Posts Tagged ‘Irrational Behavior’

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My Strange Thinking

Friday, June 4th, 2010

I was browsing the web the other day and came across this ‘online pdf manual’ that caught my attention. It wasn’t very expensive – $40 – with a full-refund guarantee. I’m not new to the Internet, so I know that there are legitimate people selling things online as well as crooks. I have no problem trusting big names online, but I am somewhat careful with the little guys. Once you send them the money, you never know what kind of product you’ll get back and whether or not they will honour their money-back guarantee. Even though it wasn’t one of the big companies, it also wasn’t one of those 10-mile long web pages with colourful fake testimonials from Jake N. and Mandy B. I thought about it for a few seconds and decided against the purchase in fear of wasting $40. And then it hit me…

How many times do I waste $40 in other ways? I have no problem going to a movie with friends or going out for dinner, which adds up quickly to well over $40. Sure, I get enjoyment out of it, but the benefit is short lived and in some ways can be considered a ‘waste’. But here I was contemplating whether or not to get this manual that may actually have some ongoing benefits for some time to come. When I noticed that, I thought how interesting it was that so much thought went into getting something unfamiliar of great potential benefit vs the amount of thought that went into saying ‘yes’ to a movie.

Has this happened to anyone else? Have you thought twice maybe about buying a $15 book, only to spend $20 at a coffee house 2 hours later?

Until Monday,

V

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Feeling Bad For Yourself

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

I’m pretty confident in saying that there is no person in this world (except for me maybe) who has not attempted to influence someone else’s behaviour by feeling bad for the self. It’s a really strange behaviour, if you ask me. To get some attention/love/caring/my way, I am going to put myself in a negative state so that another person (or people) feel bad for me and do what I ’secretly’ want them to do. Do you know anyone like that?

Every time I contemplated this, I’ve come to the same conclusion – you can always get that what you seek without resorting to the ‘feel bad for me’ state. The other conclusion that I came to is that this is unlikely to change, unless people take their understanding of the self to another level. Why do I say that? Because this is one of the first things that we learn as infants – we cry and we get attention from our mother. Pretty quickly we as children figure out that by crying we will get attention, love, caring, and often our way. Then we take those lessons with us through life.

How often do you play ‘victim’ in order to get something? Do you think that serves you very well? Can you come up with alternatives?

Until next time,

V

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Posted in Psychology, Relationships | 1 Comment »

Failure Is Not An Acceptable Option

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

North American society is not set up in a way that supports failure. Sure, we have a lot of entrepreneurs and incredible success stories, and people tell us that you will likely fail several times on your way to success. Yes, we hear the inspiring story of Thomas Edison who supposedly found 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb, before he finally discovered a way that worked, but at the end of the day our society is not set up to support people who fail (by the way, I’d like to see some evidence to support that 10,000 attempts – sure, Edison did try a whole bunch of times, but my personal feeling is that the number is grossly exaggerated for ‘marketing’ purposes).

If you fail in school, you are tagged with a label of ‘dumb’, ’stupid’, or whatever else. Later in college, if you fail a couple of courses, your GPA is brought down, and as some people discover later, that lower GPA prevents you from getting into a certain field (ie. medicine). If you take a risk and fail in business and are forced to declare bankruptcy, you are punished for 7 years via your credit score.

Our society is so focused on success, that we turned failure into a mortal sin. What is ironic is that in order to succeed, you will probably ‘fail’ a few times. Every time you ‘fail’, you’ll learn a lesson and then use that experience to make better decisions next time around. I wonder if that can even be addressed in a meaningful way, since this is so deeply ingrained in the fabric of our society.

Until next time,

V

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Posted in Success, Taking Action | 2 Comments »

Never Expect What You Don’t Desire And Never Desire What You Don’t Expect

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

This is one of those phrases that sounds nice and playful, yet contains a lot of power and wisdom. I’ve talked in the past about the vital role that expectations play in our lives, and this phrase, which I heard in a Bob Proctor program, puts it rather eloquently. The idea is pretty simple – your true expectations will create your experience. It’s not what you want, not what you wish for, but what you truly expect that becomes your experience. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had countless situations that reflect that very principle at work.

