Author: drglenndoyle

Many people seem to have bought into an idea that if we don’t feel our best, or don’t feel particularly good, then we can’t enjoy any part of life, have any pleasure at all.

A similar idea that seems to abound these days is that if the world isn’t exactly as we would prefer it to be, then we can’t acknowledge anything good about it.

Take a look around, especially at our social media feed, and you’ll see many variations on this theme. You’ll see people furious that their political party isn’t in office or their political philosophy isn’t ascendant. You’ll see people furious because they feel their cultural values are being marginalized and disrespected. You’ll see people who, in addition to sharing their outrage, demand that you be as outraged as they are, in order to be a “good person.”

On an individual level, you’ll see people post, over and over and over again, about the imperfections in their lives. People who seem to be defined by their pain and losses.

It’s truly heartbreaking to see.

There’s no question about the fact that people have real pain in their lives, both on individual and cultural levels. It’s not my job or intention to judge their pain, or how they express it. One of the reasons I do what I do is because one of my core values is, I want to help alleviate suffering when I can, in whatever small ways I can.

That said, it bothers me, the undercurrent I sense in many expressions of pain out there: that because the world is not perfect, because there is very real and very important pain that exists for individuals and groups at the present moment, that we can’t take pleasure or pride in any aspect of our lives or culture.

It’s as if we’ve forgotten that we humans are multifaceted human beings, capable of living nuanced lives. It’s very rarely black and white for us humans when it comes to experiencing pleasure and pain. Most often, our lives are a combination of both— and the presence of one does not negate the presence of the other.

I remember, when I was in grade school, my grandmother died. It was my first experience with the loss of a family member. I remember, at her wake, being hurt and confused by the fact that there were people there, people who had known my grandmother, who, instead of being wracked with the sadness I felt at the moment, were telling stories and laughing. Laughing! It felt somehow like a betrayal. I could not, for the life of me, understand how laughter could coexist with the kind of pain I was feeling at the moment.

But laughter— and pleasure, more broadly— does coexist with pain. Just like pain coexists with laughter.

When it came time, in December 2015, for me to eulogize my father, I more fully understood this. At my dad’s funeral, I was among those telling stories about my dad and laughing— and knowing that this is absolutely what my father, a robust Irish businessman who loved stories and jokes— would have wanted.

Because we’re in pain doesn’t mean we can’t laugh. Because we’re in pain doesn’t mean we have given up the right to feel pleasure. In fact, if we’re in pain, we’re more in need of pleasure and laughter than at any other time.

The world is not perfect. I absolutely understand the strong impulse many people feel to dedicate time and energy to changing the world. I deeply respect the responsibility many people feel to make fundamental changes to the fabric of society, and how passionate many people are about protecting the most vulnerable members of society.

That said, changing the world does not mean we never get to laugh or feel pleasure until the world has changed. Changing society is a long-term project, and if we put off feeling good until that project is accomplished, we’re in the position of putting off pleasure indefinitely. That’s not what we’re designed to do as humans— as humans, we are equipped to take pleasure in little things even as we keep hacking away at our larger objectives.

In fact, I would argue that taking pleasure in little things is essential to maintaining the health and perspective necessary to continue hacking away at our larger objectives.

It is entirely possible to be a happy warrior. It is entirely possible to be fully committed to making positive changes in society, while taking pleasure in things like humor, connection, and accomplishment.

On an individual level, it is entirely possible to, despite physical or emotional pain, also take pleasure in certain things. To laugh at a joke or to enjoy a friendship isn’t to diminish the presence or importance of pain in our lives.

To acknowledge that there is a lot of pain in our lives is not to surrender our ability to laugh and enjoy.

Chronic suffering— or even short-term, situationally driven pain— does not mean you abdicate the ability to take pleasure where you can find it.

Don’t let anyone convince you that the presence of pain, on a cultural or individual level, means you have some sort of obligation to blot out pleasure. Both pleasure and pain are integral parts to being human.

We can laugh at funerals.

We can smile even as we battle to make the world a better place.

We can feel good even if we rarely feel good.

Our magnificent minds have equipped us to do and feel more than one thing at a time.

 

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It occurs to me that I’m not the only therapist or personal growth teacher out there telling you you can live a better life. In fact, there’s no shortage of gurus and guides and teachers and mentors out there, all telling you a better life is, in fact, possible.

It is interesting to note, however, that there often seems to be a caveat appended to these teachers’ teachings: they maintain you can live a better life…IF you buy their product.

IF you read their book.

IF you sign up for their coaching sessions.

Or, on an even more basic level…a lot of gurus out there seem to be of the position that you can live a better life….IF you follow their philosophy. Which, of course, only they are in a position to teach you.

