The Generalization Game

Description

Don't be "owned" by one of the most common self-defeating default mechanisms in our minds. This video will help you become aware of it, which puts you on the road to transforming it.

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Music is "The Woods" by Silent Partner.

Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods

Video Transcription

[Music]

these chickens are always ruining our videos oh my gosh that's the generalization game it's something that's operating in the background for most of us and we don't even understand that it's happening yet this generalization game it can have a profound effect on our life whether we're trying to meet a survival situation scenario or we're just trying to navigate a conversation with a loved one in this video we're gonna help you understand how to recognize the generalization game of what it is and how to counter it in your life so the generalization game you might have already guessed it it is when you change from a state of observing what is going on in this moment okay Canton came into the kitchen asked me if I wouldn't mind putting the knife over here when I dry it versus just leaving it in the sink and that's one thing then I might have some feelings about it maybe I sleep well I'm grumpy and I think that didn't make me feel great so I say hey you know the way you said that to me it kind of made me feel like you we're trying to tell me what to do whatever but take it up a notch to the generalization game it switches over from here's the situation to you are always telling you what to do always telling me that I should do this I should do it differently where I should put things and you just never leave me alone you never give me a chance to do that a lot and suddenly we have always and never entering into our experience and that's when you can start to realize you've switched from what is actually happening to this broad just blanket statement you're always doing this or you're never doing this that kind of a thing so using these as keywords always

never and words like this these broad-brush words they speak to us the difference between observing the situation the chickens are here - taking that and making it into a big always chickens are always ruining our videos and this happens when our mind makes that switch into the generalization game so if I'm in a relatively peaceful observant type of space in my life I'm going to see a circumstance or an event and it's going to be I don't want to say isolated from the rest of life you know remembering that that last video it's part of our whole life but I'm seeing that that this is happening now it's in the present when I start to get frustrated then my mind's gonna make that leap and I think the great thing about the generalization game is if you remember those key words if I find myself saying this always happens or you never do this I know my mind has jumped into the generalization game and when I'm in a generalization game I mean I'm not making clear judgments about the world anymore we're not using the information that's right there we're starting to tell stories in our heads we're starting to pull in the past I mean this can happen with any of the survival skills students come out here you might have experienced this yourself you've tried numerous times to let's say start a one-match fire in the rain right and it just it usually doesn't work and then today you're trying it again and it's not working anyway oh I give up I am not good at this I suck I ever get a fire in the rain I can never do this I am NOT doing it anymore and then you've switched over right so any of those skills that you're working towards yes we have positive days we have negative days some skills might be harder for us but to then go from that this is never gonna work for me we're doing ourselves a disservice saps energy gun in that survival scenario you're trying to accomplish a task and when I start going into the generalization game then boy so much energy goes into basically telling myself all these negatives so my my power of positivity my good attitude which is really my best tool there it's gone when it comes to relationships or that conversation that we're having then it is an automatic generator of negativity and conflict think of the difference between saying you know if I say to you you know Rebecca that that thing that happened this morning it really kind of bothered me in some way it's gonna share with you as opposed to Rebecca you are always telling me what to do right what does that do that creates defensive wall right you're gonna I'm gonna bring up my defensive wall right it's how we create conflict and fights I think what's interesting is that they always never it shows us that we're in a place where we probably are feeling frustrated we're feeling vulnerable we might be scared and there's maybe a sense of crystallizing something this scenario is the same as all these other ones and it's going to be the same in the future and I'll never escape from where I am and so we feel like we have to say that it's always going to be as it is now or as I think it was and we get into kind of this negative feedback loop right where we think ok this is negative and then I say oh it's just never gonna be any different and then we create it never being any different because we look at it that way see how it goes like this and this and this negativity isn't gonna accomplish things

it's creating the crappy stuff that we think we're trying to avoid it's a feedback loop yeah and when we bring other people into it then it gets even more challenging because a lot of people don't necessarily realize this see you those trickiness always the girls call that Chicken laude when you bring in another person they may not realize oh you're in the generalization game and they may not be able to say I see what that means

