| Home | Ask Dr Matt | Call Dr Matt | Meet Dr Matt | Quotes | The Book | Answer Archive |

Excerpts from
"Changing Your Stripes"

Social Psychologist & Personal Advisor

What's Your PQ?
 by Dr Matt Moody 

Changing Your Stripes offers insights that are routinely ignored by a plethora of positive attitude preachers; pundits who erroneously advocate you-can-choose-your-destiny doctrine with no limits. Indeed, you CAN choose your destiny, but there are constraining limits — as legendary trumpet player Louis Armstrong used to say:

"If ya ain't got it in ya, . . . ya can't blow it out"

All "choices" flow from you and I according to the core of our character. This means, impatient people CANNOT choose to be patient, especially under the press of provocation. Lack of free choice in a provoking moment is similar to the freedom a skunk has to spray its stink — it happens spontaneously and instinctively.

BUT here's the good news: You can determine your propensity to be provoked tomorrow by Changing Your Stripes today; becoming a person capable of patient responses.

You can try to run from your troubles, but you cannot run from yourself. Wherever you go, . . . you will bring yourself with you. Within each of us are unresolved problems waiting to happen. Old unresolved issues that are like land mines longing to be stepped on, . . . anxiously waiting to explode. And these same old issues arise because of who we are!

Our problems are portable; we bring them with us wherever we go! Without a fundamental change from our core, a change of heart, our built-in troubles will eventually surface as we face future situations we have yet to master. This means, the same old creature might relocate to a new relationship with energetic hopes and optimistic anticipations, only to find the same stale issues arising again and again. This broken-record routine will play its annoying tune over and over until you . . . Change Your Stripes!

Mastering a challenging situation is ultimately a matter of mastering yourself! Challenges are to be met head on; for it is directly in our challenges that we discover our destiny. In the ever-appearing adversities of life, we can ever-increase in strength of character; a character that at mortal death is the only possession of which it can be said: "you took it with you." What you will take to the eternal world . . . is what you become!

* * * * *
The Greatest Prize for Life's labors is not realized in material possessions or
impressive accomplishments, but in the progress of personal character.
You labor for your own becoming, it's your richest reward. Who You
Become is your greatest possession; make it your Masterpiece.
* * * * * 
(Changing Your Stripes, 2nd Edition, page 274)

Provoke-Ability Quotient: What's your PQ ? Just as I.Q. measures intelligence, the P.Q. represents a person's propensity to be provoked. On a scale from 0 to 10, higher scores point to the tendency to be quickly and easily inflamed. A score of "10" would describe a maniacal RAGE-aholic. And lower scores would reflect a greater propensity for being patient when faced with provocation. Jesus would have a P.Q. score of "0", and the rest of us would have a descriptive score somewhere between 1 and 10.

You've likely heard the terms "reaching a breaking point" or "hitting hot buttons." These terms describe the threshold at which we literally CEASE to have character capacity sufficient to choose a patient reply. And once people pass that "breaking point," choosing rationally doesn't really happen. Instead, patterns of reaction are "automatic" due to an entrenched history of previous choices (Notice I didn't say, "an entrenched history of social influence"). In the pressing moment when the P.Q. threshold is breached, our exercise of will ceases to be "free will." Instead, we are chained to behavioral consequences that flow from us according to choices made . . . in prior days.

This explains the human tendency of knee-jerk reactions, a.k.a., going nuts, flipping out, boiling over, blowing up, blowing your top, blowing your cool, acting whack-o, going berserk, in a tiff, in a tizzy, losing it, or raging, etc.). Because these reactions are not consciously chosen in the moment, but flow from us quite unconsciously, therefore, it has been erroneously assumed that an "unconscious mind" controls "unconscious behaviors."

The only mind human beings "have" is the one that they experience consciously.4 And it is your conscious mind that puts in motion the very knee-jerk behaviors that squirt out of you--precisely because of prior patterns of conscious choosing. The "breaking point" I call the P.Q. threshold can also be visualized as a "squirting point." If you squeeze a lemon long enough, and hard enough, the lemon will spontaneously "squirt" at a particular point of external stress. Changing Your Stripes means becoming the kind of creature that does not have a high propensity for squirting!

The P.Q. Principle helps us understand that those who commit thoughtless crimes of passion--while they may indeed be insane in moments of passion--they are responsible and accountable for their disposition to react in such extreme ways. In other words, while people "acting whack-o" may NOT have consciously chosen an "insane" act in the moment, they DID choose the disposition from which their momentary "insanity" flows (also refer to "Emotion as Energy-in-Motion," page 2-43).

Thus, one conscious choice at a time we all choose the kind of creature we become; therefore, from the consistent history of our choices, we each choose . . . our PQ's. From the fountain of Who We Are flows our knee-jerk reactions--reactions that we regret . . . in retrospect. We remain responsible for the "fountain" that we are, and the "flow" that we create.

* * * * *
One Conscious Choice at a time,
You choose your Propensity to be Provoked.
You even choose your Propensity to . . . Insanity.
You are Responsible for the Person that You become.
You are Response-able for both your "premeditated" acts,
and the "thoughtless" reactions that flow from You.
 * * * * * 
(Changing Your Stripes, 2nd Edition, page 50)

PQ is also associated with the Everything-Happens-For-A-Reason assumption: Some people erroneously imagine that their current condition of character is happening for a Capital "R" Reason (it's part of God's grand design / occurring by Fate / that's just the way I am), when in reality your disposition is more likely a function of a lower case "r" reason (it's due to dumb decisions).

Another phenomenon that plays into PQ is that of Energy-In-Motion.

To understand the principle of PQ, you need to understand the way Cause & Effect occurs within the Behavioral Realm, as opposed to the physical realm of our world.

All these ideas are explained in Dr Matt's book, "Changing Your Stripes."

Sold Exclusively
through this website

Changing Your Stripes is a
unique reference book that will help
you understand, . . . and solve all of
Life's ever-appearing problems.
Here are more reasons to buy
Changing Your Stripes

Social Psychologist & Personal Advisor