Humans Are Designed to Survive!
In today’s short #ThursdayThoughts blog post, we give you a glimpse into Owen Connolly’s views on how human beings are designed to survive, and how this relates to their personal development. Owen is the founder of the Connolly Counselling Centre and our senior therapist, with a wealth of both lived and therapy experience. This post is, as usual, an extract from Owen’s book for fathers written over a decade ago, but still as relevant today as it was then. And the ideas touched on here have been explored and researched further by Owen as he prepares an exciting new writing project on the growth and development of human beings. Watch this space for a future announcement on this exciting new book! We are sure that you will find it thought-provoking, insightful, and most of all, helpful.
HUMAN BEINGS ARE DESIGNED TO SURVIVE
The work that I do as a family therapist with regard to personal development is founded mostly on understanding how we’re designed and how that design works. For instance, our brain, which is approximately 2 percent of our mass, uses about 25 percent of our energy. There must be a very good reason for that. There must also be a very good reason for the fact that humans are stubborn and persistent when faced with obstacles. And there is – survival. The reason we humans have survived until today is because there are mechanisms placed within us that were designed very specifically for our survival. For instance, we all have a two-tier information highway or two-way tracking system. If we have information coming at us that is threatening, we have mechanisms within ourselves to sense the threat and act defensively against it.
If we don’t have something threatening coming at us, we have mechanisms that encourages us to wonder and ponder and reflect. These mechanisms help us assess our body and its surroundings and they need to be understood. When a child is needy, its desire to seek out help and input is an instinct for survival and you have instincts that prompt you to help that child. You are, in fact, predisposed to help encourage their growth and continued development. As humans, we want to survive, and therefore we will interact with certain mechanisms within us that have already proven to be successful in helping us. We are the product of those who have survived before us. Going into the future, we will continue to do what we must to survive, and to assist the survival of the next generation.