Why Those You Love & Trust
Treat YOU Poorly • Part 1

“More often than not, the response we get from all of God’s creation is what we have conditioned it to give back to us…” — Rick Cox

It is said, that insanity is doing the same thing over and over yet, expecting different results. Is it not true that many of us are either doing now, or have in the past, exactly the same thing in our daily interaction with the world around us? That is to say, we have interacted and reacted in the same way time and again, expecting a different result; only to get the same result over and over.

The consequence of doing this leaves us in a very unpleasant state of mind. What makes things worse is we do not believe the outcome is fair. As a result, we develop the mindset that what is happening to us or the way we are being treated by others is not right. Like it or not, the truth is, what is happening is what should be happening as it is a direct correlation to what we are giving out, for this is how life works. Until we quit giving out that which causes what we are getting back, nothing will change. It is only when we change that everything begins to change for us. The issue is we keep blaming everyone around us for our problems.

I can hear the wheels spinning in the heads now. As a matter of fact, there are many of you with steam coming out of your ears as you think, well, this surely has not been the case with me for I have done the right thing and I am not responsible for how people are treating me. My question to you would be, “Is this really true, that you are not responsible?” Let’s take a look.

The simplest way I know to explain this is by first using the example of the way we discipline our children. When my brothers and I were children growing up at home, we were no different than most other children in that we were always doing something just this side of good. The response from Dad with regard to us doing something just this side of good was for him to ‘holler” at us as he told us not to do it again. But of course after a little time went by we would do it again. This brought a second ‘hollerin’ from Dad; which prompted us to push for a third, and fourth and sometimes even a fifth, depending on how long he would put up with it before he lost it and commenced to wailing on us with his belt.

Here is the interesting part; the amount of times we were warned depended on his mood for the day. If he was happy and in a good mood then we would get up to five warnings, but if he was not in a good mood then at the first inkling of doing something wrong there would be no first warning because the hammer would fall.

So regardless of how many times it took, when his patience was gone, there was an unmistakable silence. Soon thereafter, we would hear the clanging of the belt buckle and the leather as it cleared the belt loops. At this point we knew we were in trouble, real trouble. What I learned later in life was Dad didn’t know anything about discipline. Discipline rather than punishment would have been the right way to deal with his children, but he didn’t discipline, he punished. As children, my brothers and I feared the punishment and that also became part of the problem.

It is good to remember that faith and fear are the same in that they both have the power to attract. Faith attracts the positive while fear attracts the negative. Since fear was our most dominant thought then, what we feared would eventually come back on us. We were so afraid of getting in trouble that our subconscious minds set us up to do just that, get us in trouble. We didn’t change what we were doing or thinking therefore, the result didn’t change. We didn’t believe we should have received the punishment, but we never changed what we were doing to stop the punishment from happening. The obvious result brought to us our predominant thought: that which we feared. Notice, we kept at it until we got what we feared. That is how it works. We were conditioned by default to continue until what we feared became a reality.

Another example of explanation is the way I handled the discipline/punishment of my children especially, my oldest daughter. Being the oldest myself, I know what it is like to pave the way for the younger ones as it seems the brunt of the worst is born by the oldest because the parents have previously never had this responsibility therefore, they are learning. However, depending on their demeanor and their own personal disciplines, they might discipline instead of punish. If they punish, then the child more than likely will do the same continuing the cycle. This was me.

In the case of my oldest daughter, I was dealing with her in the same manner my Dad dealt with me, which was to do nothing other than tell her NO until I lost my temper. At this point I would yell a few times then, as I became angrier, punishment would be the result. The truth was I couldn’t see myself doing this any other way because if I was not angry then why punish her? I had felt that unless I was angry there was no reason to do anything. It was a vicious circle that led both of us down the wrong path.

As a result of my inability to be disciplined and consistent, there were no set boundaries. The boundaries changed based on how I felt each and every day. All children, my daughter included, want to know where the boundaries are for inside the boundary is safety. They will often push the envelope over and over to ensure themselves the boundary is consistently the same each and every time. This is simply the nature of children. What I didn’t recognize was IT WAS ME THAT WAS ORIGINALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR HOW SHE RESPONDED. I CONDITIONED HER TO RESPOND THE WAY SHE DID BY INSTILLING FEAR INTO HER. The eventual result of this type of behavior from a parent is that the only attention a child gets is negative attention so, in an effort to get attention, any attention, they do what is necessary to get negative attentions even when the outcome will be punishment.

As a parent I kept wondering why she was not being good while as a child she was wondering why the discipline/punishment was not consistent. Through our behavior, we conditioned each other to react or respond in a negative way or positive way. The sad truth is if this doesn’t change then somewhere along the line both child and parent will develop a love/hate relationship. More importantly, the child will wind up with a broken relationship with parent and then in most cases be just like the parent or worse with their own children.

Best of LUCK as you
Labor Under Correct Knowledge…

Respectfully,

Rick Cox