A few months ago, students in a class I was teaching challenged me over the idea that other people can’t make you feel anything, and argued that another person could indeed make you feel happy. The tone of the class during this discussion remained positive, yet after the class I continued to think about what I thought and even felt about the topic. I wrote out my thoughts a couple of days later and shared them with the class on a discussion board. What follows is the note I wrote.
I have continued to think about our class discussion this past Wednesday, which really got me to thinking about my beliefs and reviewing the concepts of Choice Theory. Several of you felt that another person could indeed make you feel happy. My explanation of a different way of looking at that process seemed not to gain a foot hold. Or maybe I should say . . . a mind hold. In my thinking and reviewing, though, I contemplated this . . .
What if during my attempted explanations during class I looked at you and said, “You make me so frustrated!”
In that moment you might think, Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make you frustrated, but fairly quickly you would probably arrive at thinking I am not making you anything.
Your thought process would then continue with – If you’re feeling frustrated because I asked a question that’s your problem. Your “frustrating” or “choosing to frustrate”, as Glasser would say, is about something inside of you, not made to happen from something in the classroom.
And if that was your thought process you would be right. My frustration would be the result of a picture in my head not being satisfied. Common teacher QW pictures include – being able to answer student questions insightfully and accurately; all students listening attentively; and giving assignments that students pour themselves into, to name a few. When a specific picture isn’t being met a teacher would very likely choose to frustrate.
What about the phrase you make me happy? Well, you make me happy is as accurate as you make me frustrated. When a picture I have placed in my head is satisfied it is easy for me to happy or to choose to be happy.
The language we use can make a big difference in our habits of mind. We use the phrase you make me so easily and so quickly that over time we come to believe it. You make me so mad we might think. And in so doing we plant the idea or support the idea that our being mad or our being happy is not up to us. It is instead up to someone else. This habit of mind, that is, the idea that someone or something outside of us can control us, drains or robs us of so much of our power. We go from a person being responsible for our Total Behavior (which includes our feelings) to a person being a victim of external circumstances. We go from creating our future to simply following the tide of events; from negotiating our QW pictures to trying to manipulate the QW pictures of others.
It is freeing to not be at the mercy of others behavior.
We may like it when someone in our life surprises us with a gift. And if this happens it is fine to think or say I love it when you surprise me with an unexpected gift. I feel valued and appreciated when you go to the trouble of planning something like this. This language reflects my choosing what I value.
It may seem like a small thing, the words we use, but it isn’t really. It is a big thing when we get in the habit of owning our Total Behaviors, and then using language that reflects this ownership. Recognizing that we directly choose and nurture our thoughts, and that our feelings are a part of this process, actually empowers us. This power brings with it responsibility, which basically eliminates criticizing, blaming, and complaining as ways to make things better. But this power, with the Holy Spirit’s help, puts our past, our present, and our future into our hands. It is freeing to not be at the mercy of others behavior.
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I am so open to your comments and feedback. So many times you have responded to one of my posts and helped me to see things more clearly and accurately. Could I have said things better in the note to my class?
The Better Plan . . 
I am definitely printing this and rereading it from time to time. It brought memories of my mother in law to my mind. She was always such a happy person and she lived with a very difficult man. I wondered how she greeted each day so cheerfully and rarely, if ever, reacted to his moods. Finally one day I asked her how she managed to always be happy, cheerful and to face most every situation with a smile. She said that it was a decision she made each day and that happiness is a choice. She said she was not going to be controlled by the actions or moods of another person. She has been a model for me and a person I try to emulate. It is freeing.
The point you are making is very valid and very important. We do have choice and responsibility. However, I’ve never had the sense that these ideas were expressed as clearly as I would like. There are multiple issues involved. A therapist once told me I could feel anything I wanted to feel. Sure, perhaps I can think the thoughts that I want to think. and the feelings will follow. An alcoholic can choose to change his feelings with alcohol. He can feel good while he is self destructing. That is simply insane. AA speaks of “stinking thinking.” We do many things to change how we feel. And we waste much of our life in distracting ourselves from our feelings and from our life. How shall we choose? Balancing is very important. Sincerity/integrity of expression is also important.
