Thoughts yield Emotions, Emotions come from Thoughts. However you think of it, you cannot will emotions into, or out of, existence (Image by author)
# 48 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: Emotions cannot be directly controlled by the will. Try to be scared now. You have to first think of something scary, right? All emotions are this way. They are the fruit of your thoughts.
You Will Never Un-See This Truth
There are some truths that, once presented to the mind, become irrefutable. The truth that emotion cannot be directly controlled by the will belongs to this class. Try it. As demonstrated in the example above, feelings don’t respond to your will. Your mind and thoughts must play an intermediate role. This role is indispensable. Your will cannot control your emotions. It cannot produce fear on its own initiative.
If you try now to be joyful, say, as an act of will, you will encounter the same obstacle. You must think of something joyous first. Once you do, the emotion is easy to produce. In fact, it is impossible to feel any other way for as long as you keep the joyous thought in your mind.
My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.
~Michel de Montaigne
If you cannot make yourself feel a certain way by willing the feeling into existence, neither can you will the feeling out of existence, once you’re feeling it.
While I am a staunch advocate of controlling everything you can. The linked discoveries that my will cannot control my emotions, rather, that my emotions come from my thinking (which I can control), has proved of incalculable worth to me. I hope you will find the same benefit.
Exactly How Does This Help You?
Knowing the general rule of where your emotions come from, allows you to know how to change them. And it will keep you from wasting time and energy listening to bad advice like, ”Don’t be (angry, afraid, anxious,)”
Your will doesn’t control your feelings. So you can safely stop trying.
Sometimes, knowing what not to do is an important step in discovering what to do.
Now, you realize the following:
Your will does not produce your emotions, instead;
Emotions are the products of your thoughts, and;
Thoughts can be controlled by a conscious, willful choice (in the absence of mental illness of neurological pathology), therefore;
Saying this woman feels “bad” doesn’t reveal much about what she’s really feeling. We would have to go granular to find out. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed by author)
# 45 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: In the face of negative emotions, go as granular as you can to analyze and identify exactly what it is you’re feeling. Generalities like, ”I’m just sad,” won’t work.
No matter your optimism, positive-mindedness, or mental toughness, there will be times when you feel bad. Unfortunately, this fact besieges and ensnares us all. Even those whose practice is to deny negative emotions, for a moment feel bad enough to trigger their denial response. It is neither a crime, nor a sin, to feel bad. In the physical world, pain is a signal that something is damaged or injured and needs protective care. Ignoring physical pain can lead to permanent damage.
This is also true of emotional pain. Ignoring or denying mental and emotional pain is not an effective strategy if mental and emotional health is the goal. Neither are generalizations a good remedy. Telling yourself, or others, ”I’m just down today,” or, ”I just feel bad,” doesn’t give any clues either to what it is you’re really feeling, or to the cause. Think of the last time someone mouthed this to you. Did their, ”I just feel bad,” provide enough useful information to offer a solution or ease their suffering?
Sometimes, we guard our privacy by deflecting unwanted attention away from our down times. Uttering a generic, ”I’m just a little down,” can be a defensive, avoidance technique. However, it’s not healthy to do this to yourself. One practice that is helpful is to probe deeper than these surface generalities to unmask exactly, precisely what you’re feeling.
Emotional Nuance Is More Than Semantics
There is a difference between ”sadness,” and depression, and between depression, and anxiety. Likewise, are you ”upset,” or frustrated? ”Angry,” or just annoyed? Do you feel ”hurt,” or ashamed? Are you simply ”bothered,” or do you feel overlooked and invisible? These nuances of emotional intensity and precision are more than mere semantics.
Going ”granular” yields analysis of your feelings with specificity. And the process of ferreting out precisely what you’re feeling, will often reveal why you’re feeling it. Oftentimes, this discovery is the insight you need to change the way you feel. Sometimes this happens instantly. Other times, you’ll come away with a hard-won lesson that can bring beauty and wisdom from the pain. At minimum, you will have a diagnostic tool revealing the root causes of the matter.
The next time you feel bad, go as granular as you can. Dive deeply to discover exactly what you’re feeling. You’ll likely also uncover the ”why” of your negative emotions, and this awareness will equip you to address the roots, and not just the bad, surface fruits, represented by those generic ”bad” feelings.
Emotional Intelligence starts with the recognition that All Emotions Are Valid
# 44 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: Allow everyone in your life to feel how they feel, they’re going to anyway. If you tell them they shouldn’t feel a certain way, you’re alienating yourself by your own emotional ignorance.
