Use Your Damn Skills

Others don’t need to agree that your experience is valid, for your experience to be valid.

A great deal of my social media feed today is preoccupied with a story that had been publicized about a celebrity’s behavior while on a date. I saw post after post opining on whether the celebrity’s behavior on the date was merely “boorish,” or whether his behavior rose to the standard of “sexual assault.”

More than a few of the posts passed judgment on “how bad” this celebrity’s behavior was, how “guilty” or “not guilty” he was (and of what “charge”), and whether the woman with whom he’d gone out on the date “should” have publicized her painful experience with this man.

We’re a culture that loves to judge how “valid” others’ experiences— particularly their painful experiences— are.

We love to apply our own standards of “how bad” an experience has to be before it’s considered to be “valid” as a painful, damaging thing.

If an experience doesn’t rise to our standard for “bad enough” to be considered painful or damaging, we often instinctively retreat into a position of, “they should just suck it up. They shouldn’t be THAT damaged by that experience.”

The thing is…nobody gets to tell us how damaged we “should” be by an experience.

Nobody gets to tell us whether an experience is or isn’t a legitimately “damaging” experience.

This is what drives me crazy when people mock others’ “triggers” (or even the word “trigger” itself); it drives me crazy when people are dismissive of others’ painful experiences as “not that bad;” it drives me crazy when people pass judgment on whether others’ experiences aren’t “bad enough” to be considered traumatizing or damaging.

Unless it’s your experience, you don’t get to decide that.

An experience is exactly as damaging as it is. The ex post facto judgment of the culture or other people doesn’t change how damaging an experience is.

I’m not talking about a legal standard, here. I’m not a lawyer. Matters of criminal charges and consequences are outside of my realm of expertise. I’m not making the argument that people should be held criminally or civilly accountable for behavior based solely on its impact— the truth is, I have no idea what those standards “should” be, and I’m glad I don’t have to think about it professionally,

I’m talking about acknowledging and healing the psychological and emotional impact of traumatic events.

When it comes to healing, we don’t do ourselves any favors by dismissing the impact of events simply because other people may or may not agree on how badly it “should” have impacted us.

We cannot heal something the impact of which we do not fully acknowledge.

It’d be like trying to repair a hole in your roof, but refusing to measure the size of the whole because the branch that fell on the roof couldn’t POSSIBLY have left a hole THAT big.

Do you have any idea how many people I’ve worked with who have been hampered in their recovery work because they can’t bring themselves to acknowledge the full magnitude of their woundedness…mostly because they’ve been convinced by the culture or the people around them that their experience “shouldn’t” be that bad?

Why do people feel it necessary to pass judgment on how profoundly experiences “should” impact people, or whether or not people’s behavior was “that bad” or not? Why did the story about the celebrity’s bad date consume so much mileage on my Facebook feed the other day?

Part of it is our old friend: denial.

There is an extent to which we truly believe we can avoid the impact of something if we just simply deny that it hurt us.

It’s well-known that the most reliable way to tell if you’ve hurt someone is if they instinctively respond, “THAT DIDN’T HURT!”

Denial is a tempting defense mechanism. I get it. It’s kind of the ultimate in magical thinking— as if we could affect tangible reality, change things that have already happened, merely by playing make believe.

The phenomenon whereby we gang up to collectively judge whether a particular event “should” or “shouldn’t” be considered “that bad” is kind of an exercise in collective denial. It’s as if, if we can get enough people to wish hard enough that certain events aren’t “that bad,” then those events will, in fact, be not “that bad” if and when they ever happen to us.

It’s a cute, fanciful theory.

But it’s not true.

Experiences are exactly as bad as they are.

They have exactly the impact they have.

Acknowledging this, with eyes wide open, is an absolutely necessary precondition to healing.

 

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What obscures your vision?

We’re all flying at least partially blind. Even me.

(ESPECIALLY me, sometimes.)

It’d be wonderful if we walked around at all times with a perfectly balanced, healthy perspective on everything that’s happening in our lives, in the world, in the universe. For that matter, our brains like to fool us into THINKING we have a perfectly clear, perfectly balanced perspective on things.

But we don’t.

Everyone is blinded by something.

Maybe we’re blinded a little when it comes to some things, or blinded a lot when it comes to other things. But we must come face to face with the reality that our vision is always at least somewhat obscured.

What blinds us?

Sometimes it’s our past.

Our brains are designed to keep track of experiences we have. Even though we don’t consciously, perfectly remember many of the moments of our lives, our brains are actually VERY good at keeping track of what are called “flashbulb” moments— i.e., moments of particular trauma or particular ecstasy.

