Impulse control

Perhaps its the frustrated writer hidden somewhere in all of us - but when you wake up in the middle of the night with an idea of something that should be said - you heed the call as best you can and write it down (or in this case) type it!!!

Walter Rinder, (Wikipedia describes him as a " gay American humanist poet/ philosopher/ photographer") had a beautiful way of looking at the world. In his "Spectrum of Love" he writes

  My understanding is determined by my parents, friends,

 places I have lived and been.  

All experiences that have been fed into my mind from living.

And that sums up who we are. We are all the culmination of our upbringing, influenced by people and places, experiences and things we have read or seen, our relationships and beliefs are all wrapped up to create the individual we are today.

But at what stage in our lives do we consciously decide to discard those influences and be different? Do we really change who we basically are or just change our behaviour to reflect who we would like to be.

Some wise fella told me years ago - you cannot do anything about your feelings, but you can do something about your behaviour. It took me a while to believe him when he said that you DECIDE to get angry, and as astonishing as that sounds - it is actually true. Try it next time - decide NOT to get angry about something that pushes your buttons and see if it works:)

So then if anger is the feeling, and you can do nothing about it - the only thing you can then control is your behaviour ..... and therein lies the cause of much women and child abuse. It is the behaviour that causes so much harm. Perhaps life  skill lessons about impulse control is just as important and any other subject taught at schools.