I had an idea for a post I wanted to write. Then before I had a chance to write it I received this email, which gave the perfect setting for the idea.
Dear Rob,
I have been a long time follower of your posts and always find that you talk sense and can evaluate situations in a way I never can. It is because of this, I am contacting you for some advice. I realise that you will receive many such requests daily, and that you may not have time to reply, but perhaps just typing this out will help me a bit. (although I have a profound inability to put my feelings into words, which might not help the situation
)
Ever since I was a child, I’ve been doing “what is expected of me”. My mum and dad never forced me to be this way, they weren’t draconian or anything. They just let me live my life, because I seemed to be doing a good job at it and didn’t seem to need much help.
I would be polite to teachers, other adults, study hard because that’s what I thought was expected of me. I’d pass up going out under-age drinking with friends, because I thought it was expected of me. I thought I was expected to be a success and so I studied hard and got damn good grades, all the time worrying what would happen if I failed.
I became fixated with getting a good job and a nice house and car so that it appeared I was a success. I was so focussed on trying to be what people would describe as a successful, nice person that I tended to be very quiet and avoid social gatherings. I eventually could count on one hand my true friends and have fingers to spare. Some how I did manage to get engaged after college.
It seems that when I’m around people I don’t know, I’m afraid to be myself in case they don’t like me (I have a diverse, possibly weird sense of humour) or if I offend anyone or embarrass my fiancee. I’m afraid to just be myself and this is stopping me from being happy.
I’ve noticed a steady reduction in happiness since 1st yr at college. I did dentistry and at the end of the year, I didn’t like it much. I wanted to quit, but my stupid brain said, no, you can’t quit.
What a waste that would be.
What will ______ and ______ say (people from school with similar grades)? What will my mum and dad say?
I’ll have to pay for another year….etc. I plugged away, liking it less and less, watching my grades tumble along with my interest. I ended up with a much lower grade than I should have.
This to me is a major hold-back in my mind, because it is a poor result and will hold me back in applying for other courses/jobs etc.
I graduated and began my pre-registration year as an Dentist and kept on putting off studying for the professional exams, fantasizing about quitting and going back to uni for something else. Then just before my final attempt at my exams, I met my fiancee who was a few years younger doing the same course. “what will she think if I fail”…..etc.
Spurred me on to finally pass, because I was her boyfriend and expected to qualify and get a good job…etc
The career is a nightmare for me. It’s not particularly taxing, but I seem to be programmed to think all wrong. I imagine arguing with patients in my head, arguing with the bosses etc.
I’ve had 4 jobs in 5 yrs qualified because I end up hating the place because of what I’ve built it up to in my head. Always thinking I could do better. I kept saying I will do this when i get my own practice or that when I get my own practice. I’ve passed up 2 chances on practices because I was scared of the risk. I always thought I wanted my own practice so that I could earn lots of money, be the successful son, friend etc.
I find that I get incredibly angry in my head when patients give contradicting answers, and worry about getting the diagnosis spot on exactly, so that I’m seen as a good Dentist. I find it difficult to remain up-beat in my work, as I’m not interested in it.
All this is building up to make me feel totally empty, as if something is missing in my life. I just can’t work out what. I want to do something different, but don’t know what.
My fiancee brought up the fact that I’m not myself when I’m not around close friends recently. Even my family, I’m not relaxed around. She tells me I’m relaxed, easy going, funny and positive, but I just can’t muster these states when I’m in work or around people I don’t know well.
I kind of broke down and cried and explained the above to her and she is telling me to just be myself, but I don’t know how to. I’ve been burying my true self under all this shit since I was old enough to realise how my thinking and acting affected others and their interaction with me. Probably since 5 or 6 yrs old. I’m 30 next year.
I feel relaxed and alive around my fiancee and close friends, but then I constantly worry about work and how it could be better elsewhere and what I should/could do in the same industry or fantasizing about getting out of it, but I don’t know what to do (and then I’ll be earning less…etc. Feel stuck with a mortgage etc)
Should I find a way of coping with the work or just leave? How do I be myself? How to I relax/stop worrying? Is this “what is expected”/accptance thing and EGO issue?
I feel I’ve blurted out a lot and it’s probably a bit incoherent and possibly seems a bit superficial, but I’m affected deeply by all of this, I just don’t know how to put it into words.
Thank you for reading this email, and I hope you manage to make some sense of it and shed your unique (and inspiring) view on it. I understand that you’ll be a busy man with your talents and may not be able to reply.
Jeff
The Single Problem In Life
There is only one problem in life, it just comes with a million different disguises. The basic challenge is being true to your self when every minute there is a new decision to make about something. There are carrots and sticks in every form that seduce or scare us off our path.
When I wrote about emotional gravity, I spoke about how the world pressurises us to fit in with it’s ideas.
Parents, friends and society as a whole put pressure on us to fit in. To do well at school. To do a good job. To conform and be a dutiful citizen.