Our brains keep track of these moments because the main job of our brains is to keep us alive. As it turns out, in order to keep us alive and healthy, it’s helpful to keep track of things that feel awful or feel great, so we can do what we can to avoid the former and repeat the latter.

Sometimes, this quirk of our brains serves us well. It triggers cautionary responses that help us avoid getting hurt, and it triggers beguiling responses that help draw us toward possible pleasure.

However, sometimes, those triggers, which are designed to be helpful and which often ARE helpful…can blind us.

Sometimes a trigger that was originally meant to warn us of danger sounds too loud and too long for it to be of practical use. Its warning siren sounds too loud and too long inside our brains for us to be able to think and act productively and responsively to problems.

In the cases of people who have post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the warning sirens insider their heads have been sounding for so long, it’s become impossible to turn them off, so EVERYTHING feels like a threat.

Likewise, sometimes a trigger that was originally meant to draw us toward pleasure fires too often and indiscriminately in our brains, leading us to maladaptive comfort behaviors that might have been okay or survival-enhancing in moderation…but when indulged too often, becomes a threat to our health or well-being.

In the cases of people who have developed unhealthy relationships to food or behaviors like sex or gambling, triggers that were originally meant to highlight things that enhance survival (like eating and shagging) have come to the point where they’re firing too often, causing a person to become preoccupied. If a trigger is constantly firing, then it becomes impossible to respond to it in a reasonable way— it just becomes background noise, that is either attended to all the time…or never attended to at all.

Triggers can blind us.

And then, after awhile, even our FEAR of triggers can blind us.

Our pasts, and the triggers associated with our pasts, are only one category of things that can blind us.

We can also be blinded by our belief systems, which dictate to our conscious and unconscious minds what we consider possible.

We can be blinded by prejudice that we either do or don’t consciously know about. (Yes, even “good people” with the best of intentions struggle with prejudice.)

We can absolutely be blinded by overwhelming emotion, which is excellent at narrowing our perspective and limiting our options when it comes to realistically problem-solving in the moment.

Understand: the point isn’t to do away with our blind spots.

The truth is, we can only do so much to clear our vision. Triggers, beliefs, attitudes, emotions…those things are going to happen, and they’re going to put blinders on us.

We CAN’T do away with our blind spots.

Part of being human, is being partially blind.

The point is to get ourselves out of denial that we are flying at least partially blind, at least some—if not most— of the time.

The point is to understand the sources of our obscured vision…and accept that we have to compensate for our blind spots.

The point is to give up the illusion that we are, can be, or should be perfect. If we’re going to make real progress in building better lives, job number one is to accept the glorious messiness and imperfections of the project in front of us.

To make a start on any of it, we have to stop being defensive about the fact that we’re partially blind, and embrace it. Get curious about it. Dedicate yourself to learning about your particular blind spots.

I’m still learning about mine.

 

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It’s not often that our problem is our goals aren’t “big enough.”

I realize it’s the “in” thing in the personal development field to encourage people to set big, audacious goals. A good friend recently told me he thinks people should set “goals that scare them.” I see in my social media feeds every day posts from personal development and self-help teachers encouraging people to shoot for the moon, telling them nothing is impossible, telling them to think and live BIG!

“Thinking big” is great in theory.

But it’s my experience that most of the time, in the real world, people who are struggling with their goals have usually thought too big, too fast.

I understand the idea behind “setting goals that scare you” is that the breathtaking audaciousness of those goals is supposed to inspire people, get them back in touch with what they REALLY want, goose them into action by posing a motivating challenge.

But, in the real world, do you know what more often happens when we’re scared of something?

That’s right— we avoid it.

For example: a lot of people are scared by the idea of quitting smoking.

Mind you, quitting smoking is a huge, audacious, inspiring goal for a lot of people. There are few behavior patterns that cause as much pain for as many people as smoking.

But the goal of quitting smoking scares a lot of people, because they’re very aware of how dependent they are on the habit of smoking. They’re aware of the physiological unpleasantness of nicotine withdrawal. They’re aware of how smoking provides a behavioral crutch in social situations. They’re aware of all the reinforcing feelings and experiences they associate with smoking, and a lot of the time they’re also aware of how unpleasant it’s often been when they’ve tried to quit smoking in the past.

True fear rarely inspires people.

More often it paralyzes them.

That’s why I’m not so hot on “goals that scare us.” I’m far fonder of “goals that seem too easy.”

For example: instead of the grandiose goal of “GIVING UP SMOKING FOR GOOD,” I prefer the goal of “smoke a third fewer cigarettes today than you did yesterday.”

