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Sample Chapter

Unwrapping
The Box 
Dennis Deer

 
Chapter Three  

Learning To Understand Your Chain Thinking (The Talking Chain)

Insanity = doing the same things over and over again expecting different results.

Elephants are some of the largest and mightiest creatures on the face of this earth. They have the potential to practically move whatever they want to, when they want to. But with all of the potential that the elephant has, it only uses about 10% of it. One may ask why does the elephant choose not to maximize all of its God given potential? The answer to that question is because of the way that the elephant has been conditioned. In essence the elephant uses all of the power and might that it thinks that it has, because as far as its concerned, that’s all the power that it has. Does that make sense to you?

O.K. let me try another angle. Elephants start receiving training very early in life. The method that is used to train elephants is simple. Each elephant that is being trained, gets a rope tied to one of his or her legs. This rope is then attached to a tree. Every time the elephant attempts to walk it feels this rope tugging on its leg, which it cannot seem to get away from. In addition to the elephant having the rope on its leg, the elephant is also subject to small pulses of shock every time it tugs to hard in an effort to break free from the rope that is tied to its leg. After trying to break free so many times and receiving so many painful pulses of shock as a consequence. The elephant accepts the fact that it cannot break free from the rope without a painful consequence.

As the elephant matures, it continues to believe the same learned responses that it adopted as a child. I can hear what the elephant probably says, “If I tug the rope to hard, I’m going to get hurt”. By the time the elephant is an adult, it has the potential to pull a tree down to the ground without breaking a sweat. But it has been conditioned to believe that it cannot go no further than the rope on its leg allows it to go. So guess what, when it feels the rope tugging on its leg, it stops in its tracks. Again, this creature has the potential to crush cars, buses, people and everything else. But the elephant is controlled by a rope and some painful memories.

Does any of this sound familiar to you. I hope that this particular illustration has caused you to think about the ropes and memories that you may have tied to you. Can you imagine having all of the power that the elephant has and not being able to use it? How would you feel? How would you react? What would you do?

You would probably do nothing. I say that because if you had all of that power and didn’t know you had it, you would probably be satisfied with just being an ordinary person. You would probably be satisfied with the status quo or doing just enough to get by.

Wake Up!!!!!!!!

It’s time to wake up. You were created by God to do more than what you are doing today. Even if you are the president of a fortune 500 company, the Governor, a State Representative, a County Commissioner, an Alderman or woman, a Teacher, a Congressman or an engineer. You were created by the Almighty Father to be more than what you are! You were created to do the impossible!! You were created to think and act outside of the norm!! Do you believe that? If your answer is no, then keep reading. If your answer is yes, still keep reading but ask yourself WHAT AM I WAITING FOR?? We must understand that it is time for us to wake up. The richest person in the world is you. You just don’t know it yet, because you have not discovered your purpose and potential for this season. Maybe you understood your purpose and potential for past seasons in your life, but what about now? It doesn’t matter that you own your own successful business or if it’s your 2^nd or 3^rd successful term as a politician or if your marriage is perfect. You still have the potential on the inside of you to do more. You still have not maximized your true potential! You still have not tested your limits. YOU HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO DO GREATER THINGS!!! Its time to go back to the manufacturer to find out what He has stored in your database. More so, its time to find out how to activate the program that he has stored within you, so that you can achieve the desired purpose. But first, you must ask yourself two questions: 1. What have you done for God lately?  2. What have you done for yourself lately?

Sometimes I have found myself doing so many things for everyone else, that I have repeatedly neglected to take care of myself. In addition, not only did I not take care of some of my physical, emotional and psychosocial needs, I would neglect to take care of myself spiritually. Totally leaving my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ out of the picture. Whenever I get to that point, I automatically know that I am not operating in my purpose. Because the Father (Manufacturer) gave me my purpose and common sense tells me that He would not give me a purpose nor potential that did not include Him. The critical component of what I am trying to convey here, is that we must connect with God to understand our true purpose and potential. Even after we have discovered our purpose for the season, we must still rely on God to help us to defeat and destroy the box that we have created for ourselves.

Defining The Walls of Box Thinking

As discussed in the previous chapter, our box has four walls. The four walls of the box include what I call “fear-hood”, “comfort-hood”, N.P.3-hood and potential. Three of these programmed walls are programmed to keep you inside of your box. One of the walls, serve as your escape route.

  Hood-Thinking!!!!

