Unchanged Behavior Quotes

One day somebody asked Herr K. if there was a God. Herr K. replied: "I suggest that you ask yourself whether the answer would effect your behavior. If your behavior would remain unchanged, then we can drop the question. If it would change, then I can at least be of assistance to you by telling you that you have already decided: you need a God.

Although we have refined our behavior over many centuries, the basic perception that we are individual beings, separate from the rest of the world, remains unchanged, and so how we relate to the world remains unchanged. Because separation is an illusion, control is also an illusion.

We can't weaponize scripture when it defends our behavior, and reject it when it convicts us.

To realize our potential, we have to be willing to change and grow. In order to do this, we have to recognize our unchangeable identity as children of God, made in the image of God, so that we will feel free to change some behaviors and mature in character without feeling like we have to become someone else. Then we can allow our relationship with God to help us mature into the likeness of Christ. So change is not loss; it’s gain.

Ethan’s parents constantly told him how brainy he was. “You’re so smart! You can do anything, Ethan. We are so proud of you, they would say every time he sailed through a math test. Or a spelling test. Or any test. With the best of intentions, they consistently tethered Ethan’s accomplishment to some innate characteristic of his intellectual prowess. Researchers call this “appealing to fixed mindsets.” The parents had no idea that this form of praise was toxic. 　　Little Ethan quickly learned that any academic achievement that required no effort was the behavior that defined his gift. When he hit junior high school, he ran into subjects that did require effort. He could no longer sail through, and, for the first time, he started making mistakes. But he did not see these errors as opportunities for improvement. After all, he was smart because he could mysteriously grasp things quickly. And if he could no longer grasp things quickly, what did that imply? That he was no longer smart. Since he didn’t know the ingredients making him successful, he didn’t know what to do when he failed. You don’t have to hit that brick wall very often before you get discouraged, then depressed. Quite simply, Ethan quit trying. His grades collapsed. What happens when you say, ‘You’re so smart’ 　　Research shows that Ethan’s unfortunate story is typical of kids regularly praised for some fixed characteristic. If you praise your child this way, three things are statistically likely to happen: 　　First, your child will begin to perceive mistakes as failures. Because you told her that success was due to some static ability over which she had no control, she will start to think of failure (such as a bad grade) as a static thing, too—now perceived as a lack of ability. Successes are thought of as gifts rather than the governable product of effort. 　　Second, perhaps as a reaction to the first, she will become more concerned with looking smart than with actually learning something. (Though Ethan was intelligent, he was more preoccupied with breezing through and appearing smart to the people who mattered to him. He developed little regard for learning.) 　　Third, she will be less willing to confront the reasons behind any deficiencies, less willing to make an effort. Such kids have a difficult time admitting errors. There is simply too much at stake for failure. 　　  　　What to say instead: ‘You really worked hard’ 　　What should Ethan’s parents have done? Research shows a simple solution. Rather than praising him for being smart, they should have praised him for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said,“I’m so proud of you. You’re so smart. They should have said, “I’m so proud of you. You must have really studied hard”. This appeals to controllable effort rather than to unchangeable talent. It’s called “growth mindset” praise.

But the reminder here is that no matter what happens, no matter how disappointing our behavior has been in the past, the principles themselves remain unchanged. We can return and embrace them at any moment. What happened yesterday—what happened five minutes ago—is the past. We can reignite and restart whenever we like. Why not do it right now?

We argued that the ban on the death penalty had implications because a death-in-prison sentence is also a terminal, unchangeable, once-and-for-all judgment on the whole life of a human being that declares him or her forever unfit to be part of civil society. We asked courts to recognize that such a judgment cannot rationally be passed on children below a certain age because they are unfinished products, human works in progress. They stand at a peculiarly vulnerable moment in their lives. Their potential for growth and change is enormous. Almost all of them will outgrow criminal behavior, and it is practically impossible to detect the few who will not. They are "the products of an environment over which they have no real control - passengers through narrow pathways in a world they never made,".

