self growth

February 25, 2021

How Love Language Pillars Are Formed

“Falling in love is like learning a whole new language and the culture that goes along with it. When you fall out of love it can be hard to pick up where you left off and start anew.”
― Isabella Poretsis

Last week I spoke about the pillars of love languages, and this week we will look at how these love language pillars are formed. Generally, secure lovers regularly have their needs met as infants. They grew up feeling competent among their peers but were also comfortable with their shortcomings to a degree. As a result, they exhibit healthy, strong boundaries as adults, can communicate their needs well in their relationships and aren’t afraid to leave a bad one if they think they need to.

Anxious lovers, on the other hand, receive love and care with unpredictable sufficiency as infants. Growing up, they have positive views of their peers, but negative views of themselves. Their romantic relationships are often overly idealised and they rely too heavily on them for self-esteem. Hence the 36 calls in one night when you don’t pick up your phone.

Avoidant lovers would have got only some of their needs met as infants, while the rest were neglected (for instance, Norman might have gotten fed regularly, but wasn’t held enough). So Norman grows up holding a negative view of others but a positive view of himself. He hasn’t depended too much on his romantic relationships for his needs and feels like he doesn’t need others for emotional support.

Anxious-avoidant lovers, though, would have had an abusive or terribly negligent childhood. Growing up having a hard time relating to peers. So as an adult, they seek both intimacy and independence in romantic interactions, sometimes simultaneously, which, as you can imagine, doesn’t really go well.

Different love languages tend to configure themselves into intimate relationships in predictable ways. I’m sure most of us are familiar with William Marston’s DISC Assessment. Love languages are similar in how they pair us together. Secure lovers are capable of dating (or handling, depending on your perspective) both anxious and avoidant types. They’re comfortable enough with themselves to give anxious types all of the reassurance they need and to give avoidant types the space they need without feeling threatened themselves.

Anxious and avoidant lovers frequently end up in relationships with one another more often than they end up in relationships with their own types. That may seem counter-intuitive, but there’s order behind the madness. Avoidant lovers are so good at putting others off that oftentimes it’s only the anxious lovers who are willing to stick around and put in the extra effort to get them to open up.

For instance, Avoidant Norman may be able to successfully shirk Secure Sarah’s pushes for increased intimacy. After which, Secure Sarah will accept the rejection and move on. But Anxious Anna will only become more determined by a man who pushes her away. She’ll resort to calling him for weeks or months on end until he finally caves and commits to her. This gives Avoidant Norman the reassurance he needs that he can behave independently and Anxious Anna will wait around for him.

Often these relationships produce some degree of dysfunctional equilibrium as they fall into a pattern of chaser-chasee, which are both roles the anxious and avoidant lovers need in order to feel comfortable with intimacy. Let’s go deeper down the rabbit hole!

Anxious-avoidant lovers only date each other or the least secure of the anxious types or avoidant types. These relationships are very messy, if not downright abusive or negligent. What all of this adds up to is that in relationships, insecurity finds insecurity and security finds security. Even if those insecurities don’t always look the same. To put it bluntly, to everyone complaining that all of the people they meet are insecure, or have trust issues, or are needy and manipulative… well, let’s just say I have some bad news for you. Look in the mirror…

What’s Your Love Language Pillar

If you don’t have an idea of what your love language pillar is yet and want to take a test, you can take this one. It’s a great resource that will give you an idea of your love language pillar across different relationships—parents, friends, and lovers.

I also really like it because you can track how various aspects of your pillar change over time.

If you don’t want to take the test though (because you have to create an account etc), the gist of it is this: if you’re consistently avoiding commitment, avoiding your romantic partners, shutting them out, or not sharing things with them, then you’re probably pretty avoidant.

Or if you’re constantly worrying about your partners, feel like they don’t like you as much as you like them, want to see them 24/7, need constant reassurance from them, then you’re probably anxious.

If you’re comfortable dating people, being intimate with them, and are able to draw clear boundaries in your relationships, but also don’t mind being alone, then you’re probably secure.

Note, however, that there are some individual differences in how strongly we might identify with each love language pillar. For example, you might be securely attached in most areas but have some anxious or avoidant tendencies in other situations.

That said, most people typically have a predominant pillar they tend to fall back on in their close relationships.

Can Your Love Language Pillar Change?

The good news is that your pillar can change over time—although it’s slow and difficult.

Research shows that an anxious or avoidant who enters a long-term relationship with a secure can be “raised up” to the level of the secure over an extended period of time. Unfortunately, an anxious or avoidant is also capable of “bringing down” a secure to their level of insecurity if they’re not careful.

Also, extreme negative life events, such as divorce, death of child, serious accident, etc., can cause a secure attachment type to fall into a more insecure attachment type.

For instance, a random man may be more or less secure, get married to Anxious Anna, bring her up to a more secure level. But when they run into money trouble she falls back to her anxious level, cheats on him, and then divorces him for all of his money, sending him into a tailspin of avoidance. Random goes on to ignore intimacy and pump-and-dump women for the next 10 years, afraid to become intimate with any of them.

Our love language pillars are intimately connected with our confidence in ourselves and others. Psychologists Bartholomew and Horowitz have hypothesised a model showing that one’s attachment strategy corresponds to the degree of positive/negative self-image, and the positive/negative image of others. Secures exhibit both positive self-images and positive perceptions of others. Anxious lovers exhibit negative self-images, but positive perceptions of others (hence their needy behavior).

Avoidants exhibit positive self-images and negative perceptions of others (hence their arrogance and fear of commitment), and anxious-avoidants exhibit negative perceptions of just about everything and everyone (hence their inability to function in relationships).

Using this model as a roadmap, one can begin to navigate oneself to a more secure love language pillar.

Anxious lovers can work on developing themselves, creating healthy boundaries, and fostering a healthy self-image. Instead of constantly looking for “the one” who will magically solve all their problems (and then calling them 36 times in one night). They can look for things that will make them a better, healthier person both in body and mind.

One of the most important pieces of dating advice I was ever told was for men to find something they’re passionate about and good at and make that a focal point of their life rather than women. Needless to say, the same goes for women as well.

Once they’re content with who they are, anxious lovers can then work to become more aware of their tendency to seek partners that reaffirm their negative self-image.

Remember what I said about insecurity finding insecurity? Anxious lovers will do well to break out of that cycle and surround themselves with people, friends and lovers alike, who lift them up, rather than knock them down. And to deepen those relationships. The positive emotional experiences they get from healthy relationships, especially profound ones like with a spouse, will re-shape their view of the world, reduce their anxieties, and help mold them into more secure types.

Avoidant lovers can work on opening themselves up to others and enrich their relationships by sharing themselves more. Research shows that simply not avoiding relationships can help avoidants move away from their avoidant tendency. And similar to anxious lovers, avoidants should stop seeking to reaffirm their view of the world with every single person they meet—not everyone is untrustworthy or clingy.

Another one of my most favourite pieces of advice is that it’s your responsibility to find something great in everyone you meet. It’s not their responsibility to show you. Become curious. Stop being judgmental, observe, and enjoy.

For the unlucky few who find themselves both anxious and avoidant, they can follow the advice for both types above. Focus on getting to know themselves. Know their fears and insecurities, embrace them, and learn to work with them, rather than against them. A few simple tools to help them do this are journaling and meditation. Professional therapy can also be effective.

And of course, some of you may be reading this and thinking, “I like being alone and being able to sleep with whoever I want. I wouldn’t change a thing.” And it’s true—many people lead happy, successful lives as avoidant or anxious lovers. Some even have successful long-term relationships as an anxious or avoidant.

But research shows secures are consistently more happy and feel more supported. Are less likely to become depressed, are healthier. Retain more stable relationships, and become more successful than the other pillar types.

And I can tell you from my personal experience. I’ve felt myself drift out of a strong avoidant (and slightly anxious) pillar to a more pillar over the past six years of working on myself in this area. And I can unequivocally say that I’m happier and more fulfilled in my relationships than I ever was back then. I wouldn’t trade it back for anything.

As always, hope you and yours are safe! Take time to figure out what your pillar is and what kind of lover are you. With this post, we wrap up the love bites series for February, hope it was informative and fun. Let’s Go!

Photo Credit: Photo by Alex Green from Pexels

February 18, 2021

Love Language

Motivation, Relationships 0

“Our most basic emotional need is not to fall in love but to be genuinely loved by another, to know a love that grows out of reason and choice, not instinct.”
― Gary Chapman

A great deal of your success in relationships—or lack thereof—can be explained by how you learned to relate to others throughout your childhood as well as later in life. We learn our love language from a very young age and we don’t even realise that we are conditioned to love in a certain way. It begins as children with our attachment to our parents. The nature of this attachment, and how well it’s fostered and cared for, will then influence the nature of our attachment to romantic partners later in our life

Your love language doesn’t explain everything about your relationships, but it probably explains a great deal of why your close relationships have succeeded/failed in the manner they did, why you’re attracted to the people you are attracted to, and the nature of the relationship problems that come up again and again for you.

The Four Pillars of Love Languages

According to psychologists, there are four love strategies adults can adopt: secure, anxious, avoidant, and anxious-avoidant.

Secure Pillar

People with secure love strategies are comfortable displaying interest and affection. They are also comfortable being alone and independent and display a healthy level of self-confidence. They’re able to correctly prioritise their relationships within their life and tend to draw clear boundaries and stick to them.

Secure love types obviously make the best romantic partners, family members, and even friends. They’re capable of accepting rejection and moving on despite the pain but are also capable of being loyal and sacrificing when necessary. They have little issue trusting people they’re close to and are trustworthy themselves.

Secure types comfortably form intimate relationships not only with partners but also with friends. They have no trouble revealing themselves to and occasionally relying on others when the situation calls for it. And they are excellent caregivers.

According to research, over 50% of the population are secure love types.

Anxious Pillar

Anxious love strategies are often nervous and stressed about their relationships. They need constant reassurance and affection from their partner. They have trouble being alone or single. They’ll often succumb to unhealthy or abusive relationships.

