Use Your Damn Skills

I will never understand therapists, life coaches, or other personal development guides who get locked into one modality, one small collection of techniques, and then try to convince everyone that THEIR program is the ONLY program that works. 

You see this very often in the personal development field. Prospective gurus, guides, and mentors getting on social media, and claiming that THEY have figured out exactly what works for YOU…even if they haven’t met you. 

What’s even more hilarious— or disturbing, depending on your point of view— is the fact that these myopic “experts” often seek to sell their programs by mocking and belittling the programs offered by their competitors. They often do this by claiming that their program is the program backed by “science.”

(One such “expert” with whom I am acquainted loves to use words like “science” and “psychology” to sell his ideas…but then he turns around and mocks the value of traditional education. Which begs the question, of course, of where he thinks most “scientific” and “psychological” research takes place, if academic settings aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. But I digress.)

“Scientific” minds do not mock alternative points of view. 

“Science,” as a way of knowing, is all about remaining open to data— ESPECIALLY data that contradicts our preexisting point of view. 

I can tell you as a stone cold certain FACT that there is NOT a one-size-fits-all approach to personal development that works for everybody. 

In fact, I can tell you that there isn’t even an approach that works for MOST people. 

Most everybody, in my experience, needs a specific combination of tools, techniques, philosophies, and supports in order to live their best lives. 

It’s up to you, and to the life development professionals you work with and follow, to determine the particular blend of things that will allow YOU to get to the next level. 

I think it’s telling that, often, when myopic gurus, guides, or mentors are confronted with evidence that their pet approach didn’t have quite the impact they’d promoted or intended, their go-to tactic is to figure out how you did it “wrong”…rather than figuring out if or how their program may have been a poor fit for your needs. 

Some people, for example, respond well to a “tough love” approach. They respond when a therapist, guide, or mentor “calls them on their shit,” doesn’t let them make excuses, and is very vocal and even somewhat confrontational when they appear to be backsliding on their program. 

Other people, by contrast, get triggered when a therapist tries to take a “tough love” approach. No matter how good the therapist’s intentions, being confrontational and blunt with these patients pushes buttons usually “installed” in the course of traumatic upbringing and relationships, and the client isn’t going to make much progress because they’re busy trying to not have an anxiety attack withe every meeting. 

The fact that people respond differentially to a “tough love” approach doesn’t say anything of importance about the approach itself. Nor does it tell us anything about the inherent virtue or value of the people who respond to it (though proponents of “tough love” do seem to be more inclined to try shaming people into “benefiting” from the approach than is sometimes necessary, in my observation). 

It just means that people are different, and respond to different things. 

It wold be more convenient for some gurus if everybody responded to the same thing in the same way. It would negate the need for them to learn about the many types of personalities out there, each of whom have unique pressure points and motivational buttons. 

But, sadly, approaching the personal development field with an appreciation for this type of complexity messes up their ability to sell seminars. So, you know. 

My own field, clinical psychology, is not immune to this kind of myopia. 

Clinical psychologists such as myself are often trained to work int he context of once weekly, fifty to sixty minute psychotherapy sessions— a model that is reinforced by insurance companies’ structures for payment. The fact that some patients may need more or different types of interventions than the once weekly fifty-minute session is something that my field has been slow to address…because psychology, too, would prefer that the world adapt to its preferences, not the other way around. 

The fact is, you’re probably going to be MOST helped by a somewhat eclectic combination of things. 

The right therapist, guru, mentor, or guide for YOU will support you in finding out what COMBINATION of things will work for you. 

They won’t be precious or territorial about what is and isn’t on the table. 

They won’t pretend that theirs is the only program backed by “science.” 

And, more than anything: the right helper for you will be driven by RESULTS, not preexisting philosophy. 

 

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Most days, all day, we are encouraged to not quite say what we mean. 

We’re told to tone it down. 

We’re told to be nice. 

We’re told to keep certain things to ourselves. 

We’re told to avoid saying what we really mean and what we really think, because it may upset or offend somebody else. 

The world is often in the business of bullying us into not being ourselves.

