Choice Theory (46 page)

If Corning gets off to a good start, I would advise any group who wants to start this process in their community to come to Corning and talk to the people who were part of this initial effort. In the first meeting in Corning, we will try to generate a plan to persuade a large group of people in the community to read the book. I believe that the intellectual interest is there. The good reading weather of a cold Corning winter will also be on our side.

Given that there will be community support from the hundred or more leaders and others who read the book for the initial conference, a good way to get the rest of the community reading is to form readers’ groups from volunteers at the first meeting. The more these people are known and respected in the community, the more they will be able to help the program. For example, it would be powerful if the chief of police was involved and then agreed to lead a group. It would also make it easier for the chief to ask his officers to get involved. But there should be no arm twisting. External control is not the way to a quality community.

The initial leaders of the reading groups do not have to be experts. All they will need is a good sense of humor and some people skills. Many of the people with the ability to lead these groups will be found among the retired. Nothing ages a retired person with a good brain faster than not using it, and this could be an exciting way to use it. If we can get ten group leaders from the initial planning group of a hundred each to fill their groups with about ten people who have some interest in becoming future leaders, we will be off to a good start. Even before the first meeting, the people from the initial group, who are already interested in leading reading groups, should start to get their groups together.

Natural leaders will arise in the initial group and in all subsequent groups, and the ideas will spread the ideas through a ripple effect. The readers’ groups will decide how long they want to meet as they go along; there will probably be a great deal of variation, depending on the makeup of the groups. Even while the readers’ groups are meeting, people in the groups who would like to lead groups themselves may get such groups together. I can see people in the group inviting others who may be interested to meetings so they can see for themselves what is going on.

Once these meetings get going, there will have to be an information and coordination office with a phone and a computer to register people who want to be in reading groups, make up groups, assign leaders, and keep track of everything. Some information about the people who register can be used to form compatible groups, but how to do so, or if it is wise, will be learned during the process. In the beginning, there may be many diverse groups and then, as the leaders arise, the groups may become more homogeneous.

High school students should be involved, perhaps as part of their English or social studies classes or as part of their community service, but all students should be offered the chance to learn these ideas. If they wish, juniors and seniors can be assigned to adult groups so they feel as if they are being treated as equals in this process. However, no student should be asked to read this book without parental permission.

The bookstores in which the book is sold should be encouraged to make up displays that tell what is going on in Corning, and pamphlets discussing the project should be available to all who are interested, especially, to those who buy the book. Bookstores might be anxious to cooperate with the committee to host discussions about the book. These sessions would be a good place to recruit people for the readers’ groups. Some groups can be made up of people who have read the book and want to keep meeting, and others can be for new people. Large and small planning meetings should be scheduled periodically with Carleen and me during the first two years so we can both contribute as well as learn.

The major implementation will be the nonspecific readers’ groups in which each person is learning choice theory to use in his or her life. Then there will be specific readers’ groups, such as school groups, made up of students, teachers, and parents who are learning choice theory separately or together but as part of a school working to become a quality school. Other typical groups would be those composed of police officers, corrections officers, politicians, governmental administrators, health professionals, recreational workers, social service workers, and the judiciary and trial attorneys; the list is long.

I can even envision a group of homeless people getting together for dinner and a discussion of the book. What these groups will have in common is that they will not be therapy groups; their aim will be to introduce their members to choice theory and encourage them to learn it by using it in their lives and, where applicable, their work. Almost all the nonspecific groups will be led by volunteers. The specific groups will be led mainly by professionals, with volunteers helping if necessary.

The other part of the implementation will be to introduce helping professionals, including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, marriage and family counselors, counselors of employee assistance plans, substance abuse counselors, and pastoral counselors, who are interested in using choice theory in their work but who have not yet been involved in readers’ groups, nonspecific or specific. In Corning, I will offer to get involved with these professionals who have read the book to explain how choice theory is combined with reality therapy in the work I do. After this explanation and demonstration, if they want further training, they can contact the William Glasser Institute, which provides this training all over the world.

With the exception of professional training, which would be optional, the cost of implementing this program in any community would be minimal because the specific readers’ groups, the heart of the program, would be led by volunteer employees from
the organizations that are involved. Thus, whatever costs there were would be to set up and administer the nonspecific readers’ groups. Moreover, every dollar the community spends on what I am suggesting will be reimbursed tenfold by what is saved, plus untold amounts of reduced human misery.

By far the greatest effect of the program would be on everyone’s life. Each individual and family who learns the choice theory has a much better chance than they have now of finding more happiness, and there are research instruments to measure these savings. But the reductions in the more obvious problems—illness, family violence, school failure, juvenile and adult crime, family separations and divorces, unrest in the workplace, and drug abuse—can definitely be measured. Some of those statistics are being gathered now.

To avoid guesswork and speculation, the Corning committee has agreed to apply for a grant to hire a researcher to find out what has been good for the community and what money has been saved by this effort. This would be a wonderful project for a social science doctoral student under the supervision of professors who have expertise in this kind of research. There is a lot to be done, but Carleen and I are thankful for this opportunity and will do all we can to help. This is a pilot project. Our goal is to show other communities that working together, we can successfully challenge the flat line on the graph of human progress. It’s time to move that line up.