Anxious types have trouble trusting people, even if they’re close to them, yet excessively rely on others for their emotional needs and to resolve their problems. Their behavior can be irrational, sporadic, and overly-emotional. They’re the ones complaining that everyone of the opposite sex are cold and heartless. And probably bursting into tears while doing so.

This is the girl who calls you 36 times in one night wondering why you didn’t call her back—let’s call her Anna. Or the guy who follows his girlfriend to work to make sure she’s not flirting with any other men along the way.

Women are more likely to be anxious types than men but it’s okay, there’s still plenty of insecurity to go around.

Avoidant Pillar

Avoidant people are extremely independent, self-directed, and often uncomfortable with intimacy. They’re commitment-phobes and experts at rationalising their way out of any intimate situation. They regularly complain about feeling “crowded” or “suffocated” when people try to get close to them. They are often paranoid that others want to control them or box them in.

In every relationship, they always have an exit strategy. Always. Avoidants often construct their lifestyle in such a way to avoid commitment or too much intimate contact.

In surveys, avoidant types score uniquely high on self-confidence and uniquely low on emotional expressiveness and warmth. Im sure you all know Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother right?They not only reveal themselves far less to their partner and friends, but also tend not to rely on others, even when they should. They score lower than other types as caregivers, meaning they’re not to be relied upon when in a pickle.

It’s a sad fact that relationships tend to be controlled by those who care least. Therefore, avoidants tend to be the ones in control in both friendships and romantic relationships, as they are almost always willing to leave. This is opposed to anxious types, who let themselves be controlled in both.

This is the guy—we’ll call him Alex—who works 80 hours a week and gets annoyed when women he dates want to see him more than once on the weekend. Or the girl who dates dozens of guys over the course of years but tells them all she

doesn’t want “anything serious” and inevitably ends up ditching them when she gets tired of them.

Men are more likely than women to be avoidant types, but as always, there’s plenty of neuroses to go around.

Anxious-Avoidant Pillar

Anxious-avoidant types (also known as the “fearful or disorganised type”) bring together the worst of both worlds. Anxious-avoidants are not only afraid of intimacy and commitment, but they distrust and lash out emotionally at anyone who tries to get close to them. Anxious-avoidants often spend much of their time alone and miserable, or in abusive or dysfunctional relationships.

Anxious-avoidants are low in confidence and less likely to express emotions, preferring to suppress them. However, they can have intense emotional outbursts when under stress. They also don’t tend to seek help when in need due to a distrust of others. This sucks because they are also incapable of sorting through their own issues.

Anxious-avoidants really get the worst of both worlds. They avoid intimacy not because they prefer to be alone like avoidants. Rather, they avoid intimacy because they are so terrified of its potential to hurt them or its potential to satisfy them.

According to studies, only a small percentage of the population qualifies as anxious-avoidant types, and they typically have a multitude of other emotional problems in other areas of their life (i.e., substance abuse, depression, etc.

As with most psychological profiling, these types aren’t monolithic qualities, but scalar in nature and somewhat independent.

For instance, according to the book Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, Amir scored about 75% on the secure pillar, 90% on the avoidant pillar, and 10% on the anxious pillar. And his guess was that 3-5 years ago, the secure would have been lower and the anxious would have been higher.

The point is, you can exhibit tendencies of more than one pillar depending on the situation and at different frequencies. Although, everyone has one dominant pillar. So someone secure will still exhibit some avoidant or anxious behaviors, someone anxious or avoidant will sometimes exhibit secure behaviors, etc. It’s not all or nothing. But the anxious-avoidant will score high on both anxious and avoidant types and low on the secure scale.

Like I said previously, our love language as adults is influenced by how we related to our parents (or one parent/primary caregiver) as young children. As helpless little babies, this is the first and most important relationship of our lives, so it naturally sets the “blueprint” for how we perceive all relationships as we mature.

We use this relationship blueprint as we age into late childhood and adolescence where we typically start to form important relationships outside of our immediate relationship with our parent(s). Our peer group takes on a larger role in our lives as we continue to learn how to relate to others. These experiences further influence our love language as we eventually become romantically involved with others, which, in turn, also influence our love language.

So while your early experiences with your parent(s) do have a considerable influence on how you relate to others, it’s not the only factor that determines your love language (though it’s a big one) and your love language can change over time (more on this next week).

As always, hope you and yours are safe. We will wrap this one up next week when we talk about how your love language is formed and how it changes.

Photo Credit: Photo by vjapratama from Pexels

February 4, 2021

Are You Sure?

Relationships 0

“By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” – Socrates

So, it’s February… A lot of you are excited about this month. At the same time, most are about to make the biggest mistakes of your lives in the name of love. Marriage proposals are common in this month, and I blame St Valentine (…this is a whole block on it’s on).

What I have come to realise in life, especially in my generation is marriage for the wrong reasons. Yet at the same time, there are good reasons for people to marry and have a healthy and everlasting marriage. So to kick off this love month I am going to breakdown these 2 lists as far as I can.

Terrible Reasons to Get Married

Most of these horrible reasons to get married will probably seem obvious and maybe even a little ridiculous. For most of us, it’s hard to take a look at our motivations and see them for what they are.

Sometimes, your real intentions are hidden a few layers deep. And you just need someone to lovingly shake them to the surface for you.

So here, let me help you with that.

1: To Solve Your Relationship Problems

For some reason, a lot of people seem to think that something magical happens when you get married. And that all the fights and toxic cycles of behavior disappear.

This is tragically misguided.

Committing to someone by getting married amplifies all facets of your relationship. So if you genuinely love and respect one another, that love and respect can grow and evolve in a married couple.

But the same is true for the problems you have in your relationship. If you’re bad at communicating in your relationship, miscommunications will only get worse in your marriage. If you don’t have respect for one another, you won’t gain it by getting married. You’ll probably lose it even more.

Basically, when you get married, things can get even better if they’re already good, but they only get worse if they’re already bad.

2: Because you’re afraid of being alone

Being alone can really suck. What sucks even more, though, is marrying the next person who comes along simply because you’re tired of being alone—and then they turn out to be terrible for you.

You’ve probably heard this before but no one is going to be happy being with you if you can’t be happy being by yourself. I’m betting nobody ever told you how to go about doing that though. After all, it seems like a catch-22: you need to be happy by yourself before you can make someone else happy, but you’re not happy because you don’t have someone to make you happy.

The problem is the way you’re judging and valuing yourself. You’re valuing others’ opinions of you more than you’re valuing your own opinion of yourself. You think your value as a person is determined by who you’re with. Just think about how messed up that is for a second.

Develop yourself into who you want to be first. Get healthy. Leave your dead-end job and get serious about your career. Get your finances in order. Then find someone who is excited to be with you because you kick so much ass already. I had a heartfelt conversation with a confidant of mine, I asked them why they smoke? Their response was so personal yet at the same time so general. I dug into them, to find out what was it about a ciggy that couldn’t be replicated by meditation or a run or a walk in a garden full of yellow flowers.

In the end, we both realised, we are who we are because of our happy moments and our bad moments, but it is up to us to choose how we access our best.

3: To prove something

Maybe your crazy aunt keeps telling you about how “the clock is ticking” and you’re not getting any younger. Maybe your father thinks you need to “grow up already. Or maybe your parents got divorced and you’re determined to show the world that you’re better than them. All your friends are married now and you want to show them. You’re not just the third or fifth or eleventh wheel all the time. I call this the social media syndrome. You just want to wear a “better dress” than your best friend, by any means necessary.

Sometimes it’s a little more subtle but just as messed up. Like, some people see marriage as a status symbol. So they get married thinking they’ll parade around town with their spouse and people will bow in their presence like they just conquered Westeros or something.

Whatever it is, getting married to prove something to someone—or yourself—is a god awful reason to do it. STOP!

The fact is that a marriage isn’t going to work unless both people are in it for each other and no one else. The world doesn’t care if you get married. Billions of people have done it. You don’t get a gold star and extra warm cookies on the plane just because you’re married. You also don’t get to rub it in anyone’s face for more than a few months, tops. And then what?

I’ll tell you what: then you’re stuck in a marriage trying to figure out if it was worth it after all.

So if any of these terrible reasons to get married apply to your situation, well first, don’t get married. Second, work on your relationship skills. Learn about healthy and toxic behaviors in relationships. Familiarise yourself with how emotional needs work so you can better get yours met and meet the needs of others. It takes a lot of time, but it will save you a lot of pain and maybe a divorce or three down the road.

On the other hand, if you can take an honest look at your relationship and say that none of these terrible reasons to get married apply to your situation, then great.

Let’s move on.

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Should We Get Married?

Alright, so you’ve determined that you’re not thinking about getting married for the wrong reasons, but you’re not out of the woods yet, my friend.

I am out here in the rain, watching people and the weather writing this, and below are some of what I’ve determined to be the most important aspects of a relationship that bode well for a healthy and happy marriage.

I’m not saying that this big of a decision can be boiled down to a few “yes/no” questions and that’s it. But if your relationship doesn’t have these things already, let’s just say that it’s going to be pretty hard to make a marriage work in the long run.

1. You fight well

A healthy relationship is not a relationship without arguments. A healthy relationship is a relationship with healthy arguments. What I mean is that not only are fights inevitable in even the happiest marriage, they can actually be a good thing for the relationship if they are fought in a healthy way.

That means that, when you do get upset and argue with each other, you try to get to the root of the issue itself and you don’t attack the other person for who they are.

So, for example, maybe your partner blew you off when you really needed them and you felt hurt by it. Instead of telling them that they’re heartless and only care about themselves, you should probably try to understand why you’re so hurt in the first place and address that with them. Are you afraid of being left alone in times like this? And if so, do they actually understand that? Is there some way you can communicate when you really need them and are they willing to work with you on it?

Most arguments in relationships come from a misunderstanding of emotional needs. But that also means there’s an opportunity for you both to a) figure out what each other’s needs are and b) learn how to get your needs met and meet the needs of the other person.

