THE SELF FROM VARIOUS

PERSPECTIVES

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LESSON OBJECTIVES

A person's self-concept is their understanding of who they are and what

makes them unique. This can include the physical self, the social self, the
competent self and the inner, or psychological, self. Meanwhile, a person's self-
understanding is about knowing what motivates his or her actions.

Self and Identity is a subfield of psychology. As the name implies, it deals

with topics pertaining to both self and identity. Key areas of investigation
include self-concept, self-esteem, and self-control.

INDIVIDUAL LEVEL ANALYSIS OF SELF

 Self-esteem, self-efficacy, etc. Self-states are self-process that include

unbiased self-awareness. However, self-motives are more serious
impulses to action, something that is innate and Societal or cultural
analysis of the self. The other level of analysis is on the societal or cultural
level, for example, the cultural conception of a person, cultural
arrangements that make the person who they are and the cultural concept
of self.

 Self and identity are highly contingent upon culture. In industrialized

Western cultures, the concept of self is based solely on independence.

THE SELF FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES

Self in Eastern traditions

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  In spirituality, and especially nondual, mystical and
eastern meditative traditions, the human being is often conceived as
being in the illusion of individual existence, and separateness from
other aspects of creation. This "sense of doership" or sense of
individual existence is that part, which believes it is the human being,
and believes it must fight for itself in the world, is
ultimately unaware and unconscious of its own true nature.

Self as an activity

 Aristotle, following Plato, defined the soul as the core essence of a

living being, but argued against its having a separate existence. For
instance, if a knife had a soul, the act of cutting would be that soul,
because 'cutting' is the essence of what it is to be a knife. Unlike Plato
and the religious traditions, Aristotle did not consider the soul as some
kind of separate, ghostly occupant of the body (just as we cannot
separate the activity of cutting from the knife). As the soul, in Aristotle's
view, is an activity of the body, it cannot be immortal (when a knife is
destroyed, the cutting stops). More precisely, the soul is the "first
activity" of a living body. This is a state, or a potential for actual, or
'second', activity. "The axe has an edge for cutting" was, for Aristotle,
analogous to "humans have bodies for rational activity," and the
potential for rational activity thus constituted the essence of a human
soul. Aristotle used his concept of the soul in many of his works;
the De Anima (On the Soul) provides a good place to start to gain
more understanding of his views.

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  Aristotle also believed that there were four sections of the soul: the
calculative and scientific parts on the rational side used for making
decisions, and the desiderative and vegetative.

 The ego is often associated with mind and the sense of time, which
compulsively thinks in order to be assured of its future existence, rather
than simply knowing its own self and the present.

Self-Knowledge

Figure 2. Socrates Figure 3. Lao Tzu

 Socrates

 For Socrates, the goal of philosophy was to "Know thyself". Lao Tzu, in
his Tao Te Ching, says "Knowing others is wisdom. Knowing the self is
enlightenment. Mastering others requires force. Mastering the self
requires strength.

SELF INDEPENDENT OF THE SENSES

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 While he was imprisoned in a castle, Avicenna wrote his famous
"Floating Man" thought experiment to demonstrate human self-
awareness and the substantiality of the soul. His "Floating Man" thought
experiment tells its readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air,
isolated from all sensations, which includes no sensory contact with even
their own bodies. He argues that, in this scenario, one would still
have self-consciousness. He thus concludes that the idea of the self is
not logically dependent on any physical thing, and that the soul should
not be seen in relative terms, but as a primary given, a substance. This
argument was later refined and simplified by René
Descartes in epistemic terms when he stated: "I can abstract from the
supposition of all external things, but not from the supposition of my own
consciousness.

BUNDLE THEORY OF SELF

Figure 4. David Hume

 David Hume pointed out that we tend to think that we are the same
person we were five years ago. Though we have changed in many
respects, the same person appears present as was present then. We
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 might start thinking about which features can be changed without
changing the underlying self. Hume, however, denies that there is a
distinction between the various features of a person and the mysterious
self that supposedly bears those features. When we start introspecting,
"we are never intimately conscious of anything but a particular perception;
man is a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed one
another with an inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and
movement" On Hume's view, these perceptions do not belong to anything.
Rather, Hume compares the soul to a commonwealth, which retains its
identity not by virtue of some enduring core substance, but by being
composed of many different, related, and yet constantly changing
elements.