So, ‘never expect what you don’t desire’! Pretty simple, right? In theory yes…in application it can be more difficult. If it wasn’t we’d never get what we don’t desire. But seriously, if you don’t desire something, why in the world would you expect it? It’s a logical statement, but we are not very logical beings. The same holds for the other side of the equation – ‘never desire what you don’t expect’. If you desire what you don’t expect, you simply will not be able to bring that into your experience. If there is something that you desire, work on expecting it in your life.

Now I’ve got to go work on the lesson in this phrase myself…

Until next time,

V

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Everything Happens For A Reason

Friday, April 16th, 2010

This is another very common comment from people – that things happened just the way they were supposed to for some reason. While it is a comforting statement, I am personally torn as to how valid it is for one main reason – human beings will always find a way to justify any choice they have made and all the things that resulted from it. Regret and emotions like it are usually not long-lasting for most of us.

It is easy to look back and see the intricate connections between everything that has happened, and how, if you would have left your house 30 second earlier, you may have never had a chance to stop at that red light, and notice an ad in the window of the store to your left, and do something that led to something completely different. But does it really work like that? Because from what I understand about human nature, if we took a completely different path, we would look back and still see all the unlikely connections between the different steps and essentially say the same thing. What if, for example, you can take 10 different ways to the same outcome, much like you can take 10 different ways from work to your house? Or what if different ways take you to different outcomes and your head just shows you how the destination you are at is the best one?

If you are brave enough to share what you think, I’d love to hear it!

Until Monday,

V

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Living Together?

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

There is a very odd statistic regarding the divorce rates – they are higher for couples who lived together prior to marriage. It is rather counter intuitive since I think that if you live with someone, you’ll get to know all their habits that may be annoying and see, in general, if co-habitation is a good idea. If you don’t live together, you may never know what the other person is like to live with and may discover some deal-breaking habits after marriage. But statistics show otherwise. Why?

The answer, in my opinion, relates to yesterday’s post where I talked about chasing the dragon with the ‘I’ll be happy when…’ approach. We tend to live life looking for the next ‘when’, and in relationships one of the ‘whens’ is the wedding. There are a lot of expectations surrounding that day – just take a look at how much preparation and planning usually goes into it. But at the end of the day, the celebration is over rather quickly and the realities of married life begin to sink in. If you are living together, chances are you go back to the same house or apartment and continue on with your life as if nothing has changed. This is the reason…right here. There are a lot of expectations around the wedding day and some of them, I would imagine, are that the relationship will change for the better. But it doesn’t, and people get disappointed, which leads to divorce.

If you do not live together, however, a lot of things change with the wedding. The two actually move in together, often finding a new place. They have to get used to each other and each other’s habits and to their life together. A lot of things change, and that is congruent with the expectations. So even if there are some annoying habits, there is a better chance that the people involved will look at them and think something along the lines of “well, sure, this is annoying, but I’ve committed to this, so we’ll just figure it out”.

And here we go – mystery solved! I personally made a transition from the first camp to the second one in terms of my outlook on it. In fact, I’ve made another transition in my outlook to a third camp that may or may not stay so, but I’ll save that for tomorrow.

Until next time,

V

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Strangers and Family

Friday, March 26th, 2010

I always found this interesting and odd at the same time – why in the world are we nicer to strangers and people we barely know than our family and close friends? I understand why it is happening from the psychological point of view, but it still one of the oddest behaviours we exhibit.

We have no problem reaming out our kid, spouse, significant other, friend, sibling, or even a parent, but when it comes to strangers, we are nice and kind and have a smile on our face. The behaviours we exhibit and tolerate with the people we are close to and care about are so much more hurtful than the worst things we’ll ever do to a stranger. Am I the only one who thinks this is madness?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I have never behaved that way – I have. It seems like the more we feel the person is committed to the relationship, the more crap we will give them, and the more we are committed to the relationship, the more crap we will tolerate. It’s as if we know that the person won’t leave, so we take advantage of that. Talk about a sure way to poison the relationship!

