Month: September 2020

Consideration    Repeating Functional Patterns

Reframing – Toothbrush falls in the toilet bowl

Glad it wasn’t the electric toothbrush

Opportunity to go fishing

Chance to practice alternative tooth brushing methods

Evaluate the benefits of clear vs. blue toilet water

Reason to shop

Glad you flushed

Enhance your skills at using chop sticks

Reminder of the benefits of putting the lid down

Consider all the things you do each day that require little to no conscious thought.  Autonomic behaviors like breathing and reflexes are examples of behaviors which occur without conscious choice.  There are also many behaviors, referred to as routine that we do repeatedly, hence the phrase “creatures of habit.”

In previous blogs I have described the differences between intentional decision making and passive acceptance decision making.  Intentional requires active choice.  Passive acceptance occurs when a learned behavior becomes a repeating pattern which requires little to no conscious choice.  Decision making patterns fall into two categories, functional and dysfunctional.  A functional pattern is intended to achieve a desired result that is intellectually and emotionally productive.  A dysfunctional pattern produces a result that is intellectually or emotionally disruptive.  Some examples may help clarify the differences.

Intentional functional pattern – Developing a budget for one’s personal finances that the person consistently uses in making financial decisions.

Intentional dysfunctional pattern – Going to a gambling establishment believing that you can consistently win the money you need to pay your bills.

Passive acceptance functional pattern – Having your paycheck automatically deposited to your bank account by your employer.

Passive acceptance dysfunctional pattern – Making purchases without tracking your spending behavior believing that there will probably be sufficient funds to cover the purchase.

The majority of our daily decisions are passive acceptance, intermittently interrupted by situations which inspire an intentional choice.  Examine your morning routine.  Which actions follow a logical pattern?  How did you arrive at your routine?  What parts of the routine work well and which create issues?  Do you ever stop to consider making some changes to the routine, and if you do, have you actually made the adjustments?

I’m a fairly intentional person when it comes to morning, particularly workdays.  I’m all about efficiency.  Toilet, sink, shower, clothes, pocket essentials, door.  Fifteen minutes pillow to car.  Most of my routines make sense.  Brush teeth before shaving (Don’t want to confuse shaving cream with tooth paste).  Socks before shoes. Belt after pants.  Simple logic.  Some parts of my routine present options.  Take showering.  No rule book.  What’s your approach?  A typical pattern would be to start at the top and work down.  Hair first, feet last.  Ever consider going in the opposite direction?  Start with the feet and head north.  When I suggest feet first other s are quick to point out the flaw in my logic.  “You don’t’ start with your feet because you don’t want to get your feet gunk on the rest of your body!”  Seemed reasonable to me until it occurred to me that if you share a shower stall, the person who showered before you probably ended with their feet so you are putting their feet gunk on your head.  I’m pretty sure that the person who invented liquid shower soap had experienced feet gunk, soap bar transfer.  Consider further, why does it have to be top to bottom?  How about we start in the middle and figure out which way to go.  Kick things off with an elbow, transition to the opposite knee, face, toes, belly.  I’ve actually tried this, got distracted and missed parts.  Talk about distractions.  Perhaps I should leave that alone.  Don’t want the FCC to cancel my PG rating for the blog.

How about morning coffee?  Those of you who are coffee drinkers who add stuff to your coffee.  When you pour the coffee do you remember to leave room for the extra stuff?  Do you end up slurping or spilling because the cups to full?  Did you learn anything the first, second, third time you screwed up?

Functional routines, also known as repeating patterns, make a valuable contribution to daily living.  They enable us to engage in multiple behaviors simultaneously.  Consider driving.  Accelerate, decelerate, steer, check mirrors, watch for hazards, observe the country-side, listen to the radio, talk on the phone, plan an event, can all be in process at the same time.

Dysfunctional patterns can be powerful detractors to a person’s quality of life.  Excessive worry, self-degradation, harbored negative feelings like guilt, anger, worthlessness are a huge drain of energy and contribute to personal misery and lowered self-esteem.

An important component of Perspective Management is the intentional development of functional patterns which contribute to our physical, intellectual and emotional health.  Just as functional patterns like eating healthy, getting regular exercise, productive rest contribute to physical wellness, the development of functional attitude patterns contribute to emotional well-being.

