Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Change the way you see situations

The way we see situations are driven by a ‘spirit-led life’ vs. a ‘flesh-led’ life. A Spirit-led life is when we can recognize how God would have us behave or think. It becomes thoughts and emotions that benefit us and others around us. When led by our emotions, we can be deceived and thus life a flesh-led life, which is often destructive. Consider the following diagram and how a Spirit-led life is similar to ABT and a flesh-led life is similar to DBT.

Spirit-Led.................................................Flesh-Led
(ABT).......................................................(DBT)


<---------live here....... don't live here --------->


Compare situations you’ve recently been involved with. From which side did you respond? If you’re questioning whether or not your actions or thoughts are spirit or flesh led, you’re probably too close to the center and need to re-align yourself further to one side or the other. Where do ‘entitlement’ thoughts appear? Entitlement thoughts are things we think we have the right to - or how others should treat us based on 'us!' They are very subtle. Every thought is either spirit-led (ABT) or flesh-led (DBT). The way we think is a learned behavior. Consider how your thoughts are or are not like your parents. It could be that your parents passed down their way of thinking (positive or negative) and you simply followed suit by doing what you saw. On the other hand, you could have witnessed thinking that you didn't agree with and therefore 'learned' to do the opposite. Either way, our thought patterns are learned behaviors shaped by many people in our lives, not just our parents.

The elephant depicted in this picture grew up with a rope tying him to a small stake. The rope and stake held him in place as a baby elephant. He learned that he could only go so far because he was tied up and so he eventually gave up trying. As an adult elephant we can see that he could easily lift that stake out of the ground – but his belief system lies to him daily – so he stays tied to the stake. People often suffer from the same syndrome of believing we are unable to make progress in areas as an adult because we couldn’t as a child. It’s important that we change our perspective to see the truth of what we can actually accomplish or, like the elephant, we risk limitation for the rest of our life.

What is your stake? Identify something in your life that keeps you limited by false ropes.

The wider the lens…the better the view! Our responses are negative when our focus is narrow. We see more clearly when we can see the big picture. When facing difficult problems, look long, look wide. Look at what’s behind and what’s in front of you. Look to the left. Look to the right. Examine the situation. Determine the problems and see through them. Extract the opportunities. Be relentless in searching every angle. The more you see, the more you have to work with.

God see’s things from a very wide lens. He can see all things while we cannot. This means that only He knows the ‘truth.’ However, our ‘reality’ often feels like the truth but is really own perception of a situation. It isn’t always truth but can feel very real to us. Separating the truth from our reality is very difficult because we have strong emotions attached to the situation. The further we are from these emotions, we will make more logical choices. We teach balance in life because leaning to any one side is dangerous. For example, making solely emotional choices is very destructive because we lack the ability to objectively look at a situation. On the other extreme is when we make solely logical choices without allowing emotions enter the equation. This can be harmful to us and to others. Do you agree with this? Think about practical examples that you can experiment with.

All conflicts have a basic issue to be resolved. Each side has something he/she wants to accomplish. In addition, all conflicts have emotions surrounding them. We can resolve a conflict but have strong emotions left over. the emotions wrap themselves around the problem so that we think that the original problem (usually someone else) is the issue when in fact it's really the emotion attached to the problem. We are responsible for addressing the emotions or they will appear in other situations. We are also responsible for understanding these emotions in order that they don't get the better of us.

Let’s assume that the problem is your roommate, spouse, or child has once again left dishes on the counter. You are irritated because you’ve expressed your frustration with this behavior over and over and it doesn’t appear that you’re being heard. You can have the conversation one more time and the perceived problem gets resolved…that is, the dishes are taken care of.

However, you still have left-over emotions and simply solving the problem doesn’t seem to be enough. What do you do? You’ll need to identify your emotion, the belief behind the emotion, and the need connected to the emotion. We’ll get into these steps more throughout in future blogs. But for now it’s important to understand that they way you see situations include the core problem as well as the surrounding emotions. These surrounding emotions are now a 'new' problem that needs to be resolved. Your emotions have been threatened and kick into high gear seeking resolution.

Think of a situation that is real to you where your emotions were very strong. Can you separate the problem from the situation? What thoughts or emotions are connected to the situation? What would it look like to solve the problem? What thoughts or emotions would be left over for you to address? If you're truly honest with yourself, you might hear various thoughts, beliefs or emotions come up that you instinctively want to reject. But before you reject them, try to sit with them for a while. They are real thoughts, beliefs or emotions that you are having - so try to resolve them rather than ignore or stuff them. Otherwise they'll only come back later - and probably stronger.

Shift from a threat to a challenge. ABT begins in the privacy of your mind. Every thought leads to ABT or DBT. You have internal conversations with yourself before you utter a word to anyone else. Stop and listen to what your body, your emotions, and your thoughts are saying to you. Determine what need is being threatened or not met. Find the challenge of success.

Breathe & Pause – Whenever a problem arises, your first gut reaction may be alarm. Your body’s natural defense mechanism switches on, and all systems are armed and aimed at fighting or fleeing the threat. Every communication breakdown, missed deadline, and costly mistake heightens your focus as you feel a shot of adrenaline restricting your thoughts and speeding your actions. What you may not be aware of is that your breathing changes too. Your breathing becomes shallow (from your chest, not your abdomen) and the intervals between breaths are much shorter.

A simple yet powerful tool you have at your disposal is breath control – the ability to shift your body out of a threat reaction into a challenge response by focusing on your breathing. Slow it down! Take five or six deep breaths. Breathing deeply facilitates ABT. You become more creative and less reactive. It puts you in charge of dealing more effectively with the threat at hand. It triggers the excitement of being challenged and dissolves the fear of being threatened. Try it!

Hindsight + Insight = Foresight

Create a positive G.A.P.

G – Gratitude for those people who hung in there or who help.
A – Appreciation for the bounty and blessings life and living have to offer.
P – Perspective of which priorities are really important.

People are attracted to ABT. It builds support, commitment and dedication of others. Think about it, who would you rather work with, and ABT or a DBT?

No comments:

Post a Comment