SOCIOLOGY OF SELF

 Social constructionism or the social construction of

reality (also social concept) is a theory of
knowledge in sociology and communication theory that examines the
development of jointly constructed understandings of the world that form
the basis for shared assumptions about reality. The theory centers on the
notions that human beings rationalize their experience by creating
models of the social world and share and reify these models through
language.

 Social constructionism questions what is defined by humans and society

to be reality. Therefore, social constructs can be different based on the
society and the events surrounding the time period in which they exist. An
example of a social construct is money or the concept of currency, as
people in society have agreed to give it importance/ value. Another
example of a social construction is the concept of self/ self-
identity. Charles Cooley stated based on his Looking-Glass-Self theory:

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 "I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I
think you think I am."

MEAD AND THE SOCIAL SELF

 George Herbert Mead developed the concept of self,

which explains that one's identity emerges out of
external social interactions and internal feelings of
oneself. Self is not evident at birth but emerges over time
through language, play, and games. The self consists of 'me' and 'I'.
Figure 5. George Mead

ANTHROPOLOGY OF SELF

 Western society is individualised; we feel at ease talking about individuals

and we study individual behaviour through psychology and
psychoanalysis. Yet anthropology teaches us that an individual approach
is only one of many ways of looking at ourselves.

 In this wide-ranging text Morris explores the origins, doctrines and

conceptions of the self in Western, Asian and African societies passing
though Greek philosophy, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confuscism, Tao and
African philosophy and ending with contemporary feminism.

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 GLOBAL VS.
DIFFERENTIATED
MODELS

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 JAMES, WILLIAM. 1890. "THE SELF AND ITS SELVES" (161-166).

Figure 6. William James

 James’ piece elaborates on the constituents, or selves, that create one

cohesive “self.” What people associate with the terms “I,” “me,” and
“mine,” can all in some way or another be associated with an investment
of self to some degree or another. James claims that the understanding of
Self can be separated into three categories: “1. Its constituents; 2. The
feelings and emotions they arouse,—Self-feelings; 3. The actions to
which they prompt,—Self-seeking and Self-preservation” (James 1890,
162). The first category, the constituents that constitute Self can then be
further divided into sub-categories of “a. The material Self; b. The social
Self; c. The spiritual Self; and d. The pure Ego” (James 1890, 162).
James then further explicates each of the four aforementioned sub-
categories.

 The material self is constituted by: our bodies, clothes, immediate

family, and home. It is it to these things, according to James, that we are
the most deeply affected by because of our investments of self within

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 these things. The more we invest of ourselves in these objects, the more
attached to them we inevitably are to them.

 A man’s social self is configured based upon our interactions with society
and the reactions of others that are analyzed in order to contribute to our
idea of a social Self. Within this notion of the social Self, there are multiple
divergences; which version of self is present is contingent upon which of a
particular social group one finds one’s self in. Seemingly, possessing
multiple social Selves and maintaining the right face depending on social
situation can be chaotic or harmonious. In attempts to maintain order
between different variations of social Self, an individual’s sense of “fame”
or “honor” regulates and determines what behaviors are or not moral,
reasonable or honorable.

 The next constituent is said by James to be the most intimate self, the
spiritual self. James claims that it is the most intimate version of self
because the satisfaction experienced when one thinks of one’s “ability to
argue and discriminate, of our [one’s] moral sensibility, and
conscience, of our indomitable will” (James 1890, 164) is more pure
than other sentiments of satisfaction. Then, James describes a number of
bodily processes in which becoming introspective can make the acts
entirely mindful, conscious processes—furthering our understanding of an
intimate, spiritual self.

