I’m going to blow your mind with this post. There are many different philosophical theories and debates, but one of my favorites is free will vs. Determinism. Do we really have as much choice as we think? Are our actions really a result of a choice we make or a process that’s as old as time itself?

Even if we ignore the philosophical and intellectual stuff, this post will still prove to be helpful for those who feel trapped. If you’ve ever looked at your life with regret and felt like you no longer had a choice for how your life turns out, then you are going to want to read this post. This is big leagues stuff…advanced personal development.

The problem we have is that often we lack the vision to see a clear way out of our current circumstances. I remember when I was an Engineer, sitting behind a desk, regretting every minute of my life. I spent my days wishing I could go back and either become a writer or a teacher. I spent seven years in that position, thinking there was no possible way for me to make the switch before I saw a clear way out.

You may be reading this today, finding yourself in the same (or a similar) predicament. If you are, there is hope for you. Let’s look at some background first…

Free Will vs. Determinism

I stumbled onto the notion of determinism a few years ago when I was still teaching Physics. It wasn’t a concept that I covered in Physics, but physics made me think about the nature of knowledge. I reasoned that, if a person were to know all there is to know about philosophy, psychology, science, and mathematics, then they could potentially predict the future.

This idea thoroughly blew my mind. For those that have seen the 2014 remake of Robocop, you’ll remember the scene where they are trying to make him more efficient. They threw him into a simulation and found that he consistently under performed when compared to the other robots. Their solution was to “tweak” him such that his physical reactions happened automatically, but they allowed him to think he was still making conscious decisions.

The leader of the program, Raymond Sellars (as played by the incredibly awesome Michael Keaton), made this comment about the tweaks: “It’s a robot that thinks it’s Alex Murphy.”

This is exactly what I’m getting at with this post. I’m suggesting that we, as humans, THINK we are making decisions consciously. The reality, however, is that we are operating on our unconscious beliefs and reacting to external stimuli. A better way to explain it comes from this website:

Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, decision and action is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. This does not necessarily mean that humans have no influence on the future and its events (a position more correctly known as Fatalism), but that the level to which humans have influence over their future is itself dependent on present and past. Taken to its logical extreme, Determinism would argue that the initial Big Bang triggered every single action, and possibly mental thought, through a system of cause and effect.

Mind. Blown.

The Choice That Isn’t A Choice

So, according to determinism, we are people who believe that we are making decisions but, in reality, are just reacting to our environment based on our psychology, DNA, and whatever other forces come into play.

I’m not saying that I believe this to be true. I’m just saying that it sounds a lot like what is happening. We are all playing this cosmic version of pong where we are just bouncing off of each other. Cause and effect…where’s the Merovingian when you need him?

Consider the row of doors in the featured image of this article. If I presented you with those doors, which would you choose? Are you REALLY making a choice or do you unconsciously make the choice before your conscious mind has a chance to process it?

Scoff if you will, but let me ask you this: have you ever been driving and, out of nowhere, you “snap to attention” and realize that you’ve been in a daze and had absolutely no idea how you managed to stay on the road? I’ll tell you why: your unconscious mind is the motor that drives you through the world and you have very little direct control over that.

It’s the choice that isn’t a choice. It explains how we can know exactly what we need to do to fix our Situation but still find ourselves repeatedly making the wrong choices.

What kind of self help website dismisses whole swaths of behavior like that? Doesn’t this notion go against every piece of self help advice you’ve ever heard?

You are NOT in control.

I think what I’ve just said is a hard pill to swallow for many people. There are many people who don’t like thinking that they have no control over their lives. And then there are other people who will love it because it *seems* to give them an excuse for their behavior.

After all, if you don’t have free will and everything is determined by a combination of your genetics and environment, then what the hell is the point of it all? Why even try if you know the outcome is going to be the same as it’s been the past five times you tried it?

I think I’m touching on a feeling that most of us have had in our lives that other self help gurus do not address. The notion that we are not in complete control of our lives. That control is just an illusion that is there to make us feel better about the general chaos of life and how fragile all of this really is.

Is there hope for you?

If we are all just bouncing around, reacting to the environments we find ourselves in based on our psychology and genetics, then how on earth do we change something we don’t like about ourselves? Determinism does NOT mean that we have zero choice in how we live our lives. It just means that, when we aren’t living consciously, we will always fall back to our default way of being.

The default way of being is our unconscious thoughts and processes. It’s the stuff that we “set and forget” throughout our lives, and much of it is determined in our formative years. We create beliefs and values that guide our unconscious behavior, and we do this when we are too young to really know what we are doing.

This means that our default reaction to certain situations may be anger or grief or whatever we initially decided it was. Have you ever found yourself getting way angrier at a situation than the situation warranted? Did you ever wonder why that was?

The main reason is because the situation is activating an Emotional response from a previously unresolved emotion. Think about something that makes you super angry. Have you ever asked yourself why you get so angry about that situation?

Digging to the Root of Your Emotional Issues

One time, as I was working through my issues in an online forum, I became super angry with a guy who would come into threads and drop a joke or make them lighthearted. In one of my threads, I was talking about a serious issue I was dealing with. He made a lighthearted comment, and I wound up flipping out on him.