Which, I mean, is fine, conceptually, I guess. It’s certainly true that there are products and books and coaching approaches and philosophies out there that can enhance our lives. But something has always rubbed me the wrong way about gurus and guides who start out from a fundamental position of, “you’re missing something.”

Maybe they believe that. Maybe they think the people who come to them for help and guidance really are missing something basic, something only they can impart. There’s certainly a long tradition of esoteric knowledge being handed down to seekers who prove themselves worthy of enlightenment. The whole “gnostic” movement is based on this principle— secret knowledge that, when revealed, can change everything. Scientology built a whole religion on this approach.

I don’t happen to believe that. In fact, as I’ve posted on the Dr. Glenn Doyle Facebook page, I don’t believe I, or anybody else with my training and background, have any “special” knowledge for you at all that isn’t freely available in dozens of other places.

Nor do I believe you’re fundamentally “missing” something.

Maybe it’s just me, but I kinda believe that every person who walks in my office already has the tools they need to create the kind of life they want. I’ll even go so far as to state that, usually, I turn out to be right about this.

I think you probably have what you need, right now, right where you are. Without purchasing anything; without being given esoteric knowledge from a guru or mentor or shaman; without fundamentally changing who you are.

Yes, yes, I know, I don’t know you personally, at least most of you. But I’m telling you, I’m usually right about these things.

So if we already have what we need to live awesome lives, then why does it seem that we spend so much time spinning our wheels, struggling with our emotions, and wrestling with self-defeating behavior?

It’s usually not a lack of knowledge or skills that’s the culprit. It’s usually a set of beliefs we’ve developed over the years about who we are, what we’re capable of, and what we “should” and “shouldn’t” do in our lives that holds us back from really feeling and doing the things we’d like to feel and do in our lives.

Put another way: our emotional and behavioral repertoires are not defined by what we can actually do. They’re defined— and limited— by our beliefs about what we can actually do.

Our beliefs are everything. Once we get limiting beliefs stuck in our heads, everything gets filtered through those beliefs. And these beliefs are formed subtly, over years, shaped day in and day out by the things others tell us and the things that we tell ourselves. We often don’t even know we’re drowning in a sea of negative beliefs about ourselves, any more than a fish knows he’s immersed in water all day every day.

It’s just the way it’s always been, so we figure it’s the way it always has to be.

There have been entire books written about the types of beliefs that limit us. A whole technique of therapy, called “schema therapy,” makes challenging distorted beliefs its primary focus. Beliefs are so fundamental to how we think that it’s often very hard to make any therapeutic progress at all until we start chip, chip, chipping away at the negative things we’ve come to believe about ourselves, the world, and the future.

The good news is, beliefs change.

But not by accident.

The first belief that I’d suggest you start chip, chip, chipping away at? The belief that you’re somehow inadequate, incomplete, “not enough” just as you are.

I mean, what if that weren’t true, that you’re “not enough?” What if it was the case that, in actuality, you have exactly the tools you need to make your life awesome, right here, right now? What if the only thing really holding you back was a conditioned set of beliefs that sold you a bill of goods about yourself a long, long time ago?

Destroying the belief that you’re “missing something” or “not enough” might change your entire world.

And you wouldn’t even need to pay that sanctimonious guru who was trying to get you to doubt yourself.

 

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Ohhh, that poor space alien.

If you follow the Dr. Glenn Doyle page on Facebook, you remember the space alien, I’m sure.

Last week, I made a post that asked, “If an alien landed on earth right now, and observed how you’ve spent your time every day for the last week, what would they conclude about what you value, what’s important to you?”

The post went on to say, “your priorities are laid bare by how you direct your time and attention. If you look at your time management and don’t think it reflects the person you’re trying to become or the life you’re trying to build, you’re the only one who can change that.”

A lot of people liked the post. They seemed to get the connection I was trying to make: that our overall goals and priorities HAVE to be linked to our time management.

Put another way, we don’t get to, for example, say we value reading, then never make the time to read.

We don’t get to say we value new ideas, then only expose ourselves to ideas we already agree with.

We don’t get to say we value fitness, and then consume foods that are harmful to our health and never make the time to exercise.

We don’t get to say we value relationships, then never make time for them.

On, and on…if we say we value something, the fact we value it MUST be evident in how we manage our time and how we direct our attention. It simply doesn’t wash if how we manage our time, day by day, tells a different story about what we value than what we say we value.

The reason I used the image of a space alien landing on our planet and looking at our time management to draw conclusions about what we value was because a space alien would have no preconceived notions about whomever they were observing.

The space alien would have no biases or prejudices; they’d have no knowledge of what any person has SAID they value. The space alien, straight off the spaceship from the far reaches of the galaxy, would have nothing to go on except for our time management to figure out what we value…and the question is, given just that information, what would this space alien conclude?

