31/10/2024
Choice and Responsibility
Two inter-related ideas come ‘off the back’ of the Freedom Model (see video with this title). One of them is choice, and the other is responsibility. I’ve always loved the word responsibility because of what happens when you break it into two parts: response ability – in other words the ability to be able to respond to a situation, as opposed to react.
I think what the Freedom Model is asking us to explore and practice and look at – and I think I see a huge connection between this and the work we do in Thinking Sessions – is that moment when we are confronted by something happening in our lives, and we have a choice about how we interpret what’s happening.
Now, the thing is that the automatic interpretations that arise which, in the context of a Thinking Session, we would think of as the untrue limiting assumptions that arise – there’s no choice about those. Because the choice about those was made some time ago. Many, many years ago often. Those interpretations were often laid down when we were children, and they were laid down in moments of threat or stress. And they were normally designed to keep us safe, and likely did keep us safe at that moment in time. They got us out of the situation, and we’ve been using them ever since.
The interesting thing is that now here we are as an adult, and we’re facing a situation and it’s triggering those old interpretations. This is where the idea of choice and responsibility comes into play, because in that moment, if we are doing the work that we do in Thinking Sessions regularly enough, we may have an opportunity to recognise “ah! There’s that assumption again! That old familiar assumption…..”
In my case, one of the assumptions that comes up regularly is that of “this isn’t fair!” And particularly “this isn’t fair on me”. So, over the years I’ve learned to recognise that if ever I’m facing a situation and the thought I’m having about it is “this isn’t fair” that there is a very strong likelihood that I’m not actually present to what’s going on in that moment. I’m now trapped in a recurring, untrue limiting assumption based on the past.
And it’s in that moment that I have an opportunity to make a choice – to choose a different response, and to look it at in a different way. In terms of the Thinking Environment, we would call that creating a different, truer and more liberating assumption which generates a different lens to look at the situation. One that might give me different ways of thinking about it, different options, different choices: more freedom.
Click on the link below to watch the full video:
Two inter-related ideas come ‘off the back’ of the Freedom Model (see video with this title). One of them is choice, and the other is responsibility. I’ve ...
