Default Attitudes

    We each have our default positions. It has become important to find mine because they define my limitations real, imagined, and/or both. They are the places where my mind is made up. They define what I believe and what I don’t.

They define the possibilities that show up in any given situation (in the moment). They are a, kind of, prerecorded set of feelings, and attitudes, followed by words that back them up. We each have them, though they can be quite different from one another’s.

Default positions can be found in likes and dislikes, expressions (physical, emotional, language). They are anyplace my reactions are. They filter the possibilities, they are the way I hear myself—inside, the habitual ways my world/life is interpreted. Are habits bad and wrong? It’s easy to default to that, and yet, it would miss the point. Habits, when not observed as habits, define choice.

Here are some examples of what has happened when operating from my defaults:

When told something I already know, I can feel self-righteous indignation come up, I internally contract, and have a thought like: What do you think, I’m stupid? I didn't get to vote on whether this response came up or not. It is an upset that looks for places to happen. Default responses are like throwing a dart with a blindfold on. Once in awhile they hit the target and more often than not they don’t.

When asked to do something my first thought is no, I consider this a default setting, as well as the answer “fine,” to how are you? I have friends whose first answer is yes which leaves them in a fix too.

Unfortunately default responses can be counter productive.  Often they are defensive or offensive.  They don't come from reflection and clarity they come from old experiences and habit.  They have left me at odds with people I care about, when I didn’t know how to go inside and find out what I would have wanted to say from my heart. Striking back from a reaction is no longer anything I am interested in nurturing. I work at setting my boundaries while speaking from my heart, not from some habitual defense posture that damages others.

No correcting If there's no problem

    It would appear to me, I was doing fine; then someone or something would come along and upset the applecart. ‘They’ acted someway I did not expect; they were the source of my problem.

My initial reaction to problems had been to see them as taking place outside me; they were caused by others. This view placed me in the familiar role of victim—justifying any retribution I saw fit to express. I could then be self-righteously rude and feel good about it. This perspective gave me no insight into my part in the play. It was about as useful as looking for dropped keys at night, underneath a streetlight, when they have fallen in the dark of the grass.

I needed to look at whether the result I produced was the one I wanted. Perhaps I had just one-upped them, hurt their feelings, maybe I had been flip. Was that the result I wanted? Not any more, was my answer more often than not as I did more and more work in these areas. I had been defending myself for so many years it felt vulnerable to admit the problem. I was addicted to the comfort of familiarity—whether it produced the result I wanted or not.

The value I have found in looking for what is and isn’t working in my life is immense. Only when I could see how my attitudes connected to my behavior and my behaviors, connected to my results, did I see the value in acknowledging what wasn’t working.

When the default setting is blame (myself or the other) attention is hijacked from the solution. From one angle we are problem solving beings when we are not in the midst of proving whose right and whose wrong. You cannot fix what you do not see.   

Black Friday

     The Holidays are here again, and from now until New Years I tend to perceive time as a whirlwind.  This is the way it always seems to me.  I wonder what will happen if I try a new angle on it?  Last year I was ill and unable to do any of the things (except the meal) I would normally do.  Our wonderful children and grand children handled everything for me.  I didn't do it and there was no calamity.  I need to remember that.
    I have banned the kitchen Nazi who used to take me over.  She was anxious and wanted everything to turn out right, to the point she barked orders instead of asking for help. It was a job retiring her.  Her presence is not missed.
     Maybe this year I can remember to seek the spirit, and pay less attention to the shoulds and shouldn'ts  that want to steel my serenity.

Strange and Common Notions

  As my skill observing (without judgment) increased, I saw how predictable many of my feelings were. 


   I remember thinking/imagining I did not get angry often, so when I did, it was righteous anger. Given that something upset me that much, I must be right about it. This was not said outright; it is my default attitude. It’s where the energy, in the words come from. Paying attention (being present) to the impressions coming and the instantaneous reactions to them allowed  discovery of the routines that kicked-in when reactivated. What I thought of as seldom was a distortion.

Observing this act (behavior) and asking the question, did it produce what I wanted. I realized it usually left a bad taste in the relationship. Not the result I wanted. My success rate with changing others was so poor I can’t remember it working.

Ah-ha, the premise was based on the idea that if I could get them to do things the way I wanted; I wouldn’t have to feel the way I did. 


    It is one of those strange notions I lived from and did not think about. It is a common practice to see people try to change others so they don’t have to be upset by them. Saying it out loud; it sounds crazy.

Have you noticed any strange notions?

Prisoner of Habit

    My habitual ways of operating take care of me from one angle—restrict me from another. They give me tried and true methods that have been collected since childhood. Whether they work in the particular instance, age or not. They include, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, postures, gestures, intonations and all the little things others notice about me.

Inundated with impressions; sights, sounds, aromas, textures, temperatures, attitudes, words and more. Some internal place has sorted them all into the responses that belong to me. It looks for what it knows, what it can say, it looks for danger, for signals it needs to respond to. It worries and scolds if I have made a fool of myself, and boasts when I do well. It has developed over time, and with repetition. It is the automatic answer that comes out more often than not when someone says, “How are you?” or saying “God bless you.” after a sneeze. I don’t think about it any more, I hear the sneeze and the words come to mind, wanted or not.

