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May 1 , 2007 Conquering Change Jim Whitaker, who climbed Mount Everest, said following his feat, that “You never conquer the Mountain; you only conquer yourself.” It seems to me that in all of our endeavors, that is the truth. In life, we build our own prisons, our parents often laying many of the stones, and society joining in later to help, and then we serve as our own jailkeepers. When the individual attempts to deal with change and self-renewal, he finds himself having to deal with ghosts of the past - - memories, perhaps, of past failures and pieces of accumulated dramas, grievances and resentments. Sometimes we become so used to the company of certain of these ghosts that we cling to them with pleasure, like old friends. Perhaps you read in a recent Sunday paper , as I did, a piece titled “Good Advice People Prefer to Ignore,” by a financial writer, Jonathan Clements. He judged much of the advice given by financial experts was not put to use by his readers, not because of a disagreement with the facts but for emotional reasons. And money comes loaded with emotion. In the Wall Street Journal Sunday, that very same Sunday, was another piece appeared titled Love and Money, by Jeff D. Opdyke, about “Emotion vs Logic: and the Winner is....” You guessed it. Of course, money is only one area of our lives in which we can be stuck in an emotional quagmire so deeply we can’t move to see the truth about ourselves. And the older we get, the greater the challenge to keep from being stuck. Scaling the walls of our jailhouses, changing how we think and behave, is a tough mountain to climb, even when it is a matter of life or death. Consider that a relatively small percentage of the population consumes the vast majority of the health-care budget for diseases that are very well know and which are, by and large, behavioral, most often involving smoking, drinking, eating, stress, and exercise. This explains why half the people who have the 600,000 bypass surgeries and 1.3 million angioplasties each year return to repeat the procedure a short time later, in spite of the cost and the pain associated with them. It is why many will die a short time later, as well. These are people who are sick because of how they choose to live their lives. It turns out that fear of consequences...whether pain, financial loss, heartbreak, failure, and even death - is often not sufficient motivation for us to change our way of thinking and behaving, contrary to popular opinion. (Note that popular opinion itself is often another name for group lockdown.) University of California professor George Lakoff, who has researched cognitive science and linguistics, says that the big challenge in trying to change is that our minds rely on frames, - that is, how we look at a thing - rather than facts. Those frames are like a set of eye-glasses. They are how we see the world. They are our reality. The challenge we all face if we are to continue to climb to the summit -- to learn and grow as human beings, to live happier, more fulfilling and more successful lives - - is finding the courage to change our glasses, to see what we have not been seeing. It can be done if we have the wisdom, daring and fortitude to take the action. Science has recently shown that we are not “hard-wired” to think and behave as we do. Science tells us that the brain can change, no matter how old we are. Doing it alone can be daunting, but there many successful help programs available (AA for alcoholics, for example). Coaching can be invaluable in many life and business situations because it helps one peel back layers of thought to examine the frames, to see options where none may seem to exist, and to develop strategies for moving forward. In one of Larry McMurtry’s books a young man is about to leave for the first time on a long cattle drive “north,” from Texas to the Nebraska. Wide eyed, the young cowhand asks the boss “how far is north?” The old timer looks at him and says, “it’s a whole lot further than you’ve ever been.” For most of us the business of growing up is a whole lot further than we’ve ever been. But, if we move ahead with purpose and determination, seeking help when we seem unable to do it alone, what we will find is the self we have been looking for. ***************************************************************************** “I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.” Gerry Spence ***************************************************************************** A Matter of Choice Mexican American actor Edward James Olmos grew up poor in East Los Angeles. Eleven family members lived in three rooms that included a kitchen with a dirt floor. His parents divorced when he was seven. Olmos has made it a practice to visit kids in jails. When he does, he tells them that we are all given a choice. “Some people say they didn’t have a choice. They’re poor or brown or crippled. They had no parents. Well, you can use any one of those excuses to keep your life from growing. Or you can say, ‘Okay, this is where I am, but I’m not going to let it stop me. Instead, I’m gonna turn it around and make it my strength.’” Which, he tells them, is what he did. In life there are easy choices and tough choices, better choices and worse, many choices or few. But there are nearly always choices. How we make them determines our destiny. ***************************************************************************** To read the previous issue's articles
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Copyright 2000-2008 Bob Bone All rights reserved |