NEWSFLASH: What You Don’t Know IS Hurting You!
I remember reading about an interesting story (well to me at least because of its implications) where there was this girl who when watching her mother cook, noticed that right before she would put a chicken she was about to bake into the oven, she’d cut off the ends of the legs. One day, after seeing her mother do this so many times, curiosity got the best of her and she asked her mother why she cut the ends of the chicken legs off before she put the chicken into the oven, and her mother, after thinking for a bit, responded that she didn’t know, that she learned it from watching her mother, who did the same thing.
The mother, having never questioned her own behaviour pertaining to baking a chicken, called her own mother and asked her why she cut the ends off the chicken legs, and her mother answered that she did it because it was the only way she could get the chicken to fit into the pan.
Hmmm……so what makes this story so “interesting?”
Well the mother cutting off the edge of the legs off the chicken before putting it in the oven without knowing why she did it, or without even being aware that she was even doing it, is the perfect example of how many of us walk through life in the same, exact manner, blindly and unconsciously exhibiting behaviours, actions and habits that in one way or another affect the course of our lives. That may not be bad in and of itself, but what if some of these behaviours, actions and habits don’t serve us or get in the way of our success, peace and happiness?
Like with the case of the mother, the behaviours and actions we engage in were picked up from watching someone else, maybe a friend, a parent, a sibling or a family member, and when we chose to adopt this behaviour, we were probably too young, too immature or just too unaware to ask ourselves if this behaviour or action that we were about to adopt was ultimately the best for us. On top of that, we start to engage in such behaviour on a regular basis so that sooner or later it becomes a habit such that we never even stop to question this behaviour because we assume it’s just a natural part of who we are.
To add even more to that, because we assume that many of our behaviour are a natural part of who we are because we’ve been doing them for so long, most of the time we’re not even aware enough to notice ourselves doing them!
If we can’t even notice ourselves doing these things, how can we even begin to see which actions and behaviour we’re engaging in that’s giving us the same crappy results in particular areas of our lives in order that we can change these behaviours to produce the results we do want?
This is The Illusion we’ve been living in.
Most of the time, we’re so bewildered as to why we have the crappy results we have in the different areas of our lives because we never even think to look at ourselves so we wind up blaming it on external circumstances such as “bad luck.”
Many of us have been privy to a whole litany of dysfunctional behaviour from bullying others weaker than us, to putting ourselves down, to judging others negatively due to their ethnicity or race, to seeing fathers physically abuse mothers, to seeing mothers stay in physically abusive relationships, to lying, to stealing, to violent outbursts of anger, to being stingy with money, to selfishness, to laziness, etc, etc.
You name the dysfunctional behaviour, we’ve probably witnessed it and adopted it unconsciously without even questioning how it would affect our lives in the future. Yet, years later, we ALL exhibit some action or behaviour that’s sabotaging our success and happiness and causing us to get the same miserable results over and over again in the areas of love, finances, career, relationships, fitness, health, etc, etc or causing us to reach hurdles that we can’t seem to get over in these same areas e.g. only being able to make a certain amount of money but never over, not being able to have a lasting relationship, lucrative business deals falling apart in the last minute, not being able to develop beyond a certain point in your career or craft, not being able to consistently keep off the weight you lose, etc.
Also, if you noticed in the story, the grandmother said that she cut the ends of the legs of the chicken off because the pans were too small, but who’s to say that just because they didn’t make pans big enough to fit a chicken during the grandmother’s time, that during the mother’s time that there weren’t pans available in stores that would be big enough to fit a whole chicken so you didn’t have to cut the ends of the legs off?
As such, many of us, just like the mother in the story, adopt behaviours that may have worked for a particular person or were convenient for a particular time or a particular situation, but may not be good for us individually, or for the situation we find ourselves in, or at the current time we’re a part of. For instance, as kids, we may have witnessed one of our siblings get his or her way as a result of throwing a temper tantrum, so we decide to adopt that behaviour because we assume that tantrums are the way to get things we want. That may bring the results we want when we’re 3 years old, but try throwing that same temper tantrum 20, 25 or 30 years later and see what that gets you.
Haha…..I thought so.
In the same token, I’ve heard stories of people who were raised during the Great Depression that witnessed their parents constantly having to hoard food and be tight with money because there was so little to go around back then. Such behaviour may have been appropriate then, but many people were engaging in that same behaviour that they picked up from their parents years later as adults without being aware of it and passing those attitudes onto their kids. Thus, you had people still harbouring a Great Depression mentality in an economic time of “plenty.”
Such people because they had such a scarcity mentality, undoubtedly had problems attracting or maintaining true success in their lives.
If we want to be the best we can be and live the best possible lives, then it’s time that we take stock of our habitual actions and behaviours and ask ourselves whether they’re serving us or not, and whether they may be getting in the way of what we want.
It’s amazing that from being in therapy for the last six months, all the stuff I’ve uncovered about myself that had been getting in the way of my success financially, in relationships, and in terms of pursing my dreams. I had absolutely NO idea of the behaviours I had adopted from childhood that had been sabotaging my success and keeping me constantly struggling.
There’d be times I’d take a look in disbelief and say to myself, “My goodness, I had no EFFIN’ chance whatsoever!”
There’s a phrase that says, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.”
I beg to differ.
Uncover what’s hurting you NOW so you can begin to change your life for the better.
This is The Viable Alternative.
Hope this helps,
Ike Love
