The behaviour of normal people is rarely appropriate. How could it be! Because normal behaviour is generated automatically – you don’t have to think about it, you just react – by your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is highly efficient at creating your reactions – it is this ability that has got us so far as the ‘superior’ species. But, as we’ve already said, normal behaviour is rarely appropriate – because your subconscious mind is constantly focused on the past – your childhood years – and it uses this out-of-date ‘stored knowledge’ to dictate your current automatic behaviour. With information that is way past its sell-by date being used to enable you react, how could today’s behaviour be appropriate to what is actually happening now?
How could it be appropriate when you understand that the normal person is forever in this automatic reactive mode? Unfortunately, it’s just the way we’re built. If you’re having a good day, your behaviour can actually be mildly effective – that’s in comparison to how effective you could actually be had you taken the trouble to focus on what’s actually happening and act, rather than react. But even then, normal people only have good days now and again. It’s the normal not-too-bad days that have consigned your life to that mundane, repetitive, not-too-bad life – you know, the one where really great things rarely happen, the one where you don’t like your job or the one where your relationship has gone off the boil – the ordinary stuff of the normal life. And on those routine not-too-bad days, normal behaviour varies from midldly in-effective to inappropriate to off-the-wall outrageous. People losing the head in rush hour traffic, people bullying their subordinates at work or who play with their workers’ lives. Husbands who beat wives, wives who beat husbands – or just the normal not-so-bad inertia of ‘I wish I was somewhere else’ and all the anxiety that that brings with it.
The problem is, however, that we confuse our behaviour with who we are – a criminal mistake that leads us into recrimination, guilt, frustration, anxiety and even more inappropriate behaviour. You are not your behaviour. How could you be? Your behaviour is automatically created by your personality – all the crap of ‘stored knowledge’ in your subconscious mind. Your personality has absolutely nothing to do with you – there’s a wealth of psychological research amassed over the last seven decades that proves this.
So here’s the deal. You can only take truly appropriate action (rather than normal reaction) by deliberately side-stepping your ego or personality – this is the essence of personal development (as distinct from personality development). You will not be able to do that until you realize that all inappropriate action comes from that source. What’s done is done – if damage was done, go and undo it. But you only damaged your own self-image, then, get forget it, it’s past, you need to get on with your life – starting right now.
