Know Who You Are

The hard truth

If your parents abused you as a child, that doesn't mean you will abuse your own children. Yet there's plenty of evidence to indicate that you will tend to live out that same script. The hard truth of the matter is that unless one has spent effective time in understanding themselves, a very large portion of who they are and how others perceive them is not understood to them.

When we are young with a fragile mind and heart ready to be influenced and molded, a large part of how we view the world is influenced by how our parents see the world.

Let me share a story with you, and in doing so I hope to highlight the message I want to convey with this blog.

My parents placed a very high value towards education. If I got low grades - I was punished. What I did not understand at the time was that; the real message being communicated to me was that my value, my self-worth was a function of how well I did in school. Thankfully I was motivated, I did well in school and my self-worth got reassured. I was born and raised with the illusion that my worth was a function of my academic success and once I grew older and friends began to take a bigger influence in my life, this illusion changed and my worth was now a function of my belongingness and acceptance among friends and a significant other. Therefore my grades fluctuated with whatever my social group was. Only until recently I realized my self worth was not a function of anything outside; rather a function of how much value I place on myself as a person.

This realization was only made because I took the time to critically look back and examine how I was raised and what influences made me view things the way I did.

My hopes with this blog is to help you understand some of the scripts in your life and how to realign your basic scripts with ones in harmony with timeless truths such as honesty and the golden rule.

What is a script?

A script is the way we "see" the world - not in terms of our visual sense, but in terms of perceiving, understanding and interpreting.

• If we are treated with more love over siblings for receiving better grades, a script handed to us is that love is earned, it is conditional. This leads into developing the scarcity mentality; where you think life is a big pie, if someone else gets a piece then there is less for you. These people find it very hard to give complements or be happy for other peoples success, as they feel it takes something away from themselves. This develops into a win/lose mentality which shapes their daily interactions. 
• If we choose to cheat on evaluations, we can successfully defeat the system - but we cannot defeat the natural consequence of not learning the material. We can get by in interviews by learning just the right things, but we cannot get by the job without knowing the skills we potentially lied about knowing. We can successfully manipulate people with deception on the degree of the relationship, but we cannot take back the time we lost in interacting with these individuals. You can cheat humans, you cannot cheat nature.
  Many people are consumed with scripts that have temporary satisfactions or easy way outs, they lack the understanding and foresight to see the natural consequences that will damage their character in the long run.

Can we now see how easy it is to view life in an disillusioned way due to something stemming from when you were a child, teenager or young adult? This is the case for so many of us, and the older we get, the more stubborn in our ways we get and the more difficult it is to change.

Scripts are very often by default. When we are young, we simply don't have the mental capacity to examine our scripts. Unfortunately for some of us, some of the scripts handed to us are so far off from reality that they lack the possibility of realizing that evaluating these scripts is a vital part of effective living.

Your life will be an emotional roller coaster that goes up and down with financial freedom, relationship status, social recognition among many other things if you don't understand where your value comes from, or where your happiness comes from.

Scripts in our lives

Now scripts can often times be the center of our lives. For example, due to heavy scripting in education, a significant portion of my day was allocated towards studying and maintaining good grades. There are 5 centers a persons life can revolve around. Also note that you can be a combination of several centers.

These 5 centers are:

1. Spouse-centered
   A partner can be the most intimate, most satisfying and growth-producing of human relationships, it may seem natural to be centered on one's partner. However this leads to emotional dependence as our sense of emotional worth comes primarily from our partner. We become highly dependent on that relationship.
2. Money-centered
   "We need to eat to live, but we don't live to eat". Although money is a necessity, to think ones life centers around money is flawed. 
3. Pleasure-centered
   We live in a world where instant gratification is available and encouraged. Television, credit cards, increasing drug use. Innocent pleasures in moderation can provide relaxation for the body and mind and foster healthy relationships, but pleasure offers no deep, lasting satisfaction or sense of fulfillment.
4. Church-centered
   Churchgoing is not synonymous with personal spirituality. There are some people who get so busy in church worship and projects that they become insensitive to the pressing human needs that surround them, contradicting the very precepts they profess to believe deeply. 
5. Self-centered
   Perhaps the most common center today is the self. The most obvious form is selfishness, which violates the values of most people. But if we look closely at many of the popular approaches to growth and self-fulfillment, we often find self-centering at their core.

Limitations of each center
Before we talk about the limitations of each center, we first must describe what we are limiting.
I claim that the what we are limiting is our source of security, guidance and wisdom.

