Labelling and Mindfulness and Relationships

 Labelling

Attention to context and variablity may be effective for our interpersonal lives as well.  Whenever we call someone by some dispoitional name -- "lazy," "inconsiderate," "self-centered" -- we are treating that peroson as if she or he has an incurable condition, overlooking any evidence to the contrary.  As I have pointed out in this book, behavior makes sense from the actor's perspective, or else she or he wouldn't have carried it out.  When we find ourselves being judgmental, we are being mindless.  You may be trying to be reliable, someone who can be counted on, but others see you as rigid; when you see yourself as spontaneous, other may think you are impulsive; you may be trusting but are seen as gulllible; and so forth.  By simply questioning why we may have sensibly behaved as we did or the reasons for the behavior of others, we see the motivations behind them and also realize that, like our symptoms, they change from time to time, and place to place.  With this more respectivful view of others, our relationship are likely to improve.

Preconceptions of old people

Despite the fact that many of us know very few elderly adults personally, we have very strong ideas about aging.  Many of these ideas are permature cognitive commitments.  As we saw in the study discussed at the end of Chapter 3, positive mindsets about old age may result in richer aging.  Those who had been exposed ot a more optimistic image of old age in their youth were more alret and more active in old age.  But this is not the image most of us carry.  When we are young, we hear expressions like "old bat," "dodering old fool," "Poor little old lady" from people with very negative views of old age before we ever start thinking of ourselves as potentially old people. 

By unquestioningly assuming that old age means frailty and weaknes, we expect little of the old people around us, and of ourselves as we grow older.  The consequence of such mindsets is an interactive spiral gradually wearing us down.  Self-esttem, of course, is underminded and causes more suffering because elderly people blame themselves rather than the situation they are in.  

Finally, Use of word "aging" rather than "changing"

It is interesting to note how rarely the term development is used to describe changes in the later years. ...  change in later years is still typically described as aging... Agging has come to refer to the darker side of growing older.  To make change in later life one must fight against all sorts of popular mindsets.