There absolutely is an extent to which it is the intelligent, kind choice to be mindful of the circumstances we’re in before choosing to express ourselves in certain ways. There is a subset of people who seem to think it is a virtue to be “blunt” in their communications. It’s my experience that most people who go around bragging about how “blunt” they are are most often looking for an excuse to be unkind, and/or not have to put the work into being aware of and sensitive to the people around them. 

We DON’T have to express every thought that occurs to us in the most “blunt” way possible. That is neither intelligent, nor necessary, nor kind. I would never tell anybody to impulsively just say whatever comes into their head. 

That said: if we cave, day after day after day, to others’ preference that we not say what we mean…it becomes really, really hard to build and maintain healthy self-esteem. 

Being honest in what what we express and communicate is something that most of us need in order to build and maintain a healthy sense of self. 

Sometimes the people around us— especially in the relatively less inhibited world of social media in which many of us live most of our days— will have reactions to us being ourselves. 

I’m not talking about the normal reactions people have when somebody chooses to be obnoxious or unkind in their communications. If you go around being hurtful just because you’ve decided it’s a virtue to be “blunt,” you’re going to alienate a lot of people…and you should. 

Unkind behavior invites unkind responses. That’s not about someone else’s “thin skin;” that’s about  something we psychologists call “natural consequences.” 

Rather, I’m talking about the fact that there are a lot of people who are only willing to accept and reinforce us if we’re their version of what a “good person” is. 

We’ve all seen examples of this on social media. We live in a culture in which it has become increasingly important to people that they be surrounded by, exposed to, and immersed in viewpoints that basically resonate with their own, especially politically. 

This happens with conservatives; this happens with liberals; this happens with Christians; this happens with atheists. Now more than ever, people have a very low tolerance for the company or feedback of people with whose worldview they disagree. 

This has the result of pressuring people, sometimes intensely, to be something-other-than-themselves in order to be accepted (or even tolerated) by other people. 

This pressure keeps up, day after day, hour after hour. It has the eventual effect of making it hard, eventually, to remember who we really are, because we’re basically spending much of our time calculating what we can’t and can’t say in order to avoid being ridiculed and rejected by the people around us. 

In the kind of judgmental, zero tolerance world in which we live (again, especially on social media), saying what we mean can have what seem like disastrous social consequences. 

The problem being, NOT saying what we mean, stifling our true selves, again and again and again, can have truly disastrous consequences when it comes to our self-esteem, our inherent sense of value and worth, our basic sense of self. 

There is a difference between being diplomatic and kind on the one hand, and stifling our basic natures and values for the sake of social acceptance on the other. 

You probably don’t have the means or the opportunity to suddenly be a “hero” and go around saying exactly what you mean. The social pressure cooker in which most of us live makes being too honest, too often, a significant social liability. That’s real. You’re not imagining that. To want to avoid the social consequences of bing too honest, too often, is perfectly reasonable. 

But you can take small steps. 

You can refuse to go along with the crowd in small ways. 

You can remind yourself who you are and what you believe…and that your identity and beliefs are fundamentally okay, no matter what “they” may think. 

To the extent that you do not wish ill will on others; to the extent that you’re not actively seeking to destroy, damage, or steal others lives, liberty, or property; to the extent that you’re not seeking to coercively impose your will upon those who would choose otherwise…your belief system is fundamentally okay, no matter what it is. 

To the extent that you’re not seeking to harm someone else or take their stuff, you’re a fundamentally “good” person. 

Remember that. 

Remind yourself of that. 

Feed yourself the kind of thoughts that will make it easier and easier to resist the enormous social pressure most of us face to shut up and conform. 

One day at a time. 

 

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Remember:  we’re constantly filtering reality through our own lenses of belief and expectation. 

In cognitive behavioral therapy, we call the various beliefs about ourselves, the world, and the future through which we filter all of our incoming information “schemas.” 

We have schemas about a lot of things. 

We have schemas— that is, beliefs— about ourselves: whether we’re a good person or bad person; whether we’re lazy or industrious; whether we’re honest or dishonest. 

We have schemas— beliefs— about other people and the world: whether people can be trusted or not; whether the world is for us or against us; whether engaging with the world is worth the hassle or not. 

