Topic Number 2 of How Not To Be a Victim

This part of your growth process in learning how to take your life back will be presented in several parts since it is so long and detailed. First I am presenting an overall picture of how this process works. Next I will write about our perceptions. Then I will write on how we think and the last will be tying them all together bringing it around full circle to how all of this leads to changing our behavior. And of course changing our behavior is the key to changing our lives.
I want to use a situation that was brought to my attention by someone who was asking my advice about how to change the way they dealt with their life. Basically they wanted to change the way they behaved.
We were discussing about how to change a behavior. I will use the example that this person presented to me. We will call him John. John has a problem with talking to people. He believes that everyone is better than he is and that makes him feel inadequate in all areas of his life. This is stopping John from going after what he wants in life. This also scares him because he sees himself ending up a failure. So, John has a problem with the way he talks to himself, the way that he sees himself and the way he "thinks" other people see him. I brought up that to change a behavior you have to first change the thought that is behind the behavior. Our behavior is the playing out of our thoughts. Which comes down to our lives being a reflection of how we view ourselves in our own mind. This is also known as our perceptions. In this way our thoughts are not private we all show what we think by the way we act and live our lives. That is why some behavior is predictable to behavioral health professionals. This is where "profiling" like what the FBI cultivated works no matter how much we consciously try to "hide" a behavior because our behaviors start with our perception and perception makes up our thoughts, we will still have the thought behind the behavior, even if we changed the behavior. This means the thought will still be acted out in our behavior. So in profiling they talk with many kinds of killers and learn these peoples perceptions on themselves and life. Then the profilers learn how these perceptions are integrated into these different killers thought processes which lets them learn how to "predict" that persons behavior by his personal makeup, meaning how he thinks. Which then leads to a particular pattern of profiling.Have you ever tried to change a behavior you have by just willing it to change? Well, it rarely works and if it did work I would say to you that you have only suppressed that behavior you didnt really change the behavior. The mind works by the laws that govern it. Just like the body lives by laws that govern it. We all know the law of the body that if you do not keep the body "hydrated" it will die, period. It is a natural law and that natural law will play out no matter what, if you do not respect its truth. This is how we have learned to make the body work for us at its most optimal level of functioning. We have studied and learned the natural laws that govern the body. We dont fight them or try to change them to make them agree with what we want. If we do try to challenge these laws that is when "accidents" take place. That just wont work which is another law of nature. No matter how much you want something to be the way you want it, "IF" you are trying to fight against a natural law you will loose 100% of the time and there will always be natural consequences for breaking these natural laws. Natures laws are not negotiable nor are they changeable. These laws are to be learned, respected and worked with to get what we want and need. This is quite interesting to learn about, people who study Martial Arts, Dancing, a lot of Athletes, those who practice Eastern Religions and American Indians know that these natural laws exist. Over the centuries they have humbled themselves to these natural laws and given these laws the respect that they deserve. They have learned these laws and learned how to use them to their advantage. These people are capable of doing remarkable acts that we sometimes think are impossible because of our lack of understanding of natures laws. Many of the natural laws I am speaking of are physical laws. We all know some of these natural laws. We have studied many of these laws and use them to deal with physical situations. Medicine is starting to learn more and more of these natural laws realizing that whether they want to believe them or not they are true and they can not deny them just because they choose to.But what isnt being focused on in this country or studied that much especially in mainstream Psychology is the natural laws that rule our mental process and our behavior. Medicine is trying to make the natural mental laws a physical problem by trying to prove things like the "difference" in brains explains behavior. In time Psychology and medicine are going to have to accept that these natural laws exist and start to work with these laws in dealing with behavioral problems that are non-medical in their origin. These natural laws do not care whether there is a "scientific process" that medicine follows to prove that something is true or not.Where does this take us in our quest to change our behavior so that we can change things in our lives that are not working for us or are sabotaging what we want in our lives? Lets get back to John, he needs to change the behavior that makes him avoid people in as many situations as he can to the extent that he is almost a hermit. John has to first change how he perceives his behavior, meaning how he "thinks". Many people believe that if they "feel" a certain way there is nothing they can do about that. It is just how they are. This is known as a defense to keep us from having to be accountable for ones own actions. If you make a behavior beyond your control how can you be responsible for it? Unfortunately this goes against a natural law that whenever you act out a behavior no matter what that behavior is the results will eventually come back to you, this is known as the "consequences" to that behavior. These consequences will come to you whether you want to take responsibility for the behavior or not. So, if you are going to take the consequences for all your actions anyway, why not make the decisions about what you do in your life? Then you have some control over what consequences come back to you. I myself would rather take responsibility for my behavior and determine what consequences come back to me. Meaning I want good consequences to come back to me as much as possible. That brings us back to realizing that by choice or not by choice we are all responsible for our behavior. In the rest of this series I will guide you step by step through the process of how of changing your behavior. If you have the power to change your behavior this is one of the keys to being in control of yourself and your life. This kind of power will have profound affects in every area of your life. You definitely will not longer be a victim to anything. You will feel more confident about your feelings and how to make your behavior work in your behalf and not against you. You will definitely feel like you have so much more control over every aspect of your life. That is why this series is so very important to learn. To learn how to change your behavior has so much power over all aspects of your self growth and getting yourself to where you are in complete control of your life.