Changes of Behaviour

Changes of Behaviour — letting go of blaming externals is hard, but blaming externals means staying stuck

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We recent­ly cel­e­brat­ed our 40th wed­ding anniver­sary. This caused me to think about a wed­ding we went to back in 2013. In Cos­ta Rica.

There were things to see and peo­ple to watch — that trip was our first time in the Sámara area. Liked it so much we keep com­ing back. 

Any­way, I remem­bered a cou­ple of odd things from the wed­ding weekend.

Example the 1st: One guy there liked to think he pretty much knew everything and really did spread it thick. 

In the process, he became more and more alien­at­ed from his grown chil­dren, and from his wife.

One thing he claimed was that he had great pro­fi­cien­cy with meditation.

Always fol­lowed by, “I’m so stressed by: “work, the behav­iour of…, traf­fic, trav­el, expectations.” 

He also men­tioned how med­i­ta­tion kept him from bit­ing on stuff, always fol­lowed by, “But this time (the stuff) is seri­ous and any­one would have bitten.”

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Example the 2nd: The other thing of note was more bizarre than noteworthy. 

Two peo­ple saw scor­pi­ons in their rooms, and one guy got bit (it was hid­ing in his shirt…) 

Here’s the odd part: the guy who got bit yelled at the hotel own­er, and coerced him to give him anoth­er room. Because, obvi­ous­ly, he’d been giv­en the “Scor­pi­on Room,” and all the oth­ers were some­how scor­pi­on free.

The stories actually dovetail, as in both cases, the parties involved think that externals are more important than internal self-responsibility.

In sto­ry 1, exter­nals trump choos­ing to remain calm and cen­tred. In sto­ry 2, expect­ing a room in a jun­gle to be “pest free” trumps learn­ing to check your room, keep your suit­case zipped, and exam­ine your clothing.

It takes constant vigilance to move from blaming, to self-responsibility, to behaviour change. Each step is as complicated (or easy) as the person involved chooses to make it.

In terms of behav­iour, it’s like this: 

Our prime pur­pose in this life is to help oth­ers. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them. ~ Dalai Lama

Help­ing oth­ers is nev­er about lec­tures, as you real­ly have lit­tle knowl­edge of where the oth­er per­son is com­ing from. 

Being help­ful some­times means just watching. 

It nev­er means try­ing to berate, belit­tle, and bad­ger oth­ers to go along with you. 

It some­times means lis­ten­ing and hear­ing, with­out try­ing to fix.

It always means being present for “all of it,” calm­ly, with cen­tred­ness, and not choos­ing to bite, even when the scor­pi­ons bite you!

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Stages of Movement

Blam­ing is insane­ly pop­u­lar, and because we live sur­round­ed by peo­ple and scor­pi­ons, it’s always something. 

Find­ing a blame tar­get, giv­en a life­time of exam­ples is stu­pid easy. 

Yet, I still think it’s weird to blame oth­ers or the past for what is going on in the here and now.

The stories we tell ourselves aren’t “true” — they’re just whatever we choose to make of our past.

Self-respon­si­bil­i­ty is the first leap out of “nor­mal.” Self-respon­si­bil­i­ty is real­iz­ing that, 100% of the time, the results I am get­ting are a direct result of “the ques­tions I am ask­ing, and the things I am doing.” 

I lose the idea that I am being act­ed upon by some out­side force. I dis­cov­er that what’s going on in my “pack­age” is me, doing me.

I then can pause long enough to notice that I am winding myself up over what I think — over my stories — and I can breathe and let go.

Where all of this can get dif­fi­cult is that peo­ple start using self-respon­si­bil­i­ty and self-aware­ness as a tool to avoid true inti­ma­cy. It works like this: 

I exam­ine myself and begin to see my games, my illu­sions, and my most com­mon “blam­ings.” From this place of increas­ing clar­i­ty, I make the fatal deci­sion to become a guru.

Just like the guy at the wedding, who really does think of himself that way.

“Guru-ship” hap­pens when peo­ple shift to teach­ing (lec­tur­ing, berat­ing) oth­ers, with­out first doing the hard work of let­ting go of their games. 

Because it’s one thing to know it, and another thing to stop it.

I hear, “Don’t you see how hard I’ve worked fig­ur­ing out myself? I know me and what you see is what you get. Giv­en who I am and what I’ve been through, I’m doing the best I can. How dare you chal­lenge me to actu­al­ly change my behaviour!”

Next, it’s not sim­ply accept­ing that I must stand on my own two feet. It’s not enough to under­stand that Dar­bel­la is Dar­bel­la, and I am me, and that my stuff is my stuff, and hers is hers. 

Once I “get” the concept — I must ruthlessly weed out any behaviour I engage in that flies in the face of this understanding.

Each time I slide back into “enti­tle­ment think­ing,” for exam­ple, I start by pay­ing atten­tion and notic­ing as I go there. 

If I am not pay­ing atten­tion, and “sud­den­ly” find myself there, I wake myself up, stop my game play­ing, and move on. 

This is my responsibility.

This how I have learned that my enti­tle­ment gets me nowhere. (Remem­ber, the stuff that caus­es us grief does not go away. We just get bet­ter and bet­ter at iden­ti­fy­ing it and deal­ing with it differently.) 

Then, (here’s the hard part), I stop myself from jus­ti­fy­ing being there.

If I choose to do this, I suddenly have the option of choosing a different behaviour.

“Here I go, act­ing like an idiot. I’ll stop myself now.” This, both sim­ple and incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult, is the key to self-responsibility. 

Self-tran­scen­dence comes as I can learn to let that part of me (the ego-dri­ven part) shrink with disuse.

Or, every time some­thing is up, you can deliv­er a lec­ture and sit in smug­ness. Or, you can demand to leave the Scor­pi­on Room for the room that nev­er, ever, has an issue.

Both approach­es are the height of sil­ly, so think twice, eh?

And when in Cos­ta Rica, always remem­ber to shake out your shirt!

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