Use Your Damn Skills

I’ll be the first to concede: setting goals is a pain in the neck.

It’d be far easier if we could just glide through life and have pleasant, meaningful experiences just happen to us. If we were just born to experience pleasure and fulfillment, and it came to us effortlessly.

Many people harbor this fantasy, even as adults: that good things will just happen to us. That a fulfilling life shouldn’t be this thing that takes effort and focus to create. Many people believe we “shouldn’t” HAVE to set goals in order for good thing to happen to us.

It’s kind of fascinating, all the “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” to which people steadfastly cling when it comes to life.

Life “should” be this. Life “shouldn’t” be that. The rules for happiness “should” be this. That “shouldn’t” happen.

The reality is that life rarely, if ever, cares about our arbitrary “shoulds” and “shoudln’ts.” Especially when it comes to being happy.

Yes, it’s inconvenient that goal-setting seems to be necessary in order for us to live happy, fulfilled lives. I wish it was as easy as the universe just taking care of us, and delivering to us experiences that we enjoy and value. It’s kind of a harsh awakening when we figure out that, sadly, life doesn’t work like that. Choosing goals that align with our values and figuring out steps to fulfill those goals are, as it turns out, completely necessary steps to creating a life worth living.

Why do so many of us find setting and pursuing goals so onerous? Why do we keep retreating to this fantasy of not having to bother, of having good things just happen to us?

Setting goals is unexpectedly tough for a few reasons.

The process of setting goals is intimidating. It requires us to take responsibility for our values and happiness— meaning, if we achieve our goals and find ourselves not happy, then we’ve opened ourselves up to admitting we’ve somehow screwed up, somehow failed. Taking responsibility for our lives by setting goals gives us the opportunity to succeed, yes— but it also gives us the opportunity to fail. This freaks a lot of people out.

The wish that life would just deliver good experiences to us, without goal-setting or proactive effort— part of that wish is a fantasy of easing back into a life place of not having to take responsibility for our happiness.

It’s very similar to the fantasy that we are “born to” do or be certain things. If we are “born to” be a success or failure, “born to” have good or bad things happen to us, “born to “ be a certain person with certain characteristics and proclivities, then we don’t have to take responsibility for how our lives turn out.

Not having to take responsibility for our lives is a seductive, and ultimately very destructive, fantasy for a lot of people.

Setting goals is also though because it forces us to clarify our values.

Many people are so intimidated by getting clear on what they value that they spend entire lifetimes avoiding it. They cruise along, pretending that the values they were handed by their parents, or their religion, or their culture, are their own personal values, without ever pausing to consider whether this is actually the case.

In fairness, there are institutions in the world that actively discourage people from clarifying their own personal values, for the very reason that sometimes when people get to thinking about values, they really do discover that they hold disparate values from those they’ve been taught over the years.

We’re not exactly taught that clarifying our own values “should” be something that we prioritize; to the contrary, we’re often taught that we “shouldn’t” question authority or tradition. Many of us grow up with an instinctive, conditioned disinclination to clarify our values; thus the process of setting values-based goals is not something that comes naturally to many people.

The good news is, goal-setting is not as hard as we imagine it to be.

The even better news is, goal-setting is a discrete skill that gets better with practice.

To set an effective goal, you don’t have to think about the big picture all the time. You don’t have to be thinking “major life goals” with every goal. It doesn’t have to be “what am I committed to accomplishing in this next year?” It doesn’t even have to be “what are my goals for this next week?”

Start small. Set a goal for these next ten minutes.

“My goal for these next ten minutes is to sit down with my journal and write about how Dr. Doyle’s blog post today made me feel.”

“My goal for the next ten minutes is to begin getting dressed to go outside.”

“My goal for the next ten minutes is to set a few more goals for the rest of the day.”

See? Every time interval, no matter how small, can have a goal attached to it. And having a goal attached to a time interval overwhelmingly increases the chances you’ll feel good about how you spent that time interval; and this, in turn, builds your self-esteem.

“My goal for the next minute is to abstain from having a drink.”

“My goal for the next minute is to simply visualize feeling good.”

“My goal for the next minute is to be kind to myself in one concrete way.”

You’ve probably been sold a bill of goods about what it means to set goals, and why you’re not up to the challenge. Perhaps it’s time to more closely examine that bill of goods. Perhaps it’s at the point where your self-esteem is demanding you start setting goals— because, as it turns out, you weren’t “born” to do anything.

You weren’t “born” to set goals. But you have the opportunity to.

 

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The one place where no one else can control us, dictate to us, or dominate us is in our magnificent mind. But we often forget this fact, simply because it’s the case that we are controlled in so many other contexts.

Often times, as a practical matter, other people have a fair amount of say about how we spend our time and how we expend our resources. That is to say, we agree to trade a certain amount of control over our time and resources to other people (such as employers and relationship partners) in exchange for certain benefits (such as a paycheck or participation in a relationship).

As a result, we get used to the idea that we’re not fully in control of our time and resources.

Sometimes this isn’t such a big deal, insofar as we accept that we’ve “signed up” for that particular exchange. Sometimes it’s an inconvenience that we’d prefer not to endure. Sometimes it’s considerably painful, and we expend a lot of energy trying to figure out how to escape unfair onerous tradeoffs.

