You Either Do it, or You Don’t

So, I’m think­ing that train­ing as a psy­chother­a­pist is not a bad model for learn­ing to exer­cise self-mastery.

What I’m think­ing is that doing an aca­d­e­mic coun­selling degree has two com­po­nents: text­book and expe­ri­en­tial. Things are appar­ently dif­fer­ent now, but back when I was a stu­dent in the early 80s, you showed up at your practicum loca­tion, and within a day or so, they handed you your first cou­ple of clients.

In other words, you learned by doing.

And this is the key to this series of arti­cles. Noth­ing in your life changes until what you are doing changes.

Excuses, Excuses

I often hear lists of excuses for not doing things dif­fer­ently. It’s always a vari­ant of, “I can’t do (what­ever) until I’m sure I’ll do it right.†I’m sur­prised how often this is said with a straight face.

I did a com­mu­ni­ca­tion exer­cise once at a work­shop with a woman who used the model quite well.

She said, “I’ve been tak­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion courses for 5 years, so I can learn how to com­mu­ni­cate with my son.†She indi­cated that she hadn’t actu­ally tried it with him, but was get­ting closer.

I sug­gested she stop tak­ing courses and actu­ally com­mu­ni­cate with her son, as she was doing a great job with me.

She was amazed.

The Myth of: It ‘Should’ be Easy!

The flip side of this, which hap­pens a lot these days, due to the empha­sis on easy and quick, is that many peo­ple expect (seem­ingly para­dox­i­cally) that ‘get­ting it’ should be easy.

The other day, a per­son seek­ing ther­apy told me she’d tried other approaches and now wanted the ‘quick fix.’ I sug­gested that she actu­ally imple­ment some of the ‘slow fixes’ she’d learned, but never applied.

I remem­ber work­ing with a client, briefly, who wanted to get a Mas­ters in coun­selling with­out first hav­ing to go through the bother of a BA. She’d been work­ing at a Women’s Shel­ter, and decided that the Uni­ver­sity should take her 5 years expe­ri­ence and that she was 45 into account, skip the whole, tedious BA thing, and let her start an accel­er­ated MA. She was highly offended that they didn’t see it that way.

This approach might be thought of as instant enlight­en­ment, with­out the work.

The Self Mas­tery Connection

That’s why I talked about [tag]self mastery[/tag] last arti­cle. Many are the excuses for any­thing but.

Some think they are too stu­pid or weak or scared.

Oth­ers blame upbring­ing or present circumstances.

I’ve actu­ally had peo­ple tell me that my rela­tion­ship with Dar­bella looks easy, and there­fore it must have to do with both of us being experts and spe­cial peo­ple. I laugh.

Last week­end we were in Mon­tréal, vis­it­ing a friend. On the way home, we stopped at a Rest Stop, and I decided to use a stall for ‘morn­ing ablu­tions.’ I walked in, and looked on top of the toi­let paper dispenser.

Now, I’m a syn­chronic­ity and irony kind of guy, but that one was really inter­est­ing. The lan­guage is a bit kludgy, but I grok where he is com­ing from. I might put it, “Self mas­tery is self-less†and I’d likely be mean­ing the same thing.

The Bud­dha said some vari­ant of, “All that you are is a prod­uct of what you have thought.†He meant that how we think deter­mines our self-identity and our view of the world. It’s not the ‘right’ view, but rather how we frame our real­ity. Once we get the joke that the frame is warped by our per­cep­tions, we can have a laugh and let it go.

The let­ting go, how­ever, is an action. Let’s say you’re afraid to try some­thing. Typ­i­cally, you main­tain this stance by remem­ber­ing all the other times you were afraid of some­thing, sim­i­lar and dis­sim­i­lar. In other words, you try to ratio­nal­ize stay­ing stuck in fear by ref­er­enc­ing other times you were afraid. Seems rea­son­able, right?

Well, it is, if what you want to do is stay stuck in fear.

The alter­na­tive is not to plunge ahead with reck­less aban­don (although that can be fun and I am often a fan of it.) The alter­na­tive is to acknowl­edge the fear (“Hi again, fear!â€) while stat­ing what you will do. And then doing it.

Thus, the Bud­dha might say, “All that you are is what you are doing.â€

Next issue, we’ll look at self mas­tery through act­ing, with­out excuse.

In the mean time, lis­ten to the sto­ries you repeat, end­lessly, that are specif­i­cally designed to keep you stuck, hurt­ing, and a vic­tim of your own sto­ries. Notice the attrac­tion of end­lessly delay­ing chang­ing your words and behav­iours (you can’t change your thoughts, but you can stop believ­ing them.) Notice your des­per­ate search for the magic cure that will ‘fix you, once and for all.’

Drop the delays and get on with act­ing in the direc­tion you choose to go. Prac­tice what you are learn­ing, all the time. Notice you are get­ting bet­ter at it, with practice.

Then, have a breath and sense the power of self-mastery.