To start, I want to acknowledge and thank John Gottman, author of multiple books, relationship and marriage therapist par excellence, and founder of the John Gottman Institute, where many fine people continue his work on relationships and emotional maturity. Many of the things I will touch on in this article I learned from reading his books and watching his videos and Ted Talks (like this one with over a million views).
I’ll also be linking to several articles for further reading. I promise I’m not intentionally plagiarizing any specific comment, phrase, or idea, but after 16 years of assimilation, I’ve adopted a lot of the language as my own.
Wow. Where do I start with this one? It is regrettable that I discovered the truth that all feelings are valid, far too late in my life. 40 years old, married, and the father of 7 kids, I was an emotional idiot, alternately over or under reacting to the negative emotions of the people around me. I even became a full-time minister. Nevertheless, I possessed zero, ZERO emotional intelligence. Why? Mostly because of how I was raised, and consequently conditioned, to deal with negative emotions.
Before proceeding, it must be noted that emotions, typically thought of as feelings, are not just feelings. They are behaviors, too. The feeling of anger can give rise to an outburst (behavior). Negative emotions form patterned responses (including associated behaviors) from a young age.
Four Parenting Styles
Gottman identifies four distinct parenting styles that influence the development of these patterned reactions. These styles imprint children for dealing with negative emotions as they grow into adulthood. I’ve linked an article outlining each of the styles. Only one of them can develop emotionally stable kids who grow up to be emotionally intelligent and emotionally mature adults. That style is the ”Emotion Coach”.
Emotion Coach parents recognize the validity of a child’s negative feelings, and help their child work out appropriate responses. This is the crux of the matter if you ever hope to become emotionally intelligent, benefitting both yourself and the people with whom you are in relationship. All emotions are valid, even if all responses are not.
I wasn’t raised by an Emotion Coach. I was raised to deny negative emotions, to ignore them, and to distract myself from them. My mom was a bi-polar, suicidal alcoholic who took her own emotional medicine. When she felt bad, which was often, she wrote bad checks, or passed out drunk, or slept with inappropriately aged young men, or sometimes…took handfuls of pills.
Whenever I felt bad it was, ”Here honey, you don’t need to feel that way, have a drink.” And when I got angry, she’d get just as angry, or worse, apparently believing the way to exorcise anger was to blow it out of your system. We could be angry together. It was us against the stupid world.
Being A Christian Doesn’t Impart Emotional Intelligence
So, of course, my life followed the stereotypical pattern. I didn’t like to feel bad. I had learned that I shouldn’t have to feel along with many ways to make myself feel better. Sex, and cocaine, and weed were great ways to avoid, ignore, or distance myself from negative emotions.
This wasn’t going to end well, but it was definitely going to end.
At 21, I became a serious Christian. I mean really serious. But reading and memorizing large swaths of the Bible didn’t make me emotionally intelligent. In some ways, my poor understanding of Jesus and Christianity made me less so. If a Christian feels bad, it’s their fault, right? God doesn’t feel bad. Jesus doesn’t. If you feel bad, you must be doing something wrong that more prayer, or listening to more teaching tapes on Faith, or attending more meetings on Sundays and Wednesday nights can fix.
In short, I grew up believing that feeling bad is not okay. Feeling bad when you’re a Christian is REALLY not ok. I mean, what’s the point?
Maybe you grew up in a lion’s den, too. Maybe you were taught to deny your negative feelings because it is not acceptable to feel bad. I want to say however you feel right now is valid. It is how you feel. You don’t have to rationalize those feelings or justify them to anyone. They are yours, and you are entitled to them. I’m sure if we could all see inside your life and your head, we’d understand a lot better why you feel as you do. And if we couldn’t, that’s our problem, not yours.
Having said that, all of your responses to your feelings are not appropriate. I’ll explain shortly.
Even as an ardent Christian, I went years in a state of emotional detachment to people. Growing up with a mom who routinely attempted suicide, and even more regularly threatened it, doesn’t exactly make one trust and value long-term relationships. I had seen her be gut-wrenchingly depressive so often, with nothing ever coming of it, that I completely detached if anyone around me ever cried or got upset. My mom’s drunken, cryee-faced, suicide routine had taught me that kind of drama wasn’t real, and not something to get too alarmed about.
Inappropriate Responses
For years, I was happy, rarely depressed, not a substance abuser, had a wife and kids, friends, and at 26, became a full-time minister.
Then, 12 years ago, after 22 and a half years of marriage, I found out my wife was cheating on me with an old high school ”friend” she had reconnected with on Facebook. I was so emotionally oblivious that it went on for 6 months before I discovered her treachery. But then, according to pattern, I was devastated and angry. Murderously angry.
Those feelings, given my situation, were completely valid. (I even had a licensed Christian marriage counselor tell me so). Feeling betrayed, I wanted to kill. That’s understandable. But actually killing either of them would have been horribly inappropriate. It wouldn’t have erased the adultery, it would have just put me in jail for murder.
