If we are fortunate, we grew up in a stable household in which we observed our parents talking, doing, being respectful, being patient, etc. The more consistent they were, the more consistent you learned to be as a person. If your parents were always courteous, odds are, you learned to be courteous. When faced with challenges, if they persevered, odds are, you learned to persevere. We learn many things from our family of origin that aren’t conscious. As adults, we might suddenly have the epiphany that we just used a word or phrase that our parents used frequently. Even the way that we speak, the slight variation in accent our parents possessed is somehow transferred to us, maybe not full blown, but a nuance of it is transmitted.
On a darker side, some people grew up in households where the kids get slapped or spanked or worse. If it happens consistently, guess what, when faced with a similar situation with your own children… what do you think you might do? Do you know anything else? If you don’t know anything else… how can you expect to be different?
Just as we learn how to be family members and how to interact within a family from our family of origin, we also learn other things like how to face challenges. Some families get their kids involved in sports, some families struggle on a daily basis to hold things together, but both families are teaching their children a way of facing challenges. In meeting those challenges our family might teach us to be effective or ineffective, the former being better than the latter.
I have often said that people try to do the best they can with what they have at any point in time. The assumption is that people TRY. When a person finds themselves repeatedly failing to meet the demands of the world, it might be a good time to think about what is going on. After all, the world really isn’t out to get you, so what gives? If we were objective and listed out all of the participants in our failures we would quickly see a common thread… ourselves. When failures have different participants, with the exception of ourselves… it means we should probably take a close look at our thinking, emotions, and behaviors for each failure. But here’s the catch-- if it was that easy you would have already figured it out. People get locked into seeing things from only one perspective. What to do?
When I work with clients who are locked into a perspective, my goal is to present that perspective back to them in such a way as to challenge their orientation to that perspective. Just as you can look at the contents on a table from one position, changing your position to the other side of the table allows you to see the same contents, but from a different perspective. Often times, slightly changing what is said is enough for people to get insight into what they need to do, or clarify what they want to do. With understanding comes the possibility of creating a roadmap for change. With change, comes the possibility of meeting the challenges the world throws at you more effectively.
