Do you think you have free will?

If you do, then why are you eating that cookie when you know you shouldn’t? Why are you staying in an unhappy marriage, enduring a boring job, tolerating a toxic friendship? Why do you continue to scream at your children in spite of promising yourself that you will stop?

Unlike most philosophers and theologians, the question for me cannot be reduced to the duality of “yes, we can choose freely,” or “no, everything is predetermined.” As a psychotherapist, I have discovered that it’s a matter of degrees. Your capacity for free will depends on how aware you are at any given moment.

In order to act with free will you need to first be aware of all options that are available to you, then choose consciously from those options. But most of our day-to-day reactions are exactly that — reactions. If we feel angry, we yell or withdraw; when we feel hungry, we reach for food; when we feel lazy, we plotz in front of the TV or computer.

Does this mean we don’t have free will?

Let’s examine what happens when you are in conflict with your spouse or lover. If you are like most people, you will immediately feel threatened and react in a way that you typically handle conflict. You may scream, sulk angrily, or you might simply try to appease and smooth things over. Any of these reactions will probably not serve you. After you calm down you may wish you handled it differently.

Had you been able to stop your knee jerk reaction, examine other possible behaviors, evaluate the consequences of each, you may have still chosen to respond angrily but it would be after consideration. You might have chosen an empathetic response by seeing things from your partner’s perspective, or a practical response by giving in because the issue is not that important to you.

You can apply this to any situation in your life and ask yourself, “Am I choosing my response freely right now or am I reacting automatically?” Do you really want to eat that cookie or listen to your friend’s negativity?

We generally live with a sense that we know what we are doing and think we understand why. For most people, this is a false belief, stemming from our illusions.

Why are we so unaware?

The answer lies in the early habits that were ingrained in our brains and became part of our automated behaviors before we had any say in the matter. These behaviors are now second nature to us, and repeatedly surface in various situations without our consciously choosing them.

If you want to develop free will, your first step is to recognize and accept how often you operate with little or no awareness. Then you need to choose whether you want to do something about it. If you do, then you need to know what you are up against: deeply ingrained habits of reactivity that will not be easy to catch and change. Once you choose to take on this challenge, you need to follow these steps:

1. Identify a specific behavior you want to change

2. Truly get what it costs you in terms of health, self esteem, happiness

3. Choose to want to change it

4. Come up with a plan

5. Commit to the plan and create support systems to help you succeed

6. Give yourself a break if you fall off the plan

7. Recommit and get back on the plan

8. Recommit and get back on the plan without making yourself wrong

9. Recommit and don’t give up no matter how many times you fall off

You can have free will if you know what it takes to achieve it and are committed to working towards it with compassion and patience.

So next time you sweat the small stuff, or even the big stuff, remind yourself that ultimately nothing is all that significant.  We humans come and go, generation after the generation.  Right now it is your turn to be here, but before you know it – you shall pass as well.

Now, how do you want to experience your life – hurt, anxious, frustrated, angry, contracted and small, or forgiving, open minded and hearted, flowing, creative and expanded.

You can choose to be a drop that creates a great ripple – it will not only enrich your life but will make a difference in the world.

Children, like most of us, don’t like to be lectured. When a child does something “wrong,” the last thing he wants is to hear his parents’ authoritative voice rambling about his mistake. Children will naturally shut out their parents when they are lecturing to them. A child will respond positively to their parents when the parents demonstrate a true desire to hear the child. One of the most important things we can give our children is our listening.

II. Inspiring vs. Imposing

Parents typically tell their child what to do, often without making it relevant to her life or helping her understand how what they are asking will be beneficial to her. When a child is inspired rather than ordered, she is likely to make whatever task her own and will put more of herself into it. When owning the task, be it school work, a chore or exercise, her level of commitment to the success of the task will increase dramatically if she is doing it for herself.

III. Individuality vs. Conforming

Each child comes into this world with his own unique attributes, talents and temperament. Discovering who your child is can be one of the most rewarding experiences for the parent and the child. Often parents compare their child to their siblings, their peers or even to each other. These comparisons invalidate the child’s uniqueness, causing you and him to not be in touch with his strengths and weakness in a way that can be addressed properly. This is one of the most detrimental deficits present in parenting behavior. The impact generally is one where the child becomes insecure and disconnected from who he is.