 Finally, James addresses the last and “most puzzling aspect of the
self,” (1980, 165) the Pure ego. While different schools of thought have
all reached differing conclusions regarding the Ego, James begins to
describe it by first addressing the deciphering of a personal identity. The
first part of understanding the Ego comes with understanding that it can
recognize its own thoughts; the thoughts that belong to one’s own Ego can
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 be recognized and possess a warmth that thoughts possessed by a
separate ego does not. This constructed consciousness then works in
conjunction with subjective synthesis, a concept that is essential to
thinking and is the act of bringing thoughts together (even if only to
contrast them and realize the thoughts no longer belong together). In
understanding the entirety of the Ego’s functions, however, one must
recall that personal identity is perceived sameness and can ultimately be
feeling—not fact.

THE CONCEPT OF SELF-DIFFERENTIATION

 Differentiation is about knowing yourself and who you are and who you
are not and holding on to that self. The goal is to hold to your self and
your values and goals apart from all the anxiety and pressure around you
(separateness) while remaining close to those in your life
(togetherness). These two forces of separateness and togetherness are
what makes the tension in differentiation.

 Scazzero writes, “People with a high level of differentiation have their own
beliefs, convictions, directions, goals, and values apart from the pressures
around them. They can choose, before God, how they want to be without
being controlled by the approval or disapproval of others. Intensity of
feelings, high stress, or the anxiety of others around them does not
overwhelm their capacity to think intelligently.

 Mr. Scazzero has simplified a scale of differentiation found in Dr.

Bowen’s theory. He says of it, “On the lower end of the scale are those
with little sense of their uniquie God-given life. They need continual
affirmation and validation from others because they don’t have a clear
sense of who they are. They depend on what other people think and feel

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 in order to have a sense of their own worth and identity. Or out of fear of
getting too close to someone and thus swallowed up, they may avoid
closeness to other completely. Under stress they have little ability to
distinguish between their feelings and their thougth (intellectual) process.”

 Considering that Jesus was 100 percent true to Himself, or “self-

differentiated,” where might you place yourself on this scale? (This is Mr.
Scazzero’s scale, not mine)

MR. SCAZERRO’S SCALE

0-25

 Can’t distinguish between fact and feeling

 Emotionally needy and highly reactive to others
 Much of life energy spent in winning the approval of others
 Little energy for goal-directed activities
 Can’t say, “I think….I believe….”
 Little emotional separation from their families
 Dependent marital relationships
 Do very poorly in transitions, crises, and life adjustments
 Unable to see where they end and others begin

25-50

 Some ability to distinguish between fact and feeling

 Most of self is a “false self” and reflected from others
 When anxiety is low, they function relatively well
 Quick to imitate others and change themselves to gain acceptance from
others
 Often talk one set of principles/beliefs, yet do another
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  Self-esteem soars with compliments or is crushed by criticism
 Become anxious when a relationship system falls apart or becomes
unbalanced
 Often make poor decisions due to their inablility to think clearly under
stress
 Seek power, honor, knowledge, and love from others to cloth their false
self

50-75

 Aware of the thinking and feeling functions that work as a team

 Reasonable level of “true self”
 Can follow life goals that are determined from within
 Can state beliefs calmly without putting others down
 Marriage is a functioning partnership where intimacy can be enjoyed
without losing self
 Can allow children to progress through development phrases into adult
autonomy
 Function well–alone or with others
 Able to cope with crisis without falling apart
 Stay in relational connection with others without insisting they see the
world the same

75-100 (Few function at this level)

 Is principle oriented and goal directed–secure in who they are, unaffected

by criticism or praise
 Is able to leave family of origin and become an inner-directed, seperate
adult
 Sure of their beliefs but not dogmatic or closed in their thinking

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  Can hear and evaluate beliefs of others, discarding old beliefs in favor of
new ones
 Can listen without reacting and communicate without antagonizing others
 Can respect others without having to change them
 Aware of dependence on others and responsibility for others
 Free to enjoy life and play
 Able to maintain a non-anxious presence in the midst of stress and
pressure
 Able to take responsibility for their own destiny and life

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 REAL AND IDEAL
SELF CONCEPTS

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 Figure 7. Carl Rogers

 Carl Rogers believed that for a person to achieve self-actualization they

must be in a state of congruence. This means that self-actualization
occurs when a person's “ideal self” (i.e., who they would like to be) is
congruent with their actual behavior (self-image).

