Mind Your Language – What You Say to Yourself Determines What You Get in Life
We may not be able to change the events that happen around us, but we can hegemony how we represent or interpret these in our mind. It is natural for most drivers to get really cross when you are overtaken from the incorrect side or someone cuts you up rudely as you slow down to follow the speed limit. I have a friend who nearly gave up driving fearing that his normal loss of temper at rogue drivers might get him involved in a road rage. But now every time he comes across an unruly driver, he imagines that the face of the person behind the wheel is that of one of his favourite cartoon characters, and that makes him laugh off any incident which in the past aggravated him no end. By varying the internal representation of the incident, he can now change his emotions and feelings about the event, and this in turn changes his reaction. This gives him stuck-up hegemony of his feelings, rather than being mad and being depressed every time he took his car out on the roads.
In one of the workshops I was doing on presentation skills for a dozen people, a young lady repeatedly avoided standing up in front of the group and do a 3-minute presentation expected from each participant. She knew the subject and had excellent content and was pleased to talk from where she was meeting. But every time I tried to get her to stand in front of the group, she would say ‘I can’t’. The reason – she felt uncomfortable “when people are looking at me”. I told her firmly that she needs to be truthful to herself: instead of saying, ‘I can’t', she ought to say ‘I would not stand up and….’. I insisted that she say this aloud to herself five times and left it there.
After lunch break, lacking prompting, she stood up and did her gig in front of the class, with a small encouragement from us all.
The moment she said to herself ‘I would not’, it became hard for her to live with that since ‘would not’ suggested that she could do something about it but was refusing to do, and that pushed her to take dependability for it. When she was saying ‘can’t', her mind could justify not doing whatever thing as ‘I could not do it anyway’. End of tale.
These are simple techniques, but commanding enough, to change how we play external events in our minds. If we can represent events in a way that are clear and helpful for our own health and wellbeing, we can take charge of our lives, rather than play the victim. This practice is called ‘Reframing’ in modern psychology. It works not just in an individual’s mind but also in collective thinking, a fact President Reagan used to his advantage during the 1984 election battle. It is said that during the battle, there was extensive concern about Ronald Reagan’s age. Speaking during the presidential debate with his opponent, Walter Mondale, Reagan said “I will not make age an issue of this battle. I am not going to exploit, for biased purposes, my opponent’s youth and immaturity.” Reagan’s age was not an issue for the remainder of the battle! And he went on to win the election!
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Author: Abhijit Bhattacharjee
Condition Source: EzineArticles.com
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