Two Key Revisions to the Golden Rule
Apr. 20th, 2007 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcepsaI've long been of the opinion that the golden rule, "Treat others as you wish to be treated," isn't terribly sound. For example I like videogame music, and I would love it if people would play videogame music while we were driving somewhere, but I don't think it would be a good idea for me to play videogame music for my vehicular guests. There are situations in which it applies, but it seems to me like it is far from universal.
To replace it, I try to go with, "Treat others as they wish to be treated." This seems to work very well when I'm able to figure out how they wish to be treated and when it doesn't cross any of my boundaries to do that.
More importantly to me, earlier this afternoon I had a mini-epiphany: "Treat yourself as you wish others would treat you."
I've heard many variations on "If it isn't something that you would put up with from someone else, don't put up with it from yourself either!" but that hasn't been all that useful for me. It generally gets me as far as "Well, crap, this is something that I wouldn't put up with from someone else, so I shouldn't be doing it to myself, but I can't seem to stop!" Which just serves to add a layer of guilt/frustration/shame to what's already an unpleasant experience and really doesn't help anything.
My understanding is that most of the evidence these days says that if you want someone to stop doing something, telling them not to do it or that they shouldn't do it is some combination of a) largely ineffective and/or b) incredibly frustrating and/or c) destructive of goodwill/conducive to ill-will. I am under the impression that a much better method is to propose an alternative, or series of alternatives, that does not include the behavior that you want them to stop. In other words, give them a positive (the presence of something else that they can do) instead of a negative (just removing the undesirable behavior).
That's why it's a big deal for me to have had that realization--treating myself as I wish others would treat me is much different than not doing something to me that I wouldn't want/let someone else do to me. Logically, it's the complete inverse. It's a positive (something to add, something to act on) rather than a negative (something to subtract, something to stop). Something that I can fill in the hole that would be left by removing whatever it is that I want to stop doing to myself. Something to distract myself from whatever I'm trying to stop doing.
~smile~ Hopefully this will come in handy for getting out of those particularly nasty loops that my brain sometimes gets locked into...
To replace it, I try to go with, "Treat others as they wish to be treated." This seems to work very well when I'm able to figure out how they wish to be treated and when it doesn't cross any of my boundaries to do that.
More importantly to me, earlier this afternoon I had a mini-epiphany: "Treat yourself as you wish others would treat you."
I've heard many variations on "If it isn't something that you would put up with from someone else, don't put up with it from yourself either!" but that hasn't been all that useful for me. It generally gets me as far as "Well, crap, this is something that I wouldn't put up with from someone else, so I shouldn't be doing it to myself, but I can't seem to stop!" Which just serves to add a layer of guilt/frustration/shame to what's already an unpleasant experience and really doesn't help anything.
My understanding is that most of the evidence these days says that if you want someone to stop doing something, telling them not to do it or that they shouldn't do it is some combination of a) largely ineffective and/or b) incredibly frustrating and/or c) destructive of goodwill/conducive to ill-will. I am under the impression that a much better method is to propose an alternative, or series of alternatives, that does not include the behavior that you want them to stop. In other words, give them a positive (the presence of something else that they can do) instead of a negative (just removing the undesirable behavior).
That's why it's a big deal for me to have had that realization--treating myself as I wish others would treat me is much different than not doing something to me that I wouldn't want/let someone else do to me. Logically, it's the complete inverse. It's a positive (something to add, something to act on) rather than a negative (something to subtract, something to stop). Something that I can fill in the hole that would be left by removing whatever it is that I want to stop doing to myself. Something to distract myself from whatever I'm trying to stop doing.
~smile~ Hopefully this will come in handy for getting out of those particularly nasty loops that my brain sometimes gets locked into...