That’s an extreme example, but it is my story, and I’m sticking with it.
I’m also ashamed to admit, that sometimes after my girls became teenagers, struggling with typical teenage girl problems, they would cry themselves to sleep at night, and I was emotionally unavailable. Sometimes I would make it worse by telling them to pray. I didn’t want them to feel bad. I offered many reasons why they shouldn’t…usually heavily laced with what I thought were uplifting scriptures. But my attempts were born out of a stupidity about the nature of emotions and emotional connection.
It seemed the more they cried and hurt, the more shut down and aloof I became.
This all changed one night when I picked up my 15 year old second daughter from a party with friends. I knew she had a crush on a boy at the party and on the way home I asked her about him. She became upset and teary as she explained that he had hardly paid any attention to her. Crying, she told me he had been obsessed with another girl. Then she told me how bad this made her feel about herself, and how she would never have a boyfriend.
It was the perfect opportunity for me to be a good, loving, understanding father to a teen-age daughter who just needed me to be there for her. It was a chance to hear her, validate her feelings, and relate to her that I had been rejected and ignored at her age too, and I understood how bad that could feel. I wish I had been that father.
Instead, I told her how silly it was to be upset. I explained that at her age nothing was going to come of this crush. And I told her that the boy was probably not ”godly” anyway and that she was much better off not getting any more involved with him. I told her to be thankful and to feel good that that was over. I can vaguely remember her looking at me incredulously with a tear-streaked face in the dark car. And I thought I had done so well trying to make her feel better.
The Turning Point
When we got home, I went about my normal routine and thought nothing more about it. After a while, I overheard her talking with her mom. She was crying and clearly upset. I got up and came into the kitchen where they were. My daughter was sitting on a barstool, her face in her hands. More teen-aged female drama, I thought. Hadn’t I already dealt with this and helped her get over it on the way home?
I said, ”You didn’t feel this way on the way home, and we get home and you fall to pieces?”
”I cried all the way home, Dad,” she said.
”What? Now, you’re just lying.” I said in return.
She jerked her head up, tears streaming, and I had the flashback of her face in the dark car. My emotional blindness astonished and floored me. After apologizing profusely to her, I retreated into my mind to try to understand how I had tuned out her emotions and her crying on the way home.
Though I had failed at getting her to ignore her bad feelings, I had succeeded in ignoring them myself. My patterned response to her crying had been to erase it from reality. So much that, to me, it didn’t even exist. I had marched into that kitchen in righteous indignation, clouded by emotional self-delusion, as if she was making up the whole dramatic scene just to curry compassion from her mother. I was stunned…in the best possible way.
Emotional Connection
The next day, I searched for the words ”Emotional Connection” and discovered John Gottman.
Do yourself a favor and watch a video, or read a book. Don’t be like me. Er, don’t be like I was!
I’m not that same detached, emotionally unavailable man anymore. It has taken work. Some of the time it has felt very artificial because my ingrained tendencies to deny, deflect, and distract were so deep. I’m no longer afraid to feel bad, quite the contrary. And I have the distinct pleasure and honor of hearing my girlfriend tell that I’m the most emotionally intelligent person she’s ever known.
I have the unspeakable satisfaction to be there for my kids when things are bad, knowing that now, I’m in it with them. I’m able to relate to their emotions, and validate them, and they know it. I’m much more the Emotion Coach now, even to my adult children. I teach and model for them that all emotions are valid, even if all responses are not. I’ve stopped telling them how to feel, or how they shouldn’t feel. I let them feel how they feel. They were always going to anyway.
And I have the chance to share these things with you, dear Reader. I hope you’ll find how affirming and strengthening it is when you allow the people in your life to feel how they feel without judging them, or trying to change their feelings, or ”make them feel better.”
One of life’s greatest gifts is a kind soul who will help us shoulder the burdens of times when we feel down. A friend and partner with whom we can share our hurts without fear of judgement. One who will hear us, hold us, be there through it with us, allowing us the space to feel all we need to feel, and who will help us respond appropriately. You can be that gift.
PS–
There are times you’ll be in a position to validate and affirm someone’s emotions, when you believe the reasons for their emotional state may not be sound. That can happen. When it does, I encourage you to connect emotionally. Tell the person you understand how they feel. You may even say something like, ”It’s understandable you feel that way since that’s how you see ____________.” The time to discuss the reasons for the feelings will come after you affirm the existence of the feelings.
Learn to listen so well you can tell the speaker how they feel
# 43 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: Learn to listen,…no, really listen. You want to be able to summarize not just a list of facts the speaker is relaying, but how the person feels about those facts.
