We are all the same.
When we are born we are totally dependent on our care givers.
2000 years ago the Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman congregation about the issue. He referred to the moulding of our personality. In the Bible Book of Romans Chapter 12 verse 2 – 3 he said three things.
- with your power of reason.
- And stop being moulded by this system of things,
- be transformed by making your mind over,
He advised the Romans to use their God given power of reason, to stop being moulded by your environment and then to make your mind over.
Who shapes or moulds us when we are young and inexperienced?
Usually, it’s our caregivers, often our immediate family members.
If your caregivers frequently told you that you were naughty, useless, or hopeless, or if they neglected you, you might eventually believe it and decide that you are not good enough. This feeling can stay with you unless you identify your limiting belief, acknowledge the source of the problem, and work to renew your belief in yourself.
Humans give and receive messages that are either positive, neutral, or negative.
Let’s do an experiment. Imagine you have a person in front of you. What’s the shortest unconditionally positive message you could give them verbally? It’s a simple message: “I love you.” There are other forms of communication, such as body language and tone, but let’s focus on verbal messages.
Let’s assign a value to that message. An unconditional “I like you no matter what” message has a value of 100 points. Now, let’s give that person another message by adding a condition: “I like you because you helped me by giving me a lift to the shops.” This message is now conditional, and its value is less than 100 points. Let’s say it’s 50 points.
In our society, we are not accustomed to giving out compliments easily. A glaring example of this is news headlines. Most will agree that news headlines are almost entirely negative. The more negative the headline, the more it draws reader interest. But why don’t they publish positive headlines? Simply put, the power of the negative headline is far greater than the positive headline.
Let’s do another experiment. With the same person in front of you, do your best to say the following and really mean it: “I hate you.” How does that feel? Did you find it difficult? It’s estimated that the power of the unconditional negative message is about a 10 to 1 ratio. So, we can rate a totally negative message at a value of 1,000 points.
The impact of both conditionally positive and conditionally negative messages will vary according to the subject and sensitivity of the receiver. Each message either adds to or reduces the emotional well-being of the receiver. These emotional messages are received by the brain and stored in the amygdala as something to treasure or as a danger to be on the lookout for. There is no time stamp on the feeling. If your brain senses that the circumstances of the current moment are similar to a previous event, even though there may not be a threat, the amygdala delivers the message to your body that it is under threat now.
Why is this important? It has to do with your emotional bank balance. These mental transactions happen thousands of times a day.
Now, let’s go back to the difference between the impact of positive and negative messages. To do a task willingly, the “taskee” must feel good about completing the task. In other words, what reward am I going to get by completing the task. That means the messages coming from the “tasker” must have a positive emotional balance.
Imagine you are trying to get your teenager to tidy up his room. Will saying “Clean up your room, it’s a mess” make your teenager feel good about doing it? Not likely. That message may be interpreted as “My parent thinks I’m lazy or that I’m not a good kid.” Let’s say that message has a negative value of 500 points. It has an extremely high negative balance, so we will see a reluctance to complete the task. Imagine how many compliments or positive messages have to be given to bring the interaction back into a positive balance.
If you wanted to overcome the emotional effect of 500 point deficit, it would mean that you would have to deliver 10 x 50 = 500 500 point positive messages just to cancel out and bring your emotional bank account with that individual to zero.
As a society, we are not generally accustomed to giving compliments.