Little did I suspect that my poor space alien, who was just curious about the behavior of us complicated, contradictory humans, would get so much flak from my commenters.

I should point out here that nowhere in the post did I say, or even imply, that the space alien in question would be judging anybody for their time management.

The space alien doesn’t really have strong opinions on how anyone spends their time. If someone wants to binge watch Netflix; or rabidly consume political content online with which they already agree; or spend hours scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling Facebook…the space alien says, more power to ya.

Which made it curious that a sizable subset of commenters seemed to think the space alien was somehow sitting in judgment of their time management.

Hmm.

The post was not about anybody being judged. The post didn’t even imply judgment. The post was about the connection between our values and priorities on the one hand, and our time management on the other. It’s a point that trips up a lot of people, which is why I wrote the post.

If there is a significant disconnect between what we say we value, and how we allot and spend our time, our lives are going to suffer. Full stop.

We’re going to find ourselves not moving toward our goals, not living congruously with what we say we value— and that’s the kind of thing that absolutely decimates self-esteem.

Make no mistake: no one will judge you for how you spend your time. (Well, I suppose someone may, but I sure won’t. And neither will the space alien who I invented for the purposes of the post.)

How you spend your time is YOUR business.

But MY business is helping people live lives that feel better, are more productive, and more consistent with the lives they want to live. My job is to help people feel more of what they want to feel, and less of what they don’t want to feel— and to be able to do that for themselves, consistently.

And you simply can’t do that if you’re fighting for your right to spend time doing things that don’t line up with what you say you value.

If something is a priority, you have to treat it like a priority— and that means managing your time and attention like it’s a priority.

So here we have this poor space alien, who just wants to know what it is we humans value, and figures how we manage our time might be a pretty good indicator of what we value…that space alien is absolutely right.

By looking at how we manage our time and energy, that space alien is going to get a pretty accurate idea of what we value.

The space alien’s not judging or shaming anybody…but he sure finds it interesting that some people assume he is.

 

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For anyone committed to developing high, healthy self-esteem, integrity isn’t optional. It is an absolute necessity.

Some people misunderstand what “integrity” means. The word often gets thrown around as a synonym for “moral” or “ethical.” In fact, what “integrity” implies is wholeness. If something is “integral” to a thing, it means that thing would not be whole, would not be complete, without it. When a hole is punched in a ship, it’s said that “the integrity of the hull has been breached.”

To have integrity, in other words, is to be whole. Not missing pieces. Or, in the case of the myriad choices that inform our self-esteem, not having given away pieces of ourselves, our judgment, our priorities.

To have integrity means to be true to oneself.

Why is having integrity so vital to self-esteem?

Because self-esteem is impossible to cultivate if you’re constantly betraying yourself, either in your thoughts or in your behavior.

Now, that may seem so obvious, so self-evident, as to be almost silly to point out. Of course we don’t want to be going around betraying ourselves— why on earth would we? No rational person goes around betraying themselves, do they?

You’d be surprised at how insidious, how prevalent, self-betrayal is.

For example, we betray ourselves when we deny or downplay who and what we are. A lot of us actually seem to actively hide who we really are from the people around us, because we’re afraid. We’re afraid of getting judged; we’re afraid of getting mocked; we’re afraid of not being liked; we’re afraid of rejection.

So we hide. We try to blend in. We feign interest in subjects we’re not really into. We don’t cop to enjoying forms of entertainment or artists we really like. We keep what really moves us, speaks to us, motivates us, under wraps.

Is it any wonder our self-esteem takes a hit when that’s our mode of dealing with the world?

When we run away from who we really are, in either little or big ways, our self-esteem notices. It sees us ending and disowning our authentic selves, and it responds. After all, we must not esteem ourselves too highly, if we’re investing so much energy in hiding from and abandoning our real interests and perceptions and tastes.

Don’t get me wrong: we live in a judgmental world. No question about it. When our brains tell us that there is a very real possibility that we might be mocked or rejected by the people or culture around us for what we’re into, they’re not necessarily wrong. Public shaming and mockery is almost a pastime on social media for some people. It’s not the case that, if you show the world who you are, you’ll never be made fun of.

But it’s also not the case that running away from who you are, trying to keep the “real you” under wraps, and trying your very hardest to blend in, solves that problem.

Not only does it not solve the problem of potentially being judged, but it creates a much bigger problem in the long run: the wearing down of your self-esteem that comes when you’ve failed to live with integrity.

Understand, there are definitely times and places where it’s appropriate to be discreet and judicious about how much of yourself to reveal to the world and the people around you. The world is not always a stage on which it’s appropriate to “bear all” to an appreciative audience. There are situations where we have to use our judgment and strike a balance between being “us” and conforming to the demands of the circumstances. For example, when we get a job, it’s a reasonable thing for our employers to ask us to keep our clothing choices within a certain range of professionalism and restraint— this isn’t a matter of repressing the “real you.” This is a matter of being appropriately flexible and responsive to the demands of reality and employment.