Instead of the grandiose goal of “RESTRICTING MY CALORIES DRAMATICALLY AND LOSING TWENTY POUNDS OF BODY FAT,” I prefer the goal of, “just this week, eat one hundred fewer calories a day than you have been eating.”

Instead of the grandiose goal of “NEVER DRINKING ALCOHOL AGAIN,” I prefer the starting point of “Just this week, pick three days when you won’t drink at all, come hell or high water. And if you can’t do that? Pick ONE day this week when you won’t drink at all, come hell or high water.”

Of course, all of these example goals are starting points. But that’s the point: someone who manages to successfully achieve these “starting point” goals will start to build confidence. They will have real-world, impossible-to-deny, first hand experience with ACTUALLY achieving goals…which not only provides them with a squirt of the reward neurotransmitter serotonin in their brains, but also gives them the confidence to adjust their goals just little bit upward.

Which is more motivating for a beginning runner: the goal to run a marathon, or the goal to run three minutes without stopping?

Which is more motivating for someone who is trying like hell to quit a habit: NEVER DO THE HABIT AGAIN, or figure out a way to keep from doing the habit for the next hour?

Which is more motivating for someone who is trying to clean their house and feels overwhelmed by it: CLEAN THE WHOLE HOUSE, or spend ten minutes doing the dishes?

I understand that some people ONLY want to think about moonshots. Moonshots are sexier. They’re more interesting to think about. They’re the stuff of movies and TV dramas. Self-help gurus routinely make money hand over fist encouraging people to shoot for the moon instead of setting small, incremental, doable goals.

But I want you to make actual change in your actual, everyday life.

I want you to build confidence in your ability to set goals and achieve them.

I want you to build your habit-changing muscles.

I want to help people AVOID getting freaked out by their goals, not encourage them to set goals that will make them feel inadequate and silly when they struggle with achieving their grandiose vision.

If you really want to realistically reach for the stars…keep your feet on the ground.

 

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What if it’s not about discovering something new?

So many people seem to be on quests for something new, different, profound, life-changing. And there is certainly no dearth of gurus, teachers, or experts who are happy to offer it to them.

But what if…what if the quest for something “new” that will change your life is kind of a myth?

What if there’s nothing truly “new” out there that will change your life?

What if the real secret is about remembering who you are, and what you already know, in the first place?

What if you already have the knowledge and skills you need in order to completely transform your life and the lives of the people around you…but you just haven’t, for whatever reason, figured out a way to organize and use that knowledge and those skills in just the right ways?

I realize it’d be the easier “sell” to claim that I have some sort of profound knowledge that you lack. That the “doctor” in front of my name gives me access to a vault of esoteric wisdom that is being kept from all you mere mortals, and you must pay me for access to that vault.

I could probably make a lot more money if I pretended that there was something, anything, they taught me in graduate school that isn’t freely available in dozens of places on the internet, at the library, or in twelve-step meetings in very city and town in the country.

In fact, there are many gurus who do make a giant profit making just such these claims.

Well, in fairness, they do more than claim they are privy to some esoteric knowledge that the common seeker lacks. First they usually spend a fair amount of time and effort making you feel stupid and vulnerable for your up-until-then futile attempts to discover truth for yourself.

Their marketing strategy, see, is heavily dependent upon you believing that you fundamentally know less than they do, particularly about Big Picture things— life, love, relationships, how the mind and brain work, how to make a life work.

Their theory is, if they can stir up feelings of inadequacy in you about your basic ability to handle life, you’ll be more likely to hand over your credit card number to them so they can fix it with their more evolved, more connected, more incisive philosophies and techniques.

By the time you get to the seminar, or you buy the book, or you finish the tape series (anybody remember tapes? They were these clunky things on which you listened to audio content before the advent of MP3’s), you were already invested in believing the guru’s claims, because, well, you’d literally invested money in it. There’s a phenomenon we psychologists call “cognitive dissonance” that refers to our ability to convince ourselves that something has merit when we’ve already bought into it, so as to avoid feeling foolish.

There is a subset of personal development gurus who have built their entire EMPIRES on peoples’ desire to reduce their cognitive dissonance once they’ve invested money in their products.

Let me dissipate the suspense: I do not have “new” knowledge for you.

I do not have esoteric wisdom that was handed to me by a shaman on a Peruvian mountaintop.

(There is one self-help guru out there who lured clients into a Native American-themed sweat lodge ceremony, claiming he had been trained and credentialed by, among others, Peruvian shamans. As it turned out, these claims were fraudulent…a fact only publicized AFTER three clients had died and multiple others had been injured when he conducted the sweat lodge incorrectly.)

Maybe the fact that I don’t have new, novel knowledge or spiritually-revealed wisdom is a letdown.