From this chapter on you will notice the constant use of the word "Hood". I mentioned it briefly earlier, but lets examine it a little more. This word is not meant to be used in any derogatory form. The context that this word is used in is representative of a specific type of mentality. When we think about the word "Hood" we generally think a reference is being made to the  “ghetto” or some lower class establishment. This is not the case in my usage of this word. When I think of the word “Hood” I can automatically tag it on to neighbor-hood, boy-hood, man-hood, woman-hood or child-hood. All of these different forms of "hood" give a representation of community and in each community that it is represented, their is a certain mentality or way of thinking. Furthermore if you were to review even the various sub-cultures mentioned above, you would find that there are distinct differences in mentality, language etc.

Please Review the following:

1.    Man-Hood- In this sub-culture only those who have achieved a certain level of responsibility can be a member. Yet men think, communicate, react and feel (show emotions) totally different from women. A man’s method of communication is even totally different than that of women. (Most men believe they are having fun drinking a beer and watching the ball game—with minimal verbal communication)

2.    Woman-Hood- In this sub-culture only those who have achieve a certain level of responsibility can be a member. Yet women think, communicate, react and show emotions totally different from men. A women’s method of communication, is even totally different that that of men. (Most women opposed the view that watching a ball game is fun, they would much rather cuddle and verbally communicate).

Both examples above are clear-cut examples of the differences in the way that men and women think. For men, society has suggested to them that they be hardcore, rugged and “never let them see you sweat”. In the Man-Hood subculture, society suggests that they repressed their feelings, because if you show too much emotion, people will think that you are “weak”. At the same time society suggest that women show their emotion through tears, etc.

The end result are two separate cultures who must learn to understand one another, but generally never know where to start in the long trip of doing so.

The mentality of men and women are totally different. So as you move through the pages of this book, understand that every time you see the word "hood" it means mentality or way of thinking.

Now that we have covered the word “hood”, lets talk in-depth about the four walls of the box. Keep in mind, three of these walls are programmed to keep you inside of your box. One of the walls serves as your escape route, but is generally covered by emotional fog.

N.P.3-Hood

N.P.3 is short for negative people, places and poisons. These are people and/or places that we have had negative experiences with or that remind us of negative experiences that we have had. Poisons are things that we for some reason or another choose to link up with for consolation or comfort at one point or another.

In life there are many occasions in which we go through experiences that are very painful. Just as the elephant that we talked about earlier, we remember those painful experiences even when we don’t want to. As a result of our memory of these past experiences, we create the infamous defense mechanisms. These mechanisms are initially created to protect us from getting hurt, but after they have done somewhat of a good job from our vantage point of protecting us from harm, they then put us into bondage. It’s almost like a co-dependent relationship in which we are dependent upon our self-created defense mechanisms, but all along instead of defending us, they are damaging us.

Remember the story that I discussed in chapter 1 about Lola. Lola is a perfect example of an individual who was in a co-dependent relationship. Although Lola was physically, verbally and sexually abused, she felt that she could change her boyfriend. At the same time, her boyfriend was trying to shape and change her into what he wanted her to be. In essence, both of these individuals were co-dependent on each other—both of them thought that the other individual needed their help to be successful. But instead, one or either both of them were being destroyed in the process of them supposedly helping each other.

This same phenomenon takes place when we develop defense mechanisms and choose to adopt them as patterns into our lifestyles. The problem develops when we never choose to augment them or update them as we get older and more mature. We must understand that we will have defense mechanisms as long as we have people.

Although we may love ourselves and love being around people, people don’t always love us. Sometimes they only love us for what we can give them. The minute that we run out of whatever they are interested in, they tend to abandon us. These individuals are what I refer to as negative people.

Profile of Negative People

Negative people are quite frankly those individuals that really mean us no good. Yet these are people that we really hold in high esteem and love being around. If you think hard enough, I am sure that you can identify a person or two that fits the description of being negative. But for the sake of those individuals who cant identify anyone, lets talk about the characteristics of negative people.

Negative people are those individuals who thrive off of being miserable. My grandmother and mother would often say that “misery loves company”. It took a while for me to understand exactly what that phrase meant, but after a while I figured it out. Basically it means that individuals who are miserable, do whatever it takes to make everybody and everything around them miserable. Just about everything that this particular individual speaks is negative. As I am profiling the negative person, many individuals are coming to mind that exhibit this behavior. I can remember a person that I know named Max. Max was a very nice person. I mean he would give you the clothes off of his back if you needed them. As long as I was dependent on Max for answers to questions, food and clothing, everything was O.K. But the minute that I started to step outside of my box, take my own risk and think for myself, Max all of a sudden became very negative. Max would begin to tell me that the things that I was thinking about were crazy. He also said that he didn’t think I could do the things that I was telling him that I wanted to do. In fact, he did everything in his power to get me to believe that things were just fine as they were.

