Temperament Tip #4
The objective of this section of the Insights newsletter is to give you some advice on how to apply temperament theory to your life. Each week you will receive information and assignments that help you practice the skills and adopt the attitudes that promise to bring you more success and long-term happiness.
Over the past couple of days, I’ve heard from some readers who have taken last week’s Temperament Tip to heart. Each day they showed their loved ones that they understood and respected their values by doing an activity which reflected those values.
Let me tell you about one of these individuals, an Orange man who has been married to a Gold woman for about 15 years. He felt their relationship was a little stagnant so he decided to spend at least 30 minutes each day doing a Gold activity rather than watching a TV show.
On the first day he cleaned the utensil drawer in the kitchen then sharpened the knives.
On the second day he said he was going to organize his bedroom closet and asked his wife for advice on how to do it correctly.
On the third day, he asked his wife if she could help him create a list of all the things he could fix around the house.
And for the next couple of days, he worked on the list, reporting in when each task was done.
By the night of the sixth day, he wrote me a note saying what a difference this has already made in his life. He indicated that while his wife was a little suspicious at first, by the end of the week she was noticeably happier and, as I promised, so was he. In fact, his wife encouraged him to go out and spend an upcoming Saturday golfing with his buddies, something she never did in the past. He said it was a terrific return on investment — for his three hours spent working on Gold service projects, he received six hours of free Orange playtime.
Even if you don’t experience a similar payback in your own life, there is an amazing amount of spiritual satisfaction and psychological peace that comes from doing something for someone without an expectation of reciprocation.
In fact, altruistic acts are universally endorsed in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and other world religions. Many people, myself included, believe that altruism is a divine characteristic which ought to be emulated as much as possible by the children of God. Whenever people willingly turn from selfishness to selflessness, the entire human family benefits.
This week, your assignment is to repeat last week’s assignment:
In the presence of the person with whom you want to enhance your relationship, do an activity every day that reflects his or her values.
Why am I asking you to repeat this assignment? Because true behavior change, either on your part or the part of those around you, doesn’t happen overnight. Nor does it happen in one week. But it does in about 10 days.
According to famed neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux, you need about 10 exposures to something new, spaced over specific intervals, before your brain figures out what to do with it and how to store it, and then blazes a stable neural pathway to it that allows it to be used or accessed more easily in the future.
For example, the first time you eat a snake, you’re likely to say, “Hmm, this tastes like chicken.” Those were my exact thoughts when I first tried snake (by the way, I was 13 years old, on a Boy Scout overnight in the Arizona desert, and had to eat it because that darn rattlesnake wouldn’t leave us alone while it remained alive.)
Because eating snake was your first experience with something, your brain tried to compare it with something you were already were familiar with–chicken. If you continued to eat snake for the next 10 days or so, you would gradually learn that it doesn’t taste like chicken at all, but has a flavor and texture of its very own. Then, whenever you eat snake in the future, your brain will say, “Hey, I remember this. I’m eating snake.” Eventually, if you eat a sufficient quantity of snake varieties, you’ll be able to taste the subtle differences between them until you eventually become a world-renowned serpent connoisseur.
Next week I promise to give you a different assignment. But please, if you want your relationships to remain stagnant and unfulfilling, please don’t do these assignments. They are designed exclusively for people who want their relationships to be strengthened and elevated to greater heights. Now, please stop reading about insights and go out and acquire some as you work this week on repeating your selfless behaviors.