But for what it’s worth: I have seen people make real, substantive changes in their lives. I’ve seen people get happier and more satisfied with their lives. I’ve seen people change the level at which they were living in profound ways. And it didn’t take profound, esoteric knowledge.

In most cases, it took reminding them of things they already knew.

It took reminding them of who they are.

It took figuring out ways in which they were already survivors and thrivers…and making that knowledge and wisdom, which they already had and had already used, more easily accessible to them.

I don’t know everyone who is reading these words personally. I don’t know your challenges, I don’t know your strengths, I don’t know your weaknesses. It may be the case that you, you reading right now, you are the exception to what I’m saying here. Maybe you’re the ONE person who truly needs “new” knowledge to really change your life.

But I doubt it.

If you’re reading these words, if you’ve somehow stumbled upon this page on the Internet, I’m betting it’s because you actually are a survivor.

I’ll bet it’s because you are a seeker.

I’ll bet it’s because you have already been through some things…and you’ve survived so far. You did that somehow. You have resilience and knowledge and skills in there somewhere.

I recommend that you don’t take advice or seek guidance from any guru, teacher, or guide who doesn’t enter into their relationship with you with profound respect for these facts.

First and foremost: remember who you are.

 

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I’ll spare you the suspense: someone probably disapproves of you right now.

In fact, I guarantee someone disapproves of you right now.

It might be someone you know, or someone you don’t know. It might be someone who is actually important to you, or someone who isn’t. It might be someone whose opinion impacts your professional or personal life in an important way, or it might not be.

But there’s no escaping it: it’s a sure bet someone out there disapproves of you.

If you’re like most people— including me— that probably bugs you. It probably bugs you more than it “should,” objectively.

But this isn’t news.

We’re very often told that we “shouldn’t” get as upset as we do about other peoples’ negative opinions of and reactions to us.

In fact, it’s one of the most well-worn tropes of personal development literature that we place too much stock in other peoples’ opinions, and we’d be much happier if we gave up our desire and need to be liked by other people.

As if it were that simple.

Believe me, if there was a quick, reliable way for us to shed our addiction to other peoples’ approval, I’d be the first person out there embracing it (and marketing the hell out of it, for that matter). I’d like nothing more than for it to be easy and simple to leave our craving for other people to like us behind us.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with well-worn tropes of the personal development industry…it’s not that simple.

I do think our reliance on the approval of others is a form of addiction.

And, as any recovering addict will tell ya…there’s nothing “easy” about surrendering an addictive “fix” that has become central to someone’s existence.

Addictions are addictions precisely because they scratch an itch for us.

Addictions are addictions because they solve, or appear to solve, a problem for us, at least in the short term. (The fact that most addictive “solutions” to problems usually end up creating bigger and worse problems isn’t something that occurs to us in the moment we’re pursuing our fix.)

Addictions are addictions because they are self-perpetuating— that is, indulging in an addictive “fix” makes it more likely that we’ll return to that fix in the future.

And, perhaps most importantly…addictions are addictions because they reduce negative feelings. That is to say: if we give up our addiction, we are still saddled with the problem of how to cope with certain negative feelings. And as any addict will tell you, one of the reasons addicts tend to BECOME addicts in the first place is, we’re not great at handling negative feelings all the time.

All of which is to say: if you find giving up your reliance on, preoccupation with, or addiction to the approval of others, there’s no reason to be hard on yourself.

EVERYBODY finds it hard to wean themselves from the approval and acceptance of others to some extent.

Almost NOBODY finds it easy to just “stop caring what others think,” no matter what the self-help experts recommend.

Treat it like the addiction that it is, and acknowledge that you’re hooked. Acknowledge that giving up that addiction, much liking giving up any addiction, is going to require you to face some hard truths about your life, and it’s probably going to require you to endure some significant discomfort.

What role does seeking others’ approval play in your life?

If significant others disapproved of you…what would that mean for you? What would that feel like?

If you refused to scramble for the approval of others…what would be different in your life? How would you feel different? What kinds of new thoughts would go through your head?

What would the voices in your head from your PAST say?

What could you say back to them?

Something most addicts understand, at least intuitively, is that part of the reason we are addicts is because it truly seems like the “easy” route. If we just give in to our addiction to others’ approval, we don’t have to think about all that messy, unpleasant, anxiety-provoking questions I just asked.

It sometimes seems easier just to go on autopilot.

There’s no doubt that it SEEMS easier. And to people who have often not had an easy time of life…the easy path sometimes seems to make a lot of sense.

The good news, however…is that the more practice you get asking the hard questions, taking the tougher path, choosing to sit with the anxiety and endure the discomfort…the easier those things get.

