Personal Meditation No. 74

“If we want to get rid of the bad apples, then we need to build better barrels.”

Embrace the Within.

Besides the large amount of reading I completed this summer dealing with the hero’s journey and influence, I have also had the pleasure of listening to many wonderful podcasts on human behavior. One of the things I did not know about the Stanford prison experiment is how its creator went another direction with his studies.

The idea that people behave just like their system dictates can be used for both ill like in the Stanford prison experiment or for good like in the Heroic Imagination project. The problem is the barrels we build for people, the systems that humans create.

Just as dropping a cucumber in the right barrel will make it a pickle or the rotten apples around other apples will spread the decomposition, so too the system folks are placed within creates either a place for negative or positive trait adoption. We need to do a better job of working on the systems because the system is contagious.

You are the product of the five people you spend the most time around. You can also become a different person when you’re on the road inside your car, when you’re at work with your coworkers, when you’re at a friend’s home at a celebration, and when you’re home with your family. These systems place different expectations for your behavior. These systems also exert undue influence on our behavior.

So, if you find yourself acting different in different situations, start to consider what is influencing that behavior? What is my true behavior? Why am I being influenced this way? How can I start to recognize when my behavior changes? Who do I want to be?

Before we can start building new barrels we need to recognize which old barrels need to go. I think people are starting to see that some of these barrels are rotten. Noticing what barrels change your behavior is an excellent start.

Until we build those new barrels, start recognizing what you can control about your behavior within those barrels. No one likes to believe they are capable of horrible things but neither did the folks at Stanford, neither did our ancestors . . . But recognizing that we can be influenced into being part of the problem is a great first step toward freeing ourselves from the bad barrels.

I hope you find whatever you’re looking for. Have the day you want.

#ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoGodsNoMasters #MyBodyMyChoice #MakeYourselfGreatAgain