Friday, November 7, 2008

Internal Themostat analogy

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This blog is by, for and about recovery.


Recovery from... addictions, codependent tendencies, self destructive behaviors.

Approach Avoidance... what does that mean, exactly?

You decide you want something, you work towards getting it, as soon as you get close to achieving whatever that was... you screw it up.


Tony Robbins coined the term I use as the title of this blog.

I have a recovery blog specifically about the part of Tony Robbins' Personal Power 2 audio series that I think is Robbins' most important contribution to recovery...

Robbins didn't write his work with that in mind!

It turns out (well, I've discovered anyway) that the path one has to take to be 'successful' in business or the path one has to take to amass wealth, is identical to the path one has to take to recover from addictions or codependency.

That other blog of mine is http://globalbeliefs.blogspot.com

Robbins speaks of (and this is in the context of a business person or business owner) you discover that you are NOT where you want to be.

  • You notice that there is some 'distance' between where you currently are and where you want to be

  • You plot a course to get from here to there


  • Here's the analogy:

    You have a 'thermostat'

    You've "lit a fire under your a**"
    Inside you sort of "heat up", the furnace kicks in, you've got to get a head of steam up if you (old railroad analogy here) intend to climb that steep hill.

    You make progress towards getting 'up the hill' (I'm mixing metaphors and analogies I know)

    BUT as soon as you get close to achieving what ever...



    The 'air conditioning' kicks in!

    The furnace kicked in, and you intentionally, consciously turned the furnace on.

    When you got close to the target state...

    You UNCONSCIOUSLY retarded forward progress!!!!!



    ...now why would you do that?

    Part of you did it... there are more of us in here than just one of us!

    (see previous post)

    A part of you (your conscious self, your EGO, the part of you that's more left brain than right) is looking at another part of you (your inner child, your right brain) with CONTEMPT!

    You're so used to being 'punitive' (self deprecating) that you actually think it's normal to do so!

    You know what context 'acclimated' means?

    If you're an Eskimo, or you live above the arctic circle, and you've been living in sub zero temperatures for months... as soon as the temp goes up to 10° above, compared to 40° below, now you think that's warm.

    You've been 'acclimated' to it being below zero.

    If you're an addict (which AUTOMATICALLY means you're a codependent) you're 'acclimated' to *beating yourself up*

    That's where the approach avoidance comes from... no wonder you weren't aware of it.

    Did you know that all you can hold in consciousness is 7 +/- 9 chunks of information at one time?

    Are you even slightly aware of the thousands (maybe even 10s of 1000's) of bits of information your subconscious can hold?

    iceberg

    There's a lot more of you under the water line than there is above it.

    My grand daughter is waking up... I've got to close