What I’m talking about here is not you choosing to curtail your preferences and choices in order to get or keep a job. What I’m talking about is the pressure so many of us feel, and often cave into, in our broader lives. To fit in with a social group. To keep from making waves in a relationship. To “earn” the approval of people on social media who we fear might otherwise ostracize and shame us.

If we make surrendering our integrity a habit, if we make shutting up and trying desperately to blend in a primary way of dealing with the world, that’s when our self-esteem starts crumbling.

Alternatively: if we start wherever we are now, however old we are, whatever life position we’re in, making it a habit to simply be ourselves, and let the social chips fall where they may— that is, if we make it a habit to prioritize and value integrity— our self-esteem will immediately start rising. It will notice that we’re suddenly treating ourselves with respect and kindness— that we seem to be esteeming ourselves more.

Living with integrity might be awkward. It might be anxiety-provoking. But it also very much might be worth it.

 

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What you feed your mind, matters.

We all know our bodies need certain things, nutritionally. We need the right amount of calories, neither too few nor too many over time. We need vitamins. We need hydration. Without the right kind of nutrition, our bodies begin to break down. They become a source of pain. They become expensive to heal and maintain. These corporeal vehicles that are supposed to get us around and be a source of pleasure and efficacy become prisons, if we don’t pay attention to them and treat them well.

The same is true of our minds.

Our minds are our primary tools of survival, even more so than our bodies.

Our ability to think and reason is what allows us to make the decisions that create our lives. Our minds allow us the ability to connect and form the relationships we need to thrive. We may be able to physically live without our active, conscious minds for awhile— but there is no way we can truly create satisfying, purposeful lives without paying attention to and taking care of our minds.

Our minds need the right kind of “nutrition,” just like our bodies do.

What is the “nutrition” to your mind? What you read. What you watch. What you focus on. What you imagine.

Every day, we have the opportunity to either feed our minds psychological “junk food,” or to feed it quality nutrients that it needs to function well.

Mind you, I love junk food. It’s tasty and fun. I have a whole blog where my buddy and I reviewed many of the pizza places in and around Chicago. Junk food, itself, is no more a problem than, say, smartphones, themselves, are. Both junk food and smartphones are tools, that can be either used or misused.

Of what possible use can junk food be? It can be a diversion. A break. It can be a point of connection and comfort. If kept in its proper role and perspective, junk food can be used to enhance our lives.

But that doesn’t mean you should try to live off of junk food.

For that matter, you probably shouldn’t have junk food every day.

What is psychological junk food that we should not try to live off of? It’s content that is only valuable because it entertains or diverts or amuses. Which, again, has its place. We can use psychological “junk food,” like tabloid news, deeply partisan political blogs, or content that primarily focuses on sardonic or sarcastic responses to life, as opportunities to take a break, divert our attention, spend some satisfying time in an echo chamber.

I’m not anti-junk food.

I’m anti-trying-to-live-off-of-junk-food.

We need nutritional value in our mental diets.

We need content that will push and support us in expanding the realm of the possible for our lives.

We need to expose ourselves to books, articles, movies, shows, and blogs that will make us think, really think, as opposed to content that only makes us nod our head in emphatic agreement of what we already believe.

We need to expose ourselves to people who inspire us as role models. (This is HUGE, actually— research suggests our brains are INCREDIBLY sensitive to role modeling, more so than most of us would ever believe.)

Understand, that while our conscious minds can only focus on a little sliver of information at any one time, our unconscious minds are constantly taking in and chewing on the things we read and watch. Our brains are processing all the time. Even if we think we’re not thinking about the things we’ve read and watched, we certainly are— which is why we need to “feed” our minds things that are “nutritious” for the mind to chew on.

Just like it’s pretty much impossible to expect your body to function well if you’re not feeding and caring for it properly, it’s virtually impossible to get high-quality results from a mind that is being fed a diet of nihilistic humor and incendiary political content hour after hour after hour on social media.

Be smart about what you “feed” your brain.

Keep running lists of content that helps you feel inspired. Uplifted. Motivated. Collect articles about and pictures of people who you look up to, whose lives and teachings fuel your mission. Always remember the old rule of “garbage in, garbage out.”

Managing your mental “diet” is free and uncomplicated. All it really takes is a willingness to maintain a reasonably high level of awareness of what your brain is being exposed to— and a willingness to keep “junk food” in its proper role.

Your self-esteem will notice if you’re taking care of your primary means of survival— that beautiful mind of yours.

 

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Sometimes you hear it said that the key to success is to be able to “adjust” to life’s conditions. I’m not sure I buy that.