We have schemas— beliefs— about the future: whether our current projects and efforts will pay off; whether there’s light at the end of this tunnel; what kind of things are probably going to happen next. 

The reason why we evolved to have schemas is pretty simple: if we didn’t have some way of filtering all the information coming at our brains every moment we’re awake, we’d get overwhelmed, completely overloaded. Our brains have to have SOME organized idea of what is worth paying attention to, and what isn’t. 

The way schemas work is, once we develop a schema about something or a set of things, our brains then mostly pay attention to incoming information that is consistent with those schema. And, conversely, our brains tend to filter out incoming information that isn’t consistent with our preconceived beliefs. 

Handy, right? 

You betcha…provided we remember that our brains are doing this filtering, all day, every day. 

That is, provided that we understand and accept that we are constantly getting a heavily filtered version of reality that is molded to what we already more or less believe. 

A lot of the time, this process works pretty well. Our brains are usually pretty smart about what to filter out and what to direct our attention toward. If we had to take on the task of constantly, critically evaluating every scrap of incoming information coming at our faces, every minute of every day…we wouldn’t be able to function. 

Our brains therefore do us the favor of figuring out, broadly, what kind of information is useful and adaptive for us in our everyday functioning, and our brains bias our attention toward this kind of information. 

But as well as this system works, we need to remember that it is a system that is fallible. 

We need to remember that there are times when our schemas are distorted. Skewed.

There are times when our perceptive “lenses” are cracked. 

Sometimes this happens as a result of trauma. We have something really bad happen to us, or a series of really bad things happen to us, and as a result, we develop beliefs about ourselves, the world, and the future that aren’t broadly true…but they FEEL true, because of the trauma we’ve experienced. 

Thus, when we try to filter realty through trauma-damaged schema, we end up with some wonky results— we pay attention to incoming information that tells us we’re defective; that the world is an unpredictable, hostile place; and that the future has little, if anything, to offer us. 

Distorted schemas— cracked lenses— focus us on incoming information in distorted ways. 

Consequently, when we try to make decisions based on the skewed information our brains have let in through the “cracked lens” of a distorted schema, we end up making decisions that don’t serve us well. Which, of course, then has the effect of reinforcing the distorted beliefs that contributed to the problem in the first place. 

It becomes a vicious, vicious cycle. 

What can we do about any of this? 

We can keep in mind— especially in therapy— that our schemas are just webs woven of beliefs. We can remember that our beliefs may or may not be accurate…that our lenses may be cracked because of things we’ve been through. 

We can remember that our reality is filtered— and while that filtering may sometimes serve us, there are going to be times when it DOESN’T serve us well. 

We can either periodically or regularly examine our schemas about ourselves, the world, and the future, to determine whether or how we’re perceiving the world through a cracked lens. 

We can remember that because something FEELS true, that doesn’t necessarily MAKE it true. 

Our brains are truly magnificent machines. They’re the most sophisticated supercomputers the planet has ever seen. 

It’s too bad no one provided an owner’s manual. 

 

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I have some potentially upsetting news.

All of those self-help gurus and law of attraction teachers are wrong.

You can’t have “literally anything you want,” no matter how hard you envision it. 

(I know. Bummer, right?)

I’m not even necessarily saying they’re out to defraud you (although I suspect some of them are).

After all, “you can have anything you want, just by leveraging the power of your MIND!” is a seductive sales pitch. We all have minds; we all use our imagination on the regular; wouldn’t it be sweet if all we had to do to have LITERALLY ANYTHING WE WANTED was to do an effortful version of the daydreaming we tend to do anyway? 

Alas…it doesn’t work like that. 

Some might call me a pessimist for saying this. I once had a commenter angrily demand why I wasn’t “open to possibility” when I wrote something like this on my page in the past. 

The thing is…you’ll never find a bigger believer in “possibility” than me. That’s why I do what I do. 

I may not believe that we can have ANYTHING WE WANT in our lives simply by imagining it really, really hard…but I believe we can create lives that look and feel an awful lot more LIKE the lives we imagine than most of us realize. 

I think we can create lives that look cooler than the lives we have now. 

I think we can create lives that feel better than the lives we have now. 