IV. Understanding vs. Judging

Due to parents’ lack of understanding of their child’s emotional needs, they tend to criticize and judge a child’s behavior, unaware that unconsciously there is a valid reason for it. Whether the behavior is one of disrespect, anger, playing too much video games, being promiscuous, etc. parents react with anger and criticism rather than looking for the underlying reason for these behaviors. Children do not act out in self destructive ways for no apparent reasons.

V. Exploring vs. Suppressing

Parents need to learn how to help their child get in touch with her underlying feelings. When parents recognize that there is an underlying unconscious motivation for their child’s destructive behavior and come to the child with patience and understanding, the child will not feel the need to suppress her feelings. This provides the child with a safe environment to explore her feelings with her parents. This is one of the most important tools parents need to develop and implement. Helping their child learn how to understand what is going on emotionally for her, and how those emotions affect her actions, will serve her for the rest of her life. Most of our actions arise from unconscious feelings and usually do not serve us. Learning how to become more aware and conscious of what makes us act the way we do, provides us with the opportunity to choose consciously our actions rather than be controlled by our unconsciousness.

VI. Accepting vs. Denying

One of the primary defense mechanisms used by both adults and children is denial. When we don’t like something, we pretend it doesn’t exist. Parents experience difficulties in seeing things they don’t like in their child. They will rationalize and justify their child’s behavior, or judge and criticize it in a way that dismisses what’s there. We all have qualities we don’t like. The way to rid ourselves of them or to minimize their impact is not by denying them, but by accepting them. The adage that an alcoholic cannot get better until he recognizes and accepts that he is an alcoholic is valid for all uncomfortable behaviors. Helping parents see and accept their child’s limitation will afford them the power to respond constructively toward the child’s behavior. Here the essential point is that parents don’t define their child by his limitations, but see the child as a whole. None of us is perfect and that is perfect. Helping the child see that he is alright even if he has some limitations, will give him the confidence and courage to work through his limitations effectively.

VII. Authenticity vs. Manipulative

Because children feel powerless and controlled by their parents and their environment, when they will eat, sleep, play, go to school, etc., they resort to manipulation and lies to get what they want. This is a natural reaction in all children and need to be understood as such. Parents can become angry and sometimes rageful at their child’s manipulative or lying behaviors. Understanding that this behavior is a byproduct of the powerlessness and control issues all children face, will alleviate some of the parents’ frustrations around this. Parents can help their child deal with her sense of powerlessness and guide her toward authentic communication by positively reinforcing authenticity.

VIII. Independency vs. Dependency

The human species is the only species that continues to infantilize their young into adulthood. The primary responsibility all parents have is to grow an independent, self sufficient adult. Very often, usually for their own egoic reasons, parents act in ways which do not promote their child’s independence.

IX. Teaching Cause and Effect vs. Protective

A child needs to learn responsibilities, accountability, accepting consequences for his actions and the need for him to see himself in the context of a whole. Children are naturally egocentric and narcissistic. Parents do not help the child by protecting him from life’s challenges. Life IS, and children need to learn how to accept reality. Parents must allow their child to experience pain, disappointment, anger, injustice, etc. so that he is better capable of dealing with life as an adult.

X. Order vs. Chaos

We live in a very turbulent world, with tons of images, ideas, products and such bombarding our senses. Parents need to protect their child from this onslaught of data. This includes, monitoring her television watching, amount of time she spends playing video games or on the computer, the number of extracurricular activity in which she is involved, consumerism mentality and other corrupted values, etc. Children need structure and limited stimuli. Their brains are developing and it is critical for them to have some order and quiet time.