 Humanistic psychologist, Carl Rogers, believed that we all

own a real self and an ideal self. The real self of course is what we
are intrinsically. It`s the self that feels most true to what and who we really
are; the honest self that leaves us most comfortable in our skin. It may not
be perfect, but it`s the part of us that feels most real. And it`s the one we
need to learn to love the most.

 The ideal self on the other hand, is the self that we think we want to be,
that we strive to be, and that we feel we are expected to be. This self is
borne out of influences outside of us. It is the self that holds

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 values absorbed from others; a culmination of all those things that we
think we should be, and that we feel others think we should be.

 We want to accommodate those expectations because we believe we will

be more loved and accepted if we do. Holding the values of others is not
a conscious decision, but rather, a process of osmosis. For the most part,
we are not even aware of it.
 It is healthy to some extent to have what we envision as an ideal self. It is
something that we all strive for; to be the best that we can be. Who
doesn`t want that? The problem arises when our ideal selves are too far
removed from what we really are.

 When there is a huge discrepancy between what we are, and what we

think we should be, we begin to experience a dissonance, a lack of
resonance within our true selves, and a gap, sometimes huge, between
what we sense as our real self-compared to what we feel compelled to
aspire to (our ideal self).

 When the discrepancy is huge, the resulting incongruence can lead us

to become demoralized and discouraged because we have in fact set
ourselves up for failure. This discrepancy can lead to stress and anxiety
because the real self never seems good enough and the ideal self seems
impossible to attain.

 It can be difficult to identify your ideal self. Often, others will see it before
you can see it in yourself. It helps to be in touch with and to trust your
feelings. In fact, your thoughts, emotions and feelings can usually be
trusted to speak the truth to you. They will lead you to your real self,
which in turn, will help you to identify your ideal self.

 If the two are close, you will be the person that is comfortable in their skin,
with the attainable goal to be the best that you can be. If the two are miles

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 apart, you will experience that dissonance, and you will know in your heart
that things are not quite right.

 You will have extremely high expectations of yourself, most of which may
be close to impossible to meet. Those perceived “failures” will take a toll
on your self-esteem. Needlessly. If you let your feelings guide you in an
honest way, you will eventually find your real self. The more you get to
know that self, the more you will come to appreciate it and love it for what
it is. The real – perhaps less than perfect – but lovable, one and only you.

ONE SELF OR MANY SELVES?

Understanding why we have a multiplicity of self-states.

 Let’s start with a basic common sense response and say that there is a
single self. This position can initially be justified by the basic observation
that we inhabit one body. My body can be conceived of as an object and
like most “normal sized” objects, it exists in one location in space and time
and in that sense it is singular. But deeper reflection reveals that we are
not usually talking about the physical body when we are talking about the
self. If so, my ‘self’ would still be there if I had a heart attack and fell to the
floor and died. But most people, myself included, would say that a dead
body does not contain the self; the self-resides in the dimension of the
mental and cultural and is not really reducible to the physical and
biological

WHAT DOES THE ‘SELF’ CONSIST OF?

 The human self as consisting of three related, but also separable

domains. The first domain is the experiential self. This is the ‘theater of

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 consciousness’ and the first person felt experience of being. In this
context, it includes the felt consistency of being across periods of time. In
that sense, it is tied very closely to memory. This is the part of you that
“disappears” when you enter a deep sleep, flickers on and off as you
dream, and then comes back on line as you wake up.

 A second portion of the human self is called the private self-

consciousness system. In more common parlance, we can call this the
“narrator” (or interpreter), because is the portion of your being that
verbally narrates what is happening and why and tries to make sense of
what is going on.
 The final portion of the self is the public self or persona. It refers to the
public image that you attempt to project others, which in turn interacts
with how other people actually see you—the crucial element of this portion
of the self is referenced in the James William quote above.

 Conceiving the “self” as patterns of behavior through time. Although we

often think about the self as a “thing,” it is also the case that one can think
of the self as a pattern of behavior through time. In this view, the “I” is
synonymous with what I feel, think, and do feel across time. When
examined in this light, then the idea that there are multiple self-states
becomes clear in the sense that we do very different things across time.
This basic insight frees us to think about the self in a much more dynamic
way, as opposed to attempting to characterize it as a specific, fixed, and
unchanging object.