You’ve survived tough times. You know how to make hard decisions.

Start asking questions of your addiction.

And watch how your addiction starts squirming.

 

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There are lots of ways that we freak ourselves out, or let ourselves get freaked out by either situations we’re facing or the people around us.

It’s rarely our fault or intention. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, “You know what? I think I’ll just totally freak myself out about this situation, and make it so that I’m unable to function. That sounds like fun.”

But the truth is that we do, often, find ourselves intimidated, overwhelmed, stressed, or exhausted by situations that we might otherwise have the knowledge and skills to handle…if only that knowledge and those skills weren’t being shrouded by a fog of panic and anxiety at the moment.

First thing’s first: if you are feeling freaked out, you don’t need to apologize for or hide your feelings.

A lot of people, when they start to feel freaked out, immediately move to hide their freak-out from the people around them. These attempts, in turn, usually add yet another layer of stress and anxiety to the situation— and often don’t even work.

(Have you ever been around someone who is clearly freaking out, but working hard to keep the people around them from knowing they’re freaking out? It makes for an awkward situation.)

If you’re feeling freaked out, just acknowledge it.

Acknowledge it to yourself, and maybe even acknowledge it to the people around you, depending on the situation. Very rarely does any good come from trying to conceal a freak out once it’s underway.

There’s no shame in getting freaked out. Everybody gets freaked out. To be freaked out is to be human.

Then, once you’ve come face to face with the fact that you’re freaking out…it becomes possible to figure out whether you’re needlessly getting freaked out.

That is to say, whether your feelings of being freaked out at that moment may be the result of other peoples’ expectations; suddenly encountering a situation that is unfamiliar or unexpected; or having a situation you thought would go one way suddenly go another way, leaving you in the position of having to adapt in quick, uncomfortable ways.

The fact of the matter is, we are often more skilled, more poised, more experienced, and more capable in situations than we give ourselves credit for.

Often times, we forget how skilled, poised, experienced, and capable we can be, because our frontal lobe (the part of our brain that is really good at decision making, critical thinking, and problem solving) is being momentarily short circuited by our limbic system (that part of our brain that responds to crises with options of fight, flight, or freeze— the part of our brain that is lit up like a Christmas tree whenever we’re freaked out, in other words).

If you’re reading these words, trust me: you have intellect, experience, and toughness that I do not have, and that few other people have.

It’s not a contest, but it is a fact: there are times and places when you know exactly what you’re doing, and you do well it well.

Unfortunately, when our limbic system gets activated in moments of panic, it becomes tough to call to mind those times and places when we feel perfectly at ease, perfectly competent, perfectly able and adequate…which leaves us feeling awkward, incompetent, and inadequate.

Sometimes we get freaked out because other people have gone out of their way to get us freaked out.

It can be an interpersonal strategy on the part of insecure people to try to arouse feelings of confusion, inadequacy, and insecurity in other people, so they might achieve an effortless leg up in social situations. It’s to their advantage that we don’t experience ourselves as confident and competent…because if we did, we’d be giving them “competition.”

When we’re getting freaked out, we’re usually thinking in black and white terms.

If something doesn’t go perfectly, we immediately rush to the conclusion it was a complete failure. If an interaction doesn’t go entirely smoothly, we rush to the conclusion it has gone so painfully awry that everyone now hates us.

The limbic system isn’t good at nuance (and for good reason: when we were cave-people trying to avoid getting eaten by sabertooth tigers, probably the last thing we needed was to contemplate the nuances of whether we should RUN LIKE HELL or not).

The good news is: we don’t have to freak ourselves out.

We can learn to recognize when we’re getting freaked out, and to use the skills and tools we already have to help us calm down.

Right now, ask yourself: how would I know when I’m starting to freak out?

What happens in my body? What happens in my mind? What thoughts go through my head?

It may sound like an absurdly obvious question, but a lot of us don’t stop to ask it very often. If we needed a reliable set of warning signs for when we’re on the slippery slope to getting freaked out…what would those signs be?

Then, we can do simple, step by step things to arrest our slide down that slope.

We can breathe, slow and easy— five counts in, hold for three, five counts out.

Fun fact: the neuropsychological research suggests that it’s really, really hard for the limbic system to dominate our functioning when we’re breathing slow and easy (why do you think this is the first lesson every novice meditator learns?).

In the coming weeks, we’ll be looking at the issue of how to avoid freaking ourselves out in far more depth, including specific tips and tricks to remember who we are in those scary moments when we’re drawn into thinking we’re someone far less capable and smart.

But in the meantime, repeat as necessary: you don’t have to let yourself get freaked out.

