Glasser Wisdom – All Behavior is Purposeful by Judith Ashley

Judith Ashley is the author of The Sacred Women’s Circle series, romantic fiction that honors spiritual traditions that nurture the soul. She is also on the Senior Teaching Faculty of The William Glasser Institute.

Dr. William Glasser first came to notice in the 1960’s due to his work at the Ventura School for Girls and the back wards of the V.A. Hospital in Los Angeles. I heard of Dr. Glasser in the late 60’s but it was 1978 before I took my first Basic Intensive Training. To learn more about this remarkable man’s life, I encourage you to read “Champion of Choice” by Jim Roy.

What I’m going to talk about over the next month or so is the impact Dr. Glasser and his concepts have on my life. Yes, “have”.

My tag line for my Glasser work is “Your Choices Today Create Your Tomorrow.”

Break that down to the title of this post “All Behavior is Purposeful.”

That translates to everything you do is your effort to create something for yourself.

As you start to argue that isn’t true for you, I encourage you to stop a moment and take a look at what you are going to use as an argument against that concept.

Deep breath.

What exactly is it that you are putting forth? Describe it in what you were doing, what you were thinking at the time, how you physically felt in that moment and what was going on in your body? When you have that clear in your mind, what did you want to happen with that choice?

My guess is that you wanted someone or something else to be different. Perhaps you wanted your child to stop whining. Or maybe your dog to “come”? Your boss to say “thank you” after you worked extra hard to finish the project on time. It could be that other drivers were more polite or perhaps it’s just customers in general if you deal with them daily.

And, that someone could be you. What was it you wanted to do that you didn’t?

An example from my own recent life:

I’ve had on my list to make dental and dermatology appointments since the end of last year. It is now August. Most weeks I wrote on my weekly list “Make appointments”. I made other appointments in the meantime but not dermatology or dental. It may seem like a simple task. Pick up the phone and make the call—however, I didn’t have a dentist or a dermatologist to call. Before I could make the appointments I first had to find a provider that took my insurance.

Some of you are rolling your eyes at my procrastination or whatever you call it.

What’s important to note—All Behavior Is Purposeful. So what was I gaining (positive) by not moving forward?

I’m on the computer for hours a day but I’m writing. I’m not someone who clicks around on the computer searching for much of anything. Also, I really, really, really do not like to go through the telephone tree and listen to all the commercials for the company in order to talk to a customer service person. (The commercial of the guy saying “customer service” over and over? I’m laughing and crying at the same time-been there too many times).

What I gained from not moving forward was I didn’t have to deal with telephone trees, computer automated systems, waiting for minutes to talk to a real person, much less clicking around on the computer. So that was the “purpose” behind my procrastination.

The scales tipped when I calculated the amount of money I’d spent on dental insurance so far this year. And by the time you read this, I will have seen my new dentist!

We make choices to support ourselves and to support others. We also make choices in our efforts to control others. More about that next week.

Judith

You can learn more about The Sacred Women’s Circle series on my website.

Check out my Windtree Press author page.

Follow me on Twitter: @JudithAshley19

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© 2016 Judith Ashley