Exercise

I challenge you to adopt two attitude enhancement patterns for a five-day period.

Pattern 1  Identify five individuals you believe would benefit from an encouragement blitz.  Each day for five days in a row, provide each individual with some words of encouragement.  You can pick people you have a close relationship with, a colleague, a neighbor or someone facing a tough life circumstance.  The encouragement can range from an emoji to a paragraph.  Be in person or use an electronic medium.  It’s your pattern, you decide what best fits your personality.

Pattern 2  For five days make a concerted effort to provide an act of consideration toward another person.  Let someone go ahead of you in line, leave an extra tip for a server, send a blank greeting card with come cash to someone you know is struggling financially.  It’s in the vein of Secret Santa or pay it forward.

The objective of these two tasks is for you to experience the intangibles associated with the positive impact you can achieve by developing a proactive attitude pattern.  Before you dismiss the challenge as a nice idea, but not worth your time or effort, consider these responses to typical excuses.

“I really don’t have time for this.”  How much time do you think it will take to accomplish these tasks?  Fifteen minutes a day.  Perhaps if you took fifteen minutes away from complaining about how screwed up everything is you could have time.

“It won’t make any difference.”  Sounds like you are thinking about others.  The tasks are intended to enhance your sense of purpose.  Two questions:  What would your reaction be if someone treated you with a little consideration?  Do you believe that you won’t feel good about the fact that you tried to bring a little sunshine into the life of another, particularly if the person is someone you care about?

“How about I just do one?”  You think anyone ever developed a pattern with a single experience?

It’s easy to fall into and casually accept the existence of dysfunctional patterns which drain your energy, stress you out, and encumber yourself and others.  The purpose of the tasks is to offer a proactive alternative that we can easily incorporate into a functional pattern if we choose to make the effort.  There is no need to change if you are satisfied with your quality of life.  If you find yourself dragging consider the possibilities of lifting your spirits.

Many people are willing to show consideration if a situation presents.  Birthday, anniversary, sickness, loss of a loved one.  A greeting card event does not create a functional lifestyle pattern.  If you want to enjoy life with its ups and downs it requires and intentional effort to develop a healthy attitude routine.  That is what perspective management is intended to help you achieve.

The only way to flourish from Perspective Management is to practice, practice, practice.  If it seems like work, you’re missing the point.  If you feel energized and a little more in control, you’re getting there.  If you can find the upside of an abscessed tooth, you got it!

I would enjoy hearing about your experience once you complete the exercise.  Post on the blog or send me an e-mail.  I’ll let you know how my experience turned out.

Keith Neuber                     www.ikan2.com                               keith@ikan2.com

Consideration:  Reframing reframing

“Keith, don’t you ever get tired of it all?”  I don’t get tired.  I do get troubled, annoyed, perplexed and sometimes even frustrated.  I have the same typical reactions to problematic circumstances as anyone else.  That is what lead to my discovery of my need for perspective management.  I think people consider themselves to be tired when they don’t know what to do to combat the frustration associated with feeling out of control.  When life gets challenging, that when we need to be energized.  That is what perspective management is intended to provide.

I really believed that perspective management and reframing would catch on.  I anticipated a domino effect.  A person would discover their ability to turn problems into challenges, they would feel better about themselves and their life circumstances and be so excited that they would want to spread the concept to everyone they knew.  It seems logical that if you give someone a tool that helps them feel more in control and optimistic, that person would want to use it.  So what is the reason that it doesn’t catch on?

A colleague tried to help me put my confusion into perspective.  In sports, to acquire a skill you first have to discover that you can do it and then you practice it repetitively until you become masterful at it.  Like ice skating, riding a bike, pole vaulting, once you know how to do it, the “know how” sticks with you for the rest of your life.  What varies is performance based on how often you use the skill and how much you practice.  So once a person understands how to reframe, the potential to use it is there if a person chooses to use it.  I have found that most choose not to.