Today I realize that this was a form of power and control. See, Max was getting a form of self-worth as long as I was dependent upon him for all of his wisdom knowledge and understanding. The minute that Max thought the source or one of the sources of his self-worth was being jeopardized, he immediately wanted to do what-ever-it-took to protect it by trying to keep me in my box. Sounds crazy right, but its true. The most interesting part about this is that Max didn’t try to keep me in my box intentionally, he was actually operating off of the defense mechanism pattern of self-preservation.

The problem with this is that Max was obtaining his self-worth from the wrong source. I now understand that Max wasn’t sure of what his purpose or potential was. Instead of trying to find out, he was trying to ascertain them through sources that were un-stable opposed to contacting “The Manufacturer” who is the firm foundation.

In essence, many individuals who are negative in nature aren’t being so because they want to. They are negative because they are caught up inside of a box of negative thinking and behavior and need to be set free. Of course, before this person can be set free from their box, they have to want to be free. They have to want to do better for themselves. And as a by-product of them wanting to do better for themselves, they will slowly destroy the negative thinking that has bound them for so long.

In my own change process, my focus is not to worry about the issues of other individuals. My concern is always me as the first priority. With that in mind, I have to do whatever it takes to keep negative and oppressing people out of my path. Because their agenda is selfish and so is mine’s (My agenda is selfish because I am only focusing on improving myself now.). Their agenda is to keep themselves feeling good by making me feel bad. Have you ever met one of those individuals? Their entire agenda is to keep you right where you are. It’s fine and dandy when they progress and they want you to be happy for them. But if you progress, it seems that they always have something negative to say about your accomplishments.

I can remember driving a 1994 Cavalier for approximately 8 years. An individual that I will call Chuck had for the past 4 years continuously said “Man you have 2 college degrees, you should be driving something better than that”. About 4 years after that statement was made I got to the point in my life where I was ready for a new car, so I went out and bought a brand new Lexus RX 300. When Chuck saw the S.U.V. he said “Wow that’s nice, but if it were me I would have gotten the much larger Lexus LS 470 S.U.V.”. At that point I knew that Chuck had his own agenda and it really made him feel good to say that he would have gotten the larger more expensive vehicle. I knew that I could not control what Chuck said, but I could control what my response to Chuck was (normally I would have let him get away with his comment and beat myself up later for not saying anything). I responded to Chuck in a calm voice saying “I went down to the dealership and picked out the perfect vehicle for my wife and I and we are perfectly content with it. Now if you want to get the vehicle that you made mention of, go right ahead, but we are content with what we chose.”

After a few of those types of responses over a period of time, I had no more problems with Chuck and his negative comments towards me. My problem was that I had allowed Chuck for a long time to speak those negative comments into my mentality and I would internalize them and actually believe what he would tell me. These beliefs in essence kept me from stepping outside of my box, as it related to previous situations in which I allowed Chuck to speak negativity into my mentality.

Negative people can also be very toxic to your mindset. They can almost be as potent as a lethal poison. Some of the most poisonous negative individuals can be found in the friendly confines of your local FAMILY.

All In Your Family

The family is where most of our shaping and memories are created. Rather you have good or bad memories, you can always count on the fact that the majority of your memories will include someone from your family. Since we have so many memories with our family members, we tend to trust their judgment and comments above all others. But the bottom line is that some of our family members are individuals who are negative or tend to bring out negativity in us. Have you ever met one of those family members who are so bold, that they will curse while they are standing inside of the Church? At the same time they will say excuse me Lord and curse three or four more times after that!!! Or better yet, have you had one of those family members who are so miserable about there bad relationships and marriages, that they tell you that there is no such thing as falling in love and attempt to encourage you not to get married? These particular individuals are miserable and laden with their own issues. So common sense should tell you that nine times out of ten, they are unable to give you sound advice about a situation. Yet we still take our problems to them and they talk us out of following our dreams.

The point that I am trying to make is that you must do what is best for you. Sometimes the best policy is to surround yourself with individuals who think like you. Malcolm X was a great street hustler and in order for him to be one of the best street hustlers, he surrounded himself with some of the best street hustlers of the time. But when Malcolm X decided to seek out his purpose and found it, he surrounded himself with individuals who were congruent with his purpose. He made a choice to self- educate himself, which meant that he needed to surround himself with others who were educated. In turn, they would help him to foster his thirst for knowledge. The choice is ultimately up to you, if you want to think negatively then surround yourself with negative people. But if you want to think positive, then you must surround yourself with positive people. This hurts sometimes, because sometimes we have to distance ourselves from individuals who are negative. But as I stated earlier, negative individuals have their own selfish agenda, which is to keep you in your box. Likewise you must have your own selfish agenda as well, which should be to get out of your box (by any means necessary). We must also realize that the best way to get away from negative individuals is to stay away from negative places.