Most advice about listening well, while fine and helpful, focuses on techniques and tools more than on the proper mindset. We are told learning to listen well starts with paying attention. This is true. But where does undistracted attention start? What can our first experiences with listening tell us about being good listeners as adults? Here’s my theory.
No one is born knowing how to listen well. Though newborns dorecognize their own mother’s voices. It is believed they respond to the emotions expressed in ”baby-talk”, and begin to associate speech with the communication of emotion. This happens well before abstract meaning is understood.
This 2017 article in Time magazine shows what happens in mom’s brains when they hear their babies cry. The emotional and verbal centers fire in preparation for an emotionally attuned response. These neural changes don’t happen for non-mothers. Mothers of newborns listen well. Impressively well. They know how their baby feels just by the timbre of the cry. The interesting take away is the clear emotional component involved.
If you hope to listen well, you will also need to recognize how the speaker feels.
This article from the National Institutes of Health cites studies indicating that by ten months, a baby differentiates sounds of her native language from a non-native tongue, and soon thereafter begins losing the innate ability to form sounds not found in the ”mother” tongue.
This baby’s mom knows who it is and probably knows what it wants…just by listening
What does this have to do with learning to listen?
It seems that newborns and their parents are able to both hear and communicate with emotional fluency. That is, there is an unconscious, but underlying and foundational emotional bond when listening for, and speaking to newborns. And the newborn is attuned to the emotional conveyance of the babbling and cooings directed his way. Newborns and their parents intuitively know that verbal sounds carry emotion.
Newborns lose the ability to form words they don’t hear in their native language at about the same time they become more proficient in forming and trying out the words they do hear. This is what makes it difficult to gain linguistic fluency of foreign languages as we age. We will likely never sound like native speakers of languages not our own. We were born with the ability to trill ”R” sounds, but if we don’t hear that sound as infants, we’ll likely lose the ability. Just as it is difficult for a Japanese person learning to speak English who doesn’t grow up hearing the hard ”L” sound since it does’t exist in Japanese.
Babies learn to form sounds, and learn meaning by listening. Sadly, somewhere along the developmental arc, babies learning to speak, and learning new vocabulary, ”outgrow” the initial importance of the emotional impartation of language, in exchange for the mechanical and comprehension components. They stop listening for the emotion and begin listening for the mechanics and the meaning. And parents don’t emphasize the transference of emotion as much as their children age, either.
Paying attention is easy when you care, Impossible if you don’t
To be a good listener means going back, as silly as that might seem. New parents can hear the sound of their own baby because they care. As mother’s listen, their brains change, preparing for an emotional response to the perceived needs of the baby. They know that the emanation of sound is the expression of emotion. Their baby’s…and their own. Even if they are unaware of the psychology behind it, and would never say it just that way.
As this New York Times article points out, good listeners are similarly empathetic, listening from a sense of caring. Responding not just to the words spoken, or the recitation of facts, but also to the emotional frequency. The more you care to apprehend the speaker’s feelings, the easier it is to pay attention. Can you tell the speaker how they are feeling? A good listener can. The better you become at this, the more you will hear and retain. You’ll be listening and connecting beyond mere sound and meaning.
This is a very acute problem. Repeated occurrences on a construction site would be chronic.
# 42 on my, 99 Life Tips– A List is: Learn to differentiate quickly between acute and chronic problems, and the strategies for dealing with both.
Do you know the difference between acute and chronic problems? Do you realize each requires a different strategy?
Simply put, acute problems arise suddenly, can be identified rapidly, and can be solved quickly…not to say easily. Chronic problems are on slow burn. They typically became problems when you weren’t watching, or you inherited them with your position, or were born into them with your family. These are long-term difficulties, they have already had long-term effects, and they promise to linger because there is no easy resolution.
So, when a problem arises, first ask, is this fresh on the scene? Have you faced this issue before? If yes, it’s probably not acute. It’s likely a chronic issue.
For Acute Problems Identify And Modify The Variables
Solving acute problems is a matter of identifying and changing the variables to directly change the outcome. They have this pattern:
A problem occurs. (You step on a nail)
You identify the variable causing the problem. (Nail)
You modify the variable. (Remove nail from foot)
Problem mostly solved.
To solve acute problems, first determine the source. Be honest. Is it you?. Seriously. If that’s the case, those are the easiest to solve. Stop being a problem.
If you’re not the source causing the problem, finding a solution becomes a matter of control. Do you control the variables needed to resolve the issue. That’s why solving acute problems is easier when you’re the source. You control your own actions. When you don’t control the variables, acute and chronic problem solving share a common tactic. Quickly limit your exposure to harm, to the degree possible.