It’s clear that I overestimated my potential to overcome the power of negativity.  My book, “If You’re Not Having Fun, You’re Doing It Wrong,” has fallen way short of my goal to make a difference.  I got the title and the cover design wrong.  To much emphasis on fun, when the content focuses on self-discovery and the hard work of self-management.  I do draw great encouragement from those who have read the book, applied the principles, made life changes and report to me how often they return to get direction when they feel challenged.  My disappointment is that I can count them on one hand.

With so much emphasis on the negative – news, sickness, viruses, politics, natural disasters, violence, greed…, it would be easy to join the discouragement crowd.  If life seems to be a burden, I can see how folks would feel tired of hauling that load around each day.  If reframing could lighten the load, I wonder why people see it more as an amusement rather than a resource.

You know how I like clever reframes.  What would it be like to reframe, reframing, i.e. looking for the downside of reframing.  Let me give it a try.

Un-reframes

Opportunity for false hope

Set up to be knocked down by your next personal catastrophe

Chance to figure out that optimism can’t stop bad things from happening to you.

Opportunity to fit in with others who are delusional

Opportunity to deceive yourself into believing life is not as bad as it really is.

Justification for not trying to improve your circumstances or the circumstances of others.

That was unpleasant.  Not the un-frames, they’re just words.  The unpleasant part is how many individuals actually think that way.  Talk about burdens.  Believing that life is a perpetual struggle with brief periods of respite as a set-up to confirm how hopeless you are to overcome the negativity.

In talking with a friend about this blog I was warned to tread lightly if I didn’t want to lose the few regular readers I have.  People want to be encouraged, amused, lifted up!  Me too.  For me it’s just more important that people understand the opportunity in front of us and consider joining the quest to beat back negativity as attitude warriors.  I want us to understand the playing field and recognize the enemy.

The playing field – Everyone experiences trials, tribulations and disappointments.  They wear on our emotions and it is easy to get caught up in the pressures of the moment. 

Fourth an inches from the goal line.  Up against the most formidable defense in the league.  Only seconds left.  Game on the line.

Focusing on the pressures of the moment, it is easy to forget that you started this drive on your own five-yard line, your team was a huge underdog coming into the contest, your team has produced a herculean effort, no one has been injured, the crowd (pre-covid) is loving the excitement and it’s only a game.  So, in the big picture, how significant is the outcome of the next play.

The enemy – Commodore Perry in the War of 1812 coined the phrase, “I have met the enemy and it is I.”  Negativity comes from within.  Events, circumstances, experiences are stimuli that trigger a reaction.  If I react negatively, I am the source of the burden.  I know this sounds like I am adding to the burden, however when I recognize that I am creating my turmoil, if I don’t like the effect, I can change my reaction.

Example: If I ruin my day being upset that rain occurred during my planned fun, I suffer an emotional burden.  If I change my plans so I can still have fun, the rain becomes insignificant.  Rain happens.  The choices I make determines how rain effects my quality of life.

I’ve been preaching reframing as an alternative to negativity since 1984.  Published a book that was to be my vehicle to return to the lecture circuit to try to make a difference.  COVID presented an obstacle.  I struck back by blogging.  There are so many to reach, I sure could use some attitude warriors to help me take up the gauntlet.

Lest you think the challenge to great, let me close with an experience from my past.

I was providing a closing keynote at a Teen Reach conference in Champaign, IL.  My topic was reframing.  I was on that day and played to a standing ovation.  After the presentation several participants came up to acknowledge me.  I noticed a woman holding back until the others left.  As she approached I could see that she had tears in her eyes.  She told me that she had been sitting alone in her hotel room the entire conference contemplating suicide.  For some reason she had decided to come to this last session.  She said, “You saved my life.  I now understand that I really have more control over my problems than I thought possible.  I am going to face my problems head on and if I can’t change the situation I’ll change my attitude.  I can’t thank you enough.”

I have been blessed to be where I needed to be with words that someone needed to hear with no intention on my part.  When we set out to make a positive difference, good things will happen even if we are unable to see tangible results.  The need is great.  The workers are few.  And the domino effect of positivity has unlimited potential.

I’m not tired.  Just took a little rest.  Getting ready for what’s going to be an incredibly productive fourth quarter.  I sure would love to have you play a part in the victory celebration.

Keith Neuber                                     www.ikan2.com                               keith@ikan2.com