EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Decisions and beliefs are, in their simplest form, thoughts. We often hang onto these thoughts with a tight grip. Today I suggest seeing them differently while using an Adlerian psychology reference that clarifies it.

Episode theme song ‘Jojo’ by Lakey

TRANSCRIPT

So I recently had duck for the first time since I was a little girl, because I had determined that I don't like duck—because the only time I ever had it was, and believe me, this memory was vague, but I verified it with my parents recently.

The only time I ever had duck was when I was a little girl and remember disliking it very much. My dad had shot and prepared us a meal of Mandarin Duck. So I called him recently to get his memory of that meal, and he too recalls that it was very gross and that it tasted fishy, which there’s something about that comment that induced my gag reflex, and still kind of does. 

The reason I was calling him, was a friend of mine's son had died a year ago. And a few of us got together on the one-year anniversary of his death and honored his memory at a restaurant he and his fiancé frequented… one of the things that he loved at this particular restaurant was their duck, or I think duck in general. So most of us at the table got that dish in honor of him, including me (I pulled my big girl pants up and got my brave on and prayed that duck did not actually taste like my childhood memory of duck. And I’m happy to say, the duck in celebration of our friend John was delicious. 

So I thought about that. I thought about making the statement, “I don't like duck.”

Because I wasn't quick to try that dish again after that hideous duck consumption when I was a little girl. And though the memory is vague, I determined at that moment that I don’t like duck. 

And I think that's true of many things for us right? I try something once and am like, mm, nah, I don't like that.” 

Liver. Liver is another one for me. I was anemic a couple of decades back and my doctor and my Chinese Medicine acupuncturist both implored me to start eating liver.

There was nothing about that organ meat that sounded good to me.

And so  I was like, "No way.” You can infuse me with iron, you can poke me with needles all day and everyday, but I will not be eating liver.  

And then I had a holistic practitioner recently say, “I've got a way that I prepare chicken liver that I think you will like. Or you can go to this restaurant…” and this was a practitioner in Kansas City, “…and you'll find that they do them really well and you can still get the nutrition and the iron benefits, but they're not disgusting because they prepare them really well.”

So I did and they were delicious. 

So my point of this is— I think we all have experiences or we have a thought or make a decision that we don’t like something. Or, you know, we carry from childhood, like in Adlerian psychology, it was Adolf Adler or Rudolph Dreikers, I can’t remember which, said, “we're children, we make decisions about the world and they become beliefs. Then we become adults and we still have somehow these beliefs, despite the fact that the reality of the world we live in as an adult is slightly, if not vastly, different than the one we perceived as a child.

And he went on to say that “when we were children, we wore children’s clothes, but now that we are adults, we don’t wear our baby clothes anymore. YET, we still have or wear the beliefs we determined as children. 

And it's really true how oftentimes they don't really align with us as adults. What we learned as children was limited.

We land on a belief as a child, and then carry it into adulthood as if it’s still real for us. 

I learned as a child, money is this. And therefore, that's why I think money is bad. I learned as a child, men are this, therefore that's why I think men are weak, you know, and women are this, marriage is this, homeless people are this, and liberals are this And by they way, this happened to me when I was little, therefore I believe this culture is bad and these people are bad—and we just hard-line these things and say that this is how it is.

Not to mention, most of those beliefs we formed as a child were handed down to us. They aren’t even really our beliefs. They were our parents saying, “Oh, don’t trust those people. Their different from us.” Or “we don’t do that.”

So we embraced other people’s thoughts as our own and kept those thoughts as true for all of time. Or we had our own experiences and we made a decision about the result of that experience. 

Like eating poorly cooked duck that tasted, grossly, like fish, and saying, “Yep, I hate duck,”

I don't like liver, I don't like duck. 

Now, I will say that if I have a choice between liver and another dish, I will likely choose the other dish, because liver is still not my favorite thing. But I have a new relationship to it. I’m making a choice based on more, and better, information than sticking with, “Nope, I hate liver.” Or, “Nope, there is no way liver can be delicious. It filters things I don’t want to think about, and the word bile alone makes me want to throw up.” 

I had all these preconceived ideas about liver before even tasting it prepared well. 

Or the duck. I was convinced all duck must be disgusting because it once was disgusting, until I had it prepared well, and realized I was wrong. 

So this thought about hard-lining what we do and don’t like. Whom we do and don’t trust. That’s all thought. It has as powerful a hold on us as we allow it to have.

And, yes, I allowed the consumption of liver and duck to repulse me for decades. Until I had them as an adult and I could make a different decision about them.

So, I think we have to do more of this. Open our minds.

One, see these hard lines we draw for what they really are. Just thought, that graduated to belief, and then to these knee-jerk reactions of, “Nope.”

No way. 

What if we could loosen up our need to define what we like and don’t like. Because in this moment, do you really know if you hate driving in convertibles because your long hair blows in the wind and it doesn’t feel good on your face? You used to hate that. But what if tonight you went out driving and loved the feeling of the cool and the wind blowing your hair around. Do you then still hate driving in convertibles? 

You see, I think we make up our minds too fast and too often. 

And I can hear it now. “Well if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” 

What? Really? No. If you don’t stand unbendingly for something, you are open and free to experience new things in new any moment. And the fact that we use the past (which no longer exists) as a barometer for what feel, believe, want now?  Think about that.

Every moment of now is an opportunity to feel something new. 

Think something new. 

Do something new. 

Experience new perspectives on things that you once allowed your mind to remain limited with a strong statement like, “I don’t like them because…”

Our whole respective worlds, our own personal life experiences could become better, more fulfilling, less painful, and more full of joy if we could loosen our grip on drawing a line, planting a stake in the ground, this do-or-die belief that is simply thought to which you’ve given a great deal of meaning. 

So this week, I am assessing things that I once made a strong hard-line decision about, and looking at them differently; looking at them objectively. 

I think the world could use a lot more of that objectivity. For the way we see ourselves and the way we see others.  

We don’t wear baby clothes anymore. Maybe it’s time to retire some of the beliefs we adopted and the decisions we made when we did. 

Okay.

I’ll see you tomorrow.  

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The podcast is hosted, produced, and edited by Jenée Arthur.
Cover art by Jenée Arthur
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