 Situations matter. Thinking of the self as a pattern of behavior across time

blends into another key point as to why we have a multiplicity of self-
states, which is that our behavior is largely a function of the situation. This
fact should not be too surprising, but as fellow PT blogger Sam
Sommers points out, it is a surprisingly easy thing to lose sight of. If we
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 go back to my everyday example, there are some situations that are
rewarding for me to be gregarious, whereas there are other situations that
are much less so. If I am in a situation where others will reward talk about
theoretical and philosophical dimensions of psychology, I am likely to
become energized and talkative. However, if the social system is
rewarding talk about other topics I both know and care little about, I
become reserved. In sort, change the situation and you change my
behavior and thus I enter into a different self-state. It is also, of course, the
case that our self is defined by roles that society has constructed.

 Our sense of self is shaped deeply by others. James Mark Baldwin has a
great quote that “ego and alter are born together,” which means our
self-concept is foundationally shaped both by how others see us and how
we see ourselves in relation to others. This starts with our earliest
attachments, when our fundamental sense of security is shaped by how
well our care-takers were attuned to our needs and vulnerabilities. Thus
we come to experience ourselves first via the eyes of others. In addition,
our self-consciousness system was shaped as a social reason giving
device. That means that our “narrator” first starts off via speech narrating
to others why we are doing what we are doing, and this means that our
self-concept is formed in large part by the audiences. In terms of a
multiplicity of self-states, this means that our self-concept is deeply
influenced by the “audience” we initially narrate to. Change the audience,
and we change the self. That is in part what William James is getting at in
his quote.

 The core self is organized by motives and emotions—and these fluctuate!

Our experiential self forms the organized core of our self, and it in turn is
organized by emotions which are tied to our goals. As I note in this blog
here, our perceptual-motivational-emotional system will fluctuate,

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 depending on things like biorhythms (time of day, month, season) and
what goals have been sated (e.g., hunger, sex, sleep) or are active.

 We have evolved “subselves.” We can be even more specific about our

motivational systems and how they give rise to our experience of a
multiplicity of self-states. In The Rational Animal (2013), PT Blogger
Doug Kenrick and Vladas Griskevicius argue that there are seven
major evolutionary goal states that have shaped our psychology in
profound ways; as such we should consider ourselves as really a
collection of “subselves” that have different perceptual-motivational-
emotional structures designed to solve the following adaptive problems

1) self-protection/injury avoidance;
2) disease avoidance;
3) affiliation;
4) status seeking;
5) mate acquisition;
6) mate retention; and
7) kin care.

 Importantly, because these different subselves have different goals, they

may often be in conflict and different situations will activate them in
different ways.

 The present versus future self. One of the most common conflicts between
self-states that people experience is the conflict between their present and
their future self.

 Almost everyone can relate to this. Our current self wants the piece of
cake, but our future self wants to be fit and trim. Our current self wants to
be relaxed by a cool drag on a cigarette, but our future self does not want
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 lung cancer. Our current self wants to take the day off and go on a
vacation, but our future self does not want to face an annoyed boss or
depleted bank account.

 The sense of self-continuity across time is dependent on memory

system.

 For example, we code memories by emotional states. Thus, if you are in a

happy mood, you remember positive events; in contrast, being in a
negative mood results in being more likely to recall disappointments and
failures. In addition, the memory system, as described here, organizes
events based on themes and is heavily shaped by primacy, recency, and
goal states. Because memories are encoded by emotion, traumas can
result in very powerful shifts in memory systems, such that for some, they
can be blocked out completely and for others, they can result in the
chronic activation.

 Psychodynamic Defense Mechanisms. The autobiographical self, or

ego, is a knowledge system that is organized by different forces. Most
notably, it is inclined toward aligning information that is: 1) accurate and
coherent; 2) consistent with existing structures; and 3) enhances the
self, depicting it has good, right, and effective. Because of the needs
to see one’s self in this manner and to manage one’s impulses and the
impressions that one forms in others, the human psyche comes equipped
with filters that shift attention, block impulses, and rationalize events.
These processes have been documented by psychodynamic theorists in
great detail.

