Mental Framework for Growth and Frame

Just wanted to write a quick post to help with your frame, how you view others, and mental growth.

I was having a discussion the other day with another professional (PHd psychologist). He is a pretty down to earth guy and he had said "well people don't usually change." I challenged that paradigm. It's true if you put the word "usually". But that way of thinking points to 2 ways of thinking about human behavior that can frame how you approach personal growth, relationships, and others. So let's talk about this.

There are a few subconscious schemas that people use to tend to frame others and growth. Let's look over the strengths and limits of each.

"People are generally good (or generally bad)

2. "People and actions have purpose"

3. "People don't change"

4. "People and actions have reasons"

"People are generally good (or bad)"

This is moralizing. People who grew up with a religious background tend to take this stance. They grew up where parents "shamed" others for bad behaviors, and praised others for good, and the ideology could go in either direction. A person from a very dogmatic religion good take the stance that all people are inherently bad or evil and need seek salvation and ultimately fight their evil nature to be good. You'll hear language like "We are all sinners who need to repent or need to be saved" and so forth. More progressive churches could believe that people are generally good. We are all Gods children and made in his image, and thoughts along those lines. Judiasm and Islam do the same things in different ways.

The benefits of moralizing is you tend to be more tribal, and create an "us vs them" mentality. This can protect you and your family in some ways. Another benefit of moralizing is that you might not lose site of your moral principles and values when you make choices.

Some huge disadvantages with this way of thinking is that you tend to judge people as "good" or "evil," which is not really objectively true and can cause you to misread others. You can take things personally as well and see people as "bad people" when they do something wrong. The group identity can be protective, but it can also exclude and isolate you socially in negative ways.

The benefit of keeping your moral principles within your conscious awareness is a good one, but you can do this without subconsciously judging. You don't need to frame people (and their actions) as "good" or "evil" in order to look at things through a moral lens. I would argue that approaching the world in this way is very limiting. It can cause you to lose care and empathy for others, and it can cause you to not accept or see things as they are. It ruins that "radical acceptance" for most people. There are better ways, so keep reading. I invite you to challenge this view.

"People and Actions have purpose"

People who take on this schema see that the actions of others are always intentional, and have some sort of meaning. The benefit of this is that it can cause a person to be very careful in how he handles others. This person is also capable of self improvement. The problem with this is it isn't objectively true at all. We know for a fact that people are not aware in their conscious mind most of what they do. By thinking everything people do is with a purpose in mind, this can lead to an elevated sense of trauma and misplaced anger and shame. When someone forgets to use a turn signal, this guy might get really pissed off, honk, flick the other person off, and take it very personally. When really the other guy just got distracted and was not trying to be negligent. When this guy does something wrong, instead of looking for his blind spots to correct the problem, he shames himself for not having the right purpose in mind, and doesn't truly correct the problem because the blind spots are still there.

People who do this one tend to be very sensitive, emotional, and they can easily get upset or offended ore angry with others. It is very difficult to have frame in your relationships and in life if this is your schema.

"People don't Change"

This view is really a short cut. Because change is complicated, most people have things about themselves that they will never change. Most people won't change certain aspects of themselves, and most people don't care about change or growth. This can be an easy shortcut to safeguard you from toxic or bad relationships and bad dealings with others. This schema is very popular amongst "red pill". It can keep you safe.

The problem with this however is it isn't really true. Sometimes people change, and sometimes they don't. By taking this stance, what does it say about you? if you take the "people never change" attitude, then that becomes very deterministic when it comes to yourself. You will assume you can't change things about yourself when you absolutely could. People with this attitude tend to stay stuck in life. They tend to also lack empathy in their relationships and have not much forgiveness. Like when someone screws up, this person will just next them even if the other people is owning the screw up.

This tends to be a very limiting schema, and is also being WEAK but disguised as strength. "just next her bro all women are like that" type red pill guys make it sound like they are being strong and it feels good to regurgitate platitudes, and that is because they have been duped and hurt and have trauma. And this ideology protects them.

But I would argue that the problems outweigh the prospective benefits. Read on for a better way.

"People and actions have reasons"

This one is in my opinion the optimal schema to have. First, it's 100% objectively true. The moralizing one (People are good/evil) might be true or not true and there is no way to objectively prove either. "People/actions have purpose" is usually not true, and "people don't change" isn't always true either. This is the only true schema out of these options.

People have reasons for their actions, and there are reasons for everything. That said, people usually aren't aware of those reasons. Someone might react a certain way to something because it resembles something they handled in the past and they are doing what worked before, but they might not consciously realize it or know why. People's actions are not always personal or intentional, but there are reasons behind them.

The benefits of this schema are huge. It allows you to be objective, and assess and predict behavior. It forces you to be empathetic and understanding of others. It allows you to be emotionally strong and outcome independent in that you don't take people's actions personally because the reasons behind them are often not personal or your fault or responsibility. It allows you to lead others and give them the opportunity to change, while at the same time accepting when they can't. Ande it allows you to make changes in yourself effectively. Instead of saying "I hate that I do this and I need to change it" and then never fixing anything, you ask better questions. "Why do I do this? Under what conditions? How frequently? Where did this behavior come from?" And so on. You discover the "reasons" you are doing something, and then you can change your behaviors more effectively.

The only word of caution with this one is that you can get stuck on people or things because you are constantly trying to figure out the "why" rather then just doing the appropriate action to get what you need. To prevent that from happening you just have to be aware, and recognize that though it is true that people and their actions have reasons, you won't always be able to figure out those reasons, and sometimes those reasons don't matter. What matter most is actions, and taking the right action. So just know in your head that actions and results are always the driving thing, and sometimes you just have to take action on limited information.

I will address this more and answer questions on a mastermind call.

Thoughts?

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