No vs. Yes: Being Stuck vs. Acceptance, Becoming, Love

How’s this for a faith matter?— As I wrote last week, “Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we don’t have to live out of our old, fearful, sinful, past nature, but in Christ we are becomers, free to forgive others and ourselves, and to walk in love, and be salt and light in a hurting world. In other words, live on the Plus Side, free to replace stress with acceptance and gratitude, and live beautifully.”

Romans 15: 7 says, Accept one another just as God in Christ has accepted you, to the glory of God.

The following steps shows what typically happens when our brains are not working right. Focusing on a “bad” feeling—an imperative—only part of our cerebral cortex, the thinking brain, is being used. For instance, Suppose your boy or girl-friend dumps you. You think “This is awful, I can’t stand it!” This is imperative thinking, involving the “Not-OK Child” and the “Critical Parent,” hurt feelings, anger and cloudy thoughts. They get stuck on “NO!” Here is what typically  happens:

Steps in Non-Acceptance

1. 1. You feel tension. Something bothers you, and your body even feels it. For instance, typically fear is felt in the belly, relational problems in the chest, anger in the forehead, arms and hands, making fists.
   2. You feel helpless. You’d like to do something about the situation, constructively, but feel helpless to change it. You have a hard time imagining yourself feeling O.K.
   3. You sense a time limitation: you want to get rid of the tension as quickly as possible. You want to feel O.K. so badly you’ll do almost anything, impulsively, to get rid of the bad feeling, or the craving. Many men, especially, take one drink, or many, to hurry up and feel better.
   4. You don’t care: you want to get rid of the “bad” feeling so badly, you don’t care about long term consequences. So you might go home and get drunk, or get lost in work, not caring about what that might do to your self-esteem, your soul, or relationships.
   5. You lose I. Q.  You get dumb; hopefully, just for a while. In recent years neurologists have found that the brain is “plastic”, meaning that neurons, or connections between them known as synapses, can be repaired, but it’s a difficult process. Severe, long-term alcohol use or drug addiction tends to permanently change the brain, and cause many physical ailments too, even a stroke and early death.

Here’s what you should do, instead. 

The steps of the Outcome Thinking Protocol:

1. 1. 1. Notice the Tension: In the first step, you simply notice your tension, rather than go with the feeling: “I notice that I’m getting angry,” “I notice that I’m getting defensive, or annoyed, etc.” Become aware of where in your body, including arms and hands, neck or head, chest or belly, you feel tightness. Incidentally, relational pain is registered mainly in the heart area, fear in the stomach region, anger in chest, upper arms and even hands, neck or head. Then ask yourself, “O.K., what is it that I’m having difficulty accepting?” Again, this does not mean tolerating or approving it, but just letting it into my brain as information, not as something with a hook on it, to grab me. Further, ask yourself, “What color do I see in this picture?” If it’s red or black, there’s anger. Also ask, “Is it a moving picture or some kind of stationary box?” A big (black) box is a sign that you’re really not accepting something. A moving picture says you aren’t really stuck on it, and your brain is functioning better.
   2. 2. Look: Look at where it will go if you continue not to accept this (negative) thing. You ask, What will happen inside of me? What will happen to my relationships, and my future success and well-being? I’ve had guys in my Rescue Mission classes who could see themselves back in prison, if they don’t learn to accept something like their wives’ nagging, and stop complaining. You might ask, What will be the outcome if I don’t accept rudeness in some students?
   3. 3. Look: Look at oneself accepting______________________, instead, and the results of that. There are three major ways of doing this, but these can be used together. (I’ll explain these next week, along with Biblical principles.)
   4. 4. Notice: Compare the results on the feeling level, of having acceptance turned on, with the original feeling state you had. When the two pictures are run side by side, the mind automatically chooses the more beautiful, and intelligent, one. Then ask yourself, “Which way do I want to live? In the next ten times when I think about this situation, how many times can I go with the new picture?”

Can you imagine how the person who got “dumped” would feel if they turned on acceptance rather than complaining?

They also could be becomers instead of being stuck in the past, on NO!; they could learn about real love, saying YES! to God and life.