Mike Bolan
ON THE frequent occasions when there’s a story of some DHHS debacle that ends in tragedy, the Minister is trotted out to say something like “we can’t be responsible for every family and person…” followed by “our department has done the best that it can…”
In saying these things, it is clear that the Minister is advocating the position of the bureaucracy, rather than doing her job and fighting for superior community service.
What the Minister does not say is “We accept responsibility for this and we will strive to find ways to make sure these things do not happen again.”
These are the too frequent examples of a Minister, paid by the taxpayers to represent them, who has chosen to represent the public service instead.
In choosing this class of approach, our ‘representatives’ themselves become mouthpieces for the public services, rather than advocates for taxpayer services and outcomes. This represents a complete corruption of the democratic process, and is virtually guaranteed to facilitate service degradation and voter dissatisfaction. We surely don’t need yet another layer of management that argues for the needs of the bureaucracy.
While it may be tempting to deny all responsibility for such things (a temptation that seems irresistible to the Lennon government) in doing so we also deny ourselves any power to influence the situation. “There’s nothing we can do….therefore we’ll do nothing.”
Responsibility
The same is true for each of us. When we remove ourselves from responsibility, we remove from ourselves the ability to take useful action. If we have no responsibility for climate change, then there’s nothing we can do to influence it. If we’re not responsible for our kids then they’ll grow up with little help from us. If we’re not responsible for the state of our government, again there’s nothing we can do. Denying responsibility neatly denies us a useful role in the development of our society.
Many people do not realise that accepting responsibility empowers us. They seem to see it as a potential threat, as if being responsible is perforce a bad thing.
Why do we do it? One cause is dysfunctional learning from an early age. We learn falsely from others that our emotions and internal state are controlled by outside factors. “These politicians are making me angry”. “I hate this traffic”. “This weather really annoys me.”
Most people in our society say these things, and apparently they mean them. From the time they get up, to the time they go to bed, their emotions are constantly being re-arranged by external factors over which they have no, or very little, control.
Because the human brain learns by association, we can easily associate our internal overall state (our emotional matrix) with external factors. Stack enough of them together and we’re soon having a dreadful day for no other reason than external stimuli to which we have learned to respond negatively.
Apart from feelings of powerlessness, another result of denial of responsibility is depression.
As well, the loss of control created by such feelings and ideas tends to mire us in bad situations more frequently because we have prevented ourselves from taking useful action – we’re sleepwalking into our own future…and, more subtly, because dynamic people don’t want to associate with low energy people. We therefore select the quality of our acquaintances.
Taking control
To take control of your situation, you first have to be able to control yourself. If you are constantly swept by negative emotions stimulated by external factors outside your control, you will probably find it much more difficult to change what’s going on around you.
“But that’s just me” is an oft repeated refrain to which I would answer “yes, and you can change” because “…just me” is a saying that neatly traps the person in their situation with no possibility of change for the rest of their life. What a depressing thought!
We need to learn to take control of our own emotional state so that we can stay alert to danger, and participate usefully in our future development.
Personally, I prefer to control my own internal state than to have it controlled by others.
We don’t have be irritated by people who are irritating, we don’t need to become bored by bores, we can select our own internal emotional state to keep ourselves on top of our situation, help us retain control and increase the quality of our life.
Circles of influence and concern
One useful way of understanding some of these ideas, is with two concentric circles (as above) with the larger containing all the things we might be concerned about (comet strikes, the Mehdi army and Britney’s digestion) while the smaller one contains all the things that we might actually influence (our own emotions, our spouse’s quality of life, our child’s overall education and our own life situation).
If we spend too much of our time and energy on matters in the circle of concern then our circle of influence shrinks so that we have very little influence left. By favouring our circle of influence, and only skimming lightly through ‘concern’ issues, our circle of influence grows, and we become more able to control our own affairs, and then help others to change and participate as well.
Nipping back to the state government for a moment, we can appreciate that their circle of positive influence has shrunk to a dot as they render themselves totally unable to produce the results that they say they want.
Self reinforcing patterns
The dysfunctional pattern of giving away responsibility and then complaining about the results, is amplified when groups of people engage in these behaviours together. Dad is always complaining about how his job makes him sick, mum is a nervous wreck from worrying about prices and the kids are busy learning that they have no control over their own state so are blaming their parents for their situation.
It doesn’t take long for these situations to curdle and for everyone to start reacting to everyone else in a self-reinforcing spiral. “Your moaning is driving me nuts”.
The same kinds of self-reinforcing patterns exist throughout our social networks.
We can’t get out of such patterns by doing more of the same. We need to make a breakthrough. That breakthrough isn’t going to happen if we blame everyone else for our situation “How can you expect me to do anything when George is carrying on?”
Breakthroughs come much more easily if we learn to control our own internal state. This is, at least in part, a matter of practice.
Here’s a few ideas …
Taking control
Think of some state that you enjoy being in such as happiness. Remove yourself from distractions and remind yourself of what happiness feels like. When you are feeling happy, say something to yourself that you would when you want to feel happy (so your brain can associate happiness with that word, song, phrase, sound or whatever) , be happy and then drop the happiness for a moment.
Note: You can also use kinaesthetic cues like touch or movement. You can add pictures, smells, whatever takes your fancy.
Repeat the process half a dozen times until you can call up happiness easily.
Once you can do this, you can move on to other useful states, like calmness or awareness using a different sound cue for each.
Keep practicing without distraction until you can reach the desired states comfortably and immediately. Continue this practice in spare moments – thereby achieving states that you enjoy at those times.
Extend your practice into more everyday situations.
Once you can reach a desired state comfortably and reliably (usually takes about 10 – 30 mins actual practice time) then you’re ready to take on further challenges, like trying happiness while in one of those bank queues or sitting in traffic.
As we improve our abilities with practice, so we can achieve desired states quickly and easily.
With practice, we can listen to Lara denying that there’s a problem, or laying all problems at the feet of the federal government while remaining entirely happy ourselves. We can even be happy while we’re ill. It’s a matter of choice – yours.
The fact is, we can deal with situations a lot more effectively when WE control our own emotional state, rather than allowing external events and people to do so.
Why not?
Mike Bolan
abetteraustraia.com
Mike is a complex systems consultant, change facilitator and executive and management coach.
Part 1 of this series: Break out!
