Concept:
Because we are social learners – we learn from those close to us in our environment. When traumatic events occur we rely almost exclusively on family and friends to teach us how to deal with problems and trauma. The impact of family and culturally significant others heavily impact our beliefs.
Auto-pilot:
Environmental conditioning (the impact of family and culturally significant others) allows individuals to make decisions once, sometimes never revisiting the moral or rational implications of those decisions. The beauty and danger of such thinking allows individuals to simply act on their socialized beliefs without running their thoughts through any type of moral filter. In essence, these individuals are on “Auto-pilot”.
Because most of us have experienced problems in getting our needs met and a large percentage of us have experienced trauma; we have a tendency to condition our thinking. We construct a method/mode of conduct that prioritizes our personal needs being met over and above anyone or anything else. Socialized thinking allows us to function on “auto-pilot” because we have previously moralized, justified, and rationalized our thinking forever.
By moralizing, justifying, and rationalizing our beliefs we do not need to perform those tasks for each individual belief and consequent behavior. This thinking permits us to act without hesitation or remorse because previously, we’ve experienced a lack in our needs. Programming helps us avoid the pain of not having our needs met and the programming of our thinking permits us to engage in self-deception – denying, distorting, and substituting other people and things for our needs.
Socialized Thinking has Six (6) Core Components
- Beliefs: Things we believe to be true (but are not necessarily true), learned behaviors as described in the Social Learning Theory*.
2. Value Placements: Things that are important to us. The easiest method of identifying what is important to us is to apply the following three principles:
a. Time – where, with whom, and how we spend our time.
b. Money – where, with whom, and how we spend our money.
c. Talents – where, with whom, and how we use our talents.
3. Permission: The personal, moral authority, to act on our beliefs, based on the perception that certain needs haven’t been met. Permission is achieved through:
a. Justification – Acting on our beliefs because we believe them to be justified. – to show to be just or right.
b. Rationalization – The explanation of why our actions were just and rational. – to devise a plausible reason for. (self-deception)
4. Control: The need to control people, places, and environments based on fear, insecurity, and a poor self-image.
5. Positive Reinforcement: The psychological, physical, and/or emotional gratification and reward from having our needs met, or controlling our environment.
6. Automatic Thoughts: Planned, personally approved, habitual behavior that becomes a part of us through positive reinforcement.
Re-Programming Yourself for Success
In order to re-program ourselves, we must carefully choose a belief system that will allow us to be successful and effective with others and our goals. We will need beliefs that produce effective, caring, pro-social behaviors that produce effective communication patterns with others, leading to good self-esteem.
Deterrent Thinking Patterns
- Examination of Conscience — Take a moral inventory daily!
- Don’t just think about the thinking patterns & behaviors themselves, but rather assess whether the thinking patterns and behaviors are productive or unproductive.
- Think about the injury you have inflicted upon others. Examine your conscience immediately as you think about irresponsible thinking patterns & behaviors.
- Use this thinking pattern as a pro-active/preventative tool.
- Plan ahead, think ahead and make another choice. Use this when you’re reminded of past thinking patterns & behaviors that you are tempted to use again – it’s poison!
- List ahead of time your past thinking patterns and behaviors that equal poison.
- Try to predict with whom, where, and under what circumstances you tend to use irresponsible and unproductive thinking patterns and behaviors.
- Stop and think of who gets hurt – use a reasoning process. Think about all the problems that similar actions have caused you and others in the past!
- Use the bad/disappointing feelings to change yourself.
- Think about the whole picture or the ripple effect of your actions.
- Stop and think of the Immediate Consequences!
- Before you act, think about the immediate consequences.
- Ask, “What gets me into trouble.”
- Remember if anything can go wrong… it will.
- Don’t dwell on it
- Don’t dwell on the past!
- Develop a vision for the future!
- Focus on priorities!