Has anyone else noticed that pattern? Your thoughts?

Until Monday,

V

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Posted in Psychology, Relationships | 1 Comment »

Soulmates

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

Ah, the idea of a soulmate – that one person in the world that supposedly completes you. Hollywood did really well with implanting that idea in the general population. I think that the entire concept is nonsense for two main reasons.

First, is that idea of “You complete me!”. I don’t know about you, but I have no reason to look at myself as a half-person that needs another human being in order to be ‘complete’. I think I am perfectly complete on my own and would only entertain a relationship with a person who is also complete on her own. In fact, I think the whole idea of needing someone else to ‘complete’ you is a big factor in dysfunctional relationships – people build their identity around their relationship and when the relationship goes, so does their identity. I think that when people are in pieces for 6 months after a break-up, that is the reason why. I’ve been fortunate enough to go through break-ups on both sides – the relationships that I have built my identity around, and the ones that I haven’t. The post-relationship recovery period is very different in both cases – trust me!

The second reason why I don’t vibe with the idea of soulmates, is because it implies that there is only one person out there for you. Relationship psychologists observe that when two people are in love, they think that their love is pure and that no one else understands how they feel. The trouble is, pretty much every couple feels that way. It is something that we create in our mind, rather than something that is actually based on facts. Again, Hollywood does not help here either. Psychologists also say that there are actually quite a few people out there who any given person is compatible with and can have a good relationship with. Now that makes sense to me.

I’m sorry (well, not really) if this sticks a pin into your romantic balloon, but I think reality is much more liberating than a made-up warm and fuzzy concept.

Until next time,

V

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Posted in Relationships | 1 Comment »

Applying Your Knowledge

Friday, March 12th, 2010

The blog posts from the last couple of days hopefully showed you that knowledge is abundant and available to anyone who wants to get it. That was the case in the past as well, except that prior to the wide availability of the Internet, it may have cost you a whole bunch of cash. Today, a lot of knowledge is freely available at your fingertips and the only commitment you need to acquire it is some time.

But knowledge, as I wrote about before, is only potential power, and it is the application of knowledge that gets you the results you seek. One of the applications of knowledge is the sharing of what you know with others for a fee, however that can become more tricky as someone can just as easily find that same information if they just commit some time. That being said, there is one main advantage that you have even if you are just re-distributing knowledge, and that is people being lazy and not willing to do the work themselves.

The safer approach is to put your own twist on what you know by innovating with your mind to present that knowledge in a way that is unique to you and to you alone. That is the more tricky part, but at the same time it is also the strategy that will keep you in a league of your own, since no one can be better than you at being you.

Until Monday,

V

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Analyzing And Re-Programming The Subconscious Mind

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Earlier I talked about the majority of our thoughts being subconscious. And although we can attract more experiences into our lives through the power of trained conscious thought, at the end of the day, conscious thoughts are vastly outnumbered by the subconscious thoughts. This is precisely why I think that analyzing our subconscious programming and re-working it is so vital.

This, of itself, is a monstrous topic that has whole books written about it, so I will not be able to go into a lot of detail in this post. I will direct your attention to one area of your life, and that is your childhood, which is the time where most subconscious programming takes place as your mind is wide open. To get a better understanding of what kind of subconscious programming you have about a given subject, like money or relationships, try to remember the things you have heard, seen, and experienced in relation to that very topic when you were a child.

You may think that you have a positive outlook on intimate relationships, but if you saw your parents fight all the time and saw people getting divorced, that is what you have stored in your subconscious, and that is what you are very likely to bring into your own experience as well. You may think that your attitude towards money is supportive of your goals, but if you have heard as a child things like ‘money is a root of all evil’, ‘we can’t afford that’, and ‘rich people are crooks’, then you will have very hard time achieving financial abundance in your life.

So think about your childhood and that should shed some light on your subconscious mind.

Until Monday,

V

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