Month: May 2010

Was noticing yesterday how we can often give others a lot of control over how we act and change our normal behaviour because of our anticipation as to how they may react or think about us. In other words, we have an internalized thought or belief as to what others or our peers or society would approve of and modify what we do because of that. Often these changes are fear-driven and limit our freedom to do what we would normally do. The speed of this reflex to “check in” with others is astonishing and most times we do it even without noticing. However, because as humans we always have a need to be consistent, we find ourselves commenting to ourselves in order to justify this change in behaviour. We make excuses for our inconsistency. During my years of training to be a therapist one experienced therapist said to me in Supervision “Always watch the excuses“. And when we notice the excuses in ourselves we often see that we are seeking permission from or consulting with scripts or models in our heads and measuring our behaviour against those models, and then making up a story to justify the gap.

One of the reasons why we practice meditation and other forms of mental training is to see the models which exist in our minds – the stories we tell ourselves – and to reduce their power over us. What mindfulness focuses on is increasing our inner freedom in order to reduce the sources of inconsistency and suffering. We try to be able to stop and ask “Who am I in this moment” and “what do I actually want“. In this way we drop more into the present and notice the reflexive asking of permission. We make our choices based on ourselves not on looking to others. If we can do this, we increasingly act out of love not fear, regradless of the consequences or what people think.