Life is Therapy

When you go through something troubling, remember that life can be its own form of therapy if you allow it. Life always has a way to help you heal the pain.

You can go for a walk or jog and see where your journey takes you, going wherever the path leads you….

You can listen to music, and allow it to take you to a peaceful plane, or to work out a certain emotion….

You can sit with a friend, and talk about the most trivial things, and let it be, or just have a laugh over nothing in particular….

You can see a dog with its head out the window of a car, truly joyful, perhaps beyond what most humans even experience, and let that sink in….

You can plant a seed and watch it grow and flower….

You can gaze into the clouds, or into the starry night, and search as far as you can….

You can lend a helping hand, finding the person who needs help more than you do….

Even when you are deeply troubled, unsure how to proceed, life can act as a form of therapy, helping you along through the storm.

You can sit back and listen with your whole body, not just your ears, and truly take in all that is happening as it happens, wherever you are, quieting the part of you that must explain and interpret all that it sees and hears….

You can find it in you to let go, to truly let go of whatever you have held onto so dearly, unable to let it be, and finally begin to open the path to somewhere….

You can observe a tree, the changing leaves of autumn, flowing with the wind, strong yet still….

You can sit in gratitude for the chance to experience anything at all, even the pain or troubles which have ultimately molded you into what you needed to be….

You can express yourself in any way that your heart would be contented to do, giving of yourself to the world….

You can simply be kind, patient, and heartfelt, even when these have not been granted to you….

How many examples must there be, infinite examples truly, where life is its own therapy? We simply must be aware and awaken to it.

Remember that for any troubles and pains, you can work through them and come out better on the other side.

What Actually Guides Human Behavior? (It’s Not Reason)

Quite often, I hear people make predictions that people will behave in a certain way. Just today, I heard this on the radio:

“There is no reason kids shouldn’t be allowed to trick-or-treat even with Covid-19 being a concern. The parents need to make sure they wash their hands. And the people who give the candy need to make sure they keep their distance. If they do these things, we won’t have any problems.”

I use this example not to take a side but to shine a light on widespread problems in our thinking.

Essentially, to expect reasonable and rational behavior is itself irrational.

From what I have seen, this is the order of what actually guides human behavior:

1. Survival

2. Self-interest

3. Close relationships

4. Emotion, feelings, and intuition

5. Beliefs (e.g., religion, ethics, ideologies, politics)

6. Reason

I have met many people who are indeed quite reasonable. They work through problems in their lives methodically. But most people, most of the time, are not guided primarily by their reason. Let’s discuss these principles a bit more deeply.

Survival

The idea of survival guiding human behavior should not be difficult to understand. When your needs are not met, you will do anything to survive.

Self-interest

This should not be a shock either – we are the star of our own lives. So naturally, our focus is often on making decisions that make us happy and successful.

Close Relationships

The people closest to us in our lives are quite important to us. So often, we will make decisions that help them, or at least consider them.

Emotion, Feelings, and Intuition

Emotions, feelings, and intuition help provide us with a shortcut to make decisions effectively and efficiently much of the time. If my boss at work asks me to spit on someone he does not like, I do not need to evaluate if this falls in line with my beliefs or if this is a rational thing to do. My gut or my feelings immediately make me disgusted at the thought.

Of course, sometimes, our emotions can overwhelm us and cause us to make poor decisions. Nonetheless, they still tend to guide our actions.

Beliefs

After all the prior principles guiding our human behavior, we have our belief systems. This does not always mean religion. I can believe in certain ethical practices, or I may believe that everyone has certain rights. If none of the prior principles mentioned have led us to behave a certain way, then our belief systems will help us decide what to do.

Some people are highly religious or believe strongly in certain values or ideas, and they may aim to make this principle the primary guiding force of their lives.

Reason

Reason is last for a reason. It takes a lot of work to reason properly. If you work hard at it and fail, you may come to an unreasonable conclusion and make a bad decision. Even if you reason correctly, you may get unlucky somehow, and the outcomes of your decision may still lead to negative consequences. Otherwise, if part of your plan involves convincing other people that your reasoning is correct, you may fail to convince them even if your reasoning is correct.

So reason carries its risks. Get it wrong, and you have wasted your time. Get it right, and it still may backfire on you. Most people, most of the time, do not find good reasons to employ reason. They may not feel competent enough to think rationally or reasonably, it may be too much work, or they may have had bad experiences trying to use reason. They may have given up on it. Also, real-life has so many variables that it can be too complicated to reason through perfectly. Rather than bother to try, many of us prefer to use feelings or emotions to guide us.

We like to think that we are rational and reasonable, but the evidence does not seem to support this.

The former conclusion stands. Most people, most of the time, are not basing their decisions on reason. We cannot expect most people to behave reasonably. If we do, then we are the ones who are thinking unreasonably.

