Like an athletic team running plays out of their playbook, we become skilled at running plays out of ours. However, those plays are not running or passing plays. Rather, they are intuitions- feelings and thoughts about people and the circumstances that confront us. Our reactions to these situations are so automatic, they operate in our subconscious. In these three episodes of Breaking Bread, Physician Keyna Martinez helps bring our playbook into our conscious awareness so we can learn, adjust and even correct our plays to match more closely with Christ’s.
Show notes:
Definition: Our “playbook” is our subconscious intuition that launches judgment and reaction.
Importance: Our “playbook” is extremely important for life. Many of our decisions are made subconsciously. For example, we avoid danger by judging it as such and making necessary changes, often before we are fully aware of what is happening.
How the playbook is made: Experience largely has constructed our internal playbooks. More specifically, painful experiences have a larger effect than blissful experiences. These experiences construct our values, judgments, expectations, and reactions.
How the playbook is maintained: The playbook is maintained when its “plays” are reinforced by repeated or similarly interpreted experiences.
Reality: Our intuitive “playbook” is right a lot of the time. However, it can be and is often wrong.
The effect of an incorrect playbook: Our judgment is incorrect and therefore our words, feelings and actions are motivated from a place of falsehood. We will not respond like Christ would in the situation.
Changing the playbook: The playbook can be changed for the better.
1. Identify your plays - Learn to identify the subconscious reactions you have to people and situations.
· Ask yourself, what am I feeling right now and what experiences in my past are my responses coming from?
2. Learn the playbook of others – Be a student of how they think.
· Learn what their experiences have been. This will inform why they have certain values, priorities and behaviors.
3. Conform your playbook to Christ – We need a standard outside of our experience to compare and correct our intuitions against. Christ is that outside standard.
· Conforming the playbook to Christ comes through intentional decisions and deliberate practice of Christ-like behaviors. Over time, new rules will be created and become our new subconscious intuition and automatic response – renewing our minds after Christ.