XI. Love vs. Fear

While we all know what love is, we don’t know how to express it in a way that a child feels it unconditionally. This is due to the fact that most of us have never experienced unconditional love from our parents – not because they didn’t love us, but because they didn’t know how to show it. When love is not present, fear is; fear of rejection, abandonment or neglect. Parents need to learn how to communicate their unconditional love in a way that will allow them to set limits and structure for their children, discipline them appropriately, and provide them with the tools to be emotionally healthy, productive and successful adults, while all along creating a safe and loving environment for their children.

Because a child’s well-being is dependent on his parents, when the parent expresses displeasure or anger the child becomes fearful that the parent will now leave him -  abandon him – which terrifies him. This fear of rejection or abandonment leads the child to modify his behavior, his opinion or his point of view, in order to avoid disapproval, not because he understands the error of his behavior.

A young child’s psyche desperately needs approval. Disapproval unconsciously but viscerally activates his fight/flight or freeze response, triggered by his terror of being alone, which is connected to his survival mechanism.  From very early on, our egos, our identities, the “I,”  believe we have to be good, we have to please our parents so that we’re taken care of.  If we don’t they may leave us, and if they leave us we will die.

This is not a conscious process; the child doesn’t sit there and think, “my parents are going to leave me now, I’m going to be all alone, I’m going to die” – it’s an emotional reaction of threat. It’s psychological threat, but the body doesn’t know it’s psychological threat: it perceives it as life-and-death threat.

Being good, looking good becomes directly linked to survival. Seeking approval now becomes one of the major driving forces in the individual’s life.

You may ask how on earth am I supposed to discipline my child and teach him the difference between right and wrong without expressing disapproval?  Children need discipline and socialization, but from a caring and patient space.  They don’t know better and they need to be guided and taught.  The challenge here is to correct or teach the child without being reactive.  Children don’t need to hear and feel our anger, our displeasure, when all they are doing is being children.  They need our guidance and support as they make mistakes and learn through the consequences we set up for them.

The reason is that nobody teaches us how to relate to money. Instead, we learn about it by observing and unconsciously modeling our parents. Without explicit instruction and discussion there is no conscious understanding, only unconscious imprinting in our brains. Our behaviors around money become linked to survival and driven by our emotional (reactive) selves, not our conscious, creative selves.

This explains why some people can be really stingy when they don’t need to be; and why some people spend when they don’t have the money.

To better understand your relationship to money, take a look at where your patterns came from. You can start by looking at your parents’ behaviors surrounding money. Were they people who hoarded money, always saving, never spending? Did they avoid the subject altogether, procrastinating on bills and not balancing their checkbooks? Did they look down on the idea of earning a lot of money, feeling virtuous about working hard for little financial reward? Or were they constantly living beyond their means, running up debts?

Now ask yourself how this compares to your attitudes and behaviors toward money? It doesn’t mean that you will have the same relationship they did, it could be the total opposite. But in either case, the same or opposite, your relationship to money came from your identifying with them or rebelling against them.

Once you understand what your patterns and behaviors are you can begin to intercept your emotional reactions and develop more constructive and objective responses to your day to day relationship with money. If you have a tendency to spend more than you have, then you would need to exercise discipline and learn how to control your spending. If you tend to hoard then you will need to begin to splurge a little. You will also need to watch out for your tendency to avoid dealing with the issue, e.g. thinking about it, paying bills on time, learning how to manage it, etc.

Rewiring your relationship to money requires the same kind of commitment and drive as it takes rewiring any challenging issue in your life. You have to first understand the counterproductive role money plays in your life. You then have to want to create a new, healthier relationship to money. Finally you have to commit and follow through with the above suggestions.

Money is a great tool when you are the master of it. It is a horrible master if you allow it to control you.

It is generally difficult to get to the bottom of this kind of conflict because the surface issue you are arguing about is not the real issue.  You may have been talking about a situation at work, or relating a story about a friend, but your attitude or your tone triggered some emotional threat in your partner that set off the argument.  You two are fighting over the details of the conversation, but the upset has nothing to do with it.  The underlying trigger does not get addressed, leaving both of you feeling hurt and angry.

Clearly I am describing an unconscious process which may leave people thinking: “well how on earth are we supposed to uncover the real issue?” First let’s clear up where these triggers come from.  Most triggers developed, yep you know it by now, in childhood. (Are you beginning to see why parents need a how-to book?)