You are enough. You have skills. You’ve handled things far tougher than the situation in front of you right now.

Now…breathe for me.

 

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There are so, so many things we can’t control in life.

And believe it or not…that’s the good news.

It’s because we only control a small subset of things— usually restricted to our attitudes and behavior— that we don’t have to worry about the huge, huge array of things that we can’t control…and we can direct our energy toward the things we can influence.

Every time we attempt to direct energy toward a thing we can’t control, we sacrifice that energy from something we can control.

It’s like bleeding energy and focus for no productive purpose.

For example: we can’t control our genetics.

Lots of us have genetic predispositions toward certain conditions. It’s very easy for me, for example, to fall into addictive and compulsive behaviors, because those tendencies are strongly encoded in my genetics.

Insofar as we cannot chose our biological parents, we can’t control our genes.

Another thing we can’t control, at least with precision and consistency, is other peoples’ behavior.

As we’ve explored on this blog in recent weeks, we can certainly INFLUENCE other peoples’ behavior. It’s silly to say we don’t have an effect on other people with how we behave and react.

But it’s also the case that we can’t CONTROL their behavior.

Even if we threw every last ounce of energy and focus we had at ATTEMPTING to control their behavior— as some people do— we’d only be able to achieve a degree of influence that is imprecise at best and wildly unpredictable more often than not.

We cannot control, in large measure, the events unfolding on the world stage.

It’s certainly the case that many of us can play a PART in influence the events on the world stage, by voting, participating in political action and protests, and educating our children and the people around us about the issues we care about.

But the fact is, by and large, the events that play out on the national political scene and the international diplomatic scene are beyond our immediate circle of influence.

We can’t control the triggers to which we’ll be exposed in a day.

We can’t control the weather.

We can’t control, to a large degree, the extent to which our bodies deteriorate with age. Yes, we can exercise and pay attention to nutrition and supplement and learn everything we can about health and wellness…but the fact is that we all inhabit human bodies, that break down at the rate they break down.

All these things, we can’t control.

And yet…I still maintain this is the good news.

Can you imagine the kinds of massive shifts that might happen if we took all the energy and focus we spent trying to futilely control things we have NO POSSIBLE CHANCE of controlling…and instead directed it toward influencing things we CAN control?

All that time and energy we spend trying to control what others think, feel, and do…what if we devoted it to tolerating living in the moment?

Sitting with anxiety long enough to make good decisions?

Sitting with addictive cravings long enough to ride them out?

What if we took all the time and energy we take living in denial that our bodies will break down and eventually die…and instead put that toward looking closer, taking our time, slowing down and savoring the moments we’re given to LIVE?

It is the reality that there are all these things we can’t control.

We can’t deny that reality, we can’t disown it. We have to deeply and thoroughly accept it.

(Which, remember, isn’t the same as LIKING it.)

Thank goodness we can’t control everything.

That frees us up to only concentrate on those things we CAN control.

 

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I just read somewhere that it takes “courage” to make changes and/or let things go. It was a curious assertion– though confidently made by the individual whose said it.

I don’t know.

“Courage,” as best I can tell, is not making changes or letting go of things just for the sake of making changes or letting go.

I mean, a lot of the time we’re told that it takes “courage” to make changes or to let go, because many people experience making changes and letting go as difficult things to do. But the fact is, sometimes it’s very easy to change things or to let go— especially if we’re scared of the alternatives.

Put another way, there are times when changing or letting go are the easy things to do. When you grab a cookie sheet out of the oven but forget to use an oven mitt, it doesn’t take a lot of “courage” to let it go.

Letting it go in that case is immediate, instinctive, and much easier than the alternative.

Some people go through life making changes and letting to of things not because they are “courageous,” but because they are afraid.

Have you ever known someone like this? They get anxious, scared, paranoid about a situation, and, instead of sitting with it and seeing how it develops, they scramble to make changes right away…whether those changes are particularly well thought out or not.

Therapists see this a lot when working with people who struggle with unstable relationship patterns. If a person happens to believe, consciously or unconsciously, that growing closer to people, relying on them, and being vulnerable to them will eventually mean pain, then they’re often tempted to torpedo relationships as soon as they become comfortable.

Again and again they do this. Get into a relationship, start to get comfortable, then…anxiety flares up, and instead of sitting with or working through the anxiety…BOOM!

The reason why it’s important to understand that not every impulse to change or let go is important is because there are lots of people— usually people who are selling something— who want to frame “making changes” as always courageous.

They want you to think that by choosing to make changes— namely, by choosing to buy or invest in whatever they happen to be selling— you’re being “courageous.”

