Create Your Life: social interaction

Written by on November 21, 2009 - 2 Comments
Categories: Create Your Life

I am prompted by some comments made to yesterday’s post by Peter.

Social Interaction

Social Interaction

In his comments, Peter mentioned learning both good behaviors and bad behaviors from others, and then modifying our own behavior in relation to those observations.

This is exactly what I was talking about! We can create our lives to be just like those we admire and remove things that are not admirable. For example, I used to be a very violent person. I came to the point where I realized that my violence was not an admirable trait and I worked hard to change it. I still get angry, of course, but I would no longer describe myself as violent. I did this because I saw in others and myself how this trait affected people around us and I didn’t like what I saw.

We live in the world, not in a cave alone, unless we are hermits. We interact with hundreds of people everyday. It is in everyone’s best interest that each of us live our lives as perfectly as we can. Now I don’t mean to say we should be perfect, that’s impossible, I just mean that we should be the best we are able. As we interact with others we have the chance to witness good and bad behaviors.

The real trick then becomes assessing our own behaviors and honestly deciding which benefit us and the world and increasing those while diminishing the traits that tear us and others down.

You have a wonderful opportunity to create the most perfect person you can; you! You cannot change others. You can influence them, but changes in their lives are up to them. The only person you can change is you. Shouldn’t you do the best job possible?

Here’s to You!

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  • Peter

    I couldn’t agree more Steve. In regards to observing others behaviors, even concerning myself, the old saying holds true. Put yourself in their shoes. If you don’t care for the way the person is reacting, or acting, but then when you put yourself in their shoes and you realize that is exactly how you would have reacted you then have pinpointed a behavior trait you may want to change or diminish. I feel this would hold true for the good behaviors as well. You notice a good behavior/reaction and like it, put yourself in their shoes, then determine whether you would react the same way. If you would not then there is a good behavior to work towards. In the study of behaviors in psychology when they are using lab animals and the researcher would like to diminish a trait they use negative reinforcement or avoidance methods. For anyone who may not be familiar with these ideas, in negative reinforcement what happens is when the test subject preforms an undesired behavior or action, the researcher will not promote the action by not giving the animal a treat for preforming this act. With avoidance the researcher will introduce some unpleasant stimuli when the certain behavior or action is preformed. Something like a small shock, and this shock will be preceded by a conditioned stimuli like a light turning on before the shock. The lab animal then learns to avoid the shock by doing whatever action needs to be done to avoid the shock. Well we are not lab animals and I don’t believe that God is going to start turning on indicator lights so that we know we are about to preform a behavior that we don’t care for. Besides we can’t go around avoiding situations because we don’t care for the behavior we display because of it. What would you suggest would be the first step, because something like this would have to be done in “baby steps”. Love the blog. I would like to see how some others feel. I am sure I will be leaving you another comment soon.

    Pete

  • Steve

    I think you are right. Decide on the behaviors or traits you want or don’t want and then take baby steps in that direction. Too often people want the change to happen over night and then they become disappointed and disillusioned. Then they give up. There is no quick fix. It takes work and determination, but it can be done.