Episode 1: The Pencil Exercise

The Five C’s: Part 1 - “The Pencil Exercise” (Automatic vs Intentional)

How many of you are right handed? How many of you are left handed? Why are you right handed or left handed? How automatic is it that you use your “dominant” hand EVERY time you pick up a pen or pencil? How often do you consciously choose to use either your dominant or nondominant hand? Me, I just pick up a pen or pencil with my right hand and off I go, without giving it another thought that I even have another hand to choose from.

There are theories out there about why we have a “dominant” hand, but that’s not the point of this blog. I just want you to be aware that there is at least one “automatic” behavior you have that you almost forget you have a choice in making. This will help you begin to look for other automatic responses.

In my sessions, I periodically illustrate this “automatic” by giving my clients a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. The instructions are simple, draw a line to make two columns, and at the top, label one column as “yesterday”, and the other column “tomorrow”. When they are finished, I say, “now turn over the sheet and do the same thing with your other hand”. Invariably I get smiles and awkward distortions of their body trying to make the un-practice hand work the way they know their imagination wants it to work. But it doesn’t and the comments are rather cute, complaining and apologizing for the appearance.

You can try this, too, but what I want you to focus on are your thoughts. Typically with our dominant hand we don’t concentrate, because we’re practiced at doing the automatic without thinking about it, our thoughts can go to the past or future, “yesterday or tomorrow” as the columns are labeled. But once we try the unpracticed hand, suddenly we’re in the present with our thoughts and efforts. In the present we become intentional.

This is a great analogy for illustrating how practiced we are with our automatic thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, too. A lot of our “automatic” is shame and guilt over our own “wrong” reactions, but until the shame and guilt are either set aside or released, we won’t feel we have a choice in responding.

In a future blog I’ll illustrate how the automatic of shame and guilt shape us without us even knowing it, and I’ll begin to give you ideas on how to change the automatic to the intentional for a healthier you which means healthier relationships.