A decade ago I discovered a book that changed my life
forever. The book was “
Happiness is a
Serious Problem” by Dennis Prager. The
message Mr. Prager conveyed throughout the entire book was, ‘You have an obligation to be happy’.
Dennis Prager takes Happiness seriously. He is
a radio talk show host who broadcasts five days a week. The second hour of every Friday is devoted to
the subject of Happiness. Every Friday,
even after September 11th, 2001, he devotes the hour to
Happiness. He is correct to do so.
The military, and particularly the Army has been grappling
with suicide rates over the past year.
To be honest suicide has been a problem since forever. The slowdown in the wars has allowed a focus
to be shifted toward suicide and other measures of the health and welfare of
the force.
Today I was exposed to part of what the Army’s research and
training has come up with. This training is similar to my own self development but was a more concise lesson worth sharing. This is Action Thought Consequence Training (ATC
Training), and I’ll get to it later. The
training hinges on an important concept of mental agility and resiliency. Resiliancy is a no brainer.
Webster defines resilient
as: able to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad
happens. In essence what the Army is
looking for is training to help Soldiers rebound back after Wars’ and Life’s
tragedies.
Much of the keys to mental agility and resiliency are
outlined in Mr. Prager’s
book . He also has a handful of videos on the
subject available for free. I may have
missed a few of them, the website updates every two weeks or so, but below is a
small collection of what he has available
Thinking back on my childhood a lot of this resonances with
my upbringing. I can remember quite
vividly getting into a fight with my little brother, or not quite so little for
those who know him. My father intervened
and sent me to my room where we talked.
Throughout the conversation I would say “he made me do it”, trying to
blame my throwing a punch and trying to beat up a giant on the victim and not
myself. My father bless his soul would
always respond back “he didn’t make you do anything, you chose to act”.
At the time this made no sense to me. My brother made me mad, he was acting like a
jerk, and he was breaking my things. He
made me hit him. To a seven year old
this was pretty cut and dry. In truth it
wasn’t. I could have taken my things
back. I could have put them away. I could have walked off. I could have shown that my brother was a
miscreant and let the punishment be taken care of by my parents.
Later my father would use the same logic when it came to my
shutting down emotionally or lashing out at those around
me. The message while hard to take, was in fact
easier as I approached adulthood. It
wasn’t easier because I was closer to being an adult, it was easier because of
the practice that was brought on by years of hearing the same message.
As an adult I would try to use this same message with those
I dated. It didn’t work well. More accurately it didn’t translate
well. It would seem that telling somebody
that they are wrong because their actions are wrong might translate as they are
wrong for the emotions that they have. More accurately I probably messaged the
emotions themselves were wrong as opposed to the actions. As
one can imagine, telling somebody that what they are feeling is wrong might
hurt and only add fuel to a fire.
ATC Training provides a different take on this. Roughly stated an action occurs, you have an
immediate thought, and then you have an emotion followed by your reaction to
that emotion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBRJNT4fa80
What the ATC Model Stresses, is that your thoughts carry
emotion as opposed to the reverse. In
other words, if you can control your thoughts you can change your feelings on a
matter. I have had a head start on this,
as my father has influenced the way I react toward my feelings for nearly 30
years. I had in fact been following the
ATC model now for 17 years without even knowing it.
Don’t get me wrong, I am still a fountain of negative
thoughts and emotions, but my overall personal outlook is quite positive and
optimistic due to my always looking for the bright side of things. Today while I audited a class of cadets the
Senior Military Instructor started the class off with the phrase “Find the good
stuff”. The object of the lesson was to
get the cadets to find something good that happened to them over the course of
the weekend and how that specifically made them feel. By getting the cadets to focus on these good
things and the emotions that were associated with them it got them more aware
of themselves and specifically on the positives.
The class would follow by examining an action that led to
them feeling bad and how they responded to it.
The goal here was to identify the thoughts that triggered the negative
emotion and to then see what other thoughts could have been triggered to endure
a more positive emotion. This is the key
component. It isn’t that your feelings
or emotions are wrong; in fact they are probably perfectly in line with your
thoughts. Instead it is that your
thoughts are wrong and therefore even if your emotions are in line with your
thoughts you are setting yourself up for failure.
To use the hypothetical event from the training:
Action: “You just got
back from a 12 month deployment and you asked your son to go out back and play
catch with you. He responds by saying no
he would rather just play video games.”
Thought: My Son Doesn’t
love me anymore.
Emotion/Reaction:
Loss/go out and drink withdraw from family
Thought: My son is an
ungrateful brat
Emotion/Reaction:
Anger/yell, and kick the kid out of the house
These thoughts would no doubt come to mind instantly and the
emotions are perfectly believable while the reactions may or may not be good
they are consistent with the emotion.
They are however a link to a breakdown.
Instead, try the following example.
Thought: My son is
sharing his interests with me.
Emotion/Reaction:
Appreciation/Ask him if there is a game we can play together, and maybe
go play catch later.
Without a doubt this type of analysis and change will be
easier for some people than others, but continual practice and application will
eventually transform your thinking. It
simply takes time. I was not born an
optimist. I was in fact quite
pessimistic growing up, but after years of trying to change my perspective on
things I slowly changed the way I view things.
It took me 6 months to graduate from Officer Candidate School, a school
that should only take 12 weeks. Even
though I was frustrated at the time when I graduated I was happy as ever. Why? Quite
simply because my thought was, “Now I can make a contribution.” I could have easily thought ”God that took
forever” and to some degree I did, but the more powerful thought, the one I
embraced was the empowering positive turn.
I have been giving Mr. Prager’s book “Happiness is a Serious
Problem” to my friends and family now for over a decade with the hopes of
improving their lives. If after reading
this short piece just one person takes the time to learn to control their
thoughts after reading this it will make me happy.
In the future, I will focus on some other aspects of Happiness. I plan on ordering a new book by Mr. Hugh
Hewitt entitled “The Happiest Life” and will discuss that book sometime in
January after its release.
