Making the Essential Enjoyable & Easy
Making Monday
I've heard it said that how we feel on Mondays is one of the clearest indicators of life satisfaction. Here is a quick thought on how to make Monday—and every day—work better...
Gaining Agency
January 30, 2023
All behavior seems to generate from three sources.
First, we operate from a program—a subconscious pattern we inherited from our family, clan identity, or greater culture.
We are either overtly or tacitly being told or shown how to behave all the time. This has been so from our earliest development when we were most easily shaped.
Our programmed responses stem from complying with and enacting these directions.
Their origins are external, but we nonetheless internalize them, and they feel like our own. They feel like “the way we are” or “the way things are,” when they are in truth quite arbitrary.
Second, we operate from triggering—a subconscious pattern arising when our survival fear is evoked in a situation where physical threat is not present.
Some refer to this as “amygdala hijacking,” when a primitive part of our brain instantaneously takes over and responds with the animal instincts of fight, flee, or freeze.
Third, we operate from choice—conscious, intentional action or response.
This is our superpower and birthright as human beings.
We can choose how we act, how we think, and how we feel.
We can become aware of our programs and upgrade or delete them.
We can intervene in and interrupt our triggering.
We can act from alignment with our chosen identity, values, vision, and purpose.
Doing so creates agency—the capacity to act with power and intention to bring about desired outcomes for ourselves, others, and the world.
But agency depends upon operating from choice.
Acting from programming or triggering rarely produces results aligned with what is most important and precious to us.
Expanding and strengthening choice is the life's work of turning inward, becoming ever more aware of who and what we are, how we are made, and where we came from.
I don't believe there is anything more important for us to do. Everything of importance depends upon it.
Fortunately, we can enjoy both the journey and destination, and travel with friends.
Together, let's end the fight to change…
Delmar