There were clear differences in how the young men responded to being called a bad name. For some, the insult changed their behavior. For some it didn’t. The deciding factor in how they reacted wasn’t how emotionally secure they were, or whether they were intellectuals or jocks, or whether they were physically imposing or not. What mattered—and I think you can guess where this is headed—was where they were from. Most of the young men from the northern part of the United States treated the incident with amusement. They laughed it off. Their handshakes were unchanged. Their levels of cortisol actually went down, as if they were unconsciously trying to defuse their own anger. Only a few of them had Steve get violent with Larry. But the southerners? Oh, my. They were angry. Their cortisol and testosterone jumped. Their handshakes got firm. Steve was all over Larry. “We even played this game of chicken,” Cohen said. “We sent the students back down the hallways, and around the corner comes another confederate. The hallway is blocked, so there’s only room for one of them to pass. The guy we used was six three, two hundred fifty pounds. He used to play college football. He was now working as a bouncer in a college bar. He was walking down the hall in business mode—the way you walk through a bar when you are trying to break up a fight. The question was: how close do they get to the bouncer before they get out of the way? And believe me, they always get out of the way.” For the northerners, there was almost no effect. They got out of the way five or six feet beforehand, whether they had been insulted or not. The southerners, by contrast, were downright deferential in normal circumstances, stepping aside with more than nine feet to go. But if they had just been insulted? Less than two feet. Call a southerner an asshole, and he’s itching for a fight. What Cohen and Nisbett were seeing in that long hall was the culture of honor in action: the southerners were reacting like Wix Howard did when Little Bob Turner accused him of cheating at poker.

Stenham had always taken it for granted that the dichotomy of belief and behavior was the cornerstone of the Moslem world. It was too deep to be called hypocrisy; it was merely custom. They said one thing and they did something else. They affirmed their adherence to Islam in formulated phrases, but they behaved as though they believed, and actually did believe, something quite different. Still, the unchanging profession of faith was there, and to him it was this eternal contradiction which made them Moslems. But Amar’s relationship to his religion was far more robust: he believed it possible to practice literally what the Koran enjoined him to profess. He kept the precepts constantly in his hand, and applied them on every occasion, at every moment. The fact that such a person as Amar could be produced by this society rather upset Stenham’s calculations. For Stenham, the exception invalidated the rule instead of proving it: if there were one Amar, there could be others. Then the Moroccans were not the known quantity he had thought they were, inexorably conditioned by the pressure of their own rigid society; his entire construction was false in consequence, because it was too simple and did not make allowances for individual variations.

When your interactions are inhibited by social anxiety, you are unable to get as much out of life as possible, and so a “harmless personality trait” can become a major obstacle that stands in the way of fulfillment and productivity. But this doesn’t have to be the case. Social anxiety is a learned response-a habit that can be broken. This book will show you, step by step, how to break the social anxiety cycle that may have caused loneliness in your personal life, decreased productivity in the workplace, and an overall lack of fulfillment. As you begin to understand that social anxiety is a combination of attitudinal, emotional, behavioral, and physical responses, you will see that there is actually no such thing as shyness. Rather, what you may refer to as “shyness” is actually social anxiety, a psychophysiological response that you can learn to control. To recognize social anxiety is to give yourself permission to resolve the issues that cause your symptoms. In working through this self-help program, learn to substitute the phrase “social anxiety” for the vague term “shyness” and you will start to see your response pattern in a different light: as a way of reacting that you have chosen, not some unchangeable instinct that has chosen you.

We now know that not only does the past influence the present, but that the present clearly influences the past. In other words, we are not doomed or damned by the past. Because we did have unhappy childhood experiences and traumas that left engrams behind does not mean that we are at the mercy of these engrams, or that our patterns of behavior are “set,” predetermined and unchangeable. Our present thinking, our present mental habits, our attitudes toward past experiences, and our attitudes toward the future—all have an influence upon old recorded engrams. The old can be changed, modified, replaced, by our present thinking.