Any time I hear phrases such as “If people do this….” I already know that we are not going to be happy with the results. It isn’t easy to control or predict what a large group of people will do. Most “experts” whose job it is to predict the stock market actually fail at it. This is their job – this is how they earn their living, and they cannot predict where the stock market will go. Part of this is because they cannot predict the human behavior that affects the market.

You may be able to predict or even control what a small group of people will do. But beyond this, it seems to be a fool’s game.

Instead of guiding everyone into perfect actions or expecting them to behave perfectly rationally, we should take advantage of this knowledge that there will be unreasonable behaviors and imperfect actions everywhere we go.

How can we do this? Here are a few examples.

I am very good at avoiding car accidents because I assume that people will drive in erratic ways. I assume that they may get distracted and struggle to stay in their own lane. I have lived in places where Stop signs and traffic lights were just viewed as suggestions, so I got used to checking for traffic and pedestrians at every intersection. Ironically, assuming that perfection will happen tends to give us poor results and may result in more accidents.

As another example, when I want to succeed at something, I have backup plans. Many people end up working outside of the field that they trained for. In my case, I was studying to be a psychologist, but I changed paths and ended up becoming an author who writes about self-development, psychology, and other related themes. Fortunately, my psychology background was a great asset for this. If you are pursuing a degree, ask yourself if it will be useful for only one thing, or can you use it to succeed in various fields?

Another way to stop assuming that things will work out perfectly is to reconsider your timelines for important projects. I had a boss who once said:

“Give me your timeline. That way, I can double it in my mind. When you make up your timelines, you tend to expect things to work out perfectly, but they rarely do. We need to account for all of the problems you’ll have that we can’t predict right now.”

You can try this too. If you expect things to take a certain amount of time (usually assuming that things will work out perfectly), then double that in your mind, and that may be the true timeline.

When I see that people have assumed perfection, I expect that things will go wrong. For situations that require everyone to behave perfectly and orderly, I will avoid them and be extra cautious, waiting for something to go wrong, as it often does.

Of course, the exception here is that some people are highly trained or skilled to deal with certain scenarios. In some professions, people may operate at seemingly perfect levels to get the job done.

However, we cannot expect such a high level of rational behavior from most people, most of the time.

Learn this lesson that people do not usually make decisions based on reason, see the lack of reason around you, and use this understanding to make better decisions.

Controlling Our Emotions So They Don’t Control Us

I am sometimes surprised at how easy it is to manipulate a person. We all have a range of emotions, personalities, beliefs, desires, knowledge, understanding, and human connections. Yet, despite our complexities, is it really so difficult to manipulate us? If someone hacks or invades our emotional centers, can’t they then hijack our mind and body?

It’s quite easy to make someone angry if you think of it. This involves calling someone a name, badmouthing their mother or other family members, insulting their intelligence or skill, making offensive gestures, or referring to a person’s most deeply held beliefs as nonsense or idiocy. If you make someone angry, they tend to lose control, yelling loudly, becoming offensive in their own word use or gestures, perhaps even be willing to engage in a fight. They tend to get into a revengeful mindset – wanting to hurt the person hurting them.

Understand that to make someone angry is to poison them and those around them and make them do foolish things. So, if you anger someone, you have controlled them into taking actions against their own best interest. Of course, most people assume they are not being manipulated. Most people assume that the antagonist is legitimately being himself, and just by his own faulty character, he happens to be anger-inducing. Somehow, that belief probably makes us even angrier, thinking, how could someone be such an imbecile, so uncaring, so offensive?

Perhaps much of the time, the antagonist is legitimately himself. Still, other times maybe he enjoys gaining control over others, knowing that if he doesn’t like someone, he can make them angry and make them lose control, turning them into his puppets. As long as the antagonist maintains some control over himself, he will appear to be the better person, in the end, perhaps even coming out to be a hero if he helps to calm down the person he has angered or to stop the one he angered from causing too much trouble.

Anger is just one powerful emotion, but any other could be used just as well to shift someone into a different frame of mind where they cannot think clearly. Can you think clearly if you feel overwhelmingly sad, happy, jealous, embarrassed, hopeless, or scared? Don’t those emotions tend to put you on a one-track mind, where all you can think is of one thing? Generally, you will work toward alleviating that strong emotion to get yourself back to normal. Still, in doing so, you may be easily manipulated and controlled into taking a course of action that works against your best interests.

I recently heard of a scam where people are contacted by the FBI, only it is not truly the FBI, but just an imposter who wishes to trick the target into transferring money to them. These villains can trick many people because they scare them. To many people, it is one of the scariest things to be contacted by the FBI, to be told that you are wanted for crimes – even, of course, when you are fully innocent. We will do anything to alleviate the overwhelming emotion of fear, even if that means telling these people all of our private details or transferring money to them.

It isn’t until later that we realize none of it made sense. The caller didn’t know the target’s name but rather had to ask to confirm it. The caller didn’t know the target’s address, or social security number, or which bank he used, or anything at all about the caller, until the caller provided that information.