Many acute problems arise from a failure to practice situational awareness. Avoidance of problems is wiser than solving them.
For Chronic Problems Clarify, Then Modify Your Thinking
Chronic, persistent problems wear you down by attrition. You feel resigned to their existence. They aren’t one-offs. They’re either constant, or predictably regular. Even when they feel like a never-ending string of acute events, using acute tactics won’t work. So, what do you do?
Recognition that it’s chronic is step one. Knowing this relieves you of the responsibility for implementing a solution with resources and actions you directly control. Here, it is helpful if you have a friend, spouse, or partner emotionally mature enough to listen to you without trying to offer pat suggestions and solutions. Guys…I’m talking to you(us). This is sexist, but, in general men are poor listeners. We think we can solve any and every problem. Sometimes the best solution is to just listen. Allow your partner, friend, wife, or lover to just vent.
This act of talking through a problem is psychologically and emotionally validating to the one suffering a chronic situation. And often, the ability to talk it through, giving vent to the feelings that arise, is a pressure release valve that reduces the negative impacts, at least for the time being. It also provides a valuable opportunity to clarify how you’re thinking of the problem. Hearing yourself talk about it, can give you insights to help cope with the problem if it cannot be easily or quickly solved. Sometimes knowing we have someone with us, gives us the courage and perseverance we need to face a problem, even if they cannot make it go away.
Changing your view of a problem can often provide some emotional protection. It won’t change the other person’s behavior (if the chronic problem is with a person), but it will change how you see them. You may modify your own connection to them. Changing your thinking may lead you to establish boundaries valuing your own integrity and asserting your own rights. It may cause you to re-categorize the person as you see them in a new, less flattering, more realistic light.
Sometimes The Problem Isn’t Yours To Solve
As you learn to differentiate quickly between acute and chronic problems, it’s also important to recognize when a problem is not yours to solve. This is most often true in chronic situations. You may be hit with the overflow of an issue that is really someone else’s responsibility to deal with. An example would be of a parent trying to negotiate a truce between adult siblings. I’ve written before that this is not the time to be an umpire.
A workplace **** is a chronic problem for the boss to solve. Unless you’re the boss, Make it the bosses problem.
Another example would be with a rude, unprofessional co-worker. This is a classic chronic situation that is unsolvable if you aren’t their direct supervisor. That problem is the bosses problem to solve. As a rule, whether acute, or chronic, don’t pick up problems that aren’t yours to fix.
In this world we have it on good authority that we will have trouble. In many ways, life consists in effective problem-solving. There is nothing wrong with wishing you had no problems to face, but wishing won’t make it so. It is better to embrace the idea that problems are going to come, but you can learn to be effective at solving them, or at least coping with the unsolvable ones. That starts with differentiating quickly between acute and chronic problems, and the strategies for dealing with both.
The ”blood is thicker than water” crowd will take offense at this statement. As will those who maintain you can’t choose your family. All I can say is, you haven’t met my family…and pass me a bottle of water…please.
I’ve thought a lot about this one. When asked what was the best training for a writer, Hemingway famously quipped, ”An unhappy childhood.”
By this measure, I’m well trained. And unfortunately so are my kids. One of whom has a newly minted degree, and is making a helluva good living as a technical writer. Causality???
Let’s raise ”family” beyond mere genetics
I do not aim to denigrate the institution of family. I’d prefer to raise it to something beyond mere genetic propagation. But the sad truth for many is that while shared genes may have established immutable family roles, those roles haven’t translated into healthy relationships. For them, the last place they can be psychologically, emotionally or even physically safe is around some blood relative or other.
In an ideal world, the role of mother, or father, or sibling, would automatically and by default, create a relational bond of care, nurture, support, and trust. You would always and forever have each other’s back, be on each other’s team, be each other’s cheerleader, and be a soft place to fall when life knocks you down. Some enviable families function this way. They’re admirable.
Yet, you and I both know it often doesn’t happen that way. In too many instances, the painful truth is that the most toxic relationships people encounter in life are with family members. The role of mother does not make one a mother. Likewise, a father, or brother, or even child.
Role, or Relationship?
No one should endure any type of real abuse at the hands of ANYONE else, regardless of their genetic role. Instead, a genetic role should be the foundation for the highest quality relationship. Being family should mean we treat each other better than any other relationship we have. A role, a title, a position, shouldn’t be an excuse to neglect the relationship that is supposed to grow out of it, then shrug, and call that ”family” just because of some shared genes. Huh-uh.
The roles never change. They are fixed by genetics. But unless accompanied by the requisite, appropriate relationship, the role alone is thinner than both blood and water in my book. It is a worthless vapor that you can wave your hand through.
