Choose Again
This was my final speech from the Competent Communicator manual given on Feb 22, 2010.
CHOOSE AGAIN. This is single message I want you to walk away with today: CHOOSE AGAIN.
What do I mean when I say CHOOSE AGAIN? I mean it to be a guidepost as we make our journey through life. It is a way of looking at the world in a flexible way. There are are many ways to deliver the essence of this message: BE A CRITICAL THINKER, CONSIDER OTHER POINTS OF VIEW, THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX, THINK DIFFERENT….
Many philosohpical and religious belief systems TELL us how to think and how to live. However, no matter how open these systems are in the beginning, over the centuries they tend to become STIFF AND BRITTLE with the accumulations of rituals and rules until the system becomes calcified by DOGMA. And when one dogma meets another dogma in the street, you usually end up with a bloody dogma fight.
I would like us to consider a few different ways where CHOOSE AGAIN can help us in life.
CHOOSE AGAIN is a valuable rule when trying to understand the world. Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” That is, life ought not to be a series of blind, unconsidered choices. Life should lived with both eyes and heart wide open.
In the Socratic method, students are guided through a series of questions intended to dig up underlying assumptions in their thinking. These assumptions should be held up to the light and see if they stand up to scrutiny. If not, the student ought to CHOOSE AGAIN.
In critical thinking, we extoll students to be clear to their purpose, to weigh the evidence, to consider more than one point of view, and to question the conclusions.
In science, we gather experimental evidence in order to build models of how the world. And if the evidence leads to a better model, we must be willing and able to change our minds. We must be willing to CHOOSE AGAIN.
The above is a more academic and estoric way to use CHOOSE AGAIN. Now let us talk about the personal.
The contemporary spiritual writer Donald Neale Walsch, author of Conversations with God, says “Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone.” This resonates with me. When we only have the view from our comfort zone, we restrict our ability to see things as they might really be. So CHOOSE AGAIN.
You may ask yourself: my life is perfect. Why should I CHOOSE AGAIN? If you have reached perfection in your life, then I congratulate you. I am glad you have found something that works well for you in all things and all circumstances and I have nothing to offer.
However, in case this is not true, consider the following:
Our unhappiness often comes from repeat over and over again the same patterns of negative behavior and negative thoughts. We get stuck in a rut yet we want something different.
For example, Alcoholics Anonymous has this definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” In committing to a 12-Step Program, the addict must first admit that I by myself am powerless over my addiction and I must CHOOSE a new way of living.
Another example: cognitive behavioral therapy is an increasingly popular method of treating mild to moderate anxiety, mood, and anger disorders. This is a bit of oversimplification but bear with me. The focus of CBT is getting the patient to CHANGE how he or she LOOKS at their problems, to REEXAMINE his or her thought processes then to actively CHOOSE to think differently. Through this careful reexaminating and choosing new thoughts, patient begins to release himself from the same old patterns. Instead of immediately becoming angry or anxious, the patient CHOOSES AGAIN a different way of thinking, CHOOSES AGAIN a different course of action.
Simply saying CHOOSE AGAIN oversimplifies the issue. I do not deny that it is not easy. It can be very hard to escape when you are already trapped in your head. However, only when we permit ourselves to at least consider that our mind has boxed us in, then we can think about poking our heads outside of the box and then be able to CHOOSE AGAIN: a new way of seeing, a new way of being, a new way of living.
There is also an IMPLICIT assumption in the credo of CHOOSE AGAIN. That is, we must be willing to consider that I MIGHT BE WRONG. We must be humble enough to be able to consider this possibility when weighing the evidence. Now IMPLICIT in this is a second notion: I MIGHT BE WRONG. We must be humble enough to be able to consider this possibility when weighing the evidence. And when our data changes, we are not locked into our first conclusions; we must be willing to CHOOSE other alternatives.
Here is an example—perhaps a strange example—of a person I look up to as embodying the principle of CHOOSING AGAIN.
Craig Ferguson is the host of THE LATE LATE SHOW on CBS. For my money, he is the funniest man on late night TV. He is the epitome of CHOOSING AGAIN.
When Craig Ferguson became host of The Late Late Show he studied the greats from Steve Allen to Johnny Carson. He decided he wanted to create the kind of show that was not boring to himself and that would allow him to be honest with the audience.
Craig Ferguson is constantly reinventing his show. A while ago, he started experimenting with using puppets in his monologues, then he started doing increasingly elaborate musical numbers with puppets, then he just stopped. Last week, he decided to do an experiment by getting rid of his audience and sitting for the whole hour just having a conversation with his friend Stephen Fry.
However, if there is just one clip worth looking up on YouTube, it is his monologue in 2008 when Britney Spears went to rehab. In summary he said while his job is to skewer celebrities for their hypocricy. However, as he said it Britney Spears was somone in trouble and that it was low to be attacking the vunerable. He then told his own story of going to rehab and becoming sober after trying to kill himself jumping off London Bridge Christmas morning. He had spent all night in a bar and woke up wretched and just wanting to end it all. As he tried to leave, the bartender stopped him and offered a Christmas sherry after which he became so drunk he forgot to go jump off London Bridge. It was a few months afterward that he called a friend who got him into a rehab program.
Craig Ferguson is smart and fearless and I know he will always CHOOSE AGAIN new ways to keep The Late Late Show fresh and funny.
I have talked about how CHOOSE AGAIN is can help us in understanding the world around us as well be a useful guidepost in just living our day-to-day lives. However, I do not intend CHOOSE AGAIN to be a complete philosophy. It is not a holy grail. It is not the answer to the riddle of the Universe. Rather, I consider it more a rule of thumb to help me find my way through this complicated thing that we call living day to day.
And if I am wrong, I will just CHOOSE AGAIN.