We might be tempted to think that knowledge of unchanging classes or kinds or species could simply take the place of knowledge of the unchanging causes. But this would be to ignore the manifest dependence of classes of beings on the existence of those (individual) beings. Xenophon’s Socrates never speaks of separately existing “ideas”: the classes or kinds are not separate from their members; the characters are always characters of the things possessing them. It is true that the characters are causes of those things, setting limits to them. They share this responsibility, however, with something other than them, something for which they are not responsible and whose existence and nature are guaranteed neither by them nor by anything else we know of. (Socrates may point to this shared responsibility when he calls attention to the dissimilar behavior of things possessing the same perceptible character.) As a result, we cannot know, though we may suspect, that some classes are permanent. The deepest implication of Socrates’ criticism of his philosophic predecessors becomes clear only when we consider more precisely what it was the pre-Socratics were trying to do. They had attempted to discover not merely the state of the cosmos but “the necessities” by which each of the heavenly things comes into being or “the way the god contrives each of the heavenly things” understood as the way he must contrive them. Needless to say, they understood the reign of necessity to extend to earthly matters as well. Human prudence and folly, as well as chance, derive from the fundamental necessity and are limited by it. Their most basic contention, the inspiration of the doctrines by which they sought to elaborate and vindicate that contention, was that not just anything can come into being or come to pass but only what accords with or is permitted by the nature of the fundamental cause or causes. But if the fundamental causes are undiscoverable, must one not regard this contention as merely plausible? Yet could Socrates, either as a philosopher or as a human being, leave it an open question whether “just anything” can come to pass?

Strict Father morality requires that there are natural, strict, uniform, unchanging standards of behavior that must be followed if society is to function. Another

Recognizes the Wisdom of Fundamental Truths “All the necessary truths have been spoken. Many of them, in fact are part of our daily speech; are said with reverence in our moments of worship; are, on great occasions, delivered as axioms of wisdom. Why have they been so relatively powerless to shape our daily behavior?” —The Mature Mind Overstreet helpfully reiterates the above question this way: “since we have long known the most inspired truths about human behavior and human relationships, why have we failed to put those truths into action?” Why is it that “A number of saving insights have been brought into the world without any of them saving the world”? The answer to this line of inquiry, he says, is that “a mature truth told to immature minds ceases, in those minds, to be that same mature truth. Immature minds take from it only what immature minds can assimilate.” Most of us have had the experience where the wisdom of a timeless aphorism or principle that we heard, and ignored, as a child is suddenly revealed. To the immature, these “ah-ha” moments come more slowly, if at all. They spend their time looking for completely novel answers or pathways, feeling that timeworn truths are too simple and too common to hold much value. Or they acknowledge the existence of such truths, but believe they themselves are exceptions to the rules, and thus fruitlessly seek to circumvent them. The mature recognize fundamental truths, respecting the fact that they, too, are subject to the unchanging laws that structure reality, even as they seek to do something wildly original.

of these cognitive behavioral therapies are based on the idea that our thoughts cause our feelings and behaviors, not external things like people, situations, or events. Even if a situation remains unchanged, how we respond to that situation can change. We can choose our response, making a conscious decision to respond

The tendency to avoid challenges is so omnipresent in human beings that it can properly be considered a characteristic of human nature. But calling it natural does not mean it is essential or beneficial, or unchangeable behavior. It is also natural to defecate in our pants and never brush our teeth. Yet we teach ourselves to do the unnatural until the unnatural becomes itself second nature. Indeed, all self-discipline might be defined as teaching ourselves to do the unnatural. Another characteristic of human nature - perhaps the one that makes us most human - is our capacity to do the unnatural, to transcend and hence transform our own nature.