A bond thicker than blood or water
And if that’s the case, you can and should find another family. There may not be a genetic link, but a choice that is free and voluntary, responding to genuine acceptance and love, creates a bond thicker than anything that can be poured out on the ground regardless of its color or viscosity.
I have brothers from other mothers, who have never shown me the slightest disrespect. And I’ve enjoyed the love and nurture of mother’s not genetically my own, who have cared for me as if I was (and at least one father like that, too). I have children with none of my genes, and sisters for whom I would do anything in the world. You can’t choose your family? You most certainly can.
Authenticity is magnetic..and is valuable for its scarcity.
# 39 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: Surround yourself with people with whom you can be authentic and still be accepted and loved.
What does it mean to be authentic?
Personal authenticity means living with genuine moral, psychological, and emotional integrity. It recognizes and maintains value-based boundaries. Authentic persons are ”comfortable in their own skin”, and allow for and encourage the same in others.
While being authentic does not automatically mean being an uninhibited exhibitionist, this lifestyle includes the idea that the self-censorship slider is set to ”off” as much as possible. The more you feel the need to self-censor, the less authentic you are, as a rule.
You can be authentic and still act appropriately
While the above is true, there are certainly appropriate times to self-censor and tone it down. My girlfriend, who is the kindest person I know, suffers from what I call ”Traffic Tourette’s”. Sometimes, when I’m on the phone with her during her afternoon commute home, I will get an earful of blue-laced, red-hot authenticity when a driver cuts her off in traffic. This language, though authentic, would not be appropriate when sitting with family at her mother’s Thanksgiving table. Nor is it the kind of language she uses in normal conversation, even in private with me, or among friends.
Being authentic means no play-acting for approval, but is not a license for bad character
But being authentic means you don’t modify your personality to ”play a role” to suit someone else. Certainly not for any length of time. Play acting of this type is extremely common, especially in the modern era of social media, dating apps, and other tools that are little more than personal marketing aids. These tend to present people at the most surface level, and the lowest common denominator. They can cause inauthentic behaviors just to attract attention. And once you’ve attracted someone while not being true to yourself, there is a danger of perpetrating the same inauthenticity for the entirety of the “relationship”.
This comes from the fear of being rejected. This can cause you to change who you are at your core to satisfy their preferences or demands. But doing this means your authentic self gets rejected in favor of a pretend self that cannot be sustained indefinitely.
The flip side of morphing into a different persona, is that some people may use the claim of authenticity to justify being jerks. My admonition to surround yourself with people with whom you can be authentic does not mean you have license to be either rude, hateful, or indiscreet in more public social settings. The mature person recognizes that a facet of genuineness is the ability to moderate behavior and language to appropriate levels.
Be where you feel no need to pretend
If either tendency poses a struggle, here is a good article from Psychology Today that offers some steps and strategies for developing authenticity. There are some good practical steps that can be a help to anyone.
This is the essence of authenticity
It is important to recognize, value, and seek out those relationships which require the least restraint from the full expression of your honest self. The ones where you don’t feel the need to pretend. In my experience, those relationships will be with people who genuinely have your best interests at heart. Oftentimes, these are the people who have witnessed and experienced the full spectrum of YOU. They’ve known you at your best…and at your worst. If they are still there beside you after the latter, you’re with a true friend.
The difference between acceptance and love
The last thing to mention is to note the difference between acceptance and love. You will want to be around people who accept YOU, because they love you. This does not mean they will accept all of your behavior at all times. This is an important distinction. I can love someone and not like their actions. I can love someone and even reject their actions or words as unacceptable. But, if I love them, I believe in the best version of them. Therefore, I’m willing to be there for them through their not-so-stellar periods, provided they express appropriate remorse and willingness to reach for the best, too. And it’s people like that you want to do life with.
“I deserve better” is a positive affirmation in one context, and a fallacy in another
# 36 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: No one would want what he truly deserves in life.
If life was just, or even fair; if karma was instant, no one would want what they truly deserve. This ”tip” is more an assertion to be absorbed and assimilated than something to be practiced. I include it because it falls into the broad category of ”wrong thinking” which is the culprit in 90% of life’s woes. This statement is related to another of my ”assertive” tips, #73, which says Happiness = Reality – Expectations, a topic I’ve written about in another post.
How To Decide What We Deserve?
To deserve means to be worthy of, or to merit, either a reward, or a punishment. The definition implies a standard, or a benchmark. It implies rules. It involves a ruler, and a judge. The idea of deserving something requires a comparative analysis. Your character and actions are measured against some objective criteria. Are you compared to your neighbor, your co-worker, your child, your spouse, Jesus? Or perhaps just against written law.