They are mechanical/habituated ways of interpreting my life. To think about them as good or bad is to fall into back into them. A habituated response in not necessarily good or bad. It can be either. The question I found most useful in looking at this is: Is it producing the result I want?  

Finding My Part

   What I know for sure: The only part of things that happen in my life I can do something about, is mine. God knows I tried fixing other’s parts for years to no avail. People don’t want to be fixed, it makes them feel broken.

Until realizing what I can and cannot do, I spent time on things I had no power over. I cannot change people, events or who I was born to. I cannot change the times I was born into, or the things that happen to me after they happened. What’s important to remember, is I am the common denominator in my life. So, when fate follows me and the same kind of things happen to me repeatedly, it's safe to assume I am participating. This is both the good and the bad news.

Bad news; whatever I am doing now is not working.  There will be no new result, unless I do something different. Trying to change them was not working.  I had to find my part.

I can’t fix what isn’t acknowledged. For instance: 
I did not start dealing with my problems until I almost hurt my daughter in a rage. Scared, by the thoughts in my head. It was as though the venom in my anger shocked me into seeing from the outside; to see and feel from inside her. It was some other kind of awake. It had its own flavor—something unfamiliar.  I saw my anger naked, bare of excuses, and justifications; out from under defenses. 


Another time I saw that as long as I thought my sarcasm made me cleaver I could not own how often it was mean. The sad part was how fast I was to defend these behaviors. They are but a sampling of what I saw when I could look without dropping into some kind of beat-myself-up-party.

The good news; As long as I can figure out what my part is I can learn to do something different (if I want a different outcome).
When something is bothering me I find there are uncomfortable sensations in my body. They are so familiar they go unnoticed unless I am attentive.  Paying attention to how my body responds in emotional moments has made me aware of how connected one is with the other  Calming the body, calms the mind too. I find it essential to tune into my breathing, which can stop or become shallow when upset.
Learning to look at my part as though it is information rather than condemnation has opened up the possibility of new ways to respond.  

Depression - Having and Being

 Depression deprives me of relativity, there is no up—only down. Its as though a net has been set out to catch good-time thoughts and prevent awareness. It is a place of distortions, like a hall of mirrors. The difference being, I know the hall of mirrors is a distortion. When experiencing depression I am the thoughts and feelings that pass through me. 


 Having feelings and being the feelings are distinct from one another.

History and/or Experience

 Once married to Stu I was faced with a dilemma. I knew about his attachment to women as friends. I often reacted to it--feeling uncomfortable, anxious, and withdrawn--followed by crusty, sharp words meant to control or back him off. It was one of those default reactions that came when some part of me felt threatened (real or not).

I noticed that my fear about Stu having lunch with a female friend came from my history; not from my experience of Stu, the friend, or our relationship. While this was true and a rational thought. Experience told me feelings trump intellect more than not. I pondered this off and on over time and realized that when my reaction is born out of history it feels no different than when it’s the real thing.

I have emotional hot spots where the reactions come faster than I know how to stop them. Like flinching, my feelings of jealousy and anger came unbidden. The threat needn’t be real only imagined. The sensations—real enough to make me indulge in a  parade-of-horribles  that were front and center. I had done enough work by then to know that controlling someone so I wouldn’t have to feel jealous, envious or begrudging was not feasible. It was some kind of insanity that didn’t work.

Stu understood I couldn’t stop my feelings from coming up. I was okay with him having lunch with female friends, and I needed to share what it brought up for me. The fears of losing another person in my life. My part was learning to recognize this as a fear of mine... and realizing controlling him would not resolve my issue.  
    This was powerful for me in that it gave me a way to work against feelings that could be destructive when I took them at face value. We went through quiet a few issues in our marriage this way. 
Discussing how certain things affected each of us allowed for close connections that carried us through difficult times.

So the moral of this story is to check in on what I’m feeling and the thoughts it brings up. I try to see if my experience of this person fits with what I have going on in my head. Many times I found it was nothing more than ghosts from the past. I try and check out what I am picking up on these days and assess whether it is my history, my experience, neither or both.

The only way to know for sure is to ask myself, “Is that my experience of Stu?” My reaction habitually comes up regardless of whether the threat is real or not.

The Truth Doesn't Mean Anything

The first time I heard that it made no sense to me.  Today I keep it in mind when I want to speak from my heart.

This view on truth reveals why so many communications take an unwanted turn. Truth has no meaning on its own; it just is. For example if I were to say to someone (in a matter of fact way) “the glass is on the table” it would be, simply, the truth. Then imagine I raise my voice, and glare yelling, “The glass is on the table!” Now I have imparted a meaning where there was none before, with the exception of information. While the statement is true the delivery has judgment attached to it.

When I aware enough to remember it, this revelation has helped me avoid many a problem. When another's voice carries judgment my typical response is one of defense or retreat. Depending on my objective this is essential to understand. When I am looking to resolve an issue, with anyone, speaking the truth without some implied judgment is far more potent, as it does not call forth the same resistance.


Truth as a weapon is not exactly the truth.