As you might know by now, I love people. Or more precisely, people’s behaviour, motivations and beliefs. Add to that my knowledge of the human brain, a bit of psychology and my experience, and it gets even more intriguing.
I do talks to a great variety of people; corporate institutions, parents and teachers. The information provided is to assist them in bettering their lives, work environments and relationships with their children and everyone else they come in contact with.
There I was, sharing a snippet of my approach towards punishment. Not the whole story, just an example of how to be creative with punishment, in stead of physically attacking your children. The conversation only relayed about 10% of my point of view regarding punishment. My statement referred to me possibly removing my daughter’s bedroom door, should she ever decide to slam the door in anger.
A few days later I received a communication from a friend, stating that he heard that I follow a very militaristic approach to parenting, and that I should rather parent from a point of love. Ahhh … and in walks human nature.
Our brains are designed to provide us with a complete picture. It doesn’t like 60%, or 80%, or even 98%. And how is that void filled to create the full picture? We insert the rest of the information based on our experience – what we believe, what we have experienced, and our current emotional state. In that instance, I was turned into a modern day version of a concentration camp warden.
Let’s take a step or two back. Our minds re-writes long-term memories every time we recall a ‘saved’ memory or experience. Thcess. The recalled information is treated as a brand new memory, updated with our current beliefs and emotional state, and stored in the same location as an updated version of the old memory. Thing is, these long-term memories are only partial memories of the event, and the brain then kicks off a process to ‘create’ the full picture again. It takes pieces of the memory, finds similar stored events, and link these to create a whole. Ever had an argument about something that happened 10 years ago and the two of you have different memories of what happened? Well, there is your answer!!
Then there is the process of listening. The minute we think of an answer, in stead of waiting for the person to finish their sentence, we stop listening. Human nature … again! We are so focused on finding solutions and moving on to the next challenge, that we do not pay full attention to the information around us. We take in the first 20% of the conversation, and then get stuck in our own minds of how to resolve the challenge. How often do you not finish the sentence of someone talking to you? Are you really listening, or already doing more thinking than hearing to finish the sentence?
My 10% of an example, became someone else’s 100% of the truth about a given situation. Not my truth, but theirs based on their brain’s ability and need to resolve what they have heard and to create a full picture only using a sample of information.
I love people. I have just been given another ‘research example’ of how we listen and create our truths by using our beliefs, motivations and behaviour. Behaviour is what we learn from – they become our real-world examples of how the world should be. Only, is this true about the world if we only sample a quarter of the information available to us?
As for parenting – we parent with a proper mix of love and empathy as the foundation.
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