To be sure, a reasonable amount of flexibility is a perfectly desirable personality trait. People who tend to be rigid and one-dimensional in their worldview tend to have difficulty relating to other people, switching tactics when what they’re doing does not work, and creating lives that are well-rounded and fulfilling. We live in a fluid world, therefore a certain amount of adjustment to conditions is necessary.

However, if we make “adjusting” to external circumstances our primary focus, we miss the opportunity to create, inside of us, a psychoemotional fortress that is impregnable regardless of what happens in the outside world.

It’s the creation of this fortress, in my view, that constitutes the primary work of therapy.

Our goal is to create a world inside of us that we carry with us— wherever we go, whatever happens to us, whatever relationships we get into, whatever job we happen to have. It is to create within us a world that supports us in feeling strong, safe, and stable, no matter where we go or what we do.

I call this world the “Memory Palace.”

I’ve written before about the power of imagination to shape us. When we’re kids, it’s just kind of assumed that we live a great deal of our time in an imaginative world of our own creation. It’s assumed we’re going to spend a big chunk of the day playing “make believe,” imagining ourselves to be other people, in other times, in other places. It’s a sound assumption— we do, in fact, do this when we’re kids.

What nobody tells us, though, is that we do this as adults, too.

Even the most well-balanced, psychologically healthy people live primarily in a world of their own creation. An inner world. A world we don’t really tell other people about, because, well, grown ups aren’t supposed to play make believe, now, are we?

But these interior worlds exist. We play them out and enhance them by watching movies and reading books and playing video games and writing fiction, but the real value to any of those things is the fact that they give us the opportunity to inhabit those interior worlds we’ve been creating inside of us for years.

You read that right. You’ve been working on creating your internal world for years. You already carry it wherever you go.

So is this world you’ve built over years, and that you carry with you wherever you go, an impregnable fortress, a palace where you can go to feel refreshed, recharged, encouraged, empowered, relaxed, and heroic?

Or is the world you carry around with you a prison, where you feel confined, powerless, inadequate, sad, and exhausted?

A lot of us haven’t devoted much attention to this interior world we’ve created, again, simply because we’ve been taught that it’s not our interior world that matters, it’s the exterior world of others’ demands and expectations and rules that is really important. We’ve been conditioned, in other words, to pay less attention to our own worlds, and more attention to others’ needs and wants— in fact, we’ve been led to believe that this is the “grown up” thing to do.

I’m here to tell you that it’s the creation and maintenance of this interior world that needs to be your number one priority. After all, YOU CARRY IT WHEREVER YOU GO.

If you don’t develop your interior world into a Memory Palace of your own design, you don’t stand a chance of being of much use to anybody else in this world, except to robotically serve their own needs and wants. And, believe me when I tell you, your self-esteem’s going to notice if your life has primary been reduced to being a tool for other peoples’ whims.

How do we design and create our own Memory Palace within, to be a place we can go for refuge and encouragement? It starts with visualization.

Yes, visualization. That very simple trick of imagining a place, a time, or a thing other than that which is right in front of you. There’s no magic or “woo” in visualization: in fact, it’s one of the most empirically validated forms of personal development work that has ever been researched. Visualization, as it turns out, taps into parts of our brains that we don’t get to access every day in the course of our daily grind. It activates emotional and behavioral centers in our brain that don’t tend to be activated very often.

We start by visualizing a physical setting for the Memory Palace.

In the book “Infinite Jest,” the character Coach Schtitt encourages his tennis pupils to imagine a world they can create for themselves within the base lines of the tennis court. In the book “Hannibal,” the character Dr. Lecter visualizes his Memory Palace as a literal palace, of Renaissance design. There are also innumerable examples in fiction and mythology of potential palaces and fortresses you can use— the Batcave, Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, King Arthur’s walled city of Camelot.

The important thing is that this physical setting, when you imagine it, makes you feel good. It makes you feel safe. It’s a place you can go, in periods of stress, to calm down and re-center yourself.

Research suggests that people who actually imagine a safe place, and who have this visualization tool ready for when stressful times arise, recover from stress much more quickly and are much more able to handle situations that arise than people who have not prepared themselves with this psychological refuge.

There are many ways for us to continue developing our Memory Palace; visualizing a physical setting for it is just the start. But start thinking about what your Memory Palace might look like. Even if if feels silly, superficial, or far-fetched, just try it out— it’s free, and you have literally nothing to lose.

You may even discover that you’ve inadvertently been lugging around a prison wherever you go.

 

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The great myth of self-esteem is that it is somehow a passive thing. That our self-esteem rises and falls based on what happens to us— that it is created and is nurtured and lives outside of us.

The truth is, it’s the exact opposite. Self-esteem can only be created within. We are 100% responsible for our self-esteem.