Clearly, these are relative comparisons, unique to each individual. I may behave better than Charles Manson, or even better than my overbearingly meddlesome neighbor on NextDoor, but not as well as Mother Teresa, so…what do I deserve?
Real Crime Deserves Real Punishment
Undoubtedly, there are crimes demanding justice, and deserving of punishment. Swift punishment, equitably applied, is a sine qua non of a healthy, functioning society. I am not ignoring the existence of crime, or the necessity of law enforcement and a functional criminal justice system. Some crimes deserve extreme sanction. I am not discounting these truths.
Moral vs. Transactional Context
Rather, we are examining the common day-to-day attitudes and beliefs we feel about what we deserve. Because, most people think they deserve better than they get. Or if something good happens, they’re convinced they ”deserved” it. They believe they are entitled to good things on some moral basis. It is this notion I’m addressing.
On the other hand, in a transactional context such as a salary negotiation, in general, you should refuse to accept less than you deserve. Accepting less than what is merited in the workplace diminishes not only your paycheck, but devalues you as a person. It causes a cascading loss of morale that undermines personal confidence and self-esteem. When possible, it is better to walk away from an underpaying job, than suffer the financial and psychological harm that results from staying in it. This will be the subject of another post.
Please consider the differing contexts as you evaluate and incorporate my comments.
Potential Merit On A 10-Point Scale
But, let us suppose our character and actions could be pegged on a 10-point scale with each of us starting with 10 as a maximum possible score. Let us call this our ”Potential Merit”. That is not difficult to conceive. We do each possess an upper limit, representing the possibility of faultless moral character and behavior, even though my hypothetical “potential merit” scoring matrix doesn’t really exist.
Your level of Potential Merit may provide greater opportunities for good deeds than mine, since that will differ according to our respective circumstances, but it cannot surpass mine on a raw 10-point scale; with 10 being the highest possible score. At maximum potential, everyone starts at 10. This score represents faultless moral behavior.
Let’s also suppose the existence of some spiritual or cosmic ”assessors” grading you at every moment. They are making comparisons of your actual performance against your potential performance to determine what you merit, that is, what you deserve. There is no grading curve. Every fault, every wrong word and deed hammers your score with de-merits. The only way to merit (deserve) good results is to consistently grade out at 10, and never dip below your potential. Yet, even grading out at 10 would be no guarantee of only good results given the vagaries of life. Do you still want what you deserve? I don’t.
This is why, at every moment, I will opt for mercy over justice, and grace over wages. I know what I deserve in life, and God help me, I do not want it. I am living the most amazing life, on borrowed time, that I absolutely and completely do not deserve. My hunch is that you are too.
Mercy, Forgiveness, and Gratitude
Mercy and forgiveness do not exist in a vacuum. They are meaningless unless there is an impending judgement and sentencing. The only suitable candidates for mercy are those earmarked for punishment. Mercy is not something one deserves, or can earn. Justice is what we deserve.
Knowing this provides innumerable opportunities for gratitude. Every good thing you experience in life is made sweeter when accompanied with the recognition that you truly don’t deserve it. The experience of good things becomes the receiving of gifts for which to be profoundly thankful. And hopefully, this realization will prompt you to show mercy when it’s your time to sit on the judgement seat, considering you don’t want what you truly deserve in life, either.
An Outback Steakhouse menu even has pictures, but even these won’t feed you…looks good though, doesn’t it?
# 32 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: The Bible is a menu describing a life that is available. Memorizing a menu won’t feed you.
I realize that, to many people, those words will come across as either sacrilegious, anti-Christian, or both. Nevertheless, after 35 years of careful consideration, I am willing to say again, the Bible is a menu. It describes a life that is available. Memorizing a menu won’t feed you. It is not that I don’t care if some are offended. But, I care more that too many have not well considered the matter and thus venerate the menu, mistaking it for the things it describes.
In an interesting synchronous side-trip, this morning, having already decided to write on this subject, I got the following link to Seth Godin’s blog. His post today is called, Code Words. In it, in his characteristic, brief, minimalist way, he makes the argument that all words are code, or rather, that every word is a code. This…this is what I mean by my tip.
It’s probable that I cannot sum up all of language theory in a sentence. A quick Google search, it turns out, isn’t so quick. Major research universities devote entire departments to the study of language. For example, this link to the Department of Linguistics at Georgetown University. So, it’s a big discipline to try to summarize. Here goes: Language, whether spoken or written, is representative of actual ideas or things and not the ideas or things themselves. That will suffice, I believe.
You Can Memorize A Menu And Still Leave Hungry
That being the case, I ask each of you how many times you have read the words Bloomin’ Onion and Bone-In Ribeye from the Outback Steakhouse menu and pushed away from the table satisfied? What if you memorized the menu? Would that help?