The basic Buddhist ( and quintessentially Japanese ) idea that the person closest to a subject can never really see it. Sometimes it is the person passing through and at a remove who has the clearest view. This is the heady sensation that most travelers relish, the freedom that comes from feeling unaccounted for and unaccountable in a foreign country. Life is order and order emanates from an authority figure. In a collective, communitarian culture, order is essential. A one-hour bath has the same physiological effect as four hours of sleep. One thing I've learned to love about Japan is its freedom from the classic Western notion that a person is a stable, unchanging, continuous entity, some essential self. In Japan, behavior and even personality depend on context. In most contexts, it's impolite to reveal your emotions in Japan, not because emotion is bad but because emotions matter. It is not right to burden someone else with your feelings, especially with your sorrow. To tell your problems is to demand attention. One of the deepest fears of the Japanese is the fear of being identified as the Other, outside the group. Japanese culture is metonymic by design - an association stands for the real thing, a part for the whole. Like most forms of nostalgia, it pays homage to a place we never really knew. Such popular Japanese psychotherapies as Naikan and Morita emphasize meditation, gratitude and humility. In Morita therapy feelings are considered less significant than will. Indeed, one can will a change in behavior regardless of one's feelings. Both Naikan and Morita are based on the Buddhist principle that selflessness is the goal one should strive for. Traditionally in Japan one does not show a visitor one's home. That would be presumptuous and prideful, as well as an invasion of one's privacy. To have so much and to worry, to complain, is to invite punishment from the kami, the ever-watchful Japanese gods.

And for non-people-pleasing kids? Well, these methods often intensify challenging behavior, not help it. Because when we are not heard or seen on the inside, we escalate our expressions on the outside, in hopes of being taken seriously and getting our needs met. In short: when we see behavior as “the main event” instead of as a window into an unmet need, we may “successfully” shut down the behavior, but the underlying need remains, and it will pop up again, Whack-a-Mole style. When we don’t attend to the source of the leak, the water flow remains unchanged.

And we might also give thought to the legacy that they have created, by which the people continue to live today. What is this legacy? We often remember ancient or traditional cultures for the monuments they have left behind--the megaliths of Stonehenge, the temples of Bangkok, the pyramids of Teotihuacán, the great ruins of Machu Picchu. People like the Koyukon have created no such monuments, but they have left something that may be unique- greater and more significant as a human achievement. This legacy is the vast land itself, enduring and essentially unchanged despite having supported human life for countless centuries. Koyukon people and their ancestors, bound to a strict code of morality governing their behavior toward nature, have been the land's stewards and caretakers. Only because they have nurtured it so well does this great legacy of land exist today. Here, perhaps, is the greatest wisdom in a world that Raven made.

In my experience, whoever is left out of the discussion ends up being the target for blame. This is just as damaging whether the scapegoat is a junior employee or the CEO. When it’s a junior employee, it’s all too easy to believe that that person is replaceable. If the CEO is not present, it’s all too easy to assume that his or her behavior is unchangeable. Neither presumption is usually correct.

Exclusion is common behavior. But that doesn’t make it unchangeable. And that doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with the cafeteria fringe.

Modeling himself after Newton, Quételet desired to create a new “social physics” describing the laws of human behavior. In Quételet’s analogy, just as an object, if undisturbed, continues in its state of motion, so the mass behavior of people, if social conditions remain unchanged, remains constant.

Some prejudices and fallacies of the human mind are understandable on a theoretical basis, but practically impossible to implement. As matters now stand, I have little choice but to recognize myself as possessing a personal state of conscious awareness and presupposing that my active state of mental awareness constitutes a personal identity. Acknowledgement of my ignorance begins with the opening admission that the concept of a self delineates the most that I will ever understand in life. Although it might be a spectacular illusion to perceive the self as the unchanging nucleus at the center of my being, from a human evolutionary standpoint and to develop and carryout strategies necessary for personal survival it is a useful illusion. Belief in a self allows a person to integrate streams of information and resolve conflicts between competing values and goals. Absence of a self-identity and devoid of the specific goal of seeking personal self-realization, would not only jeopardize human survival on a daily bases, but it would render life utterly meaningless, making a person’s ontological existence a triviality. Lacking a philosophical status of fundamental ontological event, human life would be a windowless absurdity. A person must perceive oneself as an actual entity in physical Minkowski space, not merely as a philosophical concept in order to engage in the necessary activities to perpetuate personal existence and import meaning to personal efforts. Accordingly, I elect to perceive the self as an actual entity, not as a mere abstraction, composed of a single, definite set of well-defined ontological criteria. Self-perception guides future behavioral choices, frame intellectual inquires, and the evolution of the self represents the ultimate level of personal achievement in pursuit of my goal of attaining self-realization.