As of October 1, 1998, the Quality Community Project in Corning, New York, is well under way. It is called the Choice Project and has been set up as a five-year effort with a director, funding, and a business plan. Currently two researchers have expressed interest in following the project.

T
HROUGHOUT THE BOOK,
I have stressed how much more personal freedom we have if we are willing to replace external control psychology with choice theory in our lives. Now I focus on what I call the ten axioms of choice theory. It is through these axioms that we are able both to define and redefine our personal freedom.

1. The only person whose behavior we can control is our own. In practice, if we are willing to suffer the alternative—almost always severe punishment or death—no one can make us do anything we don’t want to do. When we are threatened with punishment, whatever we do we rarely do well.

When we actually begin to realize that we can control only our own behavior, we immediately start to redefine our personal freedom and find, in many instances, that we have much more freedom than we realize. If we don’t do what we are told, we can decide how much personal freedom we are willing to give up. For example, when a wife says to her husband,
Unless you treat me better I am going to leave you,
she is in the process of redefining her freedom. It is always her choice to leave; what she has to choose now is how much freedom she is willing to give up if she stays. In terms of taking control of our own lives, which is always possible, we have to continually decide how important freedom is to us.

Think of how much time you spend trying to get others to do what they don’t want to do and how much of your time is spent resisting others who are trying to get you to do what you don’t want to do. Think of Tina, wasting time trying to get Kevin to propose, time she learned to spend on contributing to the happiness of their relationship. When she learned that she could control only her own behavior, she had more freedom to do what was best for the relationship.

2. All we can give or get from other people is information. How we deal with that information is our or their choice.

Think again of Tina. When she finally accepted that all she could give Kevin was information but that she had total control over what information she gave him, she had the freedom to stop nagging and say what got them closer together. She had much more freedom when she gave up worrying about what she couldn’t do: control Kevin. A teacher can give a student information and help him or her use the information, but the teacher can’t do the work for the student. When you get out of that trap, you regain a lot of freedom that you voluntarily gave up when you felt responsible for students who chose not to work.

3. All long-lasting psychological problems are relationship problems. A partial cause of many other problems, such as pain, fatigue, weakness, and some chronic diseases—commonly called autoimmune diseases—is relationship problems.

There is no sense wasting time looking at all aspects of our lives for why we are choosing misery. The cause of the misery is always our way of dealing with an important relationship that is not working out the way we want it to. Until we face that fact, we have no freedom; we locked ourselves into an endless, impossible task. There is no guarantee that we can solve this problem, but there is an absolute guarantee that if we don’t face it, we will never solve it.

4. The problem relationship is always part of our present lives.

We don’t have to look far for the relationship. It is not a past or future relationship; it is always a current one. It is here that we have to redefine freedom. We can be free of many things, but we are never free to live happily without at least one satisfying personal relationship. To get the most freedom in the relationship is a task that I covered over and over in this book, but it can never be a totally free choice. What the other person wants must always be considered, so in a relationship such as marriage, the freedom we can have must be continually redefined as the relationship changes over time. The solving circle is a good vehicle for two people who know choice theory to use in redefining their freedom.

5. What happened in the past that was painful has a great deal to do with what we are today, but revisiting this painful past can contribute little or nothing to what we need to do now: improve an important, present relationship.

Here we have a chance to free ourselves of the idea that it is important to know our past before we can deal with our present. It is good to revisit the parts of our past that were satisfying but leave what was unhappy alone. Most of the time we actually know what happened, but sometimes, if it was very traumatic, our creative systems have stepped in and erased those miserable memories. The argument that if we don’t know our past, we are doomed to repeat it is incorrect. Our task is to do what we can to correct our present relationship. We are not doomed to repeat our
past unless we choose to do so. Using choice theory we can correct our present unsatisfying relationships with behaviors that are satisfying to both parties. If we believe we cannot function in the present until we understand our past, then we have chosen to be the prisoners of what is over. This is hardly a way to feel more free.

6. We are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.

These needs have to be satisfied. They can be delayed but not denied. Only we can decide when they are satisfied. No one else can tell us. We can help others, but we can never satisfy anyone else’s needs, only our own. If we attempt to satisfy other people’s needs, we lock ourselves into an impossible task. In locking ourselves into anything, we lose freedom.

7. We can satisfy these needs only by satisfying a picture or pictures in our quality worlds. Of all we know, what we choose to put into our quality worlds is the most important.

The most freedom we ever experience is when we are able to satisfy a picture or pictures in our quality worlds. If we put pictures into our quality worlds that we cannot satisfy, we are giving up freedom.

8. All we can do from birth to death is behave. All behavior is total behavior and is made up of four inseparable components: acting, thinking, feeling, and physiology.

9. All total behavior is designated by verbs, usually infinitives and gerunds, and named by the component that is most recognizable. For example, I am choosing to depress or I am depressing instead of I am suffering from depression or I am depressed.