I believe we can construct lives that have a lot of the stuff in them that we might imagine in that fantasy life. 

But it’s going to take a lot more than imagination (even though visualization is an extremely effective tool). 

Creating the life we want involves a lot of focused attention. 

It involves a lot of goal-setting. A lot of planning.

Creating the live we want involves a lot of doing things we’d rather not do, at times we’d rather not do them. It involves a lot of work that isn’t particularly interesting, stimulating, or fun. 

Why? Because big goals— the goals you’re chasing when you think about “creating your dream life” are comprised of steppingstone goals. And steppingstone goals are comprised of even smaller component goals that must be attended to day to day, every day.

And a lot of those daily goals do not bear much resemblance to the big, life-defining goals you’re so hot to achieve. 

Put another way: in order to create some (not even all!) of the overarching goals you think of as your “dream life”…you’re going to have to live your day to day life in a way that may not interest or stimulate you, often for long stretches. 

It can suck. 

Concrete examples of this are everywhere. 

People want to be their “ideal weight” and have their “ideal body,” because they’re imagining what life will be like if they looked and felt a certain way. The thing is, to build a body that looks and feels that way, they have to endure things like workouts and diet plans that don’t, in the moment, feel particularly good…and they have to do it day, after day, after day. 

People want their “ideal career,” usually because they desire a certain income level and lifestyle. The thing is, in order to build that career and income, they have to endure things like sacrifice and risk that don’t, in the moment, feel particularly sexy…and they have to do it day, after day, after day. 

Now, visualization WILL help, with all of this. Visualization is a robustly research-supported technique that will reshape your brain, if you use it consistently and well. 

But visualization is not enough. 

There simply are no shortcuts to creating the lives we want to create. Not shortcuts like the ones certain self-help gurus want to sell you, anyway. 

Make no mistake: my message ultimately is one of hope. I’m not a pessimist (if I were a pessimist about human potential, I truly wouldn’t be in the psychology or personal development fields). 

We CAN create better lives. 

But it’s gonna cost us. 

 

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There is no shame in being imperfect.

Illogical, impetuous, emotional, needy. All humans are all of these at some point. Some more than others, some more frequently than others.

A lot of it is dependent upon our genetic inheritances and predispositions.

A certain amount of it is the result of trauma and other life events that have happened to us.

Some of it has to do with the general environments in which we were raised, and the environments in which we exist right now.

But the fact is: we humans are, often, very much messes.

We may think there are some humans who are exceptions to this. We see beautiful, witty celebrities who always seem to look great and say the right thing. We see politicians and leaders who are passionate and eloquent. We go to movies and watch TV shows where people make the right decisions at the right times— or, if they make the wrong decisions, things still play out in entertaining ways that wrap up within an hour or two.

Then we compare ourselves to those models, and…we’re forced to acknowledge that we are just messes.

The thing is, those characters— including the celebrities and the politicians— aren’t real.

EVERY human being is imperfect.

Moreover, we cannot do anything to make ourselves perfect. Just can’t be done. If perfection is your goal, I strongly recommend you abandon it right now.

We don’t have the option to make ourselves perfect.

All we can do is decide how we’re going to deal with being imperfect.

We can decide how to respond to the FACT that we are all imperfect.

Do we decide that the reality of imperfection means we can’t do anything?

Does it mean we can’t try anything?

Does it mean we give up?

Or does it mean that we commit, every single day, to dealing with this fact with realism, honesty, and humor?

A lot of people say, for example, they’re “terrible at relationships.”

Welcome to humanity, many of us are terrible at relationships. The fact that we can’t read each others’ minds and perfectly predict and fill each others’ needs makes most of us humans more or less terrible at relationships, at least some of the time.

Some people then decide that the fact that they’re “terrible at relationships” means they shouldn’t even try to have relationships.

Take it from me: if you’ve made up your mind to simply “opt out” of having relationships, you’re going to be wrestling with much of your instinctive programming as a human. Like it or not, we’re wired to have relationships of varying levels of intimacy. Like most human traits, the pull toward relationships exists on a spectrum, with some humans craving intimacy more than others, but it is the very rare human who truly, voluntarily wants little to no connections with other humans.