I see where they're caught kind of in this fog of looking at things they may think you're talking about it's real and when they think it's real and they don't understand where you are they start to get upset too because they're not always that way do you are you always a certain way do you always follow a particular personality trait all the time 100% that's not true we're changing creatures so the flip side of this is so we recognize we're in the generalization game when we're playing the generalization game the second is realizing when someone else is playing the generalization game and there's steps that we can take to recognize this and to help ourselves not get caught up so those those steps first is recognizing it recognizing it we're using those generalization terms either noticing on a more subtle level level that our mind is generalizing but almost always we're gonna use those verbal cues so we're gonna recognize those in ourselves or in other people right always never are there any other really good ones you can think of oh no I can't think of any doesn't usually they're your ones but those thoughts or expressions it will never change or it has always been the same that sense of stuckness and when you recognize that you're using that language you can stop right there

whether it's you or somebody else because you know that you either are not thinking clearly not registering the situation clearly or that other person is not registering the situation clearly it's not going to be any use to point that out to the other person that that they're not because they're stuck in that that place but in yourself you can learn to stop and go ah look I just said that person is always and then you've caught it just in catching it making that stop that's the big first step once you've noticed it of course you have choices you could stay in the same place and continue on continue to think the same thing or you could ask yourself okay I have noticed I'm in the generalization game and you can kind of laugh at yourself a little bit and be like yeah my life is always awful nothing ever nice happens to me I mean I always have this this and this that are wrong and you can play with yourself a little bit or not with the other person you wouldn't want to do this at their expense

but realizing that you get a choice and once it's when it's with another person you can choose how to respond to them perhaps you can actually instead of getting into that defensive wait a second you could say yeah you could step into the validation one say hey it seems like you're just having a rough time you wanna just vent a little bit I'm here you can just tell me what you think and I'm not gonna judge you you don't have to take offense at those things coming at you because you know you've already recognized they're not in their clear spot so when they're saying okay I'll vent you are always this and you are always that that can be you know water off a duck's back on you because you recognize they are not in a place of clarity this is not the time to to think they're like right big decision I think that they've thought about this and they really know what they're talking about they made as of you saying you always wear that shirt every single day and you always wear that same pair of shoes you know what I'm saying yeah so with another person stepping back not taking offense

seriously or just saying if you can't handle it and the situation is it's too intense simply saying I think now isn't a good time for me to talk and could be step away and maybe it come back to this later on you can also make that choice with yourself so you have the choice to continue on you have the choice to play with it a little bit and get super EXTREME to how life is never gonna work for you and it's always going wrong or you can choose to step away and say you know what whatever we're a number situation I'm in at the moment I'm out here it's pouring rain I'm freezing cold and I'm not getting a fire and you start to hear yourself say on never get fires I'm step away from it for a moment say okay instead of making the fire I realize I'm playing the generalisation game I'm simply going to do something else I'm gonna work on getting a shelter with some boughs over there and just get myself out of the rain a little and I'll come back to it after I've taken a breather so you can take a breather even with yourself and just put it on a different burner for a little while and tell yourself okay yep in half an hour I'm gonna come back to that thought that's another option this is so liberating I think reason one we recognize this thing that usually was just taking us for a ride before now we see it we understand it it no longer holds the same power over us number two you said we have a choice and starting to recognize that as we become aware of our minds activity it doesn't rule over us we have a choice it's not gonna just take us there we get a choice which route we're gonna go down and sometimes you know the old pathways are burnt pretty hard and we're gonna make the choice to just not be our best selves but every time we make that choice to be our best self to you know move that positive direction we're gonna burn that pathway and that neural networks being get a little bit stronger share in the comments your thoughts about the generalization game have you noticed this operating in your life you you might see it tomorrow now that you are aware of it if you weren't aware of it before you might see it happening quite often it can happen in your thoughts too things that you're thinking and then somebody says something at work and into the thought bubble you go of generalization life's always going to be this way so so tell us about you know if you've noticed this and how you have dealt with it or transformed it if you try what we talked about in this video let us know if it's helpful to you thanks my friend talk with you soon [Music]