And so, when done from a place of mutual respect for one another’s needs, this is how arguments can be a healthy part of a relationship.

And when you do fight, it’s important that, ultimately, you forgive each other and you forgive yourself. You don’t keep bringing up old issues but instead, you acknowledge when someone messes up and you accept their apology (and they own up to it and change their behavior). But you also admit when you’re wrong and forgive yourself for it instead of continuing to beat yourself up.

Again, fights are inevitable, so you need to make sure you’re fighting well before you get married. Otherwise, be prepared to deal with either a very short, tumultuous marriage or a very long, miserable marriage. Sometimes we need to endure the rain in order to appreciate the sun.

2. You have similar worldviews and visions for your future

Stop and ask yourself this about your relationship: are your lives going in the same direction and do you share similar values? Or is there friction when it comes to big life decisions? Do your career aspirations and/or lifestyles mesh well with one another?

If one of you wants to be an actor and live in Los Angeles and one of you wants to live a quiet life on a farm in Zimbabwe, well how exactly is that going to work? One of you will have to give up on your dreams, creating a downward spiral of resentment and regret. And then no one “wins.”

Similarly, if one of you wants to spend your money on traveling and seeing the world but one of you would rather buy a nice, big house and stay home to take care of it, that’s also a recipe for conflict down the road.

Essentially, if one of you has to give up on your dreams, your career, your purpose, it’s just not going to work. One or both of you will wind up miserable and resenting each other.

And if one or both of you have to suppress or change your values in some way, you’re also in for a rocky marriage. Things like how to raise kids (or if you want them at all), religion, how you handle money issues, and so on. A lot of these things aren’t sexy to think about, but again, any issues you have now in your relationship will be magnified in your marriage. And the bigger the issue, the harder it will be to ignore it for long.

3. There’s a strong friendship that underpins the relationship

A fact of any long-term relationship is that romance dwindles, sexual desire comes and goes, and life just happens sometimes. So it’s best to have someone you can count on in other ways when these things do occur. You should be marrying someone who’s not just an ideal romantic partner for you, they’re also your friend. I have a saying, “homies first, always”.

A good friendship involves accepting one another unconditionally, flaws and all. They might annoy you in some ways and piss you off in others. At the end of the day, you still want to be there for them and you want them to be there for you.

You don’t get sick of each other. When you do need your space, neither of you takes it personally and you give it to each other.

And maybe most importantly, you think in terms of “we” and “us” and not “you” and “me.” This is a product of having shared values that manifests as a solid, loving friendship. Of course, you recognise and respect one another’s autonomy. But you’re also a team, working towards the same goals.

If instead, you feel like the other person is always interfering with your independence, then you either have a mismatch in values (see above) or you have some avoidant tendencies you need to deal with. Either way, you need to work this out before getting married.

4. You see marriage as an exciting option, not an obligation.

Last, you shouldn’t see getting married as something that you have to do for whatever reason.

And I don’t just mean someone giving you an ultimatum—“we need to get married or I’m leaving”. Although that’s definitely one giant red flag not to get married. But you shouldn’t also feel like you have to get married because “that’s what people do” or because you’ve been with someone for a long time and feel like you owe it to them.

A marriage—and any relationship, really—is something that is created by two people. It’s a project, not an obligation. I was taught that when the universe wants you to have it, you will know and no one will tell you you are ready. You will know. From that I derived the statement “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear“.

But like any project worth doing in life, it can be challenging at times, but it should also be exciting and, in the end, worth it for both of you.

This is just the first of what I am calling the “Love Bites” series of February. Hope you enjoy it, and as always share with us your thoughts and comments via email or the comments section. I hope and pray you and yours are safe. Let’s Go!

Photo Credit: Photo by Fillipe Gomes from Pexels

January 21, 2021

The Double D’s

self growth 0

“It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.” – Jim Rohn

There are only two things you need to get clear on to start your year really really well, direction and determination. I call these the Double D’s.

Be clear about where you want to end up.
Have the personal commitment to getting there.

Direction – A clear and compelling picture of where you want to be.

Determination – The personal conviction and commitment to get there.

Now, in last week’s post, we spoke about the questions you need to ask yourself in order to set a firm foundation for your year. In this one allow me to breakdown the framework you need to implement in order to achieve your desired outcome.

Failure brings out 4 main traits in us as people, we either get motivated, disappointed, frustrated, or confused. Below you will see a model that explains these traits.

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THE DOUBLE D’s MODEL – WHERE GROWTH HAPPENS

The Model Explained

Low Direction and Low Determination
YOU ARE FRUSTRATED

This person is busy, really really busy. But not accomplishing anything. They are busy doing nothing. For those who want to make something of themselves and their opportunities, this is immensely frustrating. It feels like all this time and money is being used up for no good outcome.

Your first step to transformation is to get help to discover your WHY and your WHO. This helps to connect purpose to a person.

Clear Direction and Low Determination
YOU ARE DISAPPOINTED

This person has either decided to quit already or is really close to letting it go, for any number of reasons. And it’s not the first time, in fact, as you look back, your career or work has a series of “nearly got there” stories, and the excuse narrative is a well-worn path.

It just seems to be too hard sometimes. And it IS HARD. What makes it even harder is quitting and having to regain all that momentum again.

Your best action is to expect obstacles, plan for them, and create a pit crew to be part of the challenge with you. To call more out of you WHEN it gets hard. To push through and overcome the temptation to quit too soon. Writing this reminds me of Gym Trainers who know how to get more from a person in the final 4 seconds of a round, just by encouraging them.

Quick Caveat – If continuing is physically or mentally damaging you it’s imperative you seek appropriate help right now. We love you too much to be hurt by hanging on for no good reason, I realise it’s counter-intuitive but you get it right?

Low Direction and High Determination
YOU ARE CONFUSED

This person consistently puts the effort in but seems to miss the mark each time. Like those viral videos of runners taking the wrong turn or celebrating one lap too early. It’s just too painful to watch.

All that effort to end up where you DON’T want to be.

Without clear direction, a compelling North Star, you will end up where you don’t want to be and find yourself some combination of confused, bemused, and angry. Asking yourself how this happened since you worked so hard all the time and put the big hours in. For this!

The confusion is directly related to having no clear direction. You don’t know where you want to end up so when you get where you don’t want to be you throw your hands in the air in annoyance. You work hard to get……where? Not where you want to be, that’s for certain.

The next best step is to stop, pause, dream again and take some time to get crystal clear about what you want from your year and where you plan to end up.

A compelling and motivating direction clears up all your confusion. Have a strong WHY and the HOW will become so fluid and easy.

High Direction and High Determination
YOU ARE MOTIVATED

There’s something magical about knowing where you want to end up and having the conviction to get there. The clarity creates its own power, you can see it, feel it, taste it. You can’t wait to move towards it. Yesterday I had a moment of reflection and I found myself excited about the future what it holds for me personally. Just the thought of being able to be with someone and do amazing things just gave me a warm feeling inside. A straight “you can do this” feeling.

This kind of conviction and determination create resolve, give you context for challenges, and invites you to be agile and innovative as you work towards your objectives.

At this point, remember who this is for and remind yourself regularly of the purpose and the payoff. It’s huge. It also challenges you to BE the kind of person who can accomplish these goals. To do the personal work, make the disciplined decisions and sacrifices it takes for the dream to be real.

FIVE PRACTICAL STEPS TO MAKE DIRECTION AND DETERMINATION WORK FOR YOU.

ONE
Lead with life themes.
Themes are better than goals

At the start of the year, we spoke of the power of one word, and that being the theme for your year. Here’s how it all comes together. A theme is either a responsibility you have in life or a role you have in work. Themes are a BIG IDEA and goals are smaller targets that sit under the themes. Like a headline with bullet points. When you theme out your life you can more easily and more quickly attach a meaningful goal to it.

TWO
Tension, don’t order, your priorities.
You can do anything, but not everything Felicia.

When you work, work. When you play, play. Don’t play at work and don’t rob yourself and your loved ones of the time you’ve given to them. Do what needs to be done at the right time and never feel guilty for re-creating with people and activities you love.

This uneven allocation of time will help you work even more effectively, and be even more present each time, in every activity, with every person.

THREE
Look back, Look in, Look up.
Clarity is better than certainty.

You work out what to do by what history taught you, your present reality and expectations as well as your future dreams and hopes.

Learn from your past, dream wildly about what could be, and remain optimistic about the future. That alone will help you work out who you can become and what you could do.

FOUR
Measure Milestones AND Goals
Seek progress, not perfection.

Jon Acuff in his book “Finish – give yourself the gift of done” talks about how perfectionism is the biggest obstacle to making progress. He says “This is the first lie that perfectionism tells you about goals: Quit if it isn’t perfect.”

More often than not, seeing that you have made purposeful progress in the right direction can be enough to stay motivated and committed to your dream. Measure your milestones in the context of your goals.

FIVE
Expect the “Big Three” Challenges
Distraction. Disappointment. Discouragement.

You cannot and must not avoid challenges, they will come. The key is being prepared for them as best as you know-how and have a way of responding to them that is measured, wise, and commensurate to the challenge you’re facing.

Distraction is when you realise you are off track. The antidote to distraction is not to focus, it’s stillness. Just stop and be still.
Disappointment is when something or someone lets you down. The antidote to disappointment is to release forgiveness. Trust me, this heals you more than them.
Discouragement is when it seems all too hard and the dream you started with and the reality you have are worlds apart. The antidote to discouragement is not courage, it’s perspective. Change how you see things, and you will see a way out.

By way of afterthought, it would also help to write down a list of WHO benefits by you doing the year well.

You do, you can be proud of who you become and what you get done.
Your closest relationships do, they get the best of you not the rest of you.
Your purpose benefits, you get better and can do more.
The world is a better place because of your contribution and impact.

As I look at it, that seems worth it for you to have your best year ever. So go out there and be intentional about what sort of year you are going to have. As always I hope you and yours are safe and doing well. You have amazing and powerful dreams, do not doubt the impact of your purpose. The world awaits. May it be so. Let’s Go!