The fact that relationships can hurt, the fact that we sometimes don’t do them well, the fact that sometimes they’re inconvenient and maddening and exhausting…that doesn’t mean we should stop trying.

But, that’s the choice with which we’re presented: is the fact that we can’t get it right every time— the fact that we’re almost certain to get it WRONG a lot of the time— reason to attempt to opt out?

How are we going to respond to the fact that perfection is an impossibility?

To continue to strive for perfection, as a human, means you’ve chosen to respond to the FACT of human imperfection with one of the least effective and most damaging coping skills possible: denial.

In addition to almost never solving the problem, denial often creates bigger and more destructive problems.

Your choice, as a human, isn’t between perfection and imperfection.

Nor is it between constantly winning and sometimes losing. You’re going to do both.

The choice you have is in how you handle the FACT of human frailty.

So…how are you going to handle it?

 

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Remember: the Internet, in some important respects, isn’t real life.

Yes, yes, it reflects real life. Sometimes, in some ways.

But Facebook, Twitter, your favorite news website, your favorite entertainment website…they are all heavily, heavily filtered realities.

(There are literally no exceptions to this statement.)

People behind a screen and keyboard aren’t subject to the same “rules” people in “real life” are.

The field of social psychology has for years been studying the extent to which our behavior changes when it is more and less linked to “real world” consequences. Its conclusions have been robust and consistent: when people have filters between themselves and the world with which they’re interacting, they become less concerned with how their words and actions impact that world.

For some people, this has the effect of allowing them to be braver than they might otherwise be. Social media has afforded many people the opportunity to voice opinions and support causes they might never otherwise get the chance to in “real life,” for a variety of reasons. These people often say that being on social media has allowed them to feel more like “themselves” than they ever have.

For others, however, the layers of filtration between them and the real world afforded by the Internet gives them the opportunity to be meaner, more impulsive, and more obsessive than they might otherwise have the “courage” to be in the real world.

People have differing views on whether the “bad” behavior people exhibit on the Internet is more “true” to their real personalities, or less “true.” Whether the Internet makes people mean, or just allows them to be as mean as they really are.

It’s a debate similar to whether alcohol makes people “more” who they are or “less” who they are. I know a subset of people who strenuously argue that alcohol shows you who “somebody really is.”

I’ve always struggled with that view. Alcohol is a drug that interferes with the functioning of the parts of the brain that make us who we are, personality-wise and judgment-wise. I’d be surprised if ingesting a foreign substance that will literally interfere with one’s ability to function in those domains could bring out one’s “authentic” self.

Likewise, we need to remember that the Internet has effects on the human brain that are not unlike drugs of addiction.

The Internet absolutely impacts the functioning of the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin, those twin chemicals that are largely responsible for our motivation and moods.

The Internet absolutely creates an environment in which most websites want us to continue using them, with as little critical thought as possible. They absolutely want to create an environment in which we become addicted to and dependent upon their content.

To say that such an environment allows for people to be more fully “who they are” presents, to me at least, many of the same problems as saying alcohol lets people be truly “who they are.”

I think the issue is more complicated than that. I think this is something all of us need to think carefully about.

I think our behavior on the Internet is something all of us need to be very mindful of and take very seriously. It’s simply not like our behavior in other domains.

Do yourself the favor of thinking, really thinking, about your Internet behavior.

Not just how much time you spend on the Internet, but how you use this tool.

Think seriously about the comments you make.

Think seriously about the content you engage with.

Think seriously about the ideas that you allow to invade your brain as you scroll, scroll, scroll down that social media feed of yours.

Don’t get me wrong: the Internet is a tremendous tool. It has revolutionized our culture in a way that nobody could have predicted in the last twenty years. I never thought that I’d see this kind of a cultural shift in my lifetime— and yet here we are.

It’s like when humans discovered fire.

Fire can warm bodies, cook food, power steamships.

Fire can also burn cities, burn books, and burn people.

Treat your combustibles with seriousness, humility, and respect.

 

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A loss doesn’t have to be earth-shattering to hurt.

A loss doesn’t have to wreck your life in order to require mourning.