If my wife dies, does it make me sad? Do I choose to be sad? At such times we often have insane thoughts and feelings. If we choose not to grieve, we will predictably have insane feelings overwhelming our power to choose. At the same time we need to balance periods of grief with periods of joy or peace, etc. Few of us experience much power of choice at such times. And we are never free from the behavior of others. Their behavior affects us, and when we deny it we leave reality. When we are truly in touch with reality our thoughts and our feelings will flow with our experience.
There is a time to cry and a time to dance.Such is the music of life.
Your story, Sharon, really underscores what I was trying to say. What a great example!
Sharon’s mother-in-law knew Choice Theory; perhaps she discovered it for herself. She would have been a marvelous teacher for us. What a model for emulation!
Thank you for this thought. It all comes down to our thinking. I would say that if someone can make me do something or think in some way I am letting them control me, right? And do I want that? But it is hard to change the way we think, but like you say, ,,It is freeing to not be at the mercy of others behavior”.
So much depends on how we think; so much of our peace and happiness. Getting into good habits of thinking helps, but still our thinking seems to require constant monitoring. It is too easy to get off of the path we want to be on.
Bill used to say we (humans) are a control system and no control system wants to be controlled by anything outside of it. This is an interesting thought re thinking. I suppose monitoring is wise for all the components?
I suspect Bill G. was influenced by Bill P. when it comes to systems thinking, although I would add this was a good influence. Bill G. would soon leave the Bill P. sphere and state the ideas in a more useable, understandable way.
It is interesting to me that when something is right, it taps into both spiritual and secular truth. In other words, on a secular level I believe it is true that control systems don’t like being controlled by other control systems; while on a spiritual level I believe God created us for internal control, able to weigh evidence and circumstances and make choices based on freedom and autonomy. He is not the Big Puppeteer who created a bunch of puppets. The power and freedom with which we are endowed is amazing, really!
I still like the levels of perception but Bill told me once at a faculty retreat that it was all horseshit and I said there is a pony in there someplace! I agree that he made the concepts more accessible and that has proven so useful. In therapy, I found it truly remarkable that if a person raised or lowered the level of perception (ie shifted a Quality World picture), the components would similarly shift.
Hi Jim! I remember once Bill said to me to just try and eliminate “make” for just one day, and I did that and then (I was teaching in Ireland at the time) I asked my advanced class whether they would like to try that too. I think the issue for “make” was that it was a stimulus-response residual, and to rid ourselves of that flawed view of how people “work,” we could try to eliminate the accompanying vocabulary. Losing someone or something does not in itself “make” us sad; it is the loss of an essential Quality World picture that brings the sorrow. It is enough to say “I feel sad,” or “I am sad,” without the S-R “makes me sad.” There would be something really wrong with us if we lost someone or something essential and had no feeling about that; in fact, I find myself wondering now whether the degree of sorrow is related to the priority or importance of the picture. I remember Bob Wubbolding wrote a fine piece for the old journal about our pictures existing in priority (and William Powers had those different levels/orders of perception). I think the make part is habituated and we have to lay down new pathways in the brain which, when done means our behavioral language eliminates the “make” and just reports the feeling component. In the beginning of this Control Theory journey, I had to access the thinking component to do that, but now I am happy to report that I am fully recovered???? I still use “make” when I am cooking (eg a roux or something like that when the flour makes it thicken); and, I am glad about that. That particular class in Ireland posted a verboten sign with “make” in a circle and a line drawn through it. I can still see that image in my mermory and I still smile about that class.
Special love to you.
What a great idea to make a sign with MAKE in the middle with a line drawn through it. Simple, but bold. Like it.
I look forward to your responses, which always add value to what I am trying to say.
So sorry about that typo in {memory)! Your meditations on this inspired me to think about the issue all over again!!!!
Yes about the Irish; essential, bold. I like that.