It’s true that we often don’t have practical control over our external circumstances.

But we do have complete sovereignty over what happens in our minds.

There are times when this doesn’t FEEL true. When we battle depression; when we’re fatigued; when we struggle with the programming of years past. There are times when it feels as if we have no more control over what goes in inside our minds than we do over our external circumstances.

But the fact remains that we, and we alone, create our worlds within.

We decide what images get to linger on our mental screens.

We decide what soundtrack to provide.

We decide what narratives, what stories, endure in our mental worlds.

We decide which characters are more important and less important than others.

So if this is true— that we alone have control over the mental universe we carry around in our magnificent minds— then why does it feel so often as if our mental landscapes are dominated by people, places, and things that we did not choose?

Mostly because other people have programmed us to believe that we have far less power over our mental lives than we actually do.

The entire process of therapy— as far as I’m concerned, anyway— is training ourselves to take back both the power and the responsibility of creating and living in our mental worlds. Getting our magnificent minds to work for us, rather than against us.

Getting on our own damn side.

How do we harness our magnificent minds to begin creating our mental worlds, instead of being left at the mercy of other people, who would strongly prefer that our mental worlds reflect THEIR priorities, wishes, and models of reality?

First thing’s first: we need to fully accept that we do create our worlds within. We need to get past how intimidating that sounds. We need to get past the extent to which we’ve been conditioned to believe it’s not true. We need to open ourselves up to the possibility that, no matter how much others would prefer that our magnificent minds be at their beck and call, that our minds are our own, private domains, and only we exercise dominion over that landscape within.

Yeah. Sounds easier than it is. It’s one of those tasks that is simple— but not easy.

The next step is we have to make some choices, and do a little bit of research. We need to make choices about what images we want populating our mental “screens.” We need to make choices about what characters we want to be part of our story within. We need to make choices about what that story is— what our journey is all about. We need to make choices about what music is appropriate to that journey.

It’s a lot like writing your own script, producing your own movie. Which is daunting, given that a lot of us never even knew before that producing our own movie was even possible, let alone that we have to assume complete responsibility for it.

But, like conquering most daunting things— the key is to practice.

To be willing to let yourself be bad at it at first.

Then to practice, practice, practice. Visualize, visualize, visualize. Journal, journal, journal.

A good starting place is to sit down with your notebook and write at the top of a sheet of paper: “What do I want my mental world to look like?”

Then, set a timer for five minutes, and just let yourself write— write down anything and everything that comes into your mind. Don’t censor yourself. Just let whatever thoughts happen, happen, and write them down. Even if the first thoughts that pop into your mind are something like, “How should I know? I guess…”

Your brain knows what it needs out of your mental world, your mental movie. It might have “stuffed” this information, but when you give it permission to let it out…it will let it out. It may be slow at first, it may be a trickle… but it will come.

You can create your mental world.

You do create your mental world.

Now let’s get to it.

One of the consequences of failing to realistically nurture our self-esteem every day is that we become unnecessarily dependent upon other people.

Make no mistake, we need other people.

While we human beings exist on a spectrum from extremely introverted to extremely extroverted, most of us find that we don’t function particularly well in a total vacuum. The human beings in our evolutionary history who could form functional connections with other human beings were selected for; thus mot of us are wired, on a neuropsychological level, to want to connect on some level with other people.

The things we need from other people are diverse, but they’re not always inscrutable or complex. We want to be seen and acknowledged by other people. We want to be understood, at least to some extent. Sometimes we just want the company of other people. Our affinity for connecting with other people is so hardwired into us that one of the main symptoms of psychopathology therapists keep an eye out for is a diminished inclination or capacity to connect with others.

When we’re suffering a signifiant deficit in self-esteem, however, this hardwired need can get twisted.

Self-esteem is created when we establish a firm pattern in our lives of behaving toward ourselves with respect, dignity, and attention. We nurture our self-esteem when we treat ourselves like, well, someone we esteem.

It’s the phenomenon I frequently sum up by “getting on our own side.”

When we’ve created healthy self-esteem, we don’t need to reach outside of ourselves for basic human needs such as assurance that we are worthy. We know we are worthy, because we have made the decision that we are worthy and we treat ourselves as worthy.

When we’ve created healthy self-esteem, we don’t need to reach outside of ourselves for the assurance that we are competent. We trust our own judgment about whether we are up to life’s challenges, and we accept the reality of the feedback we get from the world about how we are handling life’s challenges.

As regular readers of my work know, one of the biggest mistakes most people make is looking outside of themselves for sources of “self-esteem.” As I’ve stressed over and over again, true self-esteem is not to be found outside of ourselves; it is created by the decisions we make, particularly the decisions we make about how we perceive and behave toward ourselves.

When our self-esteem is shaky, it’s usually because we’ve not been great at making decisions and behaving toward ourselves in ways that affirm our worth and equip us to deal realistically with the challenges of living.

So, when that inner core of self-esteem is missing…where do you suppose we turn for what we instinctively perceive is missing?

That’s right— other people.