So why would the FBI call someone if they did not know who they were calling, nor anything about them? Of course, they would not.

We must be wary of someone who insists on putting us into extreme emotional states. Someone who constantly reminds us that we should be scared, worried, or sad should not easily be trusted. When taken to extremes, these emotional states do not help us work our way through problems or see clearly.

One of the greatest skills anyone can learn then is emotional control. We have to practice this. When someone is yelling and behaving in a threatening way, a part of us must recognize that this is a potential threat, but it does not help to cower in fear and panic.

Recently, I stopped at a gas station to fill my tank. While I was pulling into the gas station, I got an uneasy feeling, as four men were partly blocking the entrance. One of them begrudgingly moved out of the way to let me in. There was a huge truck to one side blocking the view to the street – it crossed my mind that this may be on purpose, to obstruct the view so no one could see what these men were doing, but I ignored that idea. Some gas pumps were out of order, and the one closest to the street was in use, so I pulled up to the one next to these four men. They were standing, appearing to do nothing. This struck me as a bit strange since we were at a gas station, but I reminded myself that they were not doing anything, so there was no problem.

As I parked my car at the gas terminal, I noticed that one of the men had his eyes on me. He was the biggest of the group and only about 10 feet away from me. I stepped out of the car and in front of my door, and suddenly the man had one arm fully behind his back in an awkward manner – he was not stretching, nor was he just quickly pulling out some cigarettes. His hand was back there purposefully as if he were holding something. He was smiling at me, inching forward very slowly, as if he didn’t want me to notice he was getting closer. He complimented my nice-looking car, and I said Thanks, man.

He continued to inch closer and closer, with his arm still behind his back. I was outwardly as casual as possible, while at this point, every red flag had been raised in my mind. I realized that my life was possibly in danger. On top of all these red flags, the man was smiling with a sort of grimace that did not seem right at all to me.

Somehow, through years of working on my emotions, not allowing them to go out of control, and always keeping my composure, I had been able to be fully calm at this moment where I realized I was in trouble. I had never been so sure in all my life that something bad was about to happen to me. The man was almost within arm’s reach now. In a flash, I had realized that the big truck blocking the view was not a coincidence. The four men clustered, doing “nothing” was not a coincidence. This man’s arm awkwardly behind his back could not be a coincidence. I believe he wanted to threaten me with a weapon.

He was almost within arm’s reach.

I quickly yet casually stepped behind my car door (with it between the man and me) and into my car. I imagined that from his perspective, he might have assumed I just forgot my wallet or something in my car. Of course, I was ready to leave. I put my keys in the ignition and got out of there as quickly as I could.

The first lesson here is I should have trusted my intuition earlier. I knew something was not right immediately when I saw these four men doing nothing, and then the big truck blocking the view from the street and the many “out of order” pumps were other signals. The man with the hand behind his back staring at me was another signal. I waited until the last possible moment when he was almost within arm’s reach, and that was a mistake, but luckily nothing happened to me.

Emotional control is critical. If I had gotten too scared, I might have entered into the animalistic “fight or flight” response. As humans, we should remember that the options are actually endless, not binary. But if I had frozen there, obviously, this would have been a mistake. If he had me scared and frozen, that was probably the perfect victim he was looking for. He could have taken all my money, my phone, and the car, in that case. If I had panicked and run on foot, they might have been ready to stop me. Even though I got back in the car, if I was too scared, not thinking clearly, I may have forgotten to lock the car, I may have dropped the keys or struggled to get them into the ignition properly, giving them enough time to open my door and force me out.

It was of utmost importance that I remain calm and composed.

Luckily I did.

Just because the environment is moving us toward an emotion does not mean was must let those emotions run out of control. Something in the environment may press our Anger button, or Fear button, or Embarrassed button, but we can rewire ourselves not always to need to respond with the same thinking patterns, and certainly to not always need to respond with the same behaviors and actions.

You can imagine emotional triggers as passing through you, not happening to you. This means if someone insults you, it goes through you. You do not need to take it in and respond to it. Similarly, if someone near you fears many events: diseases, wars, financial troubles, you do not necessarily need to let this affect you. You can imagine those feelings passing through you, not needing to get entangled with your emotional self. The words and the fears of this person are just going through you. You are not adding energy to it by taking it seriously. You may even empathize with this person over their fears and try to help, but you are not required to take in their negative energy even then.

Sometimes I have thoughts such as this:

This anger (or fear, sadness, etc.) is not helping me see clearly and behave rightly. I must let this feeling go so that I can move on. When I move on, I will be able to see clearly and behave rightly once again.

When you feel the emotions start to run out of control, think the above thought (or read it aloud). Then talk to a loved one. Practice taking deep breaths. Go for a walk or jog. Watch a stand-up comedy or a comedy film. These are the things that help me. Maybe they will help you too. And of course, if you have a problem with an individual, consider talking it through with them after you have calmed down a bit.