I also appreciate your thoughts on the effort that goes into being a family leader. Being your self is the only legitimate guidance any of us can ”give” to others. I use to have a formula for telling others where I stood or what I thought, which went like this: “If I were you I would think/feel/do such and such in this kind of situation, but I am not you and you are therefore free to do as you think best.”

It is always a possible double bind to tell others what to do. If it turns out right you are demigod, and if it turns out wrong you are the devil. In both cases the other does not have to take responsibility for deciding to take some action.

As a general principle being as open and authentic as possible enables you to be in better contact with family members and that in and of itself is useful.

One can see pretty quickly who can pick up ideas and run with them. You are one of those motivated people. You have made a commitment to your life by being as thoughtful as possible. It might cost you a bit here and there but being a more thoughtful, less reactive self, improves the quality of one’s life immensely.

Many Thanks,
Andrea

Thank you for your feedback and good questions about how Mauboussin developed his interest and the difference between reactivity in Bowen Theory and “mental traps.”

The brain is wired to respond to clues in certain predetermined ways, this can lead to interpersonal emotional reactivity, as in prejudice about cultural differences, but most of what Mauboussin writes about has to do with the way we automatically make decision based on perception of stimuli.

Reactivity in Bowen theory has more to do with NOT being an objective observer and therefore acting out unresolved emotions which are “programmed” into each of us in our family of origin. If you want to you can check in Bowen book on page 540 about what goes into person to person relationships. Of course I think that being a better observer and controlling ones own emotional reactiveness makes major sense on the road to better interpersonal decisions.

Also as far as collecting facts we do not know that much about how our social actions influence our biology. See (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/opinion/13brooks.html?em)

As to how Mauboussin came to focus on how we make decision, I extracted his answer from an interview he gave below.

http://www.simoleonsense.com/miguel-barbosa-interviews-michael-mauboussin-author-investor-multidisciplinary-thinker/

“A: I started my career as a big believer in models and finance theory. And I still think those things are really important. But over time I came to recognize that what makes for great investors—and corporate managers, for that matter—is not their ability to crunch numbers, but rather their ability to make good decisions in the face of uncertainty. Remarkably, decision making is the most important facet of investing and is probably the least taught aspect in business school.

My “a-ha” moment came at an investment and behavioral finance conference a few years back. Like they do at most of these conferences, the professors ran little experiments to demonstrate various decision making principles, and offered small prizes for the attendees who did best. The first contest was about overconfidence and calibration, and I won. I got a t-shirt. The second one was about thinking about the decisions of others, and I won that one, too. Now with about 70 attendees, it would be fair to say that it was unlikely I would win both contests out of sheer luck.

But I have a confession to make: I had seen variations of these exercises before, and when I first tried them I did really poorly. Embarrassingly poorly. But then I learned the principles, and how to deal with those types of decisions. So even though I didn’t know the answers to those exact exercises, I knew how to think about them.

When Dick Thaler, a foremost behavioral economist, tossed me the t-shirt after I won the contest, he grumbled, “You don’t deserve this, you knew what was going on.” And I thought: “That’s right, and that’s the point!”

As Bowen theory puts it the degree of unresolved emotional attachment towards one’s parents is a function of how one reacts to others, or as Bowen said we are “programmed” in our family of origin.”

Sent from my iPhone 203 2741069 Andrea Schara ideastoaction.wordpress.com

Gonna keep weeding that damn garden in my head!

See you soon, Eric M