These salesman aren’t really even selling the product they’re ostensibly pushing. They’re selling the opportunity for you to feel “courageous,” by setting up an equation whereby “making changes” (i.e., investing in their product) defines you as “courageous.”

They, like so many other marketers, are trying to sell you on the opportunity to feel good about yourself.

The thing is…you don’t need their product to be courageous.

You don’t need their approval to feel good about yourself.

You have all the tools, and all the reasons, to feel good about yourself right here, right now— no purchase or transformation necessary.

The world does this a lot. It tries to control our behavior by setting up equations whereby, if we behave as “they” would prefer, you supposedly fulfill the definition they’ve established as desirable.

Politicians do this an AWFUL lot. They’ll try to sell you on the basic message that “if you’re a good person, if you truly believe in principles X, Y, and Z,” you’ll vote for Candidate Whomever.”

Or, they might try the opposite: “You don’t want to be like all of THOSE people supporting Candidate Whichever, do you?”

Again, and again, and again, the world tries to control our behavior— our voting behavior, our buying behavior, our interpersonal behavior— by telling us what behavior equates to certain qualities.

They try to tell us what “courage” means…by defining behaviors that aren’t necessarily courageous.

They try to tell us what “moral” means…by defining behaviors that are “moral” only in relative terms.

They try to tell us what “good” is, what “high class” is, what “smart” is. But if you look at the behaviors they link to these adjectives, you’ll notice a curious pattern: these behaviors aren’t necessarily “good,” “high class,” or “smart” in and of themselves. They’re “good,” “high class,” and “smart” because they happen to align with what these people want us to do…most often, how they want us to cast our votes or spend our money.

Don’t let the world tell you what “courage” means. It may mean something completely different to you than it does to the world.

Don’t let them tell you what it means to be smart, kind, moral, or high class.

You’re more than their marketing strategies.

You get to define who you are.

 

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Earlier this week, we explored on this blog about how other peoples’ behavior, specifically their behavior toward us, is frequently more about them than it is about us. We also looked at the factors in our own psychology that make it difficult for us to cope when other people don’t treat us as well as we feel they “should.”

It’s true that other peoples’ behavior is frequently far more about them than it is about us, and that we foist a great deal of unnecessary pain on ourselves when we convince ourselves otherwise.

However…we also have to be realistic and ethical about the impact and influence we have on other people. Because we do, in fact, have an impact.

We can’t make decisions for most other adults in our environment. We can’t force anybody to feel anything; we can’t force anybody to think a particular way about anything.

Even people who have spent a great deal of their lives and careers studying the science and art of influence concede that we’re extremely limited in our ability to “make” people do anything.

That said, people think, feel, and behave in certain ways as a result of factors in their environment— specifically, what they believe will lead to reinforcement or punishment. And while we cannot “make” anybody think, feel, or do anything, it is the case that we are important factors in the environments of the people we’re around day to day.

We can’t “make” anyone feel or do anything. But we can, through our words, actions, and responses, increase the odds someone may feel a certain way or do a certain thing. And we cannot afford to be naive about that fact.

The truth is, in order to create and maintain healthy self-esteem, we need to accept the sometimes onerous fact that we have a hand in creating other peoples’ worlds…which means we are both powerful and limited when it comes to other people.

We’re limited, insofar as our influence over other people is not absolute, and it’s frequently not what we think it is.

For example, many of us have the experience of going out of our way to “make” someone feel loved, and yet the person does not feel loved. We may have the experience of going out of our way to “make” someone feel supported, and yet the person does not feel supported. We may have the experience of going out of our way to “make” someone understand what we’re saying…and yet we still get misunderstood.

Our power to influence, in other words, is imprecise.

Our power to influence interacts with a huge array of factors within and around the person we’re attempting to influence…and the result is almost never predictable or linear.

Unless we accept that we’re limited in how we can influence other people, we have no hope of wielding our ability influence in a responsible, ethical, or effective way.

Still…we are powerful when it comes to influencing others. Whether we know it or not, and whether we like it or not.

While we cannot know precisely how our behavior will impact others, how what we put out in the world will interact with whatever’s going on with another person in order to yield exactly what kind of result…we can observe.

We can pay attention to how our words and actions affect other people.

We can use those observations to form hypotheses and draw conclusions. We can be scientists in this way.

The single most important factor in whether we create and maintain healthy self-esteem is our willingness to live life consciously. All the other factors that impact our self-esteem aside, it is virtually impossible to maintain high, healthy self-esteem if we’re going on autopilot. Intentionally choosing to life life “on purpose,” with eyes wide open, is central to self-esteem.

Being observant of and responsive to the reactions our words and actions evoke in others is a prime example of living life at a high level of conscious awareness.

Be realistic.