Our brains have an extraordinary capacity to lock emotional memories in our bodies when we are young and release them when a later  situation seems similar to the original event.  These memories usually revolve around feeling rejected or unloved in some way.  When the trigger sets of the emotional memory, it literally brings us back to the original feeling and the child’s mind that perceived it.  Now you are in an argument with an adult  in an adult body but you are really feeling like a wounded child fighting from that perspective, not from what is actually occurring in that moment.  No wonder it is almost impossible to resolve.

So what is a couple to do?  They need to learn to identify when they are dealing with a real issue and when they are dealing with a trigger.  A triggered emotional reaction is always disproportional to the situation.  When you find yourself in an argument that seems out of proportion to the issue, one of you needs to stop and ask the question “what are we really arguing about?”  If you are able to intercept the trigger and get to the bottom of what is really behind the argument, you will not only resolve the conflict, but over time rewire that trigger.

I used a couple to illustrate the point, but triggers can also be set off by our bosses, friends, children or parents.

We all have things about ourselves we would love to change. You may want to be more organized, more patient, more courageous, more easy going, more disciplined with your eating, shopping, exercise, the list goes on and on. You probably have told yourself a hundred times: “tonight I am going to organize my paperwork; I am not going to get angry with the kids today; I will get up tomorrow and exercise,” only to find yourself back to square one.

Here is a way that can help you put your intentions into practice:

Let’s begin with facts you need to know to maximize your success:
1. Our brains are wired to conserve energy, which is why change requires great effort.
2. Because it takes great effort to change, you need to be highly committed and focused.
3. Because most of us have many areas in our lives we wish to transform, it’s best to choose 1 and stick with it until you succeed before you start on the next one. Choose the one that bothers you and/or costs you the most.

Transformation Formula:
T = becoming aware of (-X) + intercepting it + replacing it with (+X) repeated/time

Once you identify the behavior you want to transform, write down all the ways in which the behavior (-X) hurts your life and how the new behavior (+X) can improve your life; e.g. I want to pay my bills on time. When I don’t pay them on time, I am constantly walking around with a heavy feeling, which drains me. Sometimes it costs me more because I have to pay a late fee. If I paid them on time I would feel more energetic and positive about myself.

Remember AWARENESS is the Key! Now you need to look for the behavior in your daily life. Take the example above: You get a bill and you put it in your pay bill pile. You give yourself a time by which you want to pay for it. Most likely your current pattern of avoiding it will take over and you will miss the date you were supposed to pay. A part of you will begin to nag you to make the payment. This is where awareness is critical. You want to catch this part of you, at that moment, intercept it and replace it with the desired behavior: pay your bill now! If you keep catching yourself and changing your behavior consistently, over time you will drop your avoidance behavior and replace it with paying your bills on time.

Be patient with yourself and if you fall off the wagon just start again. The only way you can fail is by quitting.

The science behind this formula
As mentioned above, our brains are wired to conserve energy. They accomplish this by automating our everyday feelings, thoughts and actions through establishing fixed neural pathways (quick ways to communicate with each other). These pathways were ingrained in us when we were very young and have become second nature to us. (Now you probably wish you listened to your parents when they tried to instill good habits in you). If we want to change our thoughts, feelings or actions we need to override the old neural pathways by creating new ones. That requires a greater amount of energy on the part of your brain, which is not particularly interested in cooperating with your objective, hence the challenge. Fortunately, your brain is capable of changing its structures and functions. If you know what you are up against – a lazy brain that likes to conserve energy – and you consistently intercept its fixed neural pathways and force it to create new ones with a new behavior, then within a few weeks your brain will create a new preferred pathway- your desired feeling or behavior.

So as the saying goes, “There is nothing you can’t do if you put your mind to it.” This Formula for Transformation shows you the way.

