An Inspired Choice

A copy of William Glasser's book Choice Theory, which was meant to be a present for a good friend, had been sitting on my book shelf for some time before I finally had a chance to meet her and give it to her during the Chinese New Year holiday.

What prompted me to think about giving her the book was when she was suffering from what appeared to be postpartum depression and her overbearing husband simply piled on the pressure. I was hoping that the book, together with my prayer, would help. According to Glasser's choice theory, while "Love and Belonging" is one of the five key human needs, some people seek to meet the need by choosing to exert external control on others, not realising that this would damage relationships and cause unhappiness, which is quite the opposite of the outcome they intend. I thought this was something my friend and, particularly, her husband should know. I mentioned the book and the theory to her and she seemed interested, but I didn't have a chance to pass it on. Fortunately, her postpartum depression was healed after she sought medical attention, and it seemed that her husband also tried to improve his attitude upon seeing how she had suffered. But I believed that the book would still be useful, so I made it a Chinese New Year gift.

I ran into her when having afternoon tea today and the first thing she told me was that she had read more than 70 pages of the book and found it very useful. What was even more encouraging was the news that her husband is also learning to apply what the book teaches.

It is always a joy to share knowledge. It is even more so when the shared knowledge makes a difference.

When the Love is Gone

How would men answer this one?

You wouldn’t be interested in having sex with your wife if ____.
a. she is fat
b. she is ugly
c. she nags

For Hong Kong men, according to a recent research study by the Centre for Health Behaviours, the answer is C.


How about women? How woud they answer this one:

Which of the following factors plays a significant role in women not having sex with their husbands:
a. long working hours
b. poor marital relationship
c. unemployment

For Hong Kong woman, the answer is B.

The study lends support to one of the axioms of William Glasser’s Choice Theory - that the source of much unhappiness are the failing or failed relationships with those who are important to us.

Interestingly though, another study, conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, suggests that couples tend to avoid getting a divorce even after their lust for each other has gone.

An Agreeable Choice

I know I have referred to William Glasser's choice theory a couple of times. I have no wish to canonise the theory or make the claim that it is the panacea to all problems, but I can't help noticing that today's Bible readings have much of the shape of choice theory in them. Here are the extracts from the readings:

Reading 1

Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and called for the elders of Israel and for their heads and their judges and their officers; and they presented themselves before God. Joshua said to all the people, "...If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." (Joshua 24:1-2, 15)

Gospel

Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, "This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?" But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, "Does this cause you to stumble? "What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before? "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. "But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him. And He was saying, "For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father." As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore. So Jesus said to the twelve, "You do not want to go away also, do you?" (John 6:60-67)

In Reading 1, Joshua presented the people with the choice of either to serve the Lord, or, if they find it "disagreeable", to "choose" for themselves whom they would serve. In the Gospel today, which continues from last week's Gospel in which Jesus said that "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life", many of Jesus's disciples found what He said difficult to take in and started grumbling, and in the end they left Him. After that, Jesus asked his twelve disciples whether they wanted to go away also. Like Joshua in Reading 1, Jesus was presenting his disciples with a choice.

While God so wants us to serve Him, just as Jesus so wants us to eat His Flesh and drink His blood so that we can have eternal life and we can abide in Him and He in us, God would like us to see doing so as agreeable, and so make the choice of doing it. To use the terms of choice theory, God would like us to keep Him in our quality world, and maintain a close relationship with Him.

Both the people of Israel in Reading 1 and the twelve disciples in the Gospel made a good choice:

The people answered and said, "Far be it from us that we should forsake the LORD to serve other gods; for the LORD our God is He who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and who did these great signs in our sight and preserved us through all the way in which we went and among all the peoples through whose midst we passed. The LORD drove out from before us all the peoples, even the Amorites who lived in the land. We also will serve the LORD, for He is our God." (Joshua 24: 16-18)

Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. "We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God." (John 6: 68-69)

In answering God's invitation to us, do we make a good choice too?

Different Ways of Looking at "Quality" and "Choices"

The definition of “quality education” given by Singapore’s Acting Minister for Education in 2004 (referred to in the blog on 6 August) is in line with William Glasser’s view on education, detailed in his book “Choice Theory”.

According to Glasser, the main reason why so many students are doing badly is “schooling”, which he defines as the practice of forcing students to acquire knowledge or memorise facts in school that have limited or no value in the real world. To improve education, we must get rid of schooling and the belief that “what is taught in school is right and that students who won’t learn it should be punished”, and redefine education as using and improving knowledge rather than acquiring it. Glasser believes that if we force students to learn and fail them if they don’t, students will be alienated, and they will “retaliate” by taking schoolwork, teachers and school out of their quality worlds. Many then drop out of school into lives of violence, crime, drugs and unloving sex. He posits that we should have quality schools which are “coercion-free and failure-free”. In these quality schools, students are led by the teachers to learn to speak, listen, read, and write and to use these skills to solve problems. What is behind everything the teachers do is choice theory, by which Glasser means the teachers put themselves, school and schoolwork into the students’ quality world, through good relationships and through providing students with choices.

Now contrast these ideas from Mr Shanmugaratnam and Mr Glasser with the drug testing scheme recently proposed by the Hong Kong government, under which secondary school students, with parents’ consent, will be randomly selected to provide urine samples for drug testing. The government officials are trying to do all the sugar-coating they can, by claiming that the testing is “entirely voluntary” (only cases where students refuse to provide urine samples will be followed up by social workers!) and that “we are not aiming at penalising students – we just want to help them” (students testing positive will just be counselled but not expelled, suspended, or criminally charged!) and probably satisfying themselves that they have done enough to fool everyone into believing that they have provided the students with a "choice". They will never see that by introducing such a witch-hunting practice which will destroy what little trust or respect many students have for school and the entire system, they are driving the students to cast school and the system out of their quality world, to a road of no return.

In this sense, the Catholic Church is absolutely right in not giving its support for the scheme.

More about Power and Control

Power and control are key concepts in William Glasser’s Choice Theory. In his book so named, Glasser suggests that ‘Power’, along with ‘Survival’, ‘Love and Belonging’, ‘Freedom’ and ‘Fun’ represents our genetically driven needs. It is these needs which drive our behaviour. As the degree of these needs vary from people to people, they influence our behaviour in different ways. According to Glasser, behaviour is composed of acting, thinking, feeling and physiology. Central to Glasser’s choice theory is the assertion that all behaviour is ‘chosen’ – we choose how to act and think, which in turn influences our feeling and physiology. Therefore, many of the problems related to our feeling and physiology, in other words, our psychological problems, stem from the way we choose to act and think, which is driven by the five needs mentioned before. Glasser posits that the cause of much unhappiness is that people choose to act and think in a way that damages relationships, namely, to exert external control on others. Glasser believes that if we can understand that the only behaviour we can control is own, make better choice about how to act and think, put our relationships with the people we value above all else, and give up trying to use external control on these people, we have a much better chance for happiness.

Power and control are coveted by so many people, but according to Glasser, they are also the major causes of our psychological and relationship problems. In the cases of many of the people I know, I have to say that this is quite true.