It’s true that external events can make it easier or harder for us to esteem ourselves. It’s also true that people born with cultural, economic, and social advantages don’t face certain obstacles to building self-esteem that people not born with these advantages face.

But when it comes down to it, building self-esteem is entirely an internal affair. It’s based entirely on choices we make. And we can make choices that enhance (or diminish) our self-esteem, regardless of our economic state, social status, or any other variable.

Self-esteem is mostly our brain’s response, our brain’s appraisal, of our chosen way of being in the world. Our brain does not choose to esteem us based on our financial success, our social success, our conventional attractiveness, or our talent at any given skill— though it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking these things create self-esteem, since these are the types of things that the people around us tend to esteem.

Your self-esteem doesn’t particularly care if you’re rich, or popular, or beautiful, or talented.

There are plenty of rich, popular, beautiful, talented people out there who do not esteem themselves. Who, behind closed doors, when they’re alone with their thoughts, consider themselves frauds, and wonder when everyone else will catch on to their scam.

Take care not to confuse what the culture, or the people around you, think of you, with genuine self-esteem. Self-esteem can never be created— or destroyed— by other peoples’ reactions to or judgments of you.

Of what use is being rich, if you don’t feel in control of your life?

Of what use is being popular, if you constantly fear that you’re about to be abandoned?

Of what use is being beautiful, if you secretly fear that people only like you for your impermanent beauty?

Of what use is being talented, when you feel overwhelmed by life’s obligations outside of the domain of your talent?

Self-esteem can only be created by our choices. And the fundamental choices that create self-esteem are faced equally by people who are rich or poor, introverts or extroverts, on all points of any personal characteristic spectrum you choose to consider.

We have the choice to think and engage, or go on autopilot.

We have the choice to clarify and pursue our goals, or let someone else direct our life and energy.

We have the choice to protect and value our resources— our time, energy, expertise, experience— or capitulate to anyone’s demand that we expend our resources at their whim.

We have the choice to think about the roles of purpose and meaning in our life, or to behave as if our existence is an accidental footnote in a chaotic world.

We have the choice to take responsibility for our choices, or to focus on how we’re jerked around by circumstances and history.

We have the choice to live with radical acceptance of what is, even if we don’t like it, or to live in denial of facts that we find inconvenient or frustrating, simply because it’s more comfortable that way.

These are all choices that are 100% made internally. They don’t have to do with our age, our gender, our race, our class, or our history. Every breathing human being is confronted with these choices— and every breathing human being must live with the consequences of these choices.

It’s not the case that in order to have healthy, realistically high self-esteem, you have to make these choices perfectly. Nobody makes choices perfectly, every time.

What we do have to do, however, is approach these decisions with seriousness, mindfulness, and focus. We need to take these choices seriously. And if we’re intimidated by these decisions— which, why wouldn’t we be?— we need to seek out the kind of support and personal growth necessary to confront them without shrinking.

Don’t fall for anyone who tries to tell you self-esteem is a function of money. Or popularity. Or beauty. Or talent.

Don’t fall for anyone who tries to tell you you cannot develop healthy self-esteem because you weren’t born a certain race, class, or gender.

Don’t fall for anyone who tries to tell you self-esteem is beyond your reach because of your history.

Don’t fall for anyone who tells you you need their specific advice, guidance, personal development program, sweat lodge, triple espresso, or philosophy to create high self-esteem.

High self-esteem is not your birthright— but you can earn it. All with decisions that are free, and that you, as a human being who has the capacity to think, are eminently capable of making.

You are enough.

 

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We’ve been told, a lot, that we cannot control how other people see, hear, perceive, or understand us. This, it turns out, happens to be true.

I got an object lesson in this a couple of days ago.

No matter how hard we try to communicate clearly, no matter the pains we go through to make our ideas and intentions clear, no matter how skilled or acknowledged we are at communicating– it’s still the case that we can ONLY control our side of the communicative equation.

(And sometimes we can’t even perfectly control THAT side of the equation.)

It’s painful to be misunderstood.

The thing about it is, being misunderstood scrapes up a lot of old feelings many of us have about not being seen and not being heard. Which, of course, then tend to double back and stir up even more painful feelings about not being valued– because, well, it’s hard to feel valued if you’re not feeling adequately seen, heard, and understood.

Not surprisingly, feeling unseen and unheard over the long haul tend to contribute significantly to many people’s feelings of being fundamentally unvalued.

The psychological literature suggests people who struggle with self esteem often have histories of feeling unseen and unheard, both in their relationships and their lives. In fact, feeling unseen, unheard, and misunderstood often seem to snowball into a painful sense of alienation and isolation– not to mention, after awhile, hopelessness.

(After all, why should we keep trying to communicate, if we’re just setting ourselves up to feel unseen, unheard, misunderstood, and unvalued?)

