Changes that last

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I’m a bit “philosophical” at the moment because I am immersed in material for Behind Closed Doors and Nuts and Bolts.

One of the things I am going to be teaching is the difference between behavioural change and real change. You see most, if not all of us are taught to “behave” in a particular way. We modify our behaviour to avoid pain and find pleasure. If we got a hiding for something, (an event sadly lacking in many children’s lives today), we would modify our behaviour so that we either
A: Didn’t get caught doing it again or
B: We stopped doing it.

Now I’m sure this never happened to you but you may have had a friend who was like this .

So some of the time our parents would achieve the desired result of stopping the behaviour. However in the main we simply get more cunning at avoiding detection. This is hardly lasting change is it?

Or another example: What if you have a penchant for being light fingered. As a child it might be lollies from the shop or change out of mum’s handbag. However as you grow older and become more aware of the consequences some of us might kind of grow out of it. But most of us won’t. What we do is find more acceptable ways of stealing that still have the same adrenalin rush. The world is littered with “legitimate thieves” who rip the IRD off and feel so good about being Robin Hood.
Their behaviour modification hasn’t changed their internal attitudes 1 bit.

Many of you are probably trying to modify your behaviour to be better parents, investors, negotiators, lovers, (fill in your challenge).
Well it won’t work. Who you really are will always come out eventually, especially under stress.

Just last night on TV there was a doco about a murderer and her paedophile husband. A corrections expert was asked what the rates of re-offending were. Part of his answer was that offenders who became stressed and isolated were at the highest risk of re-offending. Why?? Well he wouldn’t know, but the answer is because prison had modified their behaviour but never ever dealt with the problem.

It would take a book to give you the answers to this question but if I am ringing your bells then join me on Saturday 10th November where we can deal with some of these issues together and become free from these chains.

I don’t want to be able to just stop doing something, I want to be able to lose the desire to do it and not fight myself all my life.

It reminds me a very old cartoon showing a schoolboy sitting at his desk after being forced to sit down by an angry teacher.
The caption underneath has the schoolboy thinking; ” I’m sitting down on the outside, but on the inside I’m standing up”. We need to be people who stand up and sit down on the inside and the outside at the same time!!