What’s your default mode? What’s the place you go back to when you are feeling tired, stress, anxious, attacked?
In some of the Josh Luke Smith “Speak into the Chaos” stuff he talks about how our shame causes us to want to control our situations. And the more we let go of our shame, forgive ourselves and others, accept as Gabor Maté says that lots of what we do was programmed into us before we had logical thoughts, forgive into those situations and take agency with them, the more we change our belief systems about the world, the more we can let go of needing to control.
I’ve had a few interesting situations over the last couple of weeks where I have firstly felt myself wanting to take control but have ANSed, let gratitude roll through me and let go of the need to control. But then I have spoken something that rock the boat a bit, unintentionally. I was just saying how I saw the situation. I have then been met with a barrage of the other person regaining control in a quite forceful way.
For each of us, until we can let go of our shame and need for control we will all have a default method of dealing with that.
- There is the person who goes tight lipped and says nothing
- There is the one who comes out fighting – either with fist or with tongue
- There is the explain it all away
- There is the person who will suddenly change tact and agree with everything their supposed attacker is saying
- There is the person who just walks away and won’t talk about the situation again.
For each, and the myriad of other types, it is a way of keeping control.
My default rolled between going in with words to fight my corner or cutting the person out of my life. I have now come to see that a lot of the time I don’t care. Like with a meeting recently where I’d voiced an issue and the other person was defending themselves way beyond what my concern had been and they gave no hint to the issue I had raised and whether it was valid to me.
Before QECing my default would have been to no longer have anything to do with this person and their organisation. I would have dismissed the whole lot, bad mouthed them to other people, and ignored emails etc from them or emailed to tell them exactly what I thought of them. Instead, no longer needing to have that control over the situation, I allowed myself to feel sad and disappointed that they did not hear my concern, allowed them to waffle on till they had finished, and then went on to the next point I had on my agenda that needed dealing with.
Because I did not go into my old default way of keeping control I could let things wash over me, decide what was important, forgive them for not hearing me, and move on.
Too often we lose the most important thing because we “throw the baby out with the bath water” because we need to keep control, because we refuse to give ground to the other person.
I think Jesus did that. When challenged he didn’t come out fighting but would tell a story to emphasis the point. He’d bring the energy of the encounter down a notch or two. But I think that’s because Jesus knew and trusted his own heart. Too often our hearts are full of shames and hurts and wounds that we ignore them, we don’t see them as important. We don’t see they are trying to communicate with us. So we shut them away. We hold on to our shame, our hurt, our wounds.
For those old enough do you remember the “What Would Jesus Do” [WWJD] bracelets, mugs, etc used to help us know what to do? Well I think in any and every given situation that arises Jesus would breath, not rush to an answer, would check his autonomic nervous system was in balance and regulation, know he carried no shame, guilt or hurts, and would be able to respond with a gentle, strong, clear heart.
If we want to get to be more like Jesus that is the place we need to get to.
Aspirational Adventures 