A petulant child lives inside all of us, rigidly keeping a very low profile but, nonetheless, exerting immense influence.
It’s crucial that we get better acquainted with that child because it sways every decision we make!
That child is the same petulant child of our childhood years, effectively, the main difference being that it has since grown quite a bit. That is, grown more sophisticated, more polished, more advocative, more persuasive, more manipulative, and more coercive––but not any more mature.
Consider what the petulant child says when it gets a speeding ticket. It has “grown” from saying, “Why can’t I get to break the rules?” It now knows that while such responses are honest, accurate reflections of what it’s feeling, they are rightly considered utterly ridiculous and, therefore, incontestably dismissible. Rather, the petulant child has now “grown” to saying, “I didn’t realize I was going that fast; I was solely focused on avoiding being late for work and thereby avoid getting fired. And without a guaranteed source of regular income, I would likely fail to pay rent, eventually get evicted, and my entire family would shortly thereafter starve to death on the streets.”
Or consider what the petulant child says when pressed about why it seemingly exerts little effort into resisting the urge to, every so often, pull out its phone to scroll through social media feeds. Instead of, “Um, just because?” it will probably say, “While it might seem like I merely have a fear of missing out (FOMO), I quite literally can’t afford to miss out on certain things.” Or it will probably say, “I need the diversion from time to time, due to the stressful nature of my work. I don’t want to go home and offload my stress onto others and create a wild domino effect.”
Are you starting to know this petulant child a little better?
That petulant child really lives inside all of us, and accepting that reality is an enlightening experience which can actually help us make better decisions!
In any moment of questionable legality or questionable morality,—whatever it may be—play the role of translator for that petulant child within. Listen to what that child is telling you, and then translate that into plain but honest words—words which that child would certainly have used during your childhood years.
Or better yet, play the role of interrogator. Under the penalty of perjury, demand that the petulant child tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Instruct it to dispense with the melodrama; to dispense with the overly polished, sophisticated, advocative and persuasive justifications for making the wrong decisions; to dispense with the hyperbolic threats of hardship for making the right decisions. Make it comfortable enough to speak freely and candidly. Allow it to maintain that same old ridiculous tone and the silly body language.
If you go through that exercise, you might start seeing bad decisions and bad actions in their rawest form. And you might discover something profound: bad decisions and bad actions, no matter how dressed up they may be, are exactly that—bad decisions and bad actions.
Good decisions and good actions will then develop a renewed appeal.
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