No-one ever puts pressure on us to find ourselves. To discover what we really think or feel about something. To be happy. Even though most people really do want you to be happy. They just think that they know best what will make you happy and that you need prodding from them to achieve it.
Jeff’s situation perfectly highlights how this causes us to lose our way.
Now I want to start my response by sharing what I was thinking about just before reading the email above, so then you get a sense of the wider issue.
I’d just seen the fronts of rows of magazines.
Here’s some of the headlines;
Jordan cheated on me!
It Was Pete That Cheated On Me Claims Jordan
Angelina Furious At Jen and Brad’s Late Night Hook Ups
Jade Goody’s Mum Tells How Her New Man’s Turned Her Straight
The Latest on Victoria Beckham’s Marriage
So as I saw the same story dressed up in ten different ways I wondered why some of these people are so desperate to live every detail of their life in public. Now I know for some it’s their job. To keep a high profile to get advertising and sponsorship deals. But much of it goes way beyond that and becomes a measure of importance and a weapon to hurt others and ‘defend’ their own reputation.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Bertrand Russell
It’s Not What Happens, But How Quickly You Can Get Over What Happens, That Defines Your Life’s Experiences
As I thought deeper about it I realised that they were doing in print what many other people do with their Family, Friends and Acquaintances. It was about what I wrote about in getting over a relationship, It boils down to people caring so much what other people think, that there becomes two issues to deal with. One is dealing with the issue. And the second is trying to influence what other people think about you.
So what happens is that when something like a relationship breakdown happens, or a business fails, or you get fired, or you want to do something new and you’re worried about what people will think, you have a number of options to choose to move forward.
- You can do whatever it takes to get back on track and regain your emotional balance.
- You can put a lot of effort into convincing other people that you’re fine. You haven’t been hurt or affected by what’s happened.
- You can play the victim and demonise the other person so that everyone feels sorry for you and takes your side.
- You can rake over the past and rue what could have been.
However, only one of these will move you forward. The other paths are all dead ends. So choosing anything other than moving on will just lead you on a journey to nowhere ecept pain, bitterness and hurt.
Sooner or later you will get past this, but that will be when you choose the path to forward. For some people that will mean months as they travel down each of the other paths until they finally recognise that they are stuck in a dead end and there is only one way forward.
This is what I mean when I keep saying; you can be right or happy. If you care more about what people think of you than you do about your own happiness, then you get lost down some dead end road that will bring you nothing, but misery.
If you focus on your own path with such intensity that you lose the distraction of the world and other people around you, then you can never be stuck or fail to find meaning and happiness.
It is only through caring so deeply what other people think that we get lost and stuck. And there is not one of us alive that this issue does not apply to.
Why is it that when we are able to buy T-shirts for £2 and Jeans for £3, some will spend hundreds or even thousands on their outfits, which serve the exact same function?
Why do some buy the million dollar Ferrari when a more sensible, economical and possibly more reliable car would cost a fraction of the price?
Of course it is purely for the sake of making a statement to others. A demonstration of our status and our worthiness.
Yet true Millionaires generally don’t drive flash cars and cover themselves in bling. It’s actually the Wannabe Millionaires that spend more money.
The people that have real worth in the eyes of the world generally aren’t pretentious or flashy. It is those that feel insecure and so need to draw attention to themselves that believe they can boost their self esteem through Maserati’s, Jimmy Choos and corner offices.
Why We Conform
So now let’s get back to Jeff’s situation. Hopefully you’ve seen the parallels with what I have just been rambling about. Which is that it’s all about caring too much what other people think. When you take other people out of the equation life is so, so simple. Almost every problem has to do with what someone else is or isn’t doing, what they should be doing or what they may or may not be thinking.
Yet in the bigger scheme of things, they have far less to do with our life than we think they do.
The essence of the problem is a choice.
Do I take the path of what I really want to do or do I take the path that makes others think better of me?
There’s something deep inside of us, that goes to our core as social animals, that makes us care to an irrational degree about what other people think of us. And I think that has to do with a flawed assumption.
We believe greatly that the world is as we see, hear, taste, smell and feel it to be. However science now tells us that many things are not as our perception believes them to be.
We won’t fall off the world if we keep walking in a straight line.
Lightening doesn’t come from the God’s anger.
And all the dancing in the world won’t make it rain.
Likewise, I think that we believe our character, whether we are a good or bad person, is set. As if you are either good or bad. Condemned or saved for eternity. Because we cannot see this to judge with our own eyes we feel we have to observe it reflected back from others. And so we desperately need others to think well of us.
Because we are looking at their reaction to us to determine our fate. To be saved or condemned. And so when we see reflected back at us, something that imples a negative reaction… we believe we must therefore be bad.
That’s when our ego takes us down endless dead end paths. Attacking the Messenger. Hiding out. Distracting others or ourselves. Sniping at others. And on and on.
