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Let’s look at the dif­fer­ence between under­stand­ing and doing.

One of the curses of liv­ing in the West is the mis­taken idea that, in order for “life” to get better,

“I have to fig­ure every­thing out: why I am the way I am, how I got this way, who is to “blame,” etc. Then, and only then, can I look at how what I’ve under­stood effects me. Then, and only then, can I even con­tem­plate doing things dif­fer­ently. Oh. And I also have to fig­ure out every­thing every­one else is doing, too!”

Because of this, and not to over-simplify, 90% of what I do is to help peo­ple to learn to

1. say what they are will­ing to do, and
2. do it.

Notice that I do not say, “Fig­ure them­selves out.” Because we can’t.

The rea­son we can’t is that all we are ever doing is telling our­selves sto­ries. Short of video­ing our lives (and, inter­est­ingly, I’ve done this with clients, and they still see what they want to see, despite video evi­dence to the con­trary…), all we have are our faulty mem­o­ries, and we lie to our­selves about their valid­ity, all the time.

My point is, we can argue all day about whether any of your beliefs “make sense,” (most fights between cou­ples are pre­cisely about whose ver­sion of real­ity is ‘right,’) and the odds are we’ll never fig­ure it out because the real­ity is, there is no ‘right.’

On the other hand, if you sim­ply deal with each thing as if it is some­thing to be acted upon, with­out fig­ur­ing out much of any­thing, you’ll soon have a bank of new expe­ri­ences to draw upon.

The only way out is to catch our­selves as we play our games, own it out loud to a friend, and shift the behav­iour from sta­sis to action.

Most peo­ple, refuse to do this. Instead, they pre­tend to agree with me, while refus­ing to shift their behaviour—and they do this by com­ing up with cre­ative excuses. That way, they think they are doing some­thing, with­out actu­ally doing any­thing dif­fer­ently.

If this seems to be your process, you, and “your life” are going to stay “stuck” until you actu­ally change some­thing.

Games Peo­ple Play

To be human is to tell sto­ries. Our brains do many things well, and a few not so well. Our brains name and cat­e­go­rize, which they absolutely need to do.

I just thought of an illus­tra­tion, hav­ing just vis­ited the john. We all know how to use the taps on the sink. We learned that as kids. So, when we walk into a new bath­room, we cat­e­gor­i­cally know how to oper­ate the tap. In other words, imag­ine how dumbed down life would be if we couldn’t make the leap from “home tap” to “all taps.”

On the other hand, I notice I still hes­i­tate in pub­lic wash­rooms that have taps with no han­dles; rather they have infrared sen­sors. There’s a 1 sec­ond pause as my brain goes, “Where the hell is the han­dle? Oh. Yeah. Infrared.”

This is a demon­stra­tion that there is an actual thought process—a process of com­par­i­son going on, and I haven’t per­fectly set a link between han­dle and handle-less taps.

Now, all of this cat­e­go­riza­tion is well and good in a mate­r­ial world of things —less help­ful in our inter­nal and exter­nal expe­ri­ence of peo­ple and inter­ac­tions. Nonethe­less, we have ingrained patterns.

What hap­pens is that we have expe­ri­ences with peo­ple and do the cat­e­go­riza­tion thing automatically–we assign the behav­iour and the per­son to a “good/bad” cat­e­gory. The prob­lem is, there is a dif­fer­ence between cat­e­go­riz­ing “all taps” and “all men,” if by “all men” we are refer­ring to the behav­iour of your part­ner. It’s sim­i­lar to say­ing “Every­one knows…” as opposed to “Here is what I think.”

We’ve learned many ways of cat­e­go­riz­ing our­selves, and cat­e­go­riz­ing our beliefs about oth­ers. Some ways were taught to you by mom and dad, some by your peers, and some you just con­vinced your­self of. Many are quite wacky, and lead to odd places.

I’ve been work­ing with a 17-year-old who is afraid of loose hair (as in, not attached to her body.).

Head hair—On her head, fine. In her brush or on her hand, she freaks out, screams and throws up.

Body hair and pubic hair, either attached or removed while shav­ing her­self, fine. Leg hairs too long, pubic hair on the floor, or in her under­wear, she pukes.