The culture around us loves to judge the appropriateness of our feelings. We get all sorts of feedback every day on whether we’re being too emotional; whether we’re getting upset over something we “shouldn’t” be upset by; whether our emotional reactions are sufficiently “adult.”

The world loves to tell us we’re making too big a deal of something we’re feeling.

The thing is, the world doesn’t have to live inside our skin.

The culture out there doesn’t have to deal with it when we experience a loss that may not be of the magnitude it judges “acceptable” to mourn, but which leaves us sad and asks us to acknowledge it anyway.

I’ve said to before, I’ll say it again: other people don’t have to go to sleep inside our heads and hearts, and wake up with our heads and hearts. We do.

Sometimes we’re going to feel sadness over losses that other people think are “silly.”

Sometimes we’re going to feel pain over losses that other people feel aren’t big enough to qualify for “mourning.”

Whether other people want to offer us sympathy or support is up to them. Nobody is required to mourn our losses with us. Acknowledging and coping with our losses is an inside-out job, and nobody is asking anyone else to swoop in and do their mourning for them.

Let them go ahead and think it’s silly, in other words.

We can grieve for a person; we can grieve for a pet; we can grieve for an opportunity; we can even grieve for a time of life or a relationship.

“Grieving” doesn’t mean that our world stops. It means taking the time to feel what we’re feeling, to assess the meaning of losses in our life, and to adjust to our new, post-loss reality.

A lot of people get sucked into kind of an extreme, all-or-nothing model of loss and grieving. They get this idea in their heads that “grieving” necessarily implies the world stops, that one can’t do their job or interact with other people, that all of one’s energy gets focused exclusively on the grieving if a loss is big enough to require grieving.

No wonder some people set the bar so high for what kinds of losses are “okay” to grieve.

The truth is, most grieving actually happens on the down low.

Most grieving happens quietly, almost invisibly.

An awful lot of grieving happens almost exclusively in our heads and hearts, simply because the world has made it so radically “uncool” to acknowledge that loses hurt, no matter what the magnitude.

You need to know that you’re not alone in your need to acknowledge and grieve losses, no matter how big or small.

You need to know that it’s normal and human to experience pain and confusion when things go away.

You need to know that, whatever the culture thinks, you feel what you feel, and no amount of their judgment or scorn is going to change that.

You need to know that you have not only the right, but also the responsibility, to process your losses in a way that allows you to thrive and function on the other side of that loss.

What losses have you been pressured to “let go of” before you’re ready?

What grieving have you been pressured to rush because it’s not “okay” for you to be upset?

What emotional reactions have you been nudged into denying and disowning because emotions make someone ELSE in your life uncomfortable?

It’s really, really hard to build healthy, durable self-esteem when we’re denying and disowning our emotional lives. Especially if we’re doing so to please and appease someone else.

Do your grieving the way you need to do it. Be mindful of the fact that you may or may not receive the support and empathy of everyone around you— nor do you need it in order to successfully process your losses.

What you absolutely DO need, however, is your own unequivocal support and compassion toward your own emotional life.

Don’t wage a war on your emotions just because it’s what other people have done.

Be kind to yourself. Especially around losses.

Self-acceptance and compassion is a decision you can make— only and always.

 

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I don’t know if “everything happens for a reason.”

You hear that a lot in personal development circles. “Everything happens for a reason.”

You hear it a lot in religious circles. “God has a plan.”

Maybe that’s true, maybe it’s not. From a metaphysical perspective, those questions are above my pay grade.

Even if we believe in God, I don’t know if we can say for sure “he has a plan.” I’ve worked with a lot of people in my career as a therapist, the experiences of whom make me wonder about any “plan” that involves as much pain, complexity, and confusion as this one supposedly being played out by a loving, forgiving God.

Understand, I’m not saying God DOESN’T have a plan, or that things DON’T happen for a reason. I’m just acknowledging that, with the perceptual limits we have slapped on us as human beings, it’s impossible for us to know such things. Which is why, I suppose, words like “faith” exist.

No. I don’t know about the metaphysical certainty or mechanics of any grand “plans” or “reasons.”

