DIRECT EFFECTS

The direct effects of our actions are often more potent than the effects on us of other people’s treatment of us, and in fact, as we have seen, our own behavior plays a major role in determining how we interpret other people’s behavior. Not just direct effects but vantage-point effects are usually significant in cases like this last one. It is often helpful to separate the different effects on us of our actions. The eventual influence on us of nearly any act may be a combination of two of the effects mentioned, or all of them. Vantage-point effects stop us from discovering evidence that might lead us to change our beliefs. However, the place where we have intensified a belief, direct effects have nearly always played a more prominent role.

THE INTERACTION AND THE VANTAGE-POINT EFFECTS

One route by which our actions eventually influence our own thoughts is indirect. What we do influences people’s opinions of us; and form their reactions to our behavior we draw some part of our opinion of ourselves. A braggart antagonizes people, causing them to withdraw form him. Form their reactions he comes to feel that he is inadequate and that people are almost impossible to impress. Believing himself unnoticed and unheard, he invents stories of accomplishments even grander than those he has talked about in the past-a tactic which antagonizes people further, provoking reactions that in the end make him feel even less desirable. His bragging is, by its influence on other people, producing an eventual change in his own attitude toward himself. Changes of this sort follow what we may call the interaction route; it seems meaningful to say that he is producing an interaction effect on himself.

THE ACTION APPROACH

Our personal orientation is relatively stable by the time we become adult; we are conscious of only part of it. It is made up all the long-standing beliefs that have emotionally meaning to us. This orientation has been called in recent years our character structure-a term that William James did not use; however, he has told us in effect that by undertaking new modes of activity, we can alter our character structure. If James is correct, what we need is knowledge of how the various behavior patterns that we may possibly undertake will influence us. Such knowledge would enable of us to find the particular courses according to our needs-for instance, rid us of anxiety, or fear of authorities, or guilt.

THE NECESSARY STARTING PLACE FOR SELF-HELP

Whoever you are, you have a personal orientation, a complex set of feelings, attitudes, and beliefs, which are relatively constant. Your past actions have done a great deal to produce the pattern of thoughts and attitudes which now characterizes you. However, now that it’s here, you can’t wish it away: you’ve got to understand new modes of action to change it. There’s no sense blaming yourself for fear of authorities, or for the fact that you can’t enjoy sex, or that you’re lacking in confidence. If you blame yourself for anything, it must be for actions, since you can control them. Many people blame themselves for what they cannot control so as to divert attention form activities which they know would help them but which they don’t want to undertake.

TRY TO BE ALERT TO OTHER PEOPLE’S FEELINGS

When another people describe a feeling to you, especially if it is strong and he is beseeching you to listen, don’t answer him by recommending some course of action for him to take. It may be far more important to him to know that you understand how he feels-frustrated, enraged, or hopelessly in love-than to hear your advice about what he should do. Many of us find it hard to communicate feelings, and we do so only occasionally and indirectly. When someone close to you talks about a feeling, consider the possibility that he wants mainly to convey to you how he feels. Any answer used in place of a simple communication that you appreciate what he is saying is very likely to be perceived as dismissal. If you stay on the alert to how other people feel, and attentive to conveying that you are catching emotional tones in conversations, you will heighten your awareness of your own feelings.

INTERPRET YOUR OWN SURPRISE AND DISAPPOINTMENT

Surprise and disappointment can be very useful cues to attitudes we’ve held. Because they are sudden and acute reactions, they often manage to burst through to consciousness, whereas the underlying attitudes they betray do not. Stop for a moment when you’re surprised or disappointed, and ask yourself why. Very often you’ll discover some attitude you’ve held, which you have either not identified or not acknowledged. Discrepancy is the key to discovery. This is an important principle of science. Moments of surprise, if you examine them, can lead you to important discoveries about yourself.

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