What she has taught her­self is no stranger than some of the things you have taught your­self. To unlearn it, she has to stop her­self before puk­ing and tell her­self a dif­fer­ent story. (She cleaned her own hair brush, wear­ing gloves, last week, the first time in her life, and she didn’t get sick. Ah, progress. : )

Many peo­ple have “body stories.

They hate their weight, they find ways to not enjoy sex, or just feel “out of sorts with them­selves.” But remem­ber, there is a big dif­fer­ence between, “I am up 15 pounds and hate myself,” and “I’m up 15 pounds and notice I feel logy and am breath­ing hard, so I’ll exer­cise and go on a diet and lose the 15 pounds.”

Inter­est­ingly, I had a client who, 6 months after start­ing a new rela­tion­ship, will slap on 30–50 pounds (she’s done this a dozen times) and wait for the guy to reject her. She used to play the same game with her father. She’d drink, gain weight, do drugs, and wait for dad to hate her. He never did, and she really frus­trated her­self over that, as “Any­one should be able to see what a dis­gust­ing per­son I am.”

Even­tu­ally, (so far 100%) as she acts weirder and weirder, the guy leaves, and she says, “See? If he really loved me he’d be will­ing to put up with me. I’m unlov­able and attract guys who dump me.” She feels smug sat­is­fac­tion for being right.

Only thing is, she says she wants a rela­tion­ship. Hmm.

Thus begins our cycle of doing things designed to drive a wedge between peo­ple, to “prove” what we don’t want to prove—that we are unlovable.

Many peo­ple are reluc­tant to do real ther­apy, because at some deep level they know that assump­tions are going to be challenged.

To really engage you have to be will­ing to be seen—and that can feel entirely too too open—you begin to feel things, so of course it’s easy to choose to avoid hav­ing that inti­mate of an expe­ri­ence. And if you add in body­work, and it’s even more inti­mate and “juicy.”

There is a strong part in all of us that wants to avoid actu­ally hav­ing expe­ri­ences, while both fan­ta­siz­ing about them and think­ing about what “every­one else” is thinking.

I sus­pect stuck peo­ple are really good at com­ing up with the ways and means to stop them­selves from actu­ally check­ing out their assump­tions by refus­ing to engage in behav­iours that might be stretching.

For exam­ple, take relat­ing. I might tell a female client:

“You can care about your part­ner, but can’t care for (take care of) him, unless you want a dys­func­tional, co-dependent rela­tion­ship. Open­ing your­self up requires com­mu­ni­ca­tion— telling him what you are doing to block your­self as you are doing it, then look­ing for a behav­iour to coun­ter­act what you are doing. So, if you want to pull away, you say, “I want to pull away right now, so I will for 5 min­utes, then I want a hug and cud­dle,” or what­ever. Ele­gant relat­ing requires show­ing him you love him while admit­ting when you make your­self uncom­fort­able, self-conscious, or “stupid.” ”

The proactive approach, by its name and nature, requires that you actu­ally do some­thing. (Do I sound like a bro­ken record yet???)

Thus, the last thing you need is “guid­ing your thoughts in a more pos­i­tive direc­tion.” You need to guide your actions in a pos­i­tive direc­tion while accept­ing your­self as you do the men­tal crit­i­cism bit. It’s about express­ing to oth­ers that you are block­ing your­self, and let­ting them know what you’ll choose to do about it. Then, you do it!

Atti­tude is Everything???

Actu­ally, believ­ing that “atti­tude is every­thing” keeps you stuck. That’s an apho­rism or affir­ma­tion. There’s the odd, New Age belief that if I keep telling myself some­thing long enough, I’ll even­tu­ally believe it.

It’s all about get­ting com­fort­able in your skin, with your skin, and with the feel­ings and ener­gies that flow within you. The only way I know to do that is to actu­ally expe­ri­ence it.

Land in your­self, shift from under­stand­ing to doing, and, as they say on the sham­poo bot­tle, “Wash. Rinse. repeat.”

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go back to the top of the arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
Week­end Residentials

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Related posts:

1. Mind-Full of Oranges
2. Mind Movies
3. Exer­cises in Mind Emptying
4. 6 Ideas for Zen Mind
5. Body and Mind

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Tagged with: Bodywork • Categorization • Reality • Thought

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