Photo Credit: Photo by Airam Vargas from Pexels

January 14, 2021

3 Questions

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“My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.”
– Francine Jay

I know I know, your socials are FULL of how to make the new year better than last year…. That won’t be hard, will it! Also, well done to you for being well, caring for others, and finding a way forward. Darren Hill says, “Leaders aren’t finding themselves, leaders are finding a way.” You did that for the most part of last year and I want to celebrate you and say well done! There are lingering questions though of how you will make it in 2021, I am here to help out.

Perhaps we had our best of times and worst of times in 2020 and this year is an opportunity to reset for what’s ahead.

Reset. To begin again.

But how? And why?

The 3 questions in this post are not new. They’re not even all that imaginative until you put them to work. Until you ask others to lean in and engage with them in a meaningful and real way. It’s when you get moving you see the beauty and the potential of these questions. When you curiously ask one another, seek feedback, chart a course, have a go, and celebrate the possibility they create.

Your frame of reference is your personal and life purpose. What you are all about this year, and in that context ask these questions. Last week I spoke of the Power of One Word, how this should replace the clatter in your life and streamline it for a more minimalistic and sustainable manner. This week we will unpack your one word by putting 3 questions to it and make it practical.

ONE – WHAT COULD I START DOING?

What can be introduced to your life and purpose right now that would make a big difference to morale, culture, and your overall life experience? Is there anything you wanted to get to last year that just gave way because of your other responsibilities in caring for your people?

Starting gives you the opportunity to refocus, galvanise your resources, and deepen your mission. It can create the opportunity to reimagine and make new. It’s a great opportunity to shake off the old and celebrate what’s possible. In this year you need to look at what it is you NEED to do with your one word rather than a whole set of goals that ruin you in the future.

In my opinion, goals are most useful for the direction and motivation they give you. The benefit of goals is more emotional than tangible. It is difficult for us to actually know what will be useful or make us happy in the future, therefore strict adherence to the goal itself is less important than the simple fact that it tricks our mind into doing something.

TWO – WHAT CAN I STOP DOING?

Is it time to call ‘done’ on a project or initiative that simply hasn’t delivered? No matter how hard, how many tweaks, and what adjustments you’ve made, this simply won’t work. It hasn’t delivered and won’t. You already know that so saying it out loud is a relief.

Call it what it is and finish the thing! It’s hard but I am right.

People respect courage like this and at the beginning of the year making a courageous call to end what’s not working matters because it frees up resources of all kinds to reimagine what’s next (see question one.)

Rick Warren said you can do more in ten years than you think you can and less in one year than you think you can. Empty out the year as MUCH as possible to get the most valuable things done. That diet you tried, those friends you made, those businesses you started that didn’t give you the desired result, tank them NOW. It may have been the biggest trend on social media but I always ask these questions: Is it right for you? Does it fit your environment? Is it what you NEED right now.

The whole problem with social media is that the narratives that spread the furthest and loudest on these platforms tend to be anti-establishment and contrarian. These are the narratives that get repeated the most often, and therefore these become the narratives that come to define our go-to ideas. But these narratives are hollow. They tear down structures but build nothing back up in their place. The key is to define yourself by the things that you hold dear to you, do not keep on doing something for the sake of fitting in or looking cool. Whats cool is being you, even if it means standing by yourself.

“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”~ Socrates Tweet Me

THREE – WHAT CAN I CONTINUE DOING?

2020 was rough, but there are good if not great things that happened to you in the year. There are routines you started, relationships you got into that brought a new perspective. So you need to ask yourself, what still has life left in it and can be refreshed or refocused? What needs some direction and resourcing, so it can really fly in the next little while? I am certain you have some breakthroughs waiting to happen given the right attention and environment.

This whole approach provides a place and space to think with some innovation, choose courageously and, refocus wisely. Sounds great, innovation, courage and wisdom all working together for the year of your dreams.

When you take these 3 questions and pair them with your one word for the year you give yourself a road map for the year. My word for the year is SERVE, and this how I will apply the 3 questions to it.

So what can I start doing in order to SERVE more effectively
What can I stop doing to make sure I live my word SERVE to it’s true meaning and not hinder my ability.
What can I conitnue doing from all that I have learned that helps me to continue to SERVE and pour myself out into my purpose and environment

See how that gives depth and clarity to that word? This breaks down to what the internet calls SMART goals. When you set specific goals, they become measurable and actionable, which then allows you to track your progress, SMART stands for:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-Bound

Those 3 questions will help you self-assess and have a no BS look at yourself and what you are willing to achieve in the year. It is not too difficult because instead of having a lot of points to measure you only have a few. This makes focusing and achieving your desired goal easier and more fluent and smart.

May you make real progress in 2021, and enjoy the benefits. I am cheering you on. When you’re ready, I am here to help. Share with us your thoughts in the comments section or email us, we would love to hear from you.

As always, hope you and yours are staying safe and doing well. Let’s Be Great!

Photo Credit: Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

December 17, 2020

The Power of Consequences

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“When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold

Consequences, not so powerful in word but more in action. March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake rattled the ocean floor off the coast of Japan. It was the fourth-largest earthquake ever recorded. So powerful, it moved Japan’s main island by 2.4 meters. It shifted the Earth’s axis by about 10 centimetres and sped up the planet’s rotation by a few microseconds. The damage from the earthquake and the tsunami it produced was of biblical proportion. With only eight minutes of warning, waves swept as far as 10 kilometres inland, killing thousands and destroying entire towns within minutes. Official estimates put the total death toll for the entire disaster at over 15,000 people.

But wait, it gets worse. Authorities quickly discovered that a number of the nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant had been severely damaged. Huge amounts of radioactive material were leaking out into the surrounding areas, including into the Pacific Ocean. In the span of a single afternoon, a destructive act of nature had turned into a man-made nightmare, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the events of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident in 1986.

Up to this point, nuclear power had played an important role in Japan’s infrastructure since the 1970s, when the Fukushima power plant was first commissioned. But the events of that day in 2011 were so traumatic, so real for the Japanese people that their government quickly agreed to shut down nearly every nuclear power facility in the country. The events were tragic. The response was swift. But then our story takes an odd turn…

The Law of Unintended Consequences

The public demand to discontinue nuclear power within Japan was overwhelming. The Japanese government quickly promised to discontinue all 34 of its nuclear power plants and one by one, began shutting them down. By 2013, the country was free of nuclear power.

But this created another problem: how to generate the power to replace the closed down plants? Nuclear power had once provided more than 20% of the country’s electricity. Where would they get the energy?

The most expedient solution was to turn to fossil fuels. The country moved to mobilise its coal plants and build more. This disruption in power supply led to an increase in the cost of electricity across the country, causing shortages in the colder winter months, especially in the far north. And, as we all know, fossil fuels bring a bevvy of awful environmental side effects along with them — they create smog, destroy ecosystems, and harm people’s health.

And this is where the story gets weird. Because, amazingly, studies have since determined that the closing of the nuclear power plants in Japan has actually caused more deaths than the Fukushima accident itself.

Call it a case of the cure being worse than the poison or selling your shoes to buy shoelaces.

To their credit, the Japanese government has since hit a U-turn, since 2018 they have begun re-activating their nuclear reactors. Their goal is to have them fully online again (and upgraded) by 2030.

But these “Cure is Worse than the Poison” problems are everywhere if you pay attention. In fact, some social scientists loosely refer to these situations as, “The Law of Unintended Consequences.” The Law of Unintended Consequences is a vague term applied to situations where intended fixes to a problem only serve to cause more severe problems. It’s never been defined officially. But here, let me take a jab at it:

The Law of Unintended Consequences occurs when an impulsive, emotional decision is made that unintentionally creates more problems than it solves.

A friend of mine said to me “this place has taught me that I cannot have my cake and eat it“. To which I asked if it is actually how they feel or it’s just the environment they are in that is causing them to think that way. The conversation quickly moved to why they would want to change themselves because of a situation and not because they want to change ( I paraphrase).

You and Your Unintended Consequences

Have you ever been frustrated by a process in life that you decide to take a short cut only to realise you were better off sticking out the process? Or you ever have that huge purchase you’ve always dreamed about. Maybe it’s a nice car, or a big house, or a beautiful piece of land. And you fantasise and dream and save, and stay home on Fridays and cheat on your taxes for years until you can finally afford it. Then the day comes and you “buy” it — but what I really mean by “buy” is that you have these massive re-payments to a bank from now until you die. And that feeling of “this is my dream” no longer satisfies you. Yet here you are handing over like 2/3 of your salary every month to some Big Bank, who you’re slowly becoming convinced is the incarnation of all evil and injustice in the universe.

Or you have ever been absolutely miserable in a job, but you were so complacent and emotionally dependent on the salary and social validation and false sense of importance that you just kept working and working and working. Telling yourself “one more year,” then “one more year,” then “just one more year” until pretty soon your mental health has gone to the dogs. And you become anxious and insomniac and hypoglycemic and profoundly depressed on philosophical vectors previously unimagined. And you’re on so many pills and now you really need that job to keep your health insurance and a steady stream of pill-prescription supply — and I mean, let’s be real, thank god for this job you hate, right? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have access to the medicine to treat all the health problems the job gave you.

You may go through a terrible breakup but hate the fact that you and your ex don’t speak. I mean, you had such a great time together. Isn’t it worth putting in a little effort to just be friends? Don’t you 2 deserve at least that much? So you call up your ex and you tell them that you’re sorry and you wish they could get along. They invite you over to their place at midnight and you’re thinking to yourself, it’s no big deal, we used to hang out all the time. Then six days later when you’re still at their house screaming at each other about who left the toaster on. And why can’t you listen to me and I thought you loved me. But you’re so oversexed that you can’t walk straight. You can’t tell if you love or hate this person with every metabolic calorie of your being. You’re wondering what am I doing here? How did I get here, I thought I broke up with you, like, four times? That’s an exaggeration but I’m sure you get the picture aye?