A harsh word from you may not “make” someone feel lousy— but it’s a perfectly reasonable conclusion that it may heighten the odds that person will feel lousy.

A patient, compassionate response from you may not “make” someone feel better— but it’s a perfectly reasonable hypothesis that it might contribute to them feeling better.

Does the fact that we can and do influence other people in this way make us responsible for their experience of life? Of course not. Other people are as responsible for creating their worlds as we are for creating ours.

However, we ARE responsible for the situations we make predictably more or less likely with our words and actions.

We ARE responsible for the role WE play in the world we create— including the social world we create with the other human beings in our proximity.

And if we’re interested in cultivating healthy self-esteem, we accept— without flinching— our responsibility. We take on the burden of observing and responding to the ripples we create in the pond.

Yes, other peoples’ emotional, cognitive, and behavioral lives are not ABOUT us.

But we do play a role.

 

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Most of the time, we’re overconcerned with how others treat us.

We’re strongly insistent that others in our life treat us with respect, that they’re nice to us, that they’re accepting of us.

We tend to get very agitated when people treat us with disrespect, when they’re not nice to us, and when they reject us.

Make no mistake, I certainly prefer when other people are cool to me. I certainly hold being nice to and respectful toward other people as an important tent in my own moral and ethical code. I believe the world would be a much better place if everyone was awesome to each other, both in the big picture and on individual, daily levels.

But the fact is, the world is often not cool to us.

Even more uncool: people who, by rights, “should” be cool to us…often aren’t.

Even if we’re cool to them, people often aren’t as cool to us as they “should” be.

And this fact, for many people, is devastating.

Why?

Well, part of it has to do with evolutionary psychology. We evolved to value connection, because back in our cave person days, humans who were liked and valued by the other humans in our tribe stood a better chance of survival.

If winter came, and there wasn’t enough food for the whole tribe, the first cave people to be ejected out into the cold were those who didn’t get along with the rest of the group. Popularity and likability were directly tied to the opportunity to survive and reproduce back in the day.

Fast forward a few eons, and here we are, with these brains that come with deeply embedded programming that says if we’re not liked by the people around us, that poses a direct threat to our lives and futures, even if we’re no longer nomadic cave people hunting and gathering our way through life anymore.

Another aspect of our desire to be liked and treated well has to do with a common cognitive distortion called “should” thinking. The Rational Emotive Behavior therapist Albert Ellis used to call this, “shoulding all over ourselves.”

Human beings have a strongly developed sense of “fairness.” Robert Cialdini discusses this at length in his classic book about the principles of psychological influence. As it turns out, most people, in most cultures, experience the strong desire for “reciprocity”— the belief that people “should” return the attitude, approach, or favors bestowed on them by others.

Thus, if we’re cool to someone, and they’re not cool back to us, our “shoulds” kick in, and we get angry. Those people aren’t abiding by the social contract. They “should” treat us better— after all, we treated them well, right?

A third aspect of why we so strongly want to be liked and treated well by others has to do with the deeply ingrained sense of shame many of us were raised with. Many of us have grown up with programming that tells us we’ll be able to tell if we’re being “good enough” people by how others react and respond to us.

If people are not being cool to us, this old programming goes, it’s probably something we’re doing or not doing.

Whether it’s evolutionary psychology, “shoulding” all over ourselves, or shame programming that’s at work, the result is the same: we spend way more time than we need to thinking, ruminating, obsessing about how others treat us.

It’s nice when others treat us well. it’s perfectly reasonable for us, to the extent that we can, to construct a life that is populated mostly by people who do treat us well. People with healthy self-esteem go out of their way to try to cultivate networks of friends and colleagues who treat us with respect and kindness.

But when others don’t treat us well…it means exactly zero in terms of whether we’re “good people.”

When others don’t treat us well…it means exactly zero in terms of whether we’re “worthy.”

When others don’t treat us well…it means exactly zero in terms of whether we’re doing a good job, either in our careers or our lives.

Others don’t treat us well for a variety of reasons…most of which, as it turns out, have much to do with them, and often very little to do with us.

These reasons can range from their own past conditioning; to their own internal struggles; to their attempts to manipulate us; to their basic personality style. Most of which we have little to no influence over.

Understanding and accepting that our preference to be treated well by everyone we encounter is a vestige of our evolutionary psychology, our cognitive biases, and our past programming, can be EXTREMELY liberating.

Keeping others’ behavior toward us in perspective— realizing that most often its about them, not us— can be EXTREMELY liberating.

Accepting that people are sometimes going to be uncool toward us, and that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve kindness and respect…can be EXTREMELY liberating.

It might not be about you. And that’s okay.

 

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