The truth is that to judge ourselves by how others react to us is crazy.
And to try to influence other people’s opinion of us to boost our self-esteem is as insane as trying to change the reflection in a mirror, when we do not like what we see in it.
So what I believe has happened with Jeff is that like most of us he got conditioned by society that you have to forget what you want and do the right thing. And probably being genetically predisposed to conform, quick to learn and able to suppress his emotions, he set off down that path with a greater zeal and intensity than the more rebellious of us. However now he’s reached the breaking point, where the strain of inauthenticity is now bringing him to a grinding halt.
The Only Anchor In Our Lives
You see, there is only one true anchor that any of us will ever have in this world. We all have one and only one.
And it’s not a person. It’s not a place. Or even a treasured crutch like a particular skill, knowledge or religious faith.
It is your authenticity.
You can ignore it. Run away from it. But the leash is only so long. And eventually you’ll reach a point where each step is more and more of a strain on the leash. So for Jeff, it will become harder and harder to force himself to act.
Going so far off the leash can be beneficial. Most people move away, but not so far that the leash strains. So they are never as motivated to seek out what they are truly about. Since you are reading this, you can probably relate that it was probably pain or unhappiness that motivated you to seek out and understand more about happiness.
Anxiety, stress, depression and so on are all essentially the symptoms of dishonesty. Not in the form that we typically think of it. But at a more subtle and refined level.
For if we present to the world something other than what we truly are and feel, is that not dishonest?
Happiness, confidence and peace of mind are all based on the ability to walk through the world sure-footed and secure. Which can only be done with complete congruence and honesty. From this foundation the challenges of life are like a pesky insect. Annoying, but not significant.
The world tells us that study, certification and knowing the rules are key to expertise. What it doesn’t tell you is that excellence, greatness and true mastery never come from studying what has already been learned. Of course, it’s often necessary in a deeply technical field, but it’s only the entry requirement for competence. Greatness comes from merging knowledge with passion and authenticity.
The best in every field, such as Einstein, Picasso, Joseph Campbell, Warren Buffet, Al Pacino and so on are not the best through raw intelligence or technical skill. They are people that work in a field they love and know so deeply that, in that field, they develop and connect intuitively with knowledge that no-one else has yet discovered. They follow the path into the abyss and bring back and share the fruit of their efforts.
What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.
Joseph Campbell
When we are not true to ourselves we walk as if on tiptoes. And so slight challenges can easily knock us off balance. Though we may live in comfort, we live, and feel, as if we are an Imposter. The clothing does not fit so comfortably. It’s a little tight and restrictive. And so feeling slightly ill at ease makes us quicker to anger.
However our lost self is still in there. Just buried under years of habits we have trained ourselves in to perfect our act.
The Key To Authenticity
So how do you get back to living more authentically?
It’s interesting that Jeff mentions how he has great trouble with putting his emotions into words. Because our guide to authenticity comes from emotion. So when you’ve spent decades subjugating your emotions to logic or faith, you lose your sensitivity to them. They are still there, but you have trained yourself not to listen to them. So now, like rekindling a relationship with an old friend, you have to become comfortable again and develop the relationship.
First of all you have to train yourself to decide and distinguish between what you are and what you are not. Like physical exercise, if you haven’t actively used those muscles, they become weak. And so it’s hard to get them moving. It’s also likely that they’ll ache afterwards for a while.
In a short time though, they’ll recover and grow stronger and stronger. Then you’ll feel more vitality and greater emotional strength and flexibility.
Authenticity can never come from guides or instructions. No one can tell you how to be you. By definition your path is unique. You have to decide and determine, on a moment to moment, basis what is authentic for you. Where others can help is by stimulating your thoughts with ideas and perspectives that you would never have considered for yourself. Much as all the shirts are displayed in a clothing shop. Then your job is to decide on which is most you and wear it until your taste changes and it’s no longer most representative of you.
It’s a good idea to start with small steps, then build up your confidence and strength before tackling the heavy weights that hold a lot of stored anxiety for you.
Ask yourself, in every situation you remember to, what do I truly want? Not what is expected or I should do. But what do I want?
If that is too hard, ask do I want X or Y more?
Which is the most exciting path, of all the options, open to you right now?
Sometimes it can help to write out your options and map out where they might lead to, to help develop your thinking.
Also, set aside a time every day to do nothing, but sit and dream of what you could and would love to do. It might also be useful to keep a Journal to reflect and review on the day. Not to beat yourself up about what has gone, but to bring a refined sense of awareness. That next time in a similar situation you are more prepared to deal with it more elegantly. Elegance only comes with practice, but we so often expect it from ourselves on the first attempt.
I’ve added an almost 10 minute video clip below, that I think might be helpful to consider on this topic.
Don’t forget to share your thoughts and messages for Jeff below.
