Many times, we will look at somebody we know and wonder what got into them. Changes in habits and routines are often viewed as big red flags that somebody is either not doing something they’re supposed to do or doing something they’re not supposed to. Many times, this person‘s change of habits and seemingly overnight their personality changes, we wonder what got into them.
Why are they suddenly not acting the way we expect them to act? Whether it is a spouse, our kids, or our best friend, suddenly things happen and they start acting weird.
There are times it may be bad enough that we actually set them down and ask them, Why are you doing this? And the answer may be vague, non-connecting, or seem as if it is a flat-out lie.
Yet the reason most commonly given is that they don’t know, and interestingly enough, that’s probably the closest to the truth they can give you.
They seriously don’t know what got into them.
This is the same reason why alcoholics who have been doing great for 3 years suddenly fall off the wagon, and why we failed to maintain our diet. Why do we try so hard to continue controlling our adult children? All of these reasons are based on the exact same reason that our loved ones suddenly do something that is out of character.
We react this way because of our thoughts.
At the heart of it all, it is a person’s model that gets them into trouble. Now, modeling isn’t a bad thing nor is it a good thing. It’s just a tool that helps display the thoughts behind your results.
If you’re not familiar with the model, the model is a set of five events.
Circumstance – this is something that has been said or done in your life. The key to the circumstance is that it is the fax. My wife said… My wife spent $100. My son skipped school. My daughter has stopped calling. My mom has started going to bingo night every night. If you inject an adjective into the circumstance, that is not the circumstance. A circumstance is nothing but the cold, hard facts with no opinions or insights given.
Circumstances are not good nor are they bad, they just are. They are not positive or negative until you apply a thought to them.
Thoughts- this is the thought you have about the circumstance. Often we confuse circumstances with thoughts. But I thought of a sentence in your head about the circumstance. My wife doesn’t like sex. My son is going to fail high school. My daughter is being highly irresponsible. I am not good enough. I will never get this right. I am a failure. I am the best dad because of my gift. You see, the thought is just our opinion about that cirque.
Feeling – our feelings come from the thoughts that we have. So if you’re feeling dejected because your wife said no to sex, that is because you had a thought along the lines of my wife doesn’t find me attractive, and that created the feeling of dejection.
Action – so what do you do when you have that particular emotion? Let’s say dejected, do you pout? Do you go to the living room? Sit down in front of the computer and pull up porn? Do you go to the kitchen and start drinking beer? Do you sit beside your wife and just talk with her? Now, none of these actions are wrong, nor are they right; if they serve you in some way, then OK. But many times after drinking a bunch of beer, our wife really doesn’t wanna have anything to do with us. So we might actually be lying to ourselves, thinking that drinking a 12-pack of beer will solve our problems.
Results – that is where the results come from. If you want to have a better connection with your wife, and when she rejects your advances, you feel dejected, you go to the kitchen and start drinking a 12-pack of beer. Showing up drunk is not going to help you have a stronger connection with your wife. In fact, it will actually cause more distance between you and your wife. Many times the actions that we do as it means to feel better about ourselves actually cause more problems too.
The actions aren’t about you.
What are the big issues that we take on, especially when interacting with other people like our wives and kids? We take their actions very personally. We take the fact that our wife went to hang out with her best friend, even though we asked her not to, as she is not caring about us. In reality, there’s a good chance she wasn’t even thinking about you when she went to her friend’s house. Now you may have more thoughts about that, but the truth is that we make so many actions that mean something personal to us. We make our wives’ rebuff of our sexual advances mean that she doesn’t love us. We make our kids ‘ actions and lack of schooling mean that they are out to embarrass us. We make the fact that our boss skipped us for advancement mean that he is a coldhearted ball breaker that has it out for you. When in reality you’ve been late more than anybody else at work this past quarter.
Even if everyone else’s actions are uncharacteristic, it actually has nothing to do with you. It has absolutely everything to do with what their ex is experiencing in their life. What feelings do they have at that moment? It doesn’t matter whether the thoughts make sense or not. Nor is that the thought that that person is having. They are having an emotional experience that leads to an action, and there’s no thought of what the result is going to be.
That’s just being a human. Our emotions make our lives messy, but that is also what makes humans so beautiful.
Accept them for being the whole human.
When you have your wife going through some type of emotional experience, you actually have a choice too. Now the choice is whether she is happy or not. You have no control over her emotions. You have no means to control what her emotions are. You cannot affect a person’s experience. You cannot affect a person’s experience. That is actually impossible. Sadly, many people wanna blame others for their negative emotional experience because they want to take everything personally.
The one thing you’re able to do is to accept them completely. Except for being the flawed, beautiful human that they are. You don’t have to accept what they’ve done, but that they are doing the best that they can with the skills that they have at the moment.
You can choose
But you also have the ability to choose, especially with your kids and your wife. You have the choice not only to accept them completely and wholly as humans, but you get to choose whether you love them conditionally or unconditionally.
Now, sadly, most people will lie to themselves and say Well, I love them unconditionally. And that is a lie because when was the last time you yelled at your kids? When was the last time you and your wife yelled at each other? When was the last time you got really mad at your wife? That is not unconditional love. Have you done something because you were angry at your wife?
I bet your wife has withheld sex from you because you didn’t take out the trash or wash the dog or something along those lines. That again is conditional love. If you want me to be nice to you, do this condition, and I will love you and be nice is what you’re saying with conditional love. What happened when your Son showed up with a D on the report card, or he had a very minor fender bender? Did you yell and scream at him? If so, He didn’t reach the conditions for you to display love to him.
If you wanna know how to display unconditional love to your wife, then think back on your wedding day and what would happen if she had done something similar to what caused you to yell at her last time? Maybe she forgot to pay a bill, or she overspent, and you had the love that you felt on your wedding day for her at that moment that overspending wouldn’t matter nearly as much as it does at the moment. That is unconditional love.
So why do they engage in such maddening actions?
Now let’s look at the real reason why people do some of the dumb things that they do. And the reason is actually very simple, because again, as mentioned before, they are having emotional experiences based upon the thoughts they are having about a particular circumstance.
Whether they are preachers, who are desperately trying to hide an alcohol problem, or a father of four who watches too much porn. A wife who enjoys more ice cream and television than you believe they need to. All these actions point to one thing and one thing only
You and everybody else are out to make themselves feel better about their current circumstances. Your board? All of a sudden, you find yourself pursuing an adult website. Your wife just had an argument with her best friend, so she’s going to eat 3 gallons of ice cream. Your son just wants to be accepted, but he gets the dopamine hits he wants from his video games.
Would it be better if he just came over and sat down with you, and y’all started talking? Oh yeah, it would also be better for you and your wife if you stopped turning to porn and actually had connective discussions with your wife so you could actually have more sex. Yet there you are watching football on Sunday or watching porn at 2 o’clock in the morning because of the motions you’re feeling because of a thought that you had about a particular circumstance. And that circumstance is probably because you took something out of context and made it personal.
It’s not a dig at anybody. We just wanna feel better about our circumstances, and we know that we can feel better if we overeat, we know that we can feel better if we play video games. We know we can feel better if we just flogged the dolphin after watching some porno videos. We know we can feel better about ourselves and our circumstances if we just go out and spend $100 on a new pair of shoes or a new pair of pants. We do things out of character to make ourselves feel better; that is all. It’s not meant to make sense. We are humans, like we have said many times. Our emotions make our lives very messy, and we choose to let those messy lives. Shine the beauty of humans, or you can cast judgment upon them. The choice, as always, is yours.