Why Playing It Safe Is Not Safe…

Our worst decisions never feel like horrible decisions. Our worst decisions always feel like good decisions in the moment. That’s why we make them. This experience of “the cure being worse than the poison” often occurs because we are solving short-term, highly emotional problems without considering the long-term, second-order effects.

You go back to see your ex to solve that awful pain of guilt in the short-term, only to subject yourself to the much greater long-term risk of emotional turbulence. Just like Japan shut down its nuclear reactors to quell the short-term outrage and horror over the Fukushima disaster without considering the long-term effects of inviting greater amounts of pollution into the country.

We do this because our brains are biased filtering machines. We’re wired to experience the world in a skewed way, and that means our perceptions rarely—if ever—reflect reality. Like I told my friend, we are all selfish.

We suffer from the Power of Consequences for a few reasons:

We are biased towards dealing with what we see as immediate threats, rather than addressing greater but slower, long-term risks.
Also we are biased towards focusing our attention on something that is tangible and easily-imagined or visualised rather than what is highly abstract (think the risk of a terrorist attack, which is incredibly low, versus the risk of disease, which is higher than you might think).
We are biased towards events that are highly dramatic rather than events that require large amounts of logical thinking. For example, you’re far more likely to die in a car accident than a plane crash. But a plane crash is so dramatic and terrifying that it causes far more anxiety for people.
We are bad at considering second-order and third-order effects. It’s difficult and counterintuitive to think 2 or 3 moves ahead in the chess game or 2 or 3 shots ahead in a game of pool at the Inn. We fail to consider how shutting down a reactor will affect electricity costs and how electricity costs will affect elderly citizens in winter, for example. We just see really scary TV shows that make it sound like nuclear fallout will cause babies to be born with three heads or something.
Consequences often have compounding effects. We are bad at considering compounding effects. For example, after a terrorist attack like 9/11 it felt rational at the time to invest in security. But that investment compounds over time, to the point where a decade later, the United States had spent upwards of $1 trillion dollars likely to only save a few hundred lives. Indeed, terrorism is probably the poster child for policies that are in no way proportional to the threat. And this doesn’t even take into account second-order effects, such as stricter travel laws, fewer immigrant visas, lower enrollment in universities, less air travel, etc.

When something is scary like a nuclear power plant disaster our biases kick in. And interfere with our ability to judge the situation accurately. Thinking through long-term, second-order consequences is taxing. And when we’re highly emotional about a subject, we struggle to expend the effort to think through the consequences to the end. We don’t have time for a pros and cons list, that nuclear radiation is coming for us!

It’s in this way that protecting ourselves from what scares us the most at the moment can often make us vulnerable to much worse, less-noticeable problems far in the future.

How to Avoid The Power of Consequences

While we can never 100% safeguard ourselves against the power of consequences and the cognitive biases that cause them. There are some basic techniques you can apply to your decision-making to help you not fall victim to being such a dumb human:

1. “If I do nothing, will things get better on their own?” A lot of our bad decisions are merely a function of impatience. Learn to ask yourself, “If I do nothing, will this eventually get better?” In many cases, it will. Sitting in traffic is the simplest example. Not reconnecting with an ex is a more emotional example. Not throwing non-violent drug offenders in prison during the most important years of their lives is probably a more practical social example.

We often overestimate how much we can control in a situation. Therefore, we underestimate the value of simply sitting and waiting. It won’t win you any popularity contests, but often the best decision in life is to simply do nothing. Just wait. Time always tells…

2. “What is the worst-case scenario?” When evaluating our own ideas, we tend to be good at seeing the benefits and terrible at seeing the risks. After all, they’re our ideas. We wouldn’t have had them if they weren’t genius, right?

It’s difficult to poke holes in what feels right to you. Therefore, it’s useful to make a practice out of asking yourself, “What’s the worst-case scenario here? What are all the ways this could go wrong?” Write out a best-case scenario and a worst-case scenario and then ask yourself the probability of each case. Then take the probability you wrote for the worst-case scenario and quadruple it. Does it still feel worth doing? I for one hope for the best but I plan for the worst.

3. “Is it possible that my choice could have the opposite effect? If so, how?” Back in 17th century England, parliament felt that banks were punishing the poor and middle classes with exorbitant interest rates. They decided to pass legislation placing a permanent ceiling on interest rates at 4%. Everyone seemed to think this was a great idea. Except for John Locke. John Locke thought this was a terrible idea. He argued that placing a limit on interest rates would then just force banks to find sneaky, less-regulated ways to lend money, primarily to rich people.

People thought Locke was crazy. “That’s the exact opposite effect of what we’re doing,” they argued. But… he was right. The law passed. Poor people got hosed. And the rich got richer. Today, John Locke is taught in like every university ever. And the anonymous parliamentarians and bankers are still anonymous parliamentarians and bankers. Go figure.

There’s a sizable population of people in the world who seem to spend more time thinking about the purchase of a car than they do contracting HIV. Tweet Me

4. “Is this decision irrevocable?” One thing we often don’t consider is the revocability of our decisions. If you buy a car you don’t like, you can always resell it and make a significant amount of your money back. Yet, if you catch HIV, there’s no going back. Despite this fact, there’s a sizable population of people in the world who seem to spend more time thinking about the purchase of a car than they do contracting HIV.

Some decisions are easy to undo. Some are incredibly difficult or impossible to undo. Yet, we often don’t spend enough time considering the latter and often spend way too much time worrying about the former. A good rule of thumb: if a decision is not permanent, it’s better to move too fast. If a decision is permanent, it’s better to move too slow. I told my same friend ” Do not make permanent decisions based on temporary situations“.

The combination of questions #1 and #4 is why so many governmental policies end up being ineffective. There is massive public pressure to do something in the face of a problem, even though the correct response is to do little or nothing. As a result, governments adopt heavy-handed policies, expand the bureaucracy, make a big publicity blitz about all the “great things” the politicians are doing for their people. The problem is that many of these policies are incredibly difficult to undo. This is why governments tend to become bloated and less efficient as time goes on. A good case study would be Robert Mugabe’s Land Reform Program in Zimbabwe in the late 90’s.

In our personal lives, we tend to suffer more from questions #2 or #3. We are bad at considering the flaws in our own plans, at questioning our own emotional impulses and recognising situations that can backfire terribly, causing the exact problem that we’re trying to alleviate. Staying in the job we hate makes us time-poor even though we may be financially wealthy. Trying to fix a broken relationship can make it worse, not better — in fact, it might be that desire to “fix” everything that broke it in the first place!

The truth about consequences is we don’t know what we don’t know. And as much as we consciously try to expand our areas of attention and knowledge, we will inevitably succumb to failures of foresight and care. For as long as we’re able to think and breathe, we will continue to be wrong, in some shape or form. Yet, that’s never a reason to not try and be a little bit better. We may not be perfect, but we are good. And that is all there is to it.

As always, hope you and yours are safe. Catch up with us in the comments section and let us know your thoughts.

Photo Credit : Photo by Pixabay

December 3, 2020

The Power of Gratitude

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” Your life would suck a lot less if you practised gratitude a lot more” Mansfield

So your life sucks, that’s all of us, yet through it all, you can still be grateful. My 8-year-old son hit his head whilst doing a backflip in a swimming pool earlier on today. We had been stuck in a small remote town because they had run out of petrol. I thought to myself, if the town wasn’t out of petrol, my son wouldn’t have hurt himself. Then I quickly said to myself, well at least he was having fun, and so was I. We got to see this beautiful town and what it has to offer, memories that will never be erased.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel once said that history is the process of freedom realising itself. The fact that you are reading this blog means that you are richer and more educated than 99.5% of people in human history. It means you have almost immediate access to over half of all of the information and data ever created by the human race. It means you have the ability to educate yourself in an afternoon or a week on subjects people previously spent their entire lifetimes to learn.

You may be unhappy with your love life, but just a few generations ago, casual dating was impossible. Contraception was rare, and you could be disowned by your family for fooling around with the wrong person. A few generations before that, you likely never went to school with someone of the opposite gender and your parents chose who you married. In some countries and regions, you could have been killed for sleeping with or even flirting with the wrong person. That includes the US.

Your family may frustrate you, but over one-third of the world’s population has only one parent and 143 million children are growing up with no parents at all. If you’re in university or you went to university, you are part of the lucky 7% worldwide elite. You’re unlikely to ever live at a subsistence level like almost 60% of the population and you surely won’t ever be starving like almost 25% of the world population.

But you’ve heard stuff like this before, after all, it is just numbers, right? And it doesn’t actually help, right? Yeah, you’re lucky, but you still struggle with your confidence, you still feel socially anxious, you still suffer from feelings of inadequacy, you still stress about money/work/family/friends. Your love life is still a mess. Sure, you’re eating well and you have a nice TV and car and you can do long division and code in PHP, but your life isn’t exactly peachy either.

For decades, research has tied being grateful and appreciative to happiness. People who are happier tend to be more grateful and appreciative for what they have.

But what they’ve also found is that it also works the other way around: consciously practising gratitude makes one happier. It makes one appreciate what one has and helps one to remain in the present moment. Practising gratitude increases accountability which directly leads to higher self-esteem and happiness. Not to mention it makes one more pleasant to be around and creates a more magnetic personality.

Your parents may be smothering and obnoxious, but they do it because they care about you and it’s the only way they know how to show it. Be grateful you have people who love you, even if they don’t show it in the way you wish they did. Use it as an opportunity to help them, communicate with them, develop a better relationship with them.

You may be overweight, but at least you’ve enjoyed plenty of good food. It is also possible now more than ever to access the knowledge and resources needed to live a healthier lifestyle. Oddly enough, this can be an opportunity to set goals and to improve yourself.

You may be single and lonely, but at least you live in a society which accepts open communication between men and women, is liberal about dating practices, and allows widely accessible means to get out there and improve your situation.