The thing is, our connections with other people aren’t designed to withstand the stress placed on them when we try to make them our primary source of self-esteem.

Relationships with others are designed to provide us with company, support, feedback— but not to become our main avenue of assurance that we are worthy and competent as human beings.

When we try to make other people our primary sources of self-esteem, not only does it not work very well— because self-esteem is generated from inside, not outside— but it ends up frustrating, confusing, and burning out the people around us.

This, in turn, leads us to feeling unlovable, high-maintenance, and unworthy— because we don’t register that other people are backing off because we’ve asked things from them that they’re simply not equipped to provide. We simply register that they’re backing away from us. Our brains kind of panic, and we figure that we must not be worthy of esteem— or else why would they be backing up?

It becomes a vicious circle.

After awhile, many people come to believe that depending on other people is a setup for disappointment and pain. Which is a shame, because it is absolutely the case that we need other people…but we need to be realistic and grounded about what they can and cannot provide for us.

When we’re very young, we want other people (notably, our parents and caretakers) to fulfill all of our needs. Part of the painful process of growing up is learning that other people cannot be our be-all, end-all of need fulfillment— and we don’t need them to be.

We need other people for what we need other people for.

But that which we need to do for ourselves— generating real self-esteem from within, self-esteem that prepares us to relate to other people and cope with the world’s demands— we truly can only do ourselves.

 

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We all have voices in our heads.

I don’t necessarily mean the actual auditory hallucinations experienced by people diagnosed with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. Nor do I mean the voices of dissociative alters, formed in the aftermath of trauma.

I mean that we all have programs running in our heads. Think of them like old tapes, running in the background. They’ve been running in the background of our heads for so long, most of us have learned to tune them out, consciously. They’re just always there, always have been. Few of us pay a lot of attention to what they say— at least, with our conscious minds.

They’re the voices of parents. The voices of teachers. The voices of peers. Sometimes it’s what we imagine the voices of God or angels might sound like. They’re the voices of historical figures. The voices of fictional characters, who we’ve heard in movies and read about in books and internalized as part of our inner tape collection.

Hundreds and hundreds of voices, playing on a loop in our heads, making sense of the world and its events for us. Telling us what life is all about, what we’re all about, what the possibilities of our world are, what we should do.

Over the course of our lives, we’ve internalized hours and hours and hours of programming about what things mean, and this programming plays on a loop in our head, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter.

Sometimes the voices we’ve internalized tell us helpful, constructive things. One of the prominent voices inside my head is Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi, as he tells Luke Skywalker about The Force in the movie Star Wars: “It’s an energy field that surrounds us, it penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.”

You’ll be amazed, when you stop and really look at the voices that make up your internal programming, how many of those voices come from pop culture.

Movies, books, stories, songs. The things we’re exposed to every day on television and in movie theaters and on the radio get far more opportunities to bore themselves into your unconscious than most people even start to realize.

Which, frankly, is part of the problem.

Because some of the voices in our heads aren’t so helpful.

Just as an exercise, look at the lyrics of any five love songs that might spring into your head.

Set aside the fact that they may be pretty songs, and look at the story being told by their lyrics. While there are some very appealing love songs out there, the overwhelming majority of them tell stories of people who are desperate for love, who feel empty without it, cannot imagine a world without their beloved— not, in other words, the inner monologue of adults who feel secure and confident in their self-esteem, regardless of what happens in their love lives.

Likewise, look at the great romantic movies many of us enjoy so much. I mean, I totally get it, I’m a sucker for a good love story. But the anguish experienced by characters when they are apart from their beloved in so many of these stories speaks to a lack of fulfillment that, unfortunately, romantic love is not going to fix— I guarantee characters who feel empty before getting into a relationship are going to feel probably even emptier once they get into one.

Now, I fully understand that this is entertainment, pop culture, we’re talking about. OF COURSE stories are going to be simplified and emotions exaggerated for the sake of a good narrative arc. My quibble is not with the artistic liberties creators take in order to make art that moves us.

My issue is, over the course of decades, we allow the voices of these desperate characters to sink deeply into our minds, to the point where they form many fundamental ideas we have about ourselves, the world, relationships, and the future.

More to the point, when we’re lonely, when we’re discouraged, when we really need some voices whispering into our ear to give us some guidance…a lot of the time the voices we get back are the voices of pop culture that have created the problem in the first place.

The good news is, we can pick and choose our voices.

We can break way from the default setting of just letting all of that programming sink into our heads, and use our magnificent minds to do some thinking: “Is this a premise about relationships I want to accept? Does it reflect my values? Does it reflect my goals? Does it reflect the life I’m trying to create?”

Part of developing high, heathy self-esteem is developing your own philosophy of life, one that reflects your values, your goals, and reality as you understand it. A big part of developing our own life philosophies is in becoming aware of the programing that has informed our default life philosophy up until now— and deciding if we really wanna keep it.

Luckily, you’ve been given the perfect tool for this task— your magnificent mind.

Listen for the voices in your head. Just quiet your mind, and listen for them.

Listen to them for awhile.

Then ask yourself if maybe it’s time to switch up the old tapes.

 

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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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