Why We Do What We Do
Posted on October 25, 2012 by Rick and Leisa Olson, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Do you sometimes feel that you are out of control, that you are in a vicious cycle of negative results?
A number of years ago I let my marriage break down and I became a parent separated from my children by divorce. It was very painful and emotional time for me. My ex then remarried. Although I knew that this would inevitably happen, I found I was not prepared mentally for my reaction.
At first I faced many fears, the biggest being the fear of being displaced by the new “dad” in their life. What if they were able to cut me totally out my children’s lives? What if he adopted them? How would he influence their lives? What if he abuses them? What if I am left out on all of the major decisions? I felt I did not have any control with my children any more.
I know that my fears influenced me to do some things that did not help the situation, and actually created more friction. I can imagine my ex wife felt different fears that influenced her to do the things she did.
So why do we do what we do? Tony Robbins says that basically emotions are the driving force of life. To put it more bluntly, we are driven by our emotions. That leads to the next question “where do our emotions come from?”
When we focus on something, we must give meaning to it. To give meaning to it we filter what we focus on through our life experiences, that is, how we view the world. How we view the world is a creation of the thoughts we think and become habitual patterns of behaviour.
Let’s step back for a moment and look at how we think. We get information through our 5 senses. These senses are like super highways of information coming into our mind. They never shut off. We get so much information that our mind needs to sort it out so we can make sense of it. As a new-born baby, your mind just takes in information. You do not know what is good or bad, right or wrong information. You just soak it in. Over time, as you develop, you begin to make sense of things around you, and you form a certain view of the world. Your world view is influenced by the experiences you have had, the people around you, the TV shows you watch – actually all of the information you have received in your life. This view of the world becomes your filter. It helps you decide from all of the information you receive, what fits with your view and what doesn’t. That is why 6 different people watching the same event can have 6 different views of what has happened.
This view that you have may be helpful to you or may be the biggest thing holding you back.
If emotions come from what we think, how do emotions influence what we do?
Emotions are feelings that we have. These feelings are expressed in actions. When someone is angry they may yell, go into a rage, hit out, or go very quiet and retreat inside. These actions are based on their habit patterns and conditioned beliefs.
For example let’s look at my feelings as an estranged dad. I felt left out, a loss of control and a sense of being disconnected from my children. This was a new feeling for me. I was in a position where I did not have direct past experience and no habitual patterns for my filter system to use to make sense of this situation. So I felt some anxiety and helplessness. This created fears within me, fear of being displaced, fear of losing my children. My reaction to the fear was to do some actions which did not help the situation.
As a step parent coach this is the situation that I see often. Parents and children thrust out of their comfort zone, having their view of the world turned upside down. They experience anxiety and feelings of helplessness leading to fears. And these fears lead to actions that add to the pain of the situation.
Essentially we are out of “control”. I use the word control here in a specific context. Control in this situation is control of our thoughts, our feelings and our actions. When I look back I can clearly see I was not in control of my behaviour. I had thoughts about losing my children, which created feelings of fear, and caused me to act in certain ways which produced negative results and a reaction from my ex-wife, and an escalation of my thoughts and more fears which cause more negative action. Can you see the vicious circle that can happen?
Read the Circle of Responsibility on our blog at: http://fusefamilyfocus.com/blog
How do you break this cycle?
The only way to stop this is to break the cycle. You can start the change at any spot in the cycle. I have found it most effective to first change the thoughts you are letting in. You can choose to look at the situation differently. Listen to the positive voice inside your head. See things from the others point of view, find the positive in every situation. Is this easy? No! It goes against all of our past conditioning. But is it worth it? Absolutely!
It you want to change the results you are getting in your life, we can guide you through the difficult challenge of change.
Rick Olson