But I do know that we, as humans, have the opportunity to find meaning in our experience.

We have the opportunity to CREATE meaning out of our experience.

And the psychological research— which is more hands on and directly observable than questions of God’s plan or lack thereof— indicates that people who spend time meaningfully grappling with the question of what their experiences MEAN tend to be happier and more functional than those who neglect that question.

Does everything serve a purpose? Who knows. But we can MAKE everything that happens to us serve a purpose in our lives.

Put another way, we can try on the hypothesis that everything hat happens to us has something to teach us. It serves a purpose in that somehow, some way, everything that happens to us can help further our goals and fulfill our values.

It was once suggested to me that a belief adopted by many successful people is that everything happens for a reason, and that reason serves us.

Keep in mind, that’s just a belief— it may be true or not.

But its VALUE isn’t necessarily in whether it’s true. It’s VALUE— much like any belief— is in how it directs our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

The fact is, we don’t know if MOST of our beliefs, either positive or negative, are true.

We think we develop beliefs based on what we understand to be true or not, but the psychological research suggests that’s not actually the case most of the time.

Most of the time, we adopt beliefs not because they’re “true” as we understand them…but rather, we adopt beliefs because of the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors they make possible.

Important distinction, that.

If you adopted the belief that everything happens for a reason, and that reason actually SERVES you…how would you look at your daily experiences differently?

If you adopted the belief that everything happens for a reason, and that reason actually SERVES you…how would you look at experiences of “failure” differently?

If you adopted the belief that everything happens for a reason, and that reason actually SERVES you…how might that equip you to deal with challenges in a way that people who DON’T have that belief are NOT equipped?

It might be a powerful game changer.

Don’t get hung up on whether your beliefs are true. Especially beliefs that no one, at least in this lifetime, can prove or disprove— like “everything happens for a reason” or “God has a plan.”

Trust me, no matter how much you meditate and/or pray on those questions, you’re not going to get a clear, unambiguous answer. And you don’t need one.

Focus instead on what, inside you, those beliefs make possible and likely.

What thoughts do those beliefs make it easy to think?

What feelings do those beliefs make it easy to have?

What behaviors do those beliefs make it easy to do?

By choosing your beliefs— and not getting hung up on the metaphysics of it all— you can reshape the way you deal with everyday life in some powerful, surprising ways.

 

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Sometimes the people around us are going to pull some real boneheaded moves.

They’re going to do things that we know, without a doubt, are wrong headed.

They’re going to say things that we know, with no question, are simply incorrect.

They’re going to think things that we find silly and feel things we find exaggerated.

And what’s more…there’s going to be nothing we can do about any of the above.

EVEN IF we know we’re right, and they’re wrong.

EVEN IF we know that their lives would definitely be made better if they just did what WE KNOW they should do.

EVEN IF they’ve done stuff EXACTLY like this before— against our advice, even— and produced a less than desirable result in the past.

The fact is, we simply cannot control what other people think, feel, and do…regardless of how right we might be and how wrong they might be.

It is not, in any way, shape, or form, even our JOB to try to control other people’s behavior.

Influence, yes— everybody’s always tying to influence everybody else’s behavior as a matter of course.

But control…it’s not our place to control anyone but us. (And even THAT is a dicey proposition sometimes.)

It is our job, however, to develop the emotional management tools we need in order to handle it when the people around us pull boneheaded maneuvers. When people discard good advice; when they ignore relevant examples; when they fail to heed the lessons of history.

Part of what makes an emotionally mature person, emotionally mature, is the fact that they have developed the skill of self-talk. They know when and how to talk themselves down when their impulse might be to scream at someone who is dong something boneheaded that they “should” clearly be able to avoid.

We manage our feelings by talking to ourselves.

We’re always talking to ourselves.

We may not always be fully aware of how we’re talking to ourselves, but our self-talk is always there, keeping up a constant commentary on everything around us. Making sense of the world; perceiving things; judging things; asking questions; answering questions. We are never without the conversation that happens in our head.

It sounds like a simple concept, self-talk. But it’s something that is very often ignored by most people, most of the time.

How do we handle it WHENEVER we have an impulse to try to step in when someone around is making a boneheaded move?

