Author: drglenndoyle

 

Every day, we’re called upon to make lots and lots of decisions. Big decisions, little decisions. Important decisions, dumb decisions. When you think about it, making choices is really what consumes the vast majority of our mental energy every day (and, upon consideration, quite a bit of our physical energy as well, actually).

Today’s lesson is about choices. Because in the end, we only have control over a subset of our own choices– and it’s how we make those choices, those decisions, that will determine the ultimate quality of our lives.

A lot of people expend an awful lot of energy detailing for us how limited our choices are, limited by forces beyond our control. And they’re right. There are absolutely forces bigger than all of us at work that limit our options, in ways that vary from very practical to very profound.

For example, I’m very aware that I’m an educated,  middle aged white guy with a few bucks in my pocket. I’d never be so arrogant or blind to my own cultural privilege as to suggest that everyone as the same options or opportunities that I have, or have had, in this culture. I’m not saying the playing field is socially, culturally, or economically level. It’s not.

That said, I’m not a believer in directing anything other than the bare minimum of focus or energy toward forces I cannot control. Why? Because my resources, as a human being, are finite–I don’t have the time or energy to blow on mourning the unfairness of the world. I have a fucking life to design, here.

Making distinctions between what is and isn’t worth your effort to impact is key. People who can make those distinctions and act accordingly stand a much greater chance of shaping their world to their liking. People who can’t make or act on those distinctions stand a very good chance of feeling frustrated, angry, and helpless on a daily basis.

Check this out: a lot of the time, we like to pretend that we’re somehow not responsible for certain key decisions we make every day. A basic example of this is the decision of what we expose our attention, our conscious focus to, during the course of a day. It’s very easy for many people to say, “Look, I simply don’t have control over a lot of what I’m exposed to every day. My social media feeds make choices about what I’m exposed to; my daily news sources make choices about what I’m exposed to; advertisers make decisions about what I’m exposed to. I have to engage with the world every day, and thus I don’t have a choice about what goes into my mental ‘inbox!’”

And, sure enough: we can make the decision to let our social media feeds, news sources, and advertisers, among others, choose what goes into the our mental inbox. We’re free to make that choice.

However, we’re not free to avoid the consequence of that choice. Namely, if you let other people choose what goes into your mental inbox, you’re necessarily letting them choose the raw materials you have to work with when it comes to shaping your vision of the world. You know, deciding what is possible, deciding what is important, deciding what is worth expending your time and energy toward today.

Make no mistake: no matter what other forces are operating in your world, your time and energy are the two resources you, and only you, are totally responsible for.

It may be difficult to avoid altogether the barrage of potential influencers– social media, news sources, advertisers, whomever– coming at us every day. But that makes it even more essential that we take complete responsibility for carving out opportunities every single day to actively choose what goes into our mental inbox. To expose ourselves to influencers of our own choosing– influencers that align with our priorities, our visions, our dreams.

You can choose to let someone else direct your attention today. But know when you choose that, you’re also choosing a specific consequence– your resources, from your intelligence, to your skillset, to your physical strength, are all then placed at someone else’s disposal, not yours. You’re free to make choices, in other words– but you’re not free to avoid the consequences of your choices.

Maybe live according to your vision, not theirs.

Today’s lesson in hack, hack, hacking your way to psychological growth? Just use the tools you have handy. Even if those tools are imperfect, inelegant, not what you’d prefer to have handy– just use ’em. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, seriously. 

In these experiences we call “life” and “growth” it’s kind of amazing how picky we can sometimes be about what we’ll consider “legitimate” tools to get us through.

Recently, for example, there’s been reams and reams and REAMS written about the tool of Mindfulness to get us through tough times. You know, where we kind of take a step back, take a deep breath, and deeply accept everything as it is, without demanding it be other-than-what-it-is. Starting with good ol’ Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Mindfulness has made its way into pretty much every corner of the personal development universe. Everybody loves Mindfulness. Slapping “Mindfulness” on the cover of a self-help book is pretty much a guaranteed way to sell a few extra copies.

And is Mindfulness a useful tool? Sure. Most everybody can agree that Mindfulness is a fundamentally healthy habit for human beings to get into. Legitimate tool.

But what if you don’t happen to have that tool in your toolbox, yet?

There are lots of reasons why you might not have the tool of Mindfulness handy. Maybe you have ADHD, and the idea of getting pseudo-meditative is kind of an amusing abstraction to your going-going-gone attention span. Maybe you’re working through an anxiety disorder, and you’re not quite yet at the skill level where you can quiet your mind to Mindfully accept Stuff As It Is. Maybe you’re working through a trauma disorder and your brain has been wired, for the time being, to be SUPER MINDFUL OF EVERY SINGLE LITTLE STIMULI IN YOUR ENVIRONMENT AHHHHH.

Mindfulness, in other words, might be a healthy, elegant tool of psychological growth– but maybe it’s just not in your toolbox at the present moment. Much like a lot of other healthy, elegant tools of growth, such as patience, reality-testing, and perspective-taking, to name a just a few. It’d be great if we always had those elegant tools of emotional management handy, but there are times when, for whatever reason, we don’t. 

Sometimes, instead, the tools we have handy come with awkward, sometimes kinda threatening, names, like “anger.” Or “jealousy.” Or “fear.”

WHAT IS THIS CRAZY TALK, DR. DOYLE? DID YOU JUST REFER TO UGLY EMOTIONS SUCH AS ANGER, JEALOUSY, OR FEAR AS “TOOLS?” 

Yes, yes I did.

EXPLAIN YOURSELF, SIR!

Here’s the skinny on emotions, guys: much like the American Psychological Association, they’re meant to be tools. The very reason we have emotions in the first place, both positive and negative, is because somewhere along the way they had survival value.

The fact that blunt, ugly-feeing, uncomfortable emotions like anger, jealousy, and fear are still with us is evidence that they serve some adaptive purpose. They don’t feel good, but in the hunt for survival? They are our friends.

Fear, for example, doesn’t have to be just this set of experiences that paralyzes you and makes you kinda queasy and jumpy. Fear is actually a tool that keeps us from, you know, stepping out into a busy street and meeting a Frogger-like fate. Organisms that do not have or use the tool of fear don’t last very long in the wild. Fear, as it turns out, is a blunt, uncomfortable tool– but a pretty goddamn important one.

Jealousy’s another feeling that gets a bad rap. Yeah, it’s not a fun emotion to experience and can poison a relationship if it becomes the main emotional fuel of said relationship. But jealousy can also be a useful reminder of what we value in a relationship, and how much we value it. Jealousy often speaks in a distorted, shrill voice inside our heads– but it often points us to emotional truths that we might otherwise ignore.

And anger? Let me tell ya something about anger. Anger evolved so that when cave-people had their territory and cave-mates threatened, they’d be able to access the energy to fight back. Yup, anger is an emotion with which many of us have a complicated relationship– but getting angry about a Situation That Should Not Be is often the first step to changing or getting out of that situation.

Look, I get it. A lot of the time, we wish the tools available to us in our emotional toolboxes were more comfortable or soothing, like Mindfulness. But I’m here to tell you, in this thing called “life,” we have no choice but to start where we are, with the tools we have. And if those tools happen to be imperfect, blunt, or uncomfortable? What we can do is learn to use them for the purposes they do serve, instead of waiting for a “better” coping skill to magically evolve while we wait it out.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. No one’s handing out medals for Most Elegant Coping Tool. Just use the tool that is handy, dude.