1. That you can reach something positive by defeating something negative.
When we take action to improve our lives by overcoming some aspect of ourselves (for example, “an old pattern of unwanted behavior” or a recurring problem of “self-sabotage”), who, exactly, wins?
One of the most enduring and unfortunate illusions to emerge from the personal growth movement (especially the “monster power growth” version) is the idea that we all have a “strong self” that can be trained to compel subjugation. of our “weak selves”. It is completely understandable that almost all of us develop this impression. Human beings have been trying to make sense of their inner conflicts, their affinity for the light or dark side of things, their anxieties related to virtue and guilt, for tens of thousands of years, long before the invention of the personal growth weekend seminary, as far as we know.
The easiest way to enable change and personal growth is to include, not exclude or defeat, everything that is not working in our lives. We can recognize that unwanted behavior patterns are simply old solutions that have inadvertently outlived their usefulness. Actually, when we go beyond this, when we actively seek to respect whatever it is that seems to be causing us the most pain and frustration, the experience of including and changing even long-standing patterns becomes safe, fun, and rewarding. Our old patterns are much more available for easy and comfortable changes when we are not fighting them. In fact, when properly respected, we find that old and unwanted behaviors often seek to change themselves. It’s like they want to catch up with the rest of us, and that makes for a wonderful, no-loss reunion.
2. That people who take the “path of least resistance” in life are weak.
Everything in the Universe is coordinated to move and change along paths of least resistance. Everything: electrons, intergalactic clouds of hydrogen gas, white mice and melting ice. There are no exceptions. So it’s curious and strange that, for humans, the words “take the path of least resistance” are usually thrown around as an insult. Now, we are all gradually getting better at this. One is rarely congratulated on the futility and intensity of their struggle. Still, who do we think we are, anyway?
3. That fighting ourselves shows strength and builds character.
Some of the saddest words are: “At least I respect myself enough to despise myself.” Proper self-esteem is always the most courteous way to be in life and in the universe. Invite the best for and from others. Too little self-respect causes other humans to want to withdraw their care and support. They can’t help but feel this on some level. It’s an ancient instinct in our hunter-gatherer DNA, a non-knowing designed to protect the well-being of the entire pack. Instinct can be overridden, and often is, but doing so requires some energy and work. Proper self-esteem is never expensive or inconvenient for anyone. And it is almost never fatal.
4. That denying and disrespecting our parents is a good idea.
Almost all Western psychotherapy seeks, in one way or another, to separate clients from their parents. This movement is in exactly the wrong direction. If we want to know what would result from the mix if we put our parents in a giant blender and then hit the frappè button, the answer is: we would exist. We are exactly, precisely that combination.
Our broadband connection to the flow of life, the cable plugs, so to speak, turn out to be them. Not personally, necessarily, but certainly energetically, the plugs are where they are. We can deny this, but then we have to live on dial-up. When we deny parents, we deny ourselves and cut ourselves off from the sources of strength in life. This never has a good effect. If our parents are dangerous, crazy, or deadly boring, it’s probably a good idea to physically distance yourself from them, but this isn’t the same as disrespecting them.
5. That you, as an intelligent adult, would never ruin your life to prevent something really bad from happening to someone else 100 years ago (just to cite a round number).
As it turns out, this seems to be exactly what all of us humans value doing more than anything else. All of us are driven to make sure we experience some version of the unresolved tragedies and losses of family members who came before us. As long as we experience their pain, or something like it, we hope to give our families a better past, which is still very [il]logically, it will allow us to experience a better present and future for ourselves. This is a complicated and highly seductive business. When our pain now tells us that we are on our way to past and future happiness, we enter a deep trance of safe and loving family salvation. As crazy as it sounds, this is what we do, and we’re pretty screwed until we start to realize it. Ruining our own life is never a good way to show respect for anyone.
6. That the past is a failed version of a better future.
The future is not a perfected or improved past. Our experiences as human beings, whatever this implies at the moment, always represent the best life solutions that our systems have been able to achieve. We all deal with utterly mysterious and painful inherited patterns, which we then combine with the bafflingly elusive meanings and beliefs we make up for ourselves. As huge as the resulting mess may seem, it really is the most creative, positive, and loving solution we could find for ourselves (and everyone else involved) at the point where the unwanted pattern became hyper-stabilized and difficult to control. exchange. Truly, we are all doing the best we can with what we have and what we had.
7. That now is the only time there is.
Being present in the present is wonderful and useful. It is an indispensable art, an essential part of changing our relationship with ourselves and with life itself. However, for humans living in time/space, the future and the past are also real. Properly created, a good future activates our choice of it, so that it manifests itself against a supportive backdrop called the past. There is no substitute for having a good relationship with our future and our past. After all now, we are now the past of our future, aren’t we?
8. That your brain is supposed to care how you feel.
The main function of our brain is to filter everything that does not fit with your own ideas about what fits with your ideas. Consequently, he is always very busy without noticing things. However, the good result of this is that it provides us with a stable, more or less predictable world in which to live.
To make the experience of being human even more fun, the oldest and most reliable parts of our brains (our creature brains, which don’t even know they’re parts of humans) only have one major success indicator, a form to know. if they are doing a good job. This part of the brain does not think, analyze, create, synthesize, or speak. It is simply there to establish and maintain associations between this and that. It doesn’t matter what this and that are, as long as the associations are intact. Therefore, he does not care about the content of our human experience; it only cares that that content (the associations between this and that) does not change. Consequently, your most important indicator of success is the answer to the question “Are we dead already?” If the answer is no, you know to continue with what you have been doing. If this implies that we are miserable in life, on a human level, that is not your problem, not even your concern.
Our brain is not supposed to care how we feel. We are supposed to care about how we feel.
9. That positive change will inevitably lead to more positive change.
Most of the really wonderful and positive changes can eventually lead to feeling bad again. There are some beautiful ways to work with this unfortunate aspect of being human, so it’s actually not always true that good change leads to feeling bad. However, for most of us, learning to allow wonderful change to stay positive takes a bit of practice. This is what we call “the ecology of personal growth.” It’s quite an art form, and an extremely valuable thing to learn.
10. May our private thoughts and feelings not affect other people’s experience.
Everything we think and feel affects all space, all time. We really have this kind of big effect. Having power like this is never a bad thing. Learning to recognize and use this power is a respectfully creative journey of many lifetimes. In general, this is very good news.
© 2008 Carl Buchheit and NLP Marin