How To Understand Yourself And Other People

People are in fact, immensely logical in the way they work.

There is an absolute cause and effect between how people feel, how they think, and what they have experienced in their lives.

No matter how bizarre the behaviours, thoughts and emotions become, they have GOOD REASONS for being EXACTLY what they are.

I mention the case of the man who dressed up as a frog and croaked to find enlightenment.

This happened because he took a lot of drugs, nearly drowned in a swamp and when he opened his eyes, he saw a frog staring straight at him "and realised that the master of the Universe is a frog."

This is completely logical, and whatever he had seen in that moment, would have been what he ended up worshipping and believing.

"Stuff happens" to people that causes the human systems to react in this completely logical, clear cut cause and effect fashion.

A woman who has a clown phobia today was terrified by a clown who jumped up and grabbed her at a circus when she was five years old. If the clown had worn a bear costume, she would have become phobic of teddy bears instead.

A man who surrounds himself with books about Egypt had an enlightenment experience when he was a teenager and walked into an Egyptian exhibition the moment the sun came through the windows and struck a golden mask and he was instantly mesmerized.

A serial killer who kills red haired nurses and cuts out their tongues was verbally abused by a red haired nurse when he failed to perform sexually.

A woman who keeps getting involved with alcoholics who beat her up isn't "looking for pain" but for that magic moment when her alcoholic beating father had sat her on his lap and told her she was his little princess and that was the first time she felt really loved and cared for.

Stressed people feel all sorts of mixed up emotions that come from nowhere and they think crazy things, simply because they're so stressed and everything inside them is going haywire.

And if you put people into unhappy situations and relationships, take away their power and brain wash them into thinking themselves to be bad and helpless they become depressed.

It really is simple, straightforward, logical all the way how people work.

It is really IMPORTANT to stop using terms of, "Oh, he's just crazy ..." or "Look at her, she's going mad again ..." when we talk and think about ourselves AND about other people.

Instead, we must simply accept the fact that no matter how bizarre the thoughts or behaviours or emotions, there IS A GOOD REASON for that person to do what they are doing.

The good reason is usually what we call an "event" somewhere along the line, something that happened to that person which caused them DIRECTLY to do what they are doing now.

Once we understand that, and embrace that, there are many things we can do.

We can start to roll up our sleeves and make changes.

We can start by targeting stress, because ANY person under stress is going to think "crazy thoughts" they would NOT be thinking if they weren't so stressed "out of their minds".

We can ask INTELLIGENT questions - what happens? How do you feel? When does it happen, and with whom? Has it happened before? How many times? When is the first time it happened?

We can apply change techniques - of which there are many! - to make changes in the way we feel, we think, and how we act.

We can start to spot patterns in our own behaviours, and those of other people, and LEARN about the reality of cause-and-effect for people.

When we do that, we reclaim the power over our own feelings, thoughts and behaviours, and by extension, over that of other people.

This isn't difficult at all.

It's interesting, it's fun, and often, even little changes, little new connections of understanding can make all the difference to a person as they finally get their heads around the fact that they are "not mad" but instead, had an experience which directly caused them to feel, think and behave the way they do right now.

That's the first step and the biggest breakthrough.

No matter how "mad" it seems from the outside, EVERY SINGLE human being has a method to their madness.

That includes you, your friends, your enemies as well.

When you work out how they work, life becomes completely different.

Instead of living in a world where "people just go mad for no good reason at any time" which is so stressful and scary, so out of control, we can very literally start to take control back of ourselves, and by extension, we can work with people in a whole new way.

Things happen to people by accident.

But what happens next is no accident at all and people will respond predictably - no matter how strange the eventual outcome may be.

To understand that neither you, nor other people are "mad" or "insane" or "crazy" and to look for the cause and effect that makes people do the things they do is a master key to living a much more interesting and much more stress free life.

I encourage anyone who considers themselves to be an intelligent human being in the 21st century to make it their business to lay down old prejudices and medieval thinking and engage in an exploration of first of all how they work themselves, and then by extension to have more understanding for other people as well.

This leads DIRECTLY, and I really mean DIRECTLY, to feeling better about oneself; about being more able to help and support the ones we love; to do something good in the world, and to find much more of those things we seek, including love, acceptance, respect, and having a good time while we are alive.

Silvia Hartmann

Author, Events Psychology

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