We have to talk ourselves down.

We have to give ourselves good, valid reasons to back off.

We have to acknowledge to ourselves that, yes, maybe it would be better if that other person would just take our OBVIOUSLY VERY GOOD advice…but we’re not that other person, and we can’t make that decision for them.

We have to talk ourselves through the feelings of anger and disappointment that are often evoked when the people around us are behaving in frustrating ways.

The difference between people who can handle it and people who fall apart when the people around them do dumb stuff is the quality of their self-talk.

Emotionally mature people learn to listen for and consciously use self-talk to their advantage.

Self-talk becomes the way they handle it when things don’t go their way— particularly when people don’t behave as they “should.”

People who don’t use self-talk particularly well…they tend to be at the mercy of the boneheaded behavior of the people around them.

They tend to be at the mercy of their own impulsivity.

Being at the mercy of boneheads and impulsivity is not a fun place to be.

So learn how to talk to yourself.

It won’t stop the people around you from pulling really boneheaded moves. But it will make it mostly their problem, and less yours.

 

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You don’t have to be “right” all the time in order to live a fun, fulfilling life.

You don’t even have to be right MOST of the time.

You don’t need to have all the answers; you don’t need to know the “truth” on a spiritual or metaphysical level; and you certainly don’t need to follow just the right guru, regardless of what some gurus might want you to believe.

You can be wrong most of the time and still have an awesome life.

IF you’re open to course correcting.

IF you’re willing to acknowledge and admit when you’re wrong.

IF you have the courage to sometimes look a little silly.

IF you don’t have too much of your self-image wrapped up in being “right.”

So much of our time and energy is expended on worrying whether we’re right— either literally, or spiritually, or in principle, or morally, or practically.

Hours and hours and HOURS we waste, worrying about being “wrong.”

It’s no sin or crime to be wrong— despite what our upbringing might have taught us.

It is maladaptive as hell, however, to remain inflexible in wrongness once it’s realized.

Do you have any idea how many people persist in an error or a misperception or mistake JUST because they’ve spent so much time being wrong?

It’s called the “sunk cost fallacy.” People figure that they’ve made so much time and invested so much energy (and sometimes money) making a mistake, that they “should” see it through…even if they’ve realized that they’re on the wrong track.

For some people it’s a matter of pride. Their ego can’t sustain the blow it would take if they owned up to how wrong they’ve been.

For others it’s a social thing. They don’t want to deal with the prospect of ridicule from their friends or social circle if they admit to being wrong.

Look, everybody’s wrong sometimes. It’s part of life. It’s even a part of SCIENCE— in fact, being wrong is kind fo the part of science that makes science valuable as a way of arriving at knowledge.

If we were never wrong, we’d never have to do the work of reexamining our assumptions.

If we were never wrong, we’d never have to think deeply about our processes and needs.

If we were never wrong, we’d never need or find value in other peoples’ input— why would we want to hear what OTHER people have to say, if we were never wrong?

C’mon.

Don’t be afraid to be wrong— even very publicly.

Don’t be afraid to look silly— even among your friends.

Developing a sense of humor and a sense of perspective about being wrong and looking silly are among the most important emotional tools that emotionally mature people will develop.

Put another way: would YOU trust a leader, a mentor, a therapist, or a sponsor who simply couldn’t admit that they were ever wrong?

Why not?

Because when people can’t admit they’re wrong, it means they haven’t developed the emotional maturity and resilience required of leaders, mentors, therapists, or sponsors.

We can take the subjects with which we deal seriously without taking ourselves too seriously.

We can even take our lives, our values, and our goals seriously without taking ourselves too seriously.

Get out there and be wrong. Make mistakes. Generate some hilarious stories you can laugh about later.

But more importantly— get out there and develop the skill of not freaking out when you’re wrong. Develop the skill of not being in denial when you’re wrong. Develop the skill of pivoting, intentionally and self-compassionately, when you discover you’re wrong.

Don’t be that person who refuses, over and over again, to admit when things have gone awry.

Live in the real world with me— where we generate real results, because we’re not afraid to admit that we’re not perfect.

What a concept, no?

 

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