And you may not be the person you want to be, but at least you have the self-awareness and drive to notice what you’re unhappy with and the desire to do something about it. You are part of the first generation in human history that has truly discovered that we are always capable of improving our lives — socially, emotionally, professionally and financially. In the past, people assumed if they were born into it, they were screwed.

Gratitude is the skill of happiness and it’s the cure. Tweet Me

You’ve been blessed. Even if you rarely realise it. All of us here have.

And you’ll keep forgetting this unless you remind yourself. Remind yourself regularly. Choose to be grateful. Remember how it could be worse because it could always be worse. This isn’t to say one must ignore what’s wrong or broken with the world. I’m the last one to pretend everything is unicorns and rainbows. It’s just to say that when things seem to hit the fan, don’t forget what’s good, true and beautiful. Remember to shut up and be grateful.

Gratitude is the skill of happiness it’s the cure. And it is indeed a skill. It requires practice and effort and habit. But it’s a skill anyone can learn and anyone can do. And you can start it today, right now.

Do it every morning when you wake up, while you brush your teeth, look in the mirror and think of five things you’re grateful for. Pick someone and tell them this week that you’re grateful for them or for something they did. Chances are it will make you feel better than them. Chances are you’ll feel far more comfortable around them and your relationships will begin to improve.

This week has been hectic for me personally, I felt I had so much reason to be mad at the world until it hit me. I have so much to be grateful for, so much to appreciate. I do not know what you are going through right now that is weighing you down. It could be anxiety, depression, a break-up, sickness or loss of a loved one. Keep your head up, I strongly believe if you look around you, you will find something to smile about. Whatever it is, hold on to it. Be strong, be courageous. Keep moving!

As always, hope you and yours are safe. Talk to us in the comments section and share with us your thoughts and views.

(Sidenote: When showing appreciation for someone or something, it should be genuine and not designed to get them to like you. This should be obvious to any emotionally-functioning adult, but I figured I’d drop it in here because you never know who comes by these days.)

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November 26, 2020

Dealing with Loss

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“A difficult lesson in life is learning how to let go of broken relationships, our pasts, and even parts of ourselves.” – Unknown

The 21st of November was my birthday, can’t believe I am 36 years old already, like where does the time go? I sat and just looked back at which had been my best year thus far. With that realisation, to my surprise, I began to experience a faint sort of sadness. I grieved over a tiny loss of myself—that cocky, self-assured 25-year-old who had just been promoted to Sage Projects Manager having no idea what lay before him. The infinite potential that lay before me. The intensity of expectations that I didn’t know what to do with.

The reality that I faced though is that the 25 year old me is now gone. And they would never come back. I would never get to feel that feeling for the first time again. I would never get to fall wildly in love with my job in a way that both excited and terrified me at the same time.

There was a sweet, cocky ignorance to my younger self that has been irrevocably lost. And despite being lost for the best reasons, it still made me sad. For a few moments, I silently mourned my past the way one mourns a distant relative’s death.

And then I moved on.

I’m no stranger to loss. I don’t think any of us are. I’ve watched family members and friends die. And I’ve had romantic relationships end in a spectacular explosion and I’ve had them end in a long, drawn out silence. I’ve lost friendships, jobs, cities, and communities. I’ve lost beliefs—in both myself and others.

Every loss is a form of death. In every case, there once existed an experience—a thing, an idea, a person—that brought your life meaning. Now it no longer exists.

Coping with loss always involves the same dynamics. In every case, whether it’s the loss of a friendship, a career, a limb, whatever—we are forced to reckon with the fact that we will never experience something or someone again. We are forced to feel an internal emptiness and to accept our pain. We are forced to confront that horrible, horrible word: “Never.”

“Never” hurts because never means that it cannot be changed. And we always like to think that things can be changed. That possibility makes us feel better.

“Just work a little bit harder!”
“You just have to want it enough!”

These phrases give us a lil’ kick in the backside. They say if you don’t like it, get out there and change it.

But “never”? Never means it’s over. It also means it’s gone. Never means forever. And that’s really hard to bear.

You can never bring a dead person back to life. And you can never hit ‘reset’ on a broken relationship. You can never fix a wasted youth or redo a past mistake or un-say the words that destroyed a friendship.

When it’s gone, it’s gone. And it will never be the same, no matter what you do. And this, in a real psychological sense, destroys a small piece of you. A piece that must eventually be rebuilt.

Relationships don’t end because two people did something wrong to each other. Relationships end because two people are something wrong for each other. Tweet Me

We’ve all been through breakups before. And we’ve all, in our moments of weakness, pined for our exes, written embarrassing emails/text messages, drank too much on a Tuesday night, and silently cried to that one love song that reminds us of them. Yet what most people don’t get is that relationships don’t end because two people did something wrong to each other. Relationships end because two people are something wrong for each other.

But why do breakups hurt so bad? And why do we find ourselves feeling so lost and helpless in their wake? This post will be covering coping with all loss, but because the loss of intimate relationships (partners and family members) is by far the most painful form of loss, we will primarily be using those as examples throughout.

But first, we need to understand why loss sucks so bad. So I’m going to whip out an epic bullet point list to set everything straight:

To be healthy, functioning individuals, we need to feel good about ourselves. To feel good about ourselves, we need to feel that our time and energy is spent meaningfully. Meaning is the fuel of our minds. When you run out of it, everything else stops working.
The primary way we generate meaning is through relationships. Note that I’ll be using the term “relationship” loosely throughout this post. We don’t just have relationships with other people (although those relationships tend to be the most meaningful to us), we also have relationships with our career, with our community, with groups and ideas that we identify with, activities we engage in, and so on. All of these relationships can potentially give our lives meaning and, therefore, make us feel good about ourselves.
Our relationships don’t just give our lives meaning, they also define our understanding of ourselves. I am a writer because of my relationship with writing. And I am a son because of my relationship with my parents. I am a Zimbabwean because of my relationship with my country. If any of these things get taken from me—like, let’s say I get shipped to North Korea by accident (oops) and can’t write anymore—it will throw me into a mini identity crisis because the activity that has given my life so much meaning the past decade will no longer be available to me (that and, you know, being stuck in North Korea).

When one of these relationships is destroyed, that part of our identity is destroyed along with it. Consequently, the more meaning the relationship added to my life, the more significant its role in my identity, the more crippling the loss will be if/when I lose it. Since personal relationships generally give us the most meaning (and therefore, happiness), these are the relationships that hurt the most when lost.
When we lose a relationship, that meaning is stripped away from us. Suddenly this thing that created so much meaning in our life no longer exists. As a result, we will feel a sense of emptiness where that meaning used to be. We will start to question ourselves, to ask whether we really know ourselves, whether we made the right decision. In extreme circumstances, this questioning will become existential. We will ask whether our life is actually meaningful at all. Or if we’re just wasting everybody’s air.

This feeling of emptiness—or more accurately, this lack of meaning—is more commonly known as depression. Most people believe that depression is a deep sadness. This is mistaken. While depression and sadness often occur together, they are not the same thing. Sadness occurs when something feels bad. Depression occurs when something feels meaningless. When something feels bad, at least it has meaning. In depression, everything becomes a big blank void. And the deeper the depression, the deeper the lack of meaning, the deeper the pointlessness of any action, to the point where a person will struggle to get up in the morning, to shower, to speak to other people, to eat food, etc.
The healthy response to loss is to slowly but surely construct new relationships and bring new meaning into one’s life. We often come to refer to these post-loss periods as “a fresh start,” or “a new me,” and this is, in a literal sense, true. You are constructing a “new you” by adopting new relationships to replace the old.
The unhealthy response to loss is to refuse to admit that part of you is dead and gone. It’s to cling to the past and desperately try to recover it or relive it in some way. People do this because their entire identity and self-respect was wrapped up in that missing relationship. They feel that they are incapable or unworthy of loving and meaningful relationships with someone or something else going forward.
Ironically, the fact that many people are not able to love or respect themselves is almost always the reason their relationship failed in the first place.

Toxic vs Healthy Relationships

To dive into why some people have such a hard time dealing with loss, we need to understand a simple dichotomy:

A toxic relationship is when two people are emotionally dependent on each other—that is, they use each other for the approval and respect they are unable to give themselves.
A healthy relationship is when two people are emotionally interdependent with each other—that is, they approve of and respect each other because they approve of and respect themselves.

Toxic relationships need drama to survive. Toxic people, because they don’t love or respect themselves, are never quite able to completely accept the idea that someone else could love and respect them either. And if someone comes around giving them love and respect, they don’t trust it or won’t accept it. It’s kind of like that old Groucho Marx trope: “I’d never join a club that would have me as a member.”

What happens is these two people who don’t love and respect themselves OR each other begin to feel really insecure around each other. What if she leaves me? Or what if she realises I’m a loser? What if she disapproves of the pizza I ordered?

As such, these people need a way to consistently test whether or not the other person actually wants to be with them. These tests are accomplished by creating drama. In my head, drama is when someone creates unnecessary conflict that generates a false sense of meaning for a short period of time. Yet because drama doesn’t last. The underlying insecurity remains. So pretty soon, the toxic couple will need another injection of drama to keep the farce of a meaningful relationship going.

Healthy relationships avoid drama because they find that unnecessary conflict detracts from the meaning and importance already generated by the relationship. Healthy people simply don’t tolerate drama. They expect each other to take responsibility for themselves. Only then can they really take care of each other. I always say, you can pour from an empty cup. You take care of you so you take care of the next guy.

Healthy relationships, instead of inventing conflict to affirm their love and mutual support, minimise conflict to make more room for the love and support that is already there.

Toxic relationships are addictive because drama is addictive. Like drugs or gambling, drama is unpredictable; it is numbing and distracting, and it hits you with unexpected rewards of joy or excitement. This is why toxic relationships are diffivult to let go or process.

But something else happens when we’re caught up in a drama spiral. As we up the ante and the drama increases, we become more emotionally dependent on the person, not less. We invest so much into the drama that we come to believe that our partner is far more important to our well being than they actually are.