• Security represents your sense of worth, your identity, your emotional anchorage, your self-esteem, your basic personal strength or lack of it.
• Guidance means your source of direction in life. Encompassed by your map, your internal frame of reference that interprets for you what is happening out there, are the standards or principles or implicit criteria that govern moment by moment decision-making and doing.
• Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension.

Now here are the limitations of each center.

1. Spouse-centered
   Your security is based upon the treatment from your spouse, your guidance and wisdom to think and act is limited by the perceptions from your spouse.
2. Money-centered
   When personal worth comes from net worth, your security fluctuates with your financial situation. You become defensive and protective to threats to any assets you may possess. Your guidance and wisdom are limited to what increases your net worth.
3. Pleasure-centered
   The pleasure-centered person, too soon bored with each succeeding level of "fun", constantly cries for more and more, a bigger and better "high'. The course of least resistance is addictive but rots the individual. It ensures that a person's capacities stay dormant, the mind and spirit become lethargic and the heart is unfulfilled. 
4. Church-centered
   Because the church is a formal organization, it cannot by itself give a person any deep, permanent security or sense of intrinsic worth. Living the principles taught by the church can do this, but not the organization alone. Seeing the church as an end rather than as a means to an end undermines a person's wisdom and sense of balance.
5. Self-centered
   There is little security, guidance or wisdom in the limited center of self. I believe the majority of people reading this are self-centered. Do you listen with the intent to reply, or with the intent to understand? Do you get frustrated with disagreement?
   If you are developing your response while listening, or get frustrated with disagreement - then to a certain degree, you think you are objective; which is the biggest long term flaw in self-centered people.
   Understand that people see the world not as it is, but as they are. We are subjective, not objective. Ironically, due to this objectivity - it is very hard to be influential. Unless you're influenced by my uniqueness, I'm not going to be influenced by your advice. It is very difficult to be influenced when you deem yourself as objective; therefore a self-centered person listens with the intent to reply.

Too much of any center can lead to negative long term outcomes on the way you see the world, in other words - too much bias from one type of script. I believe if we honestly ask ourselves, we can internally identify which scripts are hurting us.

Now there is good to come from all this. Not all influences are bad, people are naturally good therefore we have picked up good qualities too.

The flip side

Identifying the good in people is very easy. All you need to do is ask yourself the question "why was this person in my life?" or "what did I enjoy about this person?".
Answers to these questions will reveal positive qualities that you may have adopted but never knew.

By design or default

Now after recognizing all these different authors of our scripts, we must accept the powerful fact that we can choose to write our own scripts, or rewrite ones given to us. I call this by design or default. One can choose to write their own destiny, or blame others for their behaviours and shortcomings. We can choose to pass on the script of child abuse, or we can examine the scripts handed to us, realize this one is not in harmony with effective living and rewrite it.

This process of identifying flawed scripts and rewriting them along with creating new ones sounds daunting but actually is very simple. Inside all of us, if we search deep enough are timeless truths, principles of good living that make sense. The outside influences of life often cloud these truths, but I assure each and every one of you, they are there.

Below I will identify several principle centered scripts that I'm confident if you look within yourself, you will agree this is in harmony with effective living.

Principle centered scripts

These principles govern human growth and happiness. Natural laws that are woven into the fabric of every civilized society throughout history and comprise the roots of prospering families and institutions. Principles I believe exist in all humans, regardless of social conditioning and loyalty to them, even though they might be submerged or numbed by such conditions or disloyalty.

• I am referring to principles of integrity and honesty, the foundation of trust which is essential to cooperation and long-term personal and interpersonal growth. 
• The principle of fairness, out of which the concept of equity and justice is developed.
• The principles of service, quality and excellence, the idea of making a meaningful contribution.
• The principles of growth, patience, nurturance and encouragement, releasing the potential and developing talents of other humans.

Principles are not practices. A practice is a specific activity or action. A practice that works in one circumstance will not necessarily work in another. Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value. They're essentially unarguable because they are self-evident. To easily understand this self-evident nature, simply observe a life based on the opposites. I doubt anyone would consider deception, unfairness, uselessness, mediocrity or degeneration to be a solid foundation for lasting happiness and success. 

I believe that if we filter the scripts handed to us for the positive ones and rewrite the negative ones along with creating new ones where balance is required; if we manage to do this in harmony with what makes us happy, I am confident we will have a solid understanding of who we are.

A lot of what was mentioned here is taken from the book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". A great read for anyone looking for self-improvement.