Whose choice is it anyways?

“ I let my kids do whatever they want, its their choice” is the in thing in parenting these days. I would say not only in parenting it’s the rule that new age relations claim to follow, letting people live by their choices. But think for a while , do all the people that claim to let others live by their choices really do so? What if they influence others in a way that causes them to behave as per their wishes?

What if you get so influenced by others thoughts indirectly that you start to behave as he /she wants without even realizing it? What if instead of telling you to do something directly , indirectly lot of messages by a group of people suggest the same thing. Your subconscious mind gets affected and you might end up doing as per your thoughts which are influenced by others.

So lets say a wife wants to persuade her husband to take her on a trip. The husband doesn’t want to go as he has some health issues. How will she convince him and get what she wants? The old – fashioned way is telling directly. But the wife senses that will not work . So then the indirect influence starts. So she can do the following things
• Refer to a past trip and convince him how it helped him. Mostly the benefits would be woven in a story that is an exaggerated version of the truth
• Refer to some friends examples and say how trips help them make the relationship stronger
• Invite some friends over and discuss on the same topic

Now if you notice above , none of the reasons are wrong. In the situation that the husband’s health is not good , this trip might not be entirely advisable.. Also note that the benefits of the trip are being repeated using different channels. Daniel Kahneman has said “A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.”

I am currently reading the book “The power of your subconscious mind” by Joseph Murphy. The book talks about how our subconscious mind affects what happens to us. One of the quotes from the book is as follows ..”If you look back, you can easily recall how parents, friends, relatives , teachers and associates contributed in a campaign of negative suggestions. Study the things said to you , closely examine their underlying meaning and you will discover that many of them were nothing more than a form of propaganda. Its concealed purpose was – and is – to control you by instilling fear in you. This heterosuggestion process goes on in every home , office , factory and club. You will find that many of the suggestions people make , whether they know it or not are aimed at making you think, , feel and act as they want you to , in ways that are to their advantage, even if they are destructive to you”

Hence let us be aware of our thoughts, our choices, and let us ask ourselves repeatedly “Whose choice is it anyways?” This is not to suggest that what we hear is always propaganda , but to suggest that it is worth questioning “Is what we hear some sort of propaganda?”

-Dhanashree