There is one catch though, the only way they can work together is if there is a conscious being inside of you that understands why this integration is important and fiercely wants it.   Unless that part of you awakens to this hunger and decides to pursue it as if your life depends on it, the odds are this integration will not occur.  You may think, “How dramatic!”  and OK, your life may not literally depend on it, but the quality of your life does.  Actually, Socrates would say your life does depend on it because when you are not living consciously you are not living your life.  You are living the life you were programmed to live by your parents and your society, but it is not what you would have chosen for yourself if you could.

I would like for you to stop for a moment now and just ask yourself how would you have programmed yourself if you were completely in charge.  I am not referring to your looks; I am referring to your skills, talents, attributes, values — your essence.

Whatever you imagine for yourself is within your reach if you choose. You have the capacity to rewire any and all behaviors you wish to. What is required is awareness when it occurs interception of it and replacing it with your desired behavior. In my next blog I will give you the exact formula for transforming any behavior you wish.

It begins with awareness – Awareness is the key!

Time is all you have!

What you do with it and how you spend it is your choice, but all you have is time!  You may have 80 years as I mentioned in the last blog post, that’s 42,048,000 minutes, or you may have a day, 14,400 minutes. We don’t really know.  What we do know is that we can spend it consciously or waste it unconsciously.  The choice is yours.

When we say we don’t have time, we are not choosing consciously.  Of course there are more things to do than there is time to experience them all.  But that is not what you mean when you say I don’t have time.  What we generally mean is, I have too much on my plate and I am not able to do everything I want. Just as often we mean, I am going to use this as an excuse to not do something I don’t want to do, since we tend to avoid doing things we don’t like doing.

More often than not, it is a reflection of how you are choosing to live your life.  Your life on this planet is your time on this planet.  Using this time in a way that brings you satisfaction, fulfillment, joy, adventure, play, growth and peace requires intentionality and creativity.  It is about taking ownership of your life – YOUR TIME!

So often I see people, from all walks of life, live as if something from outside of them is driving them.  The pressure to achieve the ‘next thing’ overtakes their ability to choose to what they really want to do or experience in their day to day life.  They often forget they have a choice, that they are the creators of their lives.

This way of being has been programmed into our minds when our parents schlepped us from one thing to another, often making us do things we didn’t wan to do.  (are we doing this to our children now?) Our minds learned that we are not in charge of our lives and we learned to do what we were told.  As grownups, many just continue to feel this pressure from outside of themselves and follow the external dictates: you have to go to college; you should be a doctor; buy a house; wear this fashionable outfit; enroll your kids in a million activities.  You get the picture.

Although it often feels like it, you are not a child anymore.  You are in charge of your life and you can choose how you want to experience your time.  You can do it!!

Whose life is it anyway?

Now that may seem like a lot of moments, but how many of them do you truly experience in your day?  When you eat, do you smell, taste and be with the food?  When you take a shower, do you feel the water caressing your body?  When you are driving, are you present to the scenery around you, even if you took Oprah’s pledge and are not speaking on the phone? When you are with your child, do you really hear her; her thoughts and heart?

It is very difficult for us to remain in the Now.  Even with all the knowledge and experience we have of how valuable staying in the Now can be, we often find ourselves back on automatic pilot.

Why is that?

1. We are creatures of habit:

Our brains are wired to automate our moment to moment routine behaviors, freeing  up the “thinking” parts of our brain for more creative purposes.  Our baseline is to react in our day to day lives with preexisting habitual behaviors.

2. Generally we live in our heads, not in our bodies:

a. We are uncomfortable feeling our emotions so we escape by going to our heads.

b. We are wired to keep ourselves safe by anticipating problems and trying to solve them in advance.  This causes our minds to worry or obsess about the future.  While we are busy worrying about some future event, our present moment with all it may have to offer us, is passing us by.

What can you do?

1. You can rewire your brain and release your worries by stopping whatever you are doing several times a day, take a deep breath and declare, ” I am here right now.”

2. Then ask yourself, “What am I feeling right now?”

This will bring you back into your body and out of your head.  We can become more comfortable being in our bodies by becoming more comfortable with experiencing our emotions. The more we experience our emotions, the more we can understand what is going on with us and come to see them as merely passing clouds.

The more time you spend in your body, the more you feel life and the moment.