In the BOX

Most parents believe that their children are wonderful and can do no wrong. When confronted by evidence of their son's or daughter’s wrongdoing, parents will often go to great lengths to discount the facts – that can’t be true “my son or daughter would never do something like that.”

When it comes to love and romance, the truth about one's close relationship is difficult to acknowledge.Many people actively deny the truth until they are forced to deal with it. We rarely see the world as it really is. Our perception of the world is biased, our memories betray us, and our true motives can remain hidden. For better or worse, we constantly convince ourselves of things that are not true. We kid ourselves about the most basic things in life: Who we are and what is going on around us. Most of the time we lie to ourselves in order to maintain a sense of control. After all, no one likes feeling vulnerable or helpless.

In both the above examples, the inability to see that one has a problem, is what is called as self-deception or being in the box.

George Orwell said " We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield"

Self-deception is likened to being in the box because it seems that you’re shut in a box with no other external stimulus coming in - except your own closed perspective. You may think that you’re committed, totally devoted and engaged in a project – giving it your all, forsaking holidays and special personal occasions for work – and yet, based on other people’s observations, you are NOT. Since you don’t and can’t see it from your point of view, it makes you take a defensive stance and even come to believe that other people are against you.

This inability to see that the problem lies within you, carries its weight into the relationship you have with your peers and ultimately translates itself on the performance of your group.You may think that your people skills are influencing your team members into producing great results. However, it may just be the other way around! In fact, it takes more than that to be effective in establishing a good rapport with your employees, co-workers and team members. Your success will come from a sincere desire to learn about them. People can detect even the slightest hint of hypocrisy and manipulation. Many leaders fail because they provoke the people to resist them by such behavior.

So how does one into get into the box ? It starts with what is called as self-betrayal. An act contrary to what one feels he should do for another is called an act of "self- betrayal". Self-betrayal is the most common thing in the world.

To elucidate this point, let me take a hypothetical case. Let's say one day I come home from office after a long tiring day expecting to have quick dinner and then hit the bed. My wife says that she was tired that day and did not want to make dinner. She wantes me to take the family out for dinner.I start arguing with her as to why she cannot find time to cook when she has time for watching her favorite tele-soaps and to do art work. I start to get into the box. I continue saying to my wife that I slog like crazy to earn and that she ends up spending it all (look, this arguement has no connection to the issue at hand). I say to her, if she can't cook a meal then she is better off working. Atleast it will increase the family income. I say to myself that it is cheaper to hire a cook for a lot less money than what she spends on her clothes every month. Being the sole bread-winner, I self-justify that I deserve better treatment. Adding salt to the wounds, I compare my wife with my sister-in-law who cooks tastier food for all three meals for my brother.In the end everyone goes to bed without having dinner.

This act of self-betrayal can go on and on, raking up past fights and quoting incidents totally unrelated to the issue at hand. The act of self-betrayal always leaves a bad residue.

In this case, I had two choices before me - Accept the fact that my wife is tired and use this opportunity to take the family out for dinner, thereby strengthening the relationship. The second choice is to go down the self-betrayal path and spoil the evening and rupture the relationship. I may have dramatised here a bit more than needed, but I hope you get the intent.

In the self-betrayal mode, How I start to see myself and How I start to see my wife makes an interesting comparison.

How I start to see myself	How I started to see my wife
VICTIM	LAZY
HARDWORKING	INCONSIDERATE
IMPORTANT	UNAPPRECIATIVE
FAIR	INSENSITIVE
SENSITIVE	FAKER
GOOD HUSBAND	LOUSY WIFE

When I betray myself, I begin to see the world in a way that justifies my self-betrayal. When I see a self-justifying world,my view of reality becomes distorted. So when I betray myself, I enter the box. I deceive myself while I inflate others' faults, inflate own virtue, inflate the value of things that justify my self-betrayal and start to blame others. Over time, certain boxes become characteristic of me, and I carry them with me.

We end up carrying self-justifying images with us into new situations. We enter the new situation, being already in the box.We do not see people straight forwardly as people, rather we see them interms of self-justifying images we have created. If they challenge the claim, then we see them as a threat.If they reinforce the claim then we see them as allies.

When I am in the box, I blame others. In order to counter this blame, each of us gets into a our own box and go into defensive mode. In short I provoke others to get into the box. Let us say your child comes home late. You start to see him as irresponsible and disrespectful. You discipline him harshly and criticise him openly. The child sees your act as dictatorial and unloving. This takes him further into his box. In the future he will ensure he gets home later. When two people are in their boxes, they invite mutual mistreatment and obtain mutual justification. They collude in giving each other reason to stay in the box.

I have more things to tell about the box problems and how to get out of the box. I will follow it in next week's blog. Till then ponder if you were/or in the box and try out means to get out of the box.

Mrinal Das replied to my earlier blog with the following:

"Where there is inaction, there is lost opportunity". Good one Mrinal Da.

p.s This blog gives the excerpts from the classic book "Leadership and Self-Deception" from Arbinger Institute.

Happy Reading
Ram