from one of the Matrix films. The variant of this I was more familiar with is , "You don't know who someone is until they have a gun pointed at them." Both statements emphasize the same sentiment. Chaos can show us who people are and seeing someone at their worst can say a lot about who they are. But is it really the person we are seeing or simply their reaction to the situation? These are not necessarily the same thing.
Social psychology shows us that our experiences, environments, and particularly our immediate situations have a powerful influence on our behavior, more so than many of us care to acknowledge. A majority of us tend to attribute behaviors about people to their 'traits", those things we believe to be innate. The 'type' of person they are. I am a big believer of seeing what you believe as well as believing what you see. Where our focus is becomes real to us. Each and every one of us have bad days and can recognize when we have had them. Seldom do we consciously want to have a bad day so what generally causes us to have one?
Conflicts and arguments are uncomfortable but they don't have to be damaging. Anger tends to be that thing we all lean on when we are afraid or feeling hurt. Mindfulness of this can minimize the fury which we express the next time we are in that space. Are we really as hurt or in as much danger as our reaction warrants? Most of the time I would think not. I've been accused of bottling up anger when I feel it but a more accurate description would be that I simply don't express my anger in ways many are conditioned to express or receive it. I understand that it is when we are experiencing our weakest, most angry, most scared, and hurtful states that an opportunity for growth is right before us. It is in these moments we can choose who we want to become. This is not an easy thing to do but neither is going to law school, medical school, getting a PhD, starting your own business, or as is the case when working to perfect any craft. We work on ourselves constantly as the fitness and supplement industry can attest to but how much attention are we putting into our emotional and psychological selves?
Mindfulness of how our situations influence us is a superpower. It enables us to slow things down. It enables us to take advantage of this phenomenon and engineer our situations to elicit the desired behavior. Have you noticed that when people argue they aren't even arguing about what started the argument? Even worse, they have transitioned into yelling at one another as opposed to speaking and listening to one another. Effective communication is the cornerstone to any healthy relationship between people. This requires learning and practicing across many different medians because we are all speaking a different emotional language.
It is estimated that the brain has one hundred trillion possible connections and whether or not those numbers are accurate one thing is certainly clear, most of us will never come close to stimulating a fraction of those connections but we all have the potential to do so. Emotional and psychological well being doesn't happen on its own, it requires work and commitment just like anything else. I personally want to be that person that has the individual I am arguing with want to hug me afterwards as opposed to wanting to kill me, but that doesn't happen automatically.
#elliotyi
#paradigmleft
#habits
#mindset
Social psychology shows us that our experiences, environments, and particularly our immediate situations have a powerful influence on our behavior, more so than many of us care to acknowledge. A majority of us tend to attribute behaviors about people to their 'traits", those things we believe to be innate. The 'type' of person they are. I am a big believer of seeing what you believe as well as believing what you see. Where our focus is becomes real to us. Each and every one of us have bad days and can recognize when we have had them. Seldom do we consciously want to have a bad day so what generally causes us to have one?
Conflicts and arguments are uncomfortable but they don't have to be damaging. Anger tends to be that thing we all lean on when we are afraid or feeling hurt. Mindfulness of this can minimize the fury which we express the next time we are in that space. Are we really as hurt or in as much danger as our reaction warrants? Most of the time I would think not. I've been accused of bottling up anger when I feel it but a more accurate description would be that I simply don't express my anger in ways many are conditioned to express or receive it. I understand that it is when we are experiencing our weakest, most angry, most scared, and hurtful states that an opportunity for growth is right before us. It is in these moments we can choose who we want to become. This is not an easy thing to do but neither is going to law school, medical school, getting a PhD, starting your own business, or as is the case when working to perfect any craft. We work on ourselves constantly as the fitness and supplement industry can attest to but how much attention are we putting into our emotional and psychological selves?
Mindfulness of how our situations influence us is a superpower. It enables us to slow things down. It enables us to take advantage of this phenomenon and engineer our situations to elicit the desired behavior. Have you noticed that when people argue they aren't even arguing about what started the argument? Even worse, they have transitioned into yelling at one another as opposed to speaking and listening to one another. Effective communication is the cornerstone to any healthy relationship between people. This requires learning and practicing across many different medians because we are all speaking a different emotional language.
It is estimated that the brain has one hundred trillion possible connections and whether or not those numbers are accurate one thing is certainly clear, most of us will never come close to stimulating a fraction of those connections but we all have the potential to do so. Emotional and psychological well being doesn't happen on its own, it requires work and commitment just like anything else. I personally want to be that person that has the individual I am arguing with want to hug me afterwards as opposed to wanting to kill me, but that doesn't happen automatically.
#elliotyi
#paradigmleft
#habits
#mindset
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