Negative Places

Negative places are those places that we may associate with negative experiences that we have had in our lives. Many negative places are negative because of the type of people that were in those places. As you look back over your life, I am sure that you can think of some places that you can associate with negative experiences. For some, those places may include high school, elementary school, home, grandmothers house or a place where something traumatic such as child-hood abuse, robbery, an accident or a really bad fall took place.

Once we come into contact with these past negative places, we begin to mentally re-experience the traumatic incident that took place in the past. Some individuals even go into panic and/or anxiety attacks based solely on being in the negative place. 

Negative places also remind us of the pain that we endured during a traumatic experience and in most cases cause us to make the choice not to take risks. Just as the rope on the elephants leg served as a constant reminder of the pain that it would have to endure if it attempted to pull the rope to hard and break free, negative places serve as a constant reminder to us of the pain that we could endure if we attempt to break free of our box.

The best way to deal with negative places is to learn to face the fear and the negative experience associated with that place. If you are not ready to face your fear, then it is best to stay away from the negative place. That is, until you have made a pilgrimage outside of your current box and you are ready to challenge yourself with facing the fear of your negative places. The key is that we must take one day at a time. Facing your fear is all about gradual systematic desensitization. That is, gradually sensitizing yourself or gradually introducing yourself to the situation or place that you associate negative experiences with. The key to this process is learning to take one day at a time and learning to understand that change is not instant, it is a process. In the process of change you must learn to accept your strengths, acknowledge what your areas of improvement are and avoid the poisons that are out their masking as agents of comfort.  In reality poisons are gradual agents of destruction.

Poisons

Poisons are those things that we tend to turn to for comfort when we just don’t want to deal with our problems head on. There are different types of poisons out there and different people use different types of poisons. For some individuals alcohol, marijuana, heroine, pcp and prescription drugs serve as their poison. For others over indulgence in food, spending money and sexual promiscuity are their poisons. These poisons are used as methods of comfort and as vacations away from the complexities and the work involved in realistically dealing with a problem. Most individuals choose to indulge in the poisons as a method of escape, but ultimately the poisons end up serving as agents of destruction. In many cases history has proven that individuals who choose to indulge in poisons generally suffer severe consequences. The consequences that poison users suffer from, generally includes them losing their families, homes and in some instances their lives.

Instead of turning to poisons, we must learn to face our fears by asking God to guide us and show us the path that we need to follow in order to have good success.

Fear-Hood

Fear is an emotion that can actually demobilize the best of us. We must come to the understanding that fear is designed to paralyze us. It paralyzes your faculty of reasoning, totally destroys your imagination and makes self-control impossible. Fear will paralyze and destroy the charm out of your personality, bring your will power to a screeching halt, decrease your memory, destroy love and invite failure into every aspect of your life. It will promote sleepless nights, unhappiness, anger and poor decision- making abilities. Just as we have generalized fear of negative places where trauma has taken place, we also have fear of  not being loved, of death and of not being accepted.

Fear of Not Being Accepted

In general we all have thoughts that come and leave our minds about not being accepted by other individuals. But if these thoughts are not attacked right away with positive thoughts, they will attach to our conscious mind and we actually begin to believe that we want and need to be accepted by everyone that we come into contact with. This belief is then processed by our subconscious mind, which transforms that belief into its spiritual equivalent, which is faith. Next we begin to have faith in the fact that we are not accepted by other individuals, which in turn reinforces the original belief (A more in-depth explanation is given in chapter six on spirituality). This process continues over and over again over a span of time until fear is created, that fear then paralyzes us as it initiates its process of destruction.

Have you ever wondered why the clothing, automobile, food and jewelry industry comes out with a new line of products each year? Certainly it’s not because they are listening to input from their customers.  They put new lines of merchandise out because nobody wants to wear the same clothes, drive the same car or live in the same house year after year.

This in essence is a method in which those particular industries play on our fear of being accepted by others to make money. These are considered petty things in life, but some individuals purchase new model cars every year just so that their friends will accept them. Some individuals are in relationships with certain people, simply because they wanted to be accepted by their friends or simply because their friends approved of the person that they were dating at the time.

What’s more important is that the fear of not being accepted by others has many adverse effects on an individual. It limits individuality- because you spend so much of your time trying to please other individuals so that they will accept you, that you forget about what you think about a particular topic.

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