The anger may have been warranted a little (he was trying to make a joke out of something I was dealing with seriously), but my reaction to it was way overblown. I was getting way too angry for it to JUST be about that particular issue. So, I started digging a little and realized that the situation was triggering a memory.

When I was in grade school, I was playing rag ball in gym class. I was on second base and this kid who was older than me punched me in the back as he ran past me. The gym teacher saw it and said nothing. Other kids laughed at me because I was crying.

I think I got so angry because the kid who hit me was one of those “joker” types, and I was associating him and that situation with others like that. I was bringing old feelings into a new situation.

The point is that sometimes our reactions to things are justified, but we may be getting a little more emotional or angry about stuff than the situation warrants. It’s in those cases that we are attaching old baggage to a new situation.

One of the best way to dig up these ghosts from our past is to think about the things that really get us upset, angry, or emotional. Modern psychology calls these things “triggers,’ and the best way to handle them is to face them.

Facing Your Triggers

Do you have the courage to go mucking around your memories to find these triggers? Some of you have some deep seated, messed up stuff that has happened to you in the past. If you’re going to start dealing with that, I highly recommend you find someone you trust to talk to and help you through it.

Facing your triggers is an extremely emotional process, but the results are extremely cathartic. If you’re asking yourself how you change your “autopilot” behaviors and create more choice in your life, this is one way to do it. You dig up these memories, and you face the insecurity behind them.

For example, when I was going through this process, I kept finding little beliefs that I had about myself. I am stupid. I am worthless. I am bad. And the one that really hit me deep in my core: I am alone.

You have these beliefs about yourself as well. They came from things that happened to you as a child/teen, and they are ways of coping with trauma at a time when you had no tools to do so. So, instead of dealing with the trauma, you made decisions about yourself and those decisions sit inside your unconscious mind waiting to be triggered by similar situations or people.

The only way to find them is to go digging for them. When you land on one, you’ll know because it will create an emotional reaction in you. You will also, most likely, have a memory (or many memories) associated with it. The best question to ask yourself is: “When was the first time I felt this way about myself?”

Your mind will deliver the memory pretty quickly. This is unresolved stuff that’s hanging out just underneath your conscious mind. It wants to surface, which is why you keep overreacting when something triggers you.

Do the Work on Your Triggers 

These beliefs about ourselves fall apart pretty quickly under scrutiny. I find that The Work (by Byron Katie) is an amazing way to deconstruct these beliefs. You deal with these beliefs by asking yourself four questions:

1. Is it true? (Yes or no. If no, move to 3.)
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? (Yes or no.)
3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

So, looking at my “I am bad” belief, I would work on it in this way:

1. Is it true? No, it’s not true that I am bad all of the time. But sometimes I feel like I have been bad.
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? It may be true to that sometimes I do bad things, but that does not mean that I am absolutely bad to my core. It is not absolutely true because nobody is completely and totally bad to their core.
3. How do you react when you believe that thought? I become insecure. I feel ashamed. I shy away from people and try to stay out of the spotlight because I don’t want people to see me.
4. Who would you be without that thought? I would be more outgoing and charismatic.

Take some time and list the things that make you insecure or emotional. The deeper you go with this, the more emotional you will feel. I’m a guy who rarely cries, and this process had me sobbing like a baby. But when I was done, it felt as if a ton of bricks were lifted from my shoulders.

The Three Types of Choice That You Still Have

We started this post talking about how we may not have as much choice as we thought. We learned that we are operating on our default programming most of the time, which means that our experience is mostly cause and effect. Finally, we learned a powerful technique for changing our internal programming so that we can live more consciously.

But does that change what I said about determinism? I am here to tell you that you still have choice with determinism, but it’s not the type of choice you think you have. You think you are this person who is choosing to read this article or who is choosing to go to the market later.

I am suggesting that you are this person who is “bouncing off of other people and your environment like a pong ball” and that most of what you do is already determined by your unconscious mind. That is, before you can consciously choose something, your unconscious mind has already determined how you are going to react. This means that your choices aren’t really direct “cause/effect” choices.

So, what types of choices do you really have? Let’s look at the three types of choices you still have:

1. You have the power to choose how you perceive your circumstances. Whether you agree or disagree with the notion of determinism, this choice is still powerful. There are some situations you won’t be able to change. There are things that happen to you that aren’t or weren’t your fault, but they are now things you have to deal with. You have a choice in how your perceive those things.
2. You have the power to choose what is possible in your life. You may be bouncing around, living on your default programming and only thinking you’ve been making choices. But when you do the work and uncover your limitations, you have the power of imagination that allows you to choose new default programming. Who would you have to become to achieve the thing you want to achieve?
3. You have the power to choose what gives you meaning. The meaning in your life is determined by you. You get to decide what all of this means. That’s powerful because purpose is a fundamental factor in your mental health. Those that have purpose tend to be less depressed according to studies.

Conclusion

Whether you believe in determinism (or get involved in the free will vs. determinism debate), the advice given in this article still stands. The point of this article was to explain why people get stuck in situations that they don’t think they can get out of. You can know the right things to do, but if your unconscious mind isn’t on board, it’s all going to be for nothing.

So, do the work. Dig deep into yourself and face these issues that are holding you back from living the life you’ve always wanted. Take that step into a new world. It will change your life.

The post How to Grow When You Feel Trapped (Free Will vs. Determinism) appeared first on Happy Mindsets.