It can be maddening. As I was reminded recently.

A couple days ago, I wrote a post on my Facebook page. It was a post about a psychotherapeutic technique called “reframing”– specifically, the difference it makes when people “frame” their struggles as meaningful or instructive, as opposed to meaningless and random.

Mind you, I explicitly avoided mention of religion, God, or any other “Higher Power,” because that wasn’t the point of the post– the point was, how we frame our life struggles is important. It informs what we’re willing to do, solutions we’re willing to consider, our entire approach to dealing with our problems.

(In fact, the principle of addressing the role of “meaning” in psychological suffering isn’t linked to a spiritual or religious tradition– it goes back to a school of psychotherapy called “logotherapy,” which was pioneered by Dr. Viktor Frankl. His groundbreaking book, “Man’s Search For Meaning,” is considered a classic in the psychological literature.)

I mean, I thought I’d been clear. I even received some initial feedback suggesting I’d been clear.

Until…I got feedback that suggested I’d somehow endorsed religion, told people to “pray” in response to psychological problems, and/or was being dismissive of people in painful circumstances beyond their control.

This was upsetting feedback to get.

I mean, I’d tried– hard!– to be clear and helpful in my initial post.

Even though the vast majority of the comments I’d received on the post were positive, feeling misunderstood by even one or two people was incredibly bothersome to me. I HATED thinking that someone was out there, thinking I was saying what she apparently thought I was saying.

Which brings me back to the beginning of this post: we cannot, as it turns out, control how others hear, perceive, understand, and respond to us.

No matter how much we wish we could.

It’s a reality we need to accept. It’s a reality I need to accept.

“Acceptance” is not the same as “liking” something, recall. I need to accept that sometimes I’ll be misunderstood; I don’t need to like it.

But I, and you, also need to radically accept this fact: being misunderstood is NOT the same thing as lacking value.

No matter how much our brains try to go through those old patterns (feeling misunderstood, feeling unseen, feeling unvalued).

We are NOT other people’s perceptions (or misperceptions, for that matter) of our words and ideas.

Can we accept that?

Can we accept that it is a certainty that we’re going to be misunderstood, and maybe even unseen and unheard at times– but that does NOT mean we, or our ideas, lack value?

It’s tough.

That old voice in our heads, that insidious voice which relentlessly seeks out evidence that we’re defective…that voice likes to latch on to it when we’re misunderstood.

That voice likes to magnify our feelings of being misunderstood, tries blow them up into big scary silhouettes on the movie screens of our minds.

It’s up to us to stand up to that voice.

Every time.

 

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Learning to set boundaries isn’t a one-and-done thing.

It’s not even a do-it-once, and you’ve-got-it-down kind of thing.

I WISH skill building was that easy. Especially withs skills as important as setting boundaries.

Sadly, however, learning to set boundaries— let alone getting good and comfortable at setting boundaries— is an ongoing project.

It’s a project that you’re probably going to be pretty bad at, at first. At least, most people are.

And why shouldn’t they be? For years, most people have been conditioned against setting boundaries. See, most people in our lives like to talk the talk of respecting our boundaries— but when it comes to us actually setting those boundaries, those other people often don’t like it. Us setting and adhering to boundaries almost always entails other people hearing “no” in some form from us, and boy, they really tend to not like that.

It’s particularly maddening, when other people in our lives claim they want to respect our boundaries and strengthen our ability and inclination to set good boundaries, and then they turn around and undermine our boundary-setting abilities. It’d almost be easier if they told us the truth: “I want to help and support you in setting boundaries…as long as that doesn’t mean you say ‘no’ to me.”

But, we work with what we have.

Here’s the thing: let yourself be bad at it. Be WILLING to let yourself be bad at it.

You’re not going to be great at setting boundaries at first anyway— and probably not for awhile.

That’s not your fault. Setting boundaries is kinda complicated, both logistically and emotionally. And that’s even before the complicating factors of how others respond to us when we attempt to set boundaries, which comes with its own collection of emotional and logistical complications.

You’re going to have difficulty determining when it’s appropriate to set a boundary.

You’re going to have sabotaging thoughts of, “Do I really need to set a boundary here? Or am I just being too whiny/sensitive/selfish?”)

You’re going to have difficulty figuring out the exact language you should use. “Do I need to explicitly state this is a boundary? Do I need to assume a very serious tone here? Should I frown? Do I need to look angry in order to get anybody to take me seriously?”

Then you’re going to have a whole series of thoughts that center around somehow controlling the other person’s reaction. “How can I make it so they’re not mad at me? How can I assure they still like me? How can I make sure their feelings aren’t hurt?”