Incidentally, people who don’t know how to let go of a relationship are often those who were in a relationship with someone who was either abusive or completely disinterested. That’s because, in these relationships, a breakup changes nothing. When they were together, the person spent all of their time and energy trying to win their partner over. After they split, they continue spending all of their time and energy trying to win their partner over. Same story, different day.

Similarly, people who are unable to accept the loss of their relationship will badger their ex and instigate drama with them to re-live the sensation of that relationship. But they need to create that drama again and again to keep that feeling alive.

Drama, of course, can infect other relationships as well. People create drama at work to overcome their insecurity of not being valuable or appreciated. People create drama with authorities or governments when they feel an existential insecurity. And people create drama with themselves when they imagine they aren’t living up to some sort of past glory.

So How Do You Get Better at Accepting Loss?

Understand that our memories can lie to us and convince us that EVERYTHING WAS TOTALLY AWESOME BACK THEN, even though it wasn’t. The usual mantra, “I miss the good ol days” is a scam. If you have ever gone back to your high school or a reunion, you will see how lame you probably were back then.
Surround yourself with people who love you and appreciate you for who you are. Not who you were, or who you can be, but who you are presently. What that means is you have to reconnect with people who care about you. It’s these people and these activities that will carry us through and be the emotional bulwark as we begin the hard process of rebuilding ourselves. This sounds easier than it is. Because when you’ve been destroyed by some loss in your life, the last thing you want to do is call up your friends to go get a beer. Or to call mom and admit that you’re a total failure.
Invest in your relationship with yourself. Basically, how do you treat your own body, mind, and emotions? This is the time to join a gym, to stop eating tubs of ice cream, to get outside and get reacquainted with your old friend called sunshine. It’s the time to sign up for that course you’ve always wanted to sign up for, to read that book that’s been sitting on your nightstand for six months, to finally floss for the first time ever. Now is the time to also let yourself feel sad or angry or guilty without self-judgment. And if you find it hard to get motivated to do all these things, use your loss as motivation. If you’re the victim of a disgusting breakup, well, self-improvement is the best revenge against any ex. Or you’ve lost someone close to you tragically, imagine what they would have wished for you and go out and live it. If you’ve lost something dear to you in your life, or aged out of a time of your life when you felt important and wanted, commit to building something even better for yourself today.
If you were stranded on an island and could do whatever you wanted to do—do that. One of the healthiest things you can do after a loss is get back to basics: do something for the simple pleasure of doing it. If no one was around, if you had no obligations on your time or energy at all, what would you spend your time doing? Chances are you aren’t doing much of it. And that’s part of the problem. Get back to it.
If you lost an intimate relationship, don’t be afraid to stay single for a while. After losing an intimate relationship, many people’s natural inclination is to immediately fill the void with either another relationship, or by seeking a bunch of attention, affection, and sex. This is a bad idea. As it distracts one from the healthy activities listed above. If you’re on the wrong side of a breakup (or even worse, you lose someone to tragedy), even if the relationship was healthy and secure, you need time to recuperate emotionally. And it’s hard to do that if you’re immediately throwing your heart to the next person who comes around. Stay single a while. Learn to spend time on yourself again. And only re-enter the dating world when you’re genuinely excited to. Not because you feel like you have to.

Eventually, Everything is Lost

Life is a long series of loss. It’s pretty much the only thing guaranteed in our existence. From moment to moment, year to year, we give up and leave behind former selves that we will never recover. We lose family, friends, relationships, jobs, and communities. We lose beliefs,experiences, perspectives, and passions. And ultimately, we will one day lose our existence entirely.

If you think back to a hard time in your life, recognise that to get out of those hard times, you had to accept losses. You had to lose relationships and pursuits, you had to lose a lot of meaning in order to create greater, healthier meaning. In that sense, all growth requires a degree of loss. And all loss incites further growth. The two must occur together.

People like to see growth as this euphoric, joyous thing. But it’s not. Real change brings a mixture of emotions with it—a grief of what you’ve left behind along with a satisfaction at what you’ve become. A soft sadness mixed with a simple joy. With that said, a happy birthday to me and a toast to the man I was and the man that I will be.

Hope you and yours are safe, lets catch up in the comments section of via email.

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October 15, 2020

The Power of Feelings

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“There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison.” – Jane Austen

Should we trust our brain or our feelings? The answer to this question has eluded me in the past few weeks, yet I have realised it is more complicated than I ever thought. I have always fancied myself as someone in control of their feelings until I was confronted with a ‘new feeling’.

Somehow, over the past few decades, it’s become conventional wisdom that we should put our faith in our feelings. That is, if we feel something—especially if we feel it intensely—then it deserves to be seen as valid, or truthful. The adage “trust your feelings” has by now become almost axiomatic. But ultimately, how logical or how safe is it to conclude that if we feel something strongly, we should both believe it and permit it to control our behaviour?

The very essence of cognitive-behavioural therapy and rational emotive behaviour therapy as well is derived from the theory that how we think determines how we feel. But as this theory itself might ask, if our thoughts are exaggerated, distorted or, for that matter, downright delusional—how can we possibly place our faith in any feelings that stem from such irrational thoughts? Are we not in what the ICT world calls a G.I.G.O. type of situation here (i.e., garbage in, garbage out)? For if our thoughts are erroneous, or based on false assumptions, the feelings tied to these thoughts are bound to be equally distorted—and hardly to be trusted.

To give some examples, if we mistakenly interpret a situation as dangerous, the anxiety or panic that we’ll feel however intense will still be groundless, because it’s not reality-based. Or if we irrationally perceive our situation as hopeless despite the fact that several options exist that could save us from our plight the depression we’ll experience will be similarly illogical. Or finally, if we were overindulged as children and grew up with the narcissistic assumption that we deserved to get everything we wanted, then when we’re older and subject to a world that fails to cater to our desires, we’ll probably feel we’re being treated unfairly. And consequently, we’ll experience a great deal of self-righteous anger, even indignation. But since our sense of entitlement was false, to begin with, our keenly felt anger will be without reasonable justification.

In further reviewing why it’s so important to be wary of letting our feelings dictate our behaviour, it’s also crucial to distinguish between emotions not rationally linked to present-day circumstances and what I’ll call true “gut feelings,” indistinguishable from intuition. When, say, a hot woman feels markedly uncomfortable (or “spooked”) in an elevator she’s sharing with a stranger, it’s only prudent that she exits at the next floor. And it needs to be added that her taking such a precaution is guided not so much by the diffuse emotion of anxiety, which might suggest an exaggerated distrust of strangers based on personal history, but by a more instinctual, fear-based response, itself derived from her self preservation faculties. I mean she knows she’s beautiful. As I see it, genuine intuition (as a survival mechanism hard-wired into all of us) can be safely relied upon. It’s inherently trustworthy, whereas our emotions need to be viewed much more cautiously.

Going back to the elevator example, if a woman routinely feels threatened whenever she’s alone with an unfamiliar male, there’s far less reason to think that her fear is intuitive or reality-based. In such a case, what most likely would be setting off her anxiety is some unresolved disturbance, or trauma, from the past—something that left her “sensitised” (or over-reactive) to particular situations in which she couldn’t help but experience herself as out of control. Possibly, she was physically attacked or raped or grew up in a home with a father who, unpredictable and/or authoritarian, regularly intimidated or physically abused her.

Only two emotions control the world, fear and love, and fear is the greatest. Tweet Me

However, the here-and-now experience may be only coincidentally related to the past one. There may be no meaningful connection at all between what just happened to us and what we experienced years ago. But if the present-day circumstance “triggers” us, we’ll still react to it as though it were a recurrence of the original situation. Regressing to an earlier emotional state, at that moment our rational mind is impaired, unable to function logically. In short, in such instances our emotions do not derive from the current circumstance–and are, therefore, not to be trusted.

Just as our thoughts govern our emotions, our emotions, in turn, govern our behaviour. So unless we’re able to do an on-the-spot reality check, we’re in danger of reacting to such present-day “prompts” in a way that may be completely inappropriate and self-defeating. Plainly, we can harm a relationship if in the here-and-now we deal with that person as though he or she were some ghost from our past. It’s as though we’re presented with one set of stimuli and, because of personal biases we’re totally oblivious of, we react as though we’d been presented with an altogether different set of stimuli. Once again, our emotions—however deeply felt—can end up betraying us.

One final example of needing to be careful about “running” with our emotions relates to the blissful experience of falling in love. Which is to say that our falling “madly” in love with someone doesn’t necessarily mean that the person we’re so enamoured of is right for us—i.e., the one. Certainly, in the moment it almost always feels this way, trust me, I know. But since falling in love is more chemical than cognitive, we need to be extremely careful about making an instant commitment because of the power of our feelings. Falling “head over heels” may mean just that: our passion, has thrown us seriously off balance–and we, therefore, need to proceed with considerable caution. In some ways, it’s almost as easy to just fall in love and not feel it but think it, especially if we’re ready for the experience, or the other person is just so attractive to us. Like I said last week, sometimes you just need to be willing to see how deep the rabbit hole is, feelings or not, just be like Nike and just do it.

I believe we need to remind ourselves that a romantic, emotionally laden, attraction may be far more physical than spiritual and that it may not be grounded in our ability to accurately access the other’s deeper nature or personality traits—traits that, finally, we might come to view either as lovable and endearing; or as loathsome, revolting or contemptible (consider, for example, the movie, “The War of the Roses”). Love for one has no formula. You can close your eyes to stuff you don’t want to see but you cannot close your heart to what it wants to feel. All you can do is look at it objectively and make decisions based on what you want. As I said, I was introduced to a new feeling recently, and I for the lack of a better word, love it. Tupac Shakur once said only two emotions control the world, fear and love, and fear is the greatest. Do you agree?

As always, hope you and yours are safe. Share with us your thoughts in the comments sections, would love to hear what you think or what you feel about this post. Let’s Go!!!