I understand the silliness of my comparison. But, can we agree the menu is not the point of the restaurant experience? You do not go to a steakhouse to read the menu. The food, the steak, is the point. If you look at a menu, see an item, order it, then eat it, the menu has accomplished its purpose. It led you to the thing itself. To get full, or receive any nutritional effects, you will need to take some additional steps after reading the menu.
That’s how it is with the Bible. It is not a magic book. The Bible is a menu. The words themselves have no power apart from their ability to induce belief. The words are pointing towards the thing itself. They are not the thing. To make the Bible more than that is the equivalent of making the menu the point of going out to eat. But think with me, if all the Bibles in print vanished simultaneously, would the God described disappear too?
Beware the confidence that you know what is good for you…no one can see very far down the tracks
# 31 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: Beware of the confidence that you know what is good for you.
Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher of the middle-1800’s penned this famous quote in his journal. It is instructive as to why this tip to beware of the confidence that you know what is good for you is worth heeding.
“It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards. A proposition which, the more it is subjected to careful thought, the more it ends up concluding precisely that life at any given moment cannot really ever be fully understood; exactly because there is no single moment where time stops completely in order for me to take position [to do this]: going backwards.”
~ Kierkegaard, Journal, 1843
This usually ends up shortened to:
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards”
Ibid
True Good Must Pass The Test Of Time
As a father to seven children, I’ve oft told another about a lesson I’ve shared with one of my kids. Sometimes, they have remarked to me, ”Oh, that is soooo good!” My reply has usually been, ”We’ll see in six months.” Goodness can pass the test of time. It’s best not to judge to soon.
As the philosopher noted, we do not have the luxury of time-travel while living. We are stuck on the railroad tracks of sequential time. One thing follows another. We are forced to respond on a moment by moment basis. Not being able to see far enough down the tracks of cause and effect, we don’t know at any particular moment how one thing, one decision, one attainment, or one disappointment, may turn out in the long run. If you cannot have the confidence of certainty about the future, isn’t it wise to beware of the confidence that you know what is good for you in the present? Because good is not just about immediate gratification, but also long-term effects.
I’ve said many times, one of the worst things I can get in life is what I want. Just because you want something doesn’t mean you should have it. Just because you think it is good for you, doesn’t mean it is. We are trapped in a short-sighted series of near-term decisions that produce unknowable long term effects.
True Good May Not Be What You Think It Is At All
On two occasions thus far, I have suffered the devastating loss of life. The me that was alive from birth to 21 died at a Grateful Dead show in March of 1986 when I met Jesus. My whole conception of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and bad, died with that 21 year old drug-addicted hippie. That me died in possession of a hundred-hit sheet of 3-day-old blotter acid, and tickets to 12 more concerts on the Spring Tour. Things that I was confident were very good for me. And a new me arose in his place. A better me, yes, but with similar limitations at being able to predict the future accurately.
Losing those ”good things”, this death and rebirth, was the first best thing that ever happened to me.
A Second Death; But This Was Good…Wasn’t It?
The second me died on May 15, 2009 when, under duress, I left my wife of 22 and a half years and a houseful of six minor children for whom I had given everything I had to give. They, including my unfaithful wife, were my whole life. Like a vessel ripped loose from its anchorage at a dock, I was completely un-moored from the reality I had known from age 23 to 45 and a half. That role and those relationships formed my entire conception of who I was. That me was as indissoluble from that life as if blue dye was dissolved in water. How would one ever separate them?
There was no “me” apart from the life I’d spent more than two decades living. And yet, through actions not mine to control, that version of me died; along with the at-home father and husband. Those things were so incredibly valuable and good to me, that the whole notion that I would ever see good again, died too.
And yet…
Life Can Only Be Understood Looking Backwards
Looking back these 12 years, this 3rd iteration of me can see and understand. I now know that this devastation was the second best thing that ever happened to me. Not only did it bring about a much needed humbling, it opened the door to a relationship with a life partner with whom I have never been more happy, more authentic, more complete, or more grateful.
I carry in my mind an appreciation for a God who may not keep bad things from happening to me, but who will be with me through them and will work them out for good. Almost like Someone who isn’t stuck in sequential time could see down the tracks and cause enough good to wipe away every tear.
So yes, I repeat, beware of the confidence that you know what is good for you. Rather, do your utmost to be good to others, treating them as you’d wish to be treated. And cultivate your awareness and relationship with One who can see further down the road of life than you, One who knows you better than you know yourself, and Who can love you more fully than you ever could love yourself. One who does know what is good for you. That’s a better place for your confidence.