 Dissociative Identity Disorder represents perhaps the most extreme

manifestations of these processes, such that aspects of the self are so
“split off” or “compartmentalized” that not only is the person not conscious
of them (which is common), but whole personalities can be built around
them and then emerge.
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 THE SELF AS
PROACTIVE
AND AGENTIC

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Agency

 point of view individuals ability to make choices in society

 free will
 the ability of you as a person
 to make decisions in your world

Structure

 how structure influence of individual

 social forces
 the decisions that we make
 have a biggest impact on the structure
 big role that you are able to make

AN AGENTIC THEORY OF THE SELF

 Four core properties of human agency were described in Bandura.

 Intentionality deals with the forming of intentions that “include action

plans and strategies for realizing them”

 Forethought involves “the temporal extension of agency” (p. 8) by

setting goals and anticipating future events:

 FORETHOUGHT includes more than future-directed plans. People set

goals for themselves and foresee likely outcomes of prospective actions to
guide and motivate their efforts anticipatorily. When projected over a long-
term course on matters of value, a forethoughtful perspective provides
direction, coherence, and meaning to one’s life.

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  Self-reactiveness broadens the role of the agent to be more than just
“planners and fore thinkers and includes processes of self-management
and self-motivation, as well as emotional states that can undermine self-
regulation: The translation of plans into successful courses of action
requires the self-management of thought processes; motivation to stick
with chosen courses in the face of difficulties, setbacks, and uncertainties;
and emotional states that can undermine self-regulatory efforts.

 Lastly, self-reflection refers to the self-examining nature of human

agents. “Through self-awareness, they reflect on their personal efficacy,
the soundness of their thoughts and actions, the meaning of their pursuits,
and…[if needed] change existing life course patterns”

HUMAN AGENCY IS EXERCISED THROUGH THREE DIFFERENT

MODES:

 Personal agency is exercised individually, and is the process by which an

individual affects what he or she can control directly. In some cases,
however, direct influence is not possible. The exercise of agency
through proxy is the indirect influence a person can exert on
circumstances beyond their immediate control, by acting through others.

 For example, children work through parents to get what they want, marital
partners through spouses, employees through labor unions, and the
general public through their elected officials. Agency can also be
exercised in groups. “People do not live their lives in individual autonomy.
Indeed, many of the outcomes they seek are achievable only through
interdependent efforts.”

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  Collective agency is an interdependence of human functioning that is
enacted when people who share common beliefs act as a group to
produce effects by collective action. Collective agency is an
interdependence of human functioning that is enacted when people who
share common beliefs act as a group to produce effects by collective
action.

 Agency refers to the thoughts and actions taken by people that express
their individual power. The core challenge at the center of the field of
sociology is understanding the relationship between structure and agency.
Structure refers to the complex and interconnected set of social forces,
relationships, institutions, and elements of social structure that work
together to shape the thought, behavior, experiences, choices, and
overall life courses of people. In contrast, agency is the power people
have to think for themselves and act in ways that shape their experiences
and life trajectories. Agency can take individual and collective forms

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND AGENCY

 To consider the relationship between structure and agency a dialectical

one is to assert that while social structure shapes individuals, individuals
(and groups) also shape social structure. After all, society is a social
creation -- the creation and maintenance of social order require the
cooperation of individuals connected through social relationships. So,
while the lives of individuals are shaped by the existing social structure,
they none the less have the ability -- the agency -- to make decisions and
express them in behaviour.

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  Individual and collective agency may serve to reaffirm social order by
reproducing norms and existing social relationships, or it may serve to
challenge and remake social order by going against the status quo to
create new norms and relationships. Individually, this might look like
rejecting gendered norms of dress. Collectively, the ongoing civil rights
battle to expand the definition of marriage to same-sex couples shows
agency expressed through political and legal channels.

PROACTIVE VS REACTIVE BEHAVIOUR — YOU CHOOSE

BEING REACTIVE

 We’ve all done it.

 Looked through the window to see rain and grey clouds, and decided it’s a
miserable day. Been criticised by someone at work or home and
consequently felt down for hours afterwards. Watched our sports team win
a game and felt on cloud nine for a week.