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October 8, 2020

The Power of Doubt

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“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
― Voltaire

Doubt leads to more experimentation, more self-discovery, and more tolerance. James Warren Jones was a charismatic minister of a church where he built up a congregation by specifically appealing to minorities, the unemployed, and homeless people. He sometimes called his congregation his “Rainbow Family” due to its racial and class diversity — something highly novel in the US in the 50s and 60s. He also had strong socialist political leanings, calling for extremely progressive governmental policies to try and bring more help to the needy and oppressed. By all appearances, he was an admirable man.

By the 1970s, Jones had become an influential figure in San Francisco politics. His church had thousands of members and they could be mobilized at the drop of a hat to help campaign for candidates. As a result, leftist candidates of the time relied upon Jones to help them win office. He was involved in Harvey Milk’s famous campaign to be the first openly homosexual person elected to public office. And he helped George Moscone become mayor of San Francisco in 1975. He even had some private chats with then-vice-president Walter Mondale and First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

But what all of these people somehow missed was that Jones believed he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. No, seriously.

Jones said this regularly in his sermons, that people should treat him both as their father and as their God, that he was charged with creating a new Garden of Eden because the apocalypse was going to happen any second now. This new Eden would be just up highway 101 a few dozen miles, just turn left at the diner with the hot dog on the sign.

Now, this might surprise you, but towards the end of the 1970s, it became known that Jones was physically and sexually abusing his congregation members. I know — surprise. But fortunately for Jones, angels came to him and told him that actually, that whole new Garden of Eden thing wasn’t supposed to be in Northern California after all. See, they had made a mistake, turned the map sideways, and actually, Jones was supposed to lead his chosen people to the Garden of Eden in nearby… *drumroll* Guyana… which, by coincidence, had no extradition laws with the US.

So Jones headed for Guyana. And brought 1,000 of his favourite church members with him.

In Guyana, Jones promised salvation from the apocalypse that was seriously going to start, like, any second now. His settlement, aptly dubbed “Jonestown,” would be an egalitarian community where everything would be shared equally and everybody would be treated as equals. There would be no fear or violence or any of that horrible stuff that existed in the US. It would be a utopia, as it were. A perfect little plot on earth. And we all know how utopias usually turn out… In the case of Jim Jones, he committed the largest mass murder-suicide that you and I have likely ever heard of. In total, 909 people took their own lives that day, shortly after murdering five others.

And for what? Some whacked-out belief in the apocalypse and end times?

The Dangers Of Super Beliefs

I read of a concept called “Super Beliefs.” Super Beliefs are beliefs that are so big and abstract that they encompass all other beliefs and experiences that could potentially contradict them. As a result, Super Beliefs cannot be proven or disproven, since all experience falls under their umbrella. Confusing right? Let me break it down.

Whether we realise it or not, we all have our own Super Beliefs. They’re incredibly common. And we tend to cling to them as though our lives depended on it.

“Everything happens for a reason,” is a Super Belief. It’s so all-encompassing that it can explain every single thought or idea you have in response to it. Therefore, it’s impossible to ever disprove it or show contrary evidence to it.

“Something is only true if there is evidence to support it,” is another Super Belief. “God has a plan for everyone,” is another. “We are all spiritually connected and one with the universe,” is another.

“We all live in a computer-generated virtual reality and are enslaved by machines,” is another super belief. Any argument proposed against it will simply reinforce it. If I try to point out that there’s no evidence that this is a hyper-realistic form of virtual reality, someone can just say, “Yeah, because the machines programmed it that way.” You either believe it or you don’t. Such are all Super Beliefs.

Super beliefs are so common that they define a lot of our culture. Some believe that people always deserve whatever happens to them, that if they suffer through life it’s because they’re lazy or stupid or just not trying hard enough. Others believe people suffer due to karma — i.e., what goes around comes around. Others believe that people suffer because humans are inherently sinful and God is punishing them for not repenting. These are all common, everyday Super Beliefs that have very real consequences on the social order.

Super Beliefs can be benign (“Everything happens for a reason”), useful, (“All knowledge must be verified and tested to be believed”), benevolent (“The meaning of life is to ease the suffering of all living beings”), or just plain mean (“Death to all non-believers!”). They are the foundation on which you’ve built your whole understanding of the universe and everything in it. As a result, Super Beliefs are often hard to spot because they feel so obviously true to us that we never think to question them.

But as time goes on, you’ll notice your Super Beliefs, and the super beliefs of others, poking their dirty heads up, derailing reasonable conversations, putting a roadblock up to any discourse or progress. And it’s in those moments where Super Beliefs emerge that they must be challenged.

When people do horrible things, they don’t do it because they’re uncertain in themselves or they feel as though they are wrong or damaged in some way. It’s actually the opposite. People who do horrible things do them because they are so sure in their own moral superiority. They are so confident that they are right and others are wrong that they feel justified in imposing their own beliefs on others through force.

Whether we’re talking about Hitler, Mao, genocide in Rwanda, dictatorship on Zimbabwe or honour killing a Pakistani woman for showing her ankles in public, people who do awful things do it because they are certain in their own moral righteousness, and that moral righteousness is usually the product of some Super Belief which cannot be verified or concretely challenged.

The Only True Belief

The only true Super Belief is that no Super Belief is completely true. That is, the only certainty is that nothing is certain.

This is the only “safe” Super Belief as it limits your ability to force your certainty onto others, while simultaneously always leaving you open to new and improved ideas. It keeps you open to new experiences and capable of coping with whatever pain may arise in a realistic and safe way.

Doubting ourselves generates anxiety because it forces us to acknowledge that we may be believing in something stupid that might get us (or others) killed as well. Tweet Me

A lot is said these days about being “sure” of yourself. That you need to have faith in yourself and your ideas. These platitudes are usually regurgitated as a way to encourage people to feel a bit more confident about themselves. You are worried about your work, so you try to muster up some certainty that you really are a cold-calling badass. Or you start to feel uncomfortable with how your relationship is going so you fall back on the old “everything happens for a reason” Super Belief to feel a bit more at ease about the situation. Super Beliefs relieve the anxiety caused by uncertainty. But they do so by creating mental constructs that can lead down dark and dangerous paths.

Doubting ourselves generates anxiety because it forces us to acknowledge that we may be believing in something stupid that might get us (or others) killed as well. But instead of learning to become comfortable with doubt, our culture has instead decided to get rid of the anxiety and be as certain in our half-baked ideas as possible.

Doubt is healthy. Doubt is a virtue. Just like lifting heavy weights breaks down bone and muscle to make them stronger, the same is true with doubt and one’s ideas and beliefs. There is no such thing as faith without doubt. Doubt is necessary to test the faith and make it stronger. There is no confidence without a doubt. Without doubt, there is nothing to persevere against. There is no brilliant idea without doubt. Doubt and criticism and failure is what slowly chisels an OK idea into the brilliant result the world ends up seeing.

Cultivate doubt in your life. Always be unsure. Because being unsure leads to testing and discovering and learning and improving. It leads to dialogue and tolerance and acceptance and all that good happiness crap. There’s talk about COVID 19 vaccines and all, how certain are you they will work? Are you willing to be the first to try one? I didn’t think so.

Doubt makes you smarter. It makes you more resilient. And if done correctly, it should make you more curious. If you doubt, you are more likely to go down the rabbit hole because you are curious to see what’s down there. Yet if you are certain, you are never gonna go down it, and guess what, you will never know what you would’ve experienced.

Doubt today is more important than ever. With ever-dwindling attention available for each issue, with a glut of information and contrary information available. With the ease in which the internet allows us to surround ourselves with only those who agree with us, the ability to hold onto doubt will become a virtue in our 21st-century society. It will distinguish those who are able to reason and synthesise information from those who will lash out and go with the day’s biggest trend. It will differentiate those who can find their own way in a sea of opportunity and haze of information and those who drown in the digital noise.

So when you find your gut sinking because you are in doubt of something or someone, always remember you are in the right space. As always, hope you and yours are safe. Share with us your thoughts in the comments section.

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self growth

“Falling in love is like learning a whole new language and the culture that goes along with it. When you fall out of love it can be hard to pick up where you left off and start anew.” ― Isabella Poretsis

What’s Your Love Language Pillar

Can Your Love Language Pillar Change?

“Our most basic emotional need is not to fall in love but to be genuinely loved by another, to know a love that grows out of reason and choice, not instinct.” ― Gary Chapman

The Four Pillars of Love Languages

Secure Pillar

Anxious Pillar

Avoidant Pillar

Anxious-Avoidant Pillar

“By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.” – Socrates

Terrible Reasons to Get Married

1: To Solve Your Relationship Problems

2: Because you’re afraid of being alone

3: To prove something

Should We Get Married?

1. You fight well

2. You have similar worldviews and visions for your future

3. There’s a strong friendship that underpins the relationship

4. You see marriage as an exciting option, not an obligation.

“It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.” – Jim Rohn

The Model Explained

FIVE PRACTICAL STEPS TO MAKE DIRECTION AND DETERMINATION WORK FOR YOU.

“My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.”– Francine Jay

ONE – WHAT COULD I START DOING?

TWO – WHAT CAN I STOP DOING?

THREE – WHAT CAN I CONTINUE DOING?

“When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.” ― Lois McMaster Bujold

The Law of Unintended Consequences

You and Your Unintended Consequences

Why Playing It Safe Is Not Safe…

How to Avoid The Power of Consequences

” Your life would suck a lot less if you practised gratitude a lot more” Mansfield

“A difficult lesson in life is learning how to let go of broken relationships, our pasts, and even parts of ourselves.” – Unknown

Toxic vs Healthy Relationships

So How Do You Get Better at Accepting Loss?

Eventually, Everything is Lost

“There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison.” – Jane Austen

“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.” ― Voltaire

The Dangers Of Super Beliefs

The Only True Belief

“Falling in love is like learning a whole new language and the culture that goes along with it. When you fall out of love it can be hard to pick up where you left off and start anew.”
― Isabella Poretsis

“Our most basic emotional need is not to fall in love but to be genuinely loved by another, to know a love that grows out of reason and choice, not instinct.”
― Gary Chapman

“My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.”
– Francine Jay

“When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold

“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
― Voltaire