YOU CAN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU DON’T ACCEPT

I wrote an entire chapter in the book, The Crucible and the Fires of Change (2012*). Do you know why? Because as a book on change, it wanted to fully describe a basic change principle. Namely, You can’t change what you don’t accept. A strong irony? Accept in order to change. For most people, it seems completely paradoxical in the sense that it seems contradictory.

“I want to change this experience of being poor, this limiting belief, this self-sabotaging identity, I don’t want to accept it! That’s the last thing in the world I want to do!”

In the years during which I had a psychotherapeutic practice, this was a constant phenomenon that I encountered in the counseling sessions. It was common with most of the clients I saw. They were often crystal clear about the change they wanted to make— their desired outcome. Yet as they discovered what the therapeutic process for getting there required, namely, embracing the problem, entering into it to understand it on its own terms. That is, accepting the problem as a problem and a problem that they are responsible for (or at least responsible to)— that was not easily accepted. They fought against that. They resisted that.

Ah, resistance— the big bugaboo of therapy. Typically, those who need therapy (healing from traumas of the past), who come for therapy, who need to change, are also those who fight the most against the change. Every therapist worth her salt therefore has to learn how to avoid resistance or to get around it. As a therapist I learned from NLP how to do that. I learned that by matching (pacing) a client, I could thereby give him a sense of connection, rapport, safety, and understanding. Matching the person physically, verbally, emotionally, and semantically would prevent the person from feeling assaulted or forced to make a change. This created a personal relationship that reduced or even completely eliminated resistance to you as a person.

The only resistance that would then be outstanding to deal with would be resistance to accepting one’s current state and/or the problem. Another paradox occurs here: to get over, overcome, deal with, solve, etc. a problem— one has to embrace it. That’s what is meant by the line— you can’t change what you don’t accept.

Consider something that you don’t understand– not something that requires years of disciplined study such as you would undertake at a University. Think of something that others understand and believe and act on that you don’t. Think of a political position that you just don’t understand. Think of a religious position, an economic position, etc. something like that. Others understand it, but you don’t. You not only do not agree with it, you also do not understand it.

“I just don’t get it! How could anyone in their right mind think that! How could anyone believe that non-sense and still be sane?!” The disagreement in these cases is not due to a lack of intelligence, nor even study. It is due to a lack of acceptance. Behind the disagreement and the disbelief is a non-acceptance, a rejection. And that’s what prevents even an intellectual understanding.

I can best illustrate that (and this is offered just as an illustration) using the political situation in the US by those “on the left” who do not understand President Trump. Now it is not news to say that they do not understand him. Duh! Nor is it news that they fully and completely disagree with him, dislike him, and reject him. No wonder then that they don’t understand him! As long as they don’t accept that he is the President, that he won the Electoral College with 314 (needing only 270), and accept that he is ‘their President,’ — they will continue to not understand him.

And by not understanding him, then they will suffer from the onslaught of the cognitive distortions, cognitive biases, and cognitive fallacies that plague the human race. They will use these, knowingly or not, to “explain” to themselves (and others) what it all means. They will explain that he didn’t rally win, the Russians colluded and gave him the election (denial). They will explain that he will cause everything to go to hell— the stock market will crash, unemployment will soar, Gestapo police will round up twelve million illegals and put them into concentration camps, etc. (awfulizing, catastrophizing). They will “explain” that he is mentally deranged, an idiot, a fool, in over his head, doesn’t know what he’s doing, etc. (name calling, ad hominem). And so it will go. What is the source or cause of their lack of understanding? They do not accept that he is President. You can’t understand what you don’t accept.

NLP began with the idea of meeting a person at his model of the world. Instead of expecting others to come to your model of the world, enter into and match theirs. Seek first to understand and then to be understood. If you don’t do that, it will be next to impossible to truly understand or influence them. Your misunderstanding of them will continue and will grow and, given human nature, your reasoning will become rationalization as you will be influence to your own detriment by the cognitive biases and fallacies that distort your thinking.

Accepting Donald Trump, in this case, would entail reading about how he built a billion dollar real-estate company. Begin with The Art of the Deal, he not only told his story but revealed his values, his strategic thinking, his ways of thinking and handling business and economic challenges, etc. In his book, The Art of the Comeback he described the economic crises of the 1990s in Manhattan and how he handled his own financial crises and didn’t let the problems that he faced defeat him. Having followed him since 1989 when I started my own wealth creation, what he set forth in those books fully explains his actions today. The one I really disagree with is his policy of hitting back twice as hard anyone who criticizes him. Today he is doing that with the tweets. Crazy? Mentally deranged? Not exactly. For him it is policy. and while I don’t like it, I do understand it. For business and even for being a television celebrity, it worked for him. Whether it will work in the domain of politics where being “politically correct” tends to be the standard, that’s another question.