 For better or worse, these are all examples of reactive behaviour, where
our feelings depend on the results of external events or processes that we
have no control over. They are completely outside our sphere of influence,
yet they can control our lives.

 Reactive people are essentially like characters in a movie, playing out the
script. They often resemble powerless victims, having their lives run by
external factors. They have little control over their emotions. Instead their
emotions are dictated by someone or something else; by circumstance
and the outside environment.

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  You’ll often hear phrases like: “If only they treated me a bit better, I could
be happy”. “I have to do this because…”. “I wish I had more time for that,
but…”.

 We are all guilty of being reactive from time to time, often without even
knowing. For most people it’s the default program. I know I’m guilty.

 But whether we realise it or not, we choose to subordinate ourselves to

those forces that are outside our sphere of influence. We choose to
experience happiness, unhappiness, anger, frustration, boredom and
elation. We choose to create the habits of wallowing in self-pity, shifting
the blame, and feeling powerless.

BEING PROACTIVE

 When we are told that the situations we find ourselves in and the emotions
we experience are largely from our own doing, it can be hard to accept. It
involves a huge paradigm shift, with us taking responsibility for our current
circumstances.

 If we can choose to be reactive and be controlled by external factors, we

can also choose not to be.

 We don’t have to be influenced by unpredictable events or the negative

emotions of others. As holocaust survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl
stated in Man’s Search for Meaning:

 “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human
freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to
choose one’s own way.”

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  This type of behavior is proactive. When we are proactive, we only
concern ourselves with things that are inside our sphere of influence,
rather than worrying about things we can’t do anything about. We look
towards what we are able to control and change and this includes the way
we react to any given situation.

 We can’t always directly alter how someone else behaves or talks to us.
We have no control over the weather. We don’t even have a say in how
our favourite team will do on the weekend. But we can choose our thought
processes and our responses.

 Being proactive is not a case of being a robot and having no emotions.

Rather, it’s being in complete control over your emotions. It’s making the
transition — from other people and circumstances being in charge, to being
in charge of yourself.

 Instead of shifting the blame elsewhere, you can begin to carry the
responsibility. You stop thinking that the external circumstances need to
change, and realise that you can instead alter yourself internally. The
proactive approach is one that deals with things from the inside-out
perspective.

 And it applies to all sorts of situations. In relationships; where you work on

your own behaviour and focus on being a loving person, rather than
worrying about the faults of your partner. In business; where you work to
your strengths and contribute as much as you can to the company rather
than letting your belittling boss bring you down.

 Proactivity is not exactly a new concept. Stoic philosophy promoted the

idea of concerning yourself only with the things you could influence — your
thoughts and your actions. Everything else is indifference; not worth
worrying about. The Buddhists also believe that there are no inherently

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 good or bad events. Only our judgements of those events make them
good or bad, and we are free to choose. And that, we are.

APPLYING PROACTIVITY

 How can we apply this thinking to our everyday lives? How can we make
the shift from reactivity to proactivity? Here are a few things you can have
a go at:

1) Notice your reactive behaviour. Begin with the little things, not with the
death of a loved one or the suffering of innocent people. Just the everyday
situations; in work perhaps, or in your relationships. Notice your reactive
behaviour when it occurs, in the moment. Also note how many others do
the same, and how easy it is to be reactive. Don’t judge, just watch.

2) Alter your language. Our language tells us a lot about our level of
reactivity or proactivity. Reactive people tend to use “I can’t”, “If only”, “I
have to”. These phrases are shifting the blame to outside circumstances,
getting rid of responsibility. Consciously change these to more positive,
empowering phrases. “I can”, “I will”, “I want to”. A simple change in
language can make a big difference.
3) Analyse your past mistakes. Whilst you can control your actions, you
cannot always control the consequences. Invariably, you will have made
mistakes in your past — we all have. But we cannot change the past, so
dwelling on those mistakes is a form of reactive behaviour. Instead, accept
that you made them, take whatever you can learn from them, let them go,
and move on.

4) Make commitments. Making goals and working towards them can help
empower you and reinforce the control you have over your life. If you

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 achieve what you set out to, you realise that you can be responsible for
your circumstances, regardless of the external forces.

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