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As we move into July, it seems appropriate (at least in the U.S.) to spend a few moments reflecting on the meaning of freedom. In the States, we tend to associate the word “freedom” with the ability to make personal choices about such matters as religious beliefs, the friends with whom we associate, and the places we choose to live and visit. If we’re young enough, we might think of it in terms of how late we can stay up. If we’re older, we might think of it in terms of personal habits, such as smoking or using intoxicants. In other cultures, “freedom” might be considered having enough food to eat and having access to shelter from inclement weather—freedom from want.

While there is nothing particularly wrong with those definitions, they fail to take into account what Richard Bandler has called “the chains of the free” (See Conversations: Freedom Is Everything & Love Is All the Rest, by Richard Bandler and Owen Fitzpatrick). When our freedom is limited by physical restraints, unreasonable laws, or lack of environmental resources, we know it and resist the restraint. When we are restrained by our own belief systems, however, we are comfortable even though shackled by the “chains of the free.” Don Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements) refers to this same concept as “domestication.”

We are all prisoners of what we believe. I discussed the general concepts of beliefs in a previous blog, “You Believe What?” (22 March 2009), and asked the question, “What if you knew that everything you believe is false?” To a certain extent, everything you believe—and everything everyone else and I believe—really is false. That doesn’t make beliefs bad. Rather it simply acknowledges that they aren’t completely true. A more important question is whether a particular belief is useful. It may be useful, for example, to believe what others in your social group believe. Many shared beliefs fall into the category of “social constructs.” When a social group constructs a belief, members of the group usually accept the belief as “true.”

As Galileo discovered, challenging a culturally accepted belief can cause problems, so it’s worth checking the utility and consequences of proposing a new belief before you challenge a cherished social construct. In Counter Clockwise, Ellen Langer challenged socially constructed beliefs about aging, such as old people should have aches and pains, failing eye sight and hearing, failing memories, and so on. She constructed a number of experiments to show that much of the decline that comes with age results from such beliefs rather than from age itself. And, as Dave Barry would say, I’m not saying this because I’m getting older.

The socially constructed beliefs about what “getting older” means fall into the category of the “chains of the free.” They tend to restrict us because we accept them as “true.” One of the reasons we need to question whether our beliefs are serving our purposes is that, like our cultural beliefs about aging, we don’t even recognize them as beliefs. We simply accept them as “true,” as though they were facts rather than beliefs.

So, on this Fourth of July, let's let freedom ring by paying attention to the way limiting cultural beliefs used to hold us prisoner and cast off the chains of the free.

joel@scs-matters.com
www.scs-matters.com

I have two cats, Bobbie and McGee. They are littermates, about a year old now, and both are female. This blog isn’t about them specifically. It is rather about perception and sensory acuity. I have had cats (and often dogs) most of my life and have always known that their perceptions of the environment differed from my own. After the last of my previous kitty companions died, I wanted new fur friends and was lucky to find Bobbie and McGee.

In NLP, the model of the learning curve presents learning as a four stage process:

• Unconscious Incompetence. At first, we are ignorant, but we don’t know that we are. This is true for matters both small (such as driving a car or tying one’s shoes) and large (such as evolutionary biology or brain neurology). When we are young, we are unaware (unconscious) of the process of driving a car, and we are unable (incompetent) to do so.

In Steering by Starlight, Martha Beck introduces what she calls the “yeahbut” syndrome. You may know someone with the “yeahbut” disease. Any suggestion offered that would probably lead to their enjoying more pleasure in life is met with a “yeabut.”

Bob: I’m so fat and out of condition.
Mary: We could start walking after dinner.
Bob: Yeahbut we’d miss our favorite TV shows.
Mary: We could record the shows and watch them later.
Bob: Yeahbut then we’d have to find the time to watch them later.

Memorial Day was originally established to honor the Union soldiers who had died during the U.S. Civil War. Originally known as Decoration Day, it was expanded after WWI to include all American soldiers who died in any war. The traditional date of observance was 30 May, but that has been changed to the last Monday in May to ensure a three-day weekend for those who want to do something in addition to—or perhaps other than— decorating the graves of the fallen.

Byron Katie, author of the insightful book, Loving What Is, suggests that when you argue with Reality, “you lose—but only every time.” While I agree with Katie in principle, I have some questions based on our inability to determine with any degree of certainty what reality actually is. In a previous blog (“You Believe What?” 22 March 2009), I asked, “What if you knew that everything you believed is a lie?”

In my previous blog (7 May), I commented on the problems the Republicans caused themselves by focusing so exclusively on their talking points. This seems to imply that talking points are a bad thing, whereas they are essential to the success of individuals (especially politicians and other sales people) and organizations. The Republicans did not get into difficulty with voters because they had specific talking points but rather because they demonstrated an inability to get beyond them.

The Republicans (what there are left of them) are reportedly in the process of “rebranding” the GOP and “reframing” perceptions of what it means to be conservative at this point in U.S. history. Given the results of the last election, I can understand why they would want to do that, and it seems to me that the issue is a lot larger than the Republican Party.

While we weren’t watching (at least I wasn’t), science seems to have discovered the Fountain of Youth. In her new book, Counter Clockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility, Harvard psychologist Ellen J. Langer describes a number of experiments that show the process of aging depends almost as much on attitude and perception as it does on biology.