These thoughts can be the most insidious of all, because 1) you 100% cannot control the other person’s reaction, and 2) the other person is 100% entitled to whatever reaction they’re going to have. Just like you’re 100% entitled to set boundaries in the first place.

For many people this is a whole process they go through each and every time they need to set a boundary. A lifetime of conditioning has led them to the point where setting boundaries isn’t a natural thing we feel entitled to as human beings; we’ve been convinced that it’s a thing that only selfish people do. It’s a rigamaroll. It’s a pain in the neck.

It’s no wonder many of us would prefer to remain doormats, rather than deal with the emotional and logistical hassle of setting boundaries.

And it’s going to happen EVERY TIME, you say?

Oof.

The good news is, though: it does get better.

But there is an “if.”

Setting boundaries does get easier IF you’re working on your self-esteem.

Setting boundaries does get easier IF you’re nudging closer to believing you are worthy of having strong boundaries.

Setting boundaries does get easier IF you’re developing the belief that you are more than others’ approval or disapproval of you.

Some of those are tall orders, I realize. Especially when we’ve gone for years having the exact opposite reinforced.

Again, though there’s good news: IF we’re willing to put in the leg work, IF we’re willing to be super honest about ourselves, our lives, and our needs, IF we’re willing to let ourselves be bad at something for awhile before we get comfortable and good at it…it really will pay off.

Our self-esteem really will begin to rise.

Setting boundaries really will get easier.

But we have to be willing to let ourselves be bad at it first.

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Learning new habits is often a drag.

It’s often boring. And awkward. And frustrating. Painful, in other words.

Learning new habits is especially painful when we’ve gotten really good at practicing old habits. Even if those old habits are hurting us— hence, why we’re trying to learn new habits— those old habits are habits specifically because they’ve been etched in our nervous systems by being practiced over, and over, and over again.

Our brains don’t like to be told they have to do things in a new way. They prefer old patterns. Old patterns are familiar. They’re overrehearsed. They’re even comfortable, in some ways— even as they are uncomfortable and painful in other ways.

New habits, on the other hand, require much more work, at least up front, than old habits.

They require us to level up our level of awareness— when we’re learning new habits, we don’t have the luxury of going on autopilot like with old habits.

New habits require us to take risks. After all, we know exactly how old habits work out, even if sometimes we’re not crazy about those results. The consequences of new habits are often relatively unknown— and our brains are fairly risk averse most of the time.

Momentum is a powerful thing. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Habits of thought and behavior that are set and rehearsed and overrhearsed, tend to endure.

When we’re starting a new habit, we’re often not good at it. We feel clumsy. We feel inadequate. And, indeed, we often are clumsy and inadequate at our new habit— we haven’t yet had the time and opportunity to refine our new habits. To get good at them.

It’s amazing how feeling like we’re bad at something makes it so easy to give up on it.

So how do we get over that hump, of feeling like we’re bad at a new habit? How do we get past that awkward stage? How do we get ourselves to stick with a new habit long enough so that it stops feeling like so much work, and begins feeling more practiced and natural?

You’re not going to like the answer.

The only way to really cement a habit in your central nervous system is simply to do it. Over, and over, and over again.

Even when it feels awkward.

Even when you feel incompetent.

Even when it feels silly.

Even when that little voice in your brain tells you that this new habit is so much WORK, how much EASIER would it be to just go back to the old habit, I mean come on, you can figure this stuff out LATER, just go back to the old habit TONIGHT, don’t you want to feel less PRESSURE right now?

Keep practicing it. Keep doing it.

Even when you’re angry you have to do it.

Keep doing it.

Even when you’re unconvinced you’ll EVER get the hang of the new habit.

Keep doing it.

Don’t think about it. Just do it.

Let yourself feel inadequate. Let yourself feel awkward. Let yourself feel angry. Let yourself feel silly. Let your nervous system throw its little tantrum that it can’t just plug along in its old, familiar pattern.

Keep doing it. Keep practicing it. Just do it.

The most profound piece of wisdom to ever come out of the Twelve Step tradition of addiction recovery isn’t about a Higher Power. It’s not “live and let live,” or “learning to live life on life’s terms.” It’s not even about getting a sponsor and consistently attending meetings, though all of those things are incredibly helpful.

The most profound piece of wisdom the friends of Bill W. ever gave the world is a succinct, three-word dictum: “Keep coming back.”

That’s the core of human behavior change. Keep coming back. Keep at it. Keep doing it.

The good news is, behavioral change isn’t complicated. It’s relatively simple. Stop doing something for long enough, and that behavior pattern will extinguish and fade away. Do something new over, and over, and over again, and it will become a conditioned behavioral response. Very simple.

Simple, however, does not equal easy.

But easy doesn’t usually equal “worth it.”

it may not be easy, as the saying goes.

It will be worth it.

Keep. At. It.

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