I was recently asked by someone why he wants to drink so much. Not being a mind reader (a gift I still pray to be given), my immediate response was to ask if he was married… that’s a joke… kind of. The real question why someone drinks so much is does he have kids? Again, a kind of joke. The truth is there are many reasons why people drink. An exercise I often like to do to figure out someone’s motivation is to look at the following fraction (I apologize if the term fraction congers up childhood math class trauma):
- Action
- Intention
As this points out, under every action there is an intention. After writing the action on the top line I will then consider all the possible reasons why someone would do that action underneath. No matter what the action is, we need to come up with all the possible reasons we can before settling for our answer. My rule is if you have less than 10 possible reasons, you need to continue brainstorming because there’s always a list of possibilities. For instance when it comes to drinking options include:
- To fit in
- It’s part of a daily routine
- It’s Friday (i.e. a weekly routine)
- It’s cultural
- You like the taste
- You like the feeling
- It makes things seem more fun
- You think you’re more fun when you’ve had a few drinks
- You feel empowered
- You feel manly having a beer in your hand
- It’s social
- It’s to unwind and relax
- You’re bored and need something to do
- It gets you out of having to do something (e.g. “I can’t drive to the store for you; sorry.”)
- You’re drowning your feelings and bottling things up
- To numb the pain
- To forget or escape
- Caught up in the moment and forget the bigger picture
- It’s liquid courage to overcome nervousness
- To turn off your brain from over thinking
- It goes with the meal
- It’s a reward for a good day or a pick-me-up after a bad day
- It’s following what you were taught or role modelled
- It looks sophisticated
- It’s a temptation developed when you were younger
- You enjoy the comradery of a local bar
As you can see there a lot of potential reasons why someone will drink. After writing this list, I pointed out that every action is usually fueled by at least three reasons, which can change depending when you do the action. It’s rare there’s ever one reason for doing something, and it’s even more rare that the action was done because the person is evil and/or trying to hurt us, which we often assume when we’re hurt. For instance, yelling at our partner is usually motivated with the intention of wanting to feel loved, we’re defending ourselves, and we lack self control. Unfortunately for uptight people, human behavior is rarely a simple equation like x + y = z. We need to be open to possibilities and that our immediate assumptions can be wrong. At the same time, we need to focus on how we can improve our own behavior because behaviors are ultimately a choice. An interesting note: People are quicker to judge our action, thus when it comes to our behavior, how we treat others is more important than why we treat others that way. Ultimately, we need to be nice to people regardless of our intention. If you’re not nice, you’ve chosen the wrong action and people we likely not be nice back to you. On the other hand, when it comes to our personal growth, it’s more important that we push ourselves to have good intentions, and when we can have both good actions and good behaviors, we can be considered “good” people.
This week may you push yourself to have both good actions and intentions for your behaviors.
Rev Chad David, ChadDavid.ca, learning to love dumb people