Begin with the end in mind

I recently quoted Stephanie Dowrick who says we judge others on their behaviour, and ourselves on our intentions. Intentions are slippery things. What we intend to do, and the strategy we employ to achieve this end, are often at cross purposes. We humans are wonderfully complex and variable creatures!

We say: "I love my children and being a good father is important to me" then we stay at work late most weeknights until after they are in bed.

We say: "I want to lose a bit of excess weight" then we begin a mortification of the flesh that would impress the early desert fathers, and when we - inevitably - slip up, we give up and eat a whole tub of icecream to drown our failure.

We say: "I want to impress my boss, so I get a raise at my next review" then we hide any mistakes we make, even if this means we'll keep repeating them, because we don't want to look bad. Or we work long, long hours, without checking that our output is achieving what our boss needs.

It's fun pointing out other people's cognitive dissonances. The trick is to find your own. Try this sentence completion:

I want X and to get it I (do) Y.

I want my son to be confident and unselfconscious, and to get it I loudly point out to him times when he is shy, and push him into social situations even when we both know he'll just sulk and refuse to engage in order to resist me.

Ok, that was a cheap shot, but you get the idea.

This is post 15 of 100 posts in 100 days.