Rule 5 - Actions speak louder than words.

10 Principles, Rule 5

(Where is Bartlett when you need it? Who said this?) Anyway, plagiarism aside, we often wonder why our spouses or kids end up reacting in ways we don't like. Almost always, that's what they've seen us do. Pressuring someone to talk more means that they'll talk less. Why not simply demonstrate meaningful conversation and work with the response at hand? Kids learn to respect you when you respect them.

So, given that I'm writing this and am also the editor, I've made an executive decision to skip number 4 on my list from some years ago and proceed directly to "rule" 5. Rule 4 had to do with anger, which I believe I've covered pretty well in the past.

Oh, and I looked up the quote, "Actions speak louder than words," and Bartletts came up with Fran Lebowitz. Jeez, I could swear it came from, like, Ben Franklin or somebody. But I digress.

Of course, the opposite of this expression is the ever popular, "Don't do as I do, do as I say."

In all the years I've been doing counselling, I've yet to come across an issue that is so complex and difficult to follow that my client and I couldn't describe it, talk about the consequences and look at possible alternatives to the "normal" way of expressing the situation. Nonetheless, people desperately want explanations, and will refuse obvious ones, spending years stuck on "why."

Because we've been brought up in the West, where explanations of the "whys" of things takes precedence over pretty much everything else, there is a natural tendency to ask such questions when it comes to our belief systems, our behaviours and our explanations.

So, I get a lot of, "I'm continually having trouble with this particular thing, and if only I could understand why, then things would be different." Or, as we indicated last week, we might have it as, "I'm continually having trouble with this particular thing, and if only I could understand why, then I'll know why I'm powerless to change it." A person we knew, some years ago, used the latter to "freeze" for a long time. She'd always been sort of confused and unmotivated. She ended going off to an ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) weekend. There, she listened to lecture after lecture, which spelled out the "characteristics of ACOAs." She let us know that now that she'd heard all of that, she knew why she was as she was, and how this was how she was going to always be. This is crap in the extreme.

This "understanding" piece, as I said, is a common request. I do it too. Fortunately, I have Gloria and Dar in my life. I'll go in for a session with Gloria, and start describing how hard done by or confused or sad or blocked I am, and she'll sigh and say, "Cute, but stupid." When I do the same in Dar's presence, she'll sigh and say, "Wayne, get over yourself." Different words, same message.

"Why am I the way I am?" "Why do I keep doing the same things, making the same mistakes, over and over?" "What's wrong with me that this stuff keeps happening?" And at the end of the day, these questions lead precisely nowhere.

They lead nowhere because, even if they are answered, (and they can't be) all that gives us is an invented or constructed story. The reason they lead nowhere is they are not true - we can never know, for sure, what happened to us to make us who we are. We have a story we tell ourselves, but the story is just a construct. Thus, if you have a sibling, and sit discussing past events, you'll likely be amazed at either the differences in details of shared stories of your childhood, or at least different interpretations of the stories. The different interpretation part is especially interesting.

I often hold my hand out sideways, in front of me, and ask clients which direction my fingers are pointing in. They say, "right," and I see they are pointing to the left. I say, "See? We can't even agree on something this simple." And the reason we can't is simple - we disagree because of our perspective.

This simply means that any two of us can look at a situation and come up with two different interpretations. Thus, when we struggle to understand "why," the best and truest answer we can come up with is, "I believe this because this, from my perspective, is what I believe." It's not the "right" answer, or even the "only" answer. It's just the thing I believe.

And from each belief that we have come up with comes an action or actions. This, too, is mostly unreflected upon. This happens, that is my reaction. The only way out of this dilemma is, not surprisingly, to do something else.

God, have I ever got a good story for this one. The phone just rang. It was my dad, who is 89. We just gave him a headset to listen to his talking books. He breaks them regularly. Anyway, he announced that I'd "bought the wrong headset" - the impedance was wrong, because it had a yellow cord. His other headsets had black cords and that was the right impedance. I suggested that all headsets these days were the same. He argued that (as usual) I was wrong. I simply said, "OK. We'll see."

He just called back. Before picking up the phone, I said to Dar, who is busily typing on her NEW computer, "That'll be dad, and his headset works." Sure enough. He tried replacing the battery in one of his hearing aids. Voila! The headset suddenly was the right impedance. He couldn't believe the batteries both hearing aids were going at once - thus it had to be the headset. Then, (being my dad) he tried something different, to check out his premise. What he believed, fervently, shifted as soon as he did something. Had he not done something, he'd be sitting there with dead hearing aids, blaming the headset.

This approach is so counter-intuitive as to be quite rare. It seems too simple. Change your behaviour, and things will change. "It can't be that simple. Surely I have to understand what causes me to act strangely. Surely I have to know who made me this way, and how, and surely I have to whine about how tough it will be, how impossible it will be, to change my resulting behaviour."

And yet, all that is ever necessary is to stop doing what doesn't work, and do more of what does.

I don't want to hear that people understand what I'm saying. I get that a lot. How my words make sense and how they fit with their other theories. What I am interested in is what the person is actually doing differently, given their "great" understanding. If the troubling behaviours or symptoms are continuing, they really do not understand anything. If the behaviour changes, the understanding and symptoms will shift of their own accord.

Changing how we were brought up or what happened to us is not possible. We are stuck with the details of our life. What we choose to do with those details - how we play them out, how we choose to live, within the life we have been given, is a completely free choice.

If it ain't working, stop doing it. Select another behaviour, reach out another way, do what is necessary. And leave the explanations for another time.