Using Projects to Avoid Making Changes

If you are having trouble getting motivated to finish a project, consider the possibility that finishing that report (or whatever your project involves) means facing a void. The project is a distraction so that you don't have to see the emptiness outside of it. You slow down the completion until another project emerges to play the role of another distraction. You’re putting off looking at uncomfortable truths about yourself 

While in the midst of a deadline-driven project, you feel like you have a clear identity because your purpose is defined by the project's needs. But if the projects was removed from your life, would you have justification for thinking of yourself as someone of value? Is your worth  bound in the projects?

So it is with serious relationships, where someone provides a sense of purpose, giving definition and a sense of worth.

If you were forced to sit down and write out the definition of who you are without the benefit of a title (manager, employee, project manager) or relationship (wife, girlfriend, mother) would you lack the means to define yourself?

A suggestion: Spend time doing things that allow you to center yourself. Give yourself downtime to listen. Whatever brings you to stillness will put you in a good position to allow the transition to take hold and internalize it so you don’t miss the opportunity to make a paradigm shift toward greater emotional and spiritual health. Allow yourself to just "be" and reconnect with the world around you (its sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and sights).

Stephen Goforth

Selfishness and Self-love

If it is a virtue to love my neighbor as a human being, it must be a virtue and not a vice-to love myself since I am a human being too. There is no concept of man in which I myself am not included. A doctrine which proclaims such an exclusion proves itself to be intrinsically contradictory. The idea expressed in the Biblical “Love thy neighbor as thyself!” implies that respect for one’s own integrity and uniqueness, love for and understanding of one’s own self, can not be separated from respect for and love and understanding of another individual. The love for my own self is inseparably connected with the love for any other self.

The affirmation of one’s own life, happiness, growth, freedom, is rooted in one’s capacity to love, i.e., in care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself too; if he can love only others, he can not love at all.

The selfish person.. can see nothing but himself; he judges everyone and everything from its usefulness to him; he is basically unable to love. Does not this prove that concern for others and concern for oneself are unavoidable alternatives? This would be so if selfishness and self-love were identical. But.. selfishness and self-love, far from being identical, are actually opposites.

Eric Fromm, Man for Himself

The Upside of Impostor Syndrome

In workplace settings, at least, those harboring impostor-type concerns tend to compensate for their perceived shortcomings by being good team players with strong social skills, and are often recognized as productive workers by their employers.  “People who have workplace impostor thoughts become more other-oriented as a result of having these thoughts,” says Basima Tewfik, an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and author of a new paper detailing her findings. “As they become more other-oriented, they’re going to be evaluated as being more interpersonally effective.”

She adds, “What I don’t want people to take away is the idea that because people with impostor thoughts are more interpersonally effective, it’s not a problem.”

Peter Dizikes, MIT News

Escaping from Group-Narcissism

You can’t force everyone to see the value in your group, just as you can’t force everyone to see the value in you as an individual. But you can control how you see yourself, and the narrative you tell yourself about your group and the world. The only way out from the group-narcissism trap is up, by transcending your group’s feelings of entitlement and connecting with fellow humans—even when it’s easier to believe that you’re special. 

Scott Barry Kaufman writing in The Atlantic

Building Self-confidence

Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade.

Do not be awestruck by other people and try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as YOU can. Remember also that most people, despite their confident appearance and demeanor, are often as scared as you are and as doubtful of themselves.  

Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking

Falling into old ditches

Have you ever had someone bait you when your family gets together?  “Come on. Join me, and let’s relive those old patterns you’ve tried to shed.”  You try not to let the person get under your skin, but somehow, you end up behaving in a way you believed you had left behind long ago. You can't stop yourself. You stumble backward into old dysfunctional patterns.

“Why does the other person say these things?” you wonder. Perhaps they want to feel superior to you. Maybe that unhealthy relationship is in their comfort zone.

You could try being passive—that might allow you to avoid conflict, put off the problem, and set it aside for the sake of peace. But the goal should be a healthy relationship rather than the absence of conflict. On the other hand, you could make yourself vulnerable, rising and falling with the other’s approval and rejection. This will mean spending a lot of your life bouncing between working hard to prove you are worthy of respect and resenting the need to prove it. 

Stephen Goforth

The Self-esteem Secret

You can either let your self-esteem ride on the answer to questions like:

Do people think I am smart?  
Am I shaped like a model?  
Do I look weak and foolish? 

Or you can let your self-esteem be based on the knowledge that you are of value because you are made in God's image and that he has set his affection on you.

You've made quite a journey already, struggling to keep going and learning to rest in that knowledge. Won’t it be enjoyable to march down that path, head held high and a big smile on your face? It’s there, not because you are ignoring your trouble, but because you know the secret.

 
Stephen Goforth

Lies our Culture Tells Us

College mental health facilities are swamped, suicide rates are spiking, the president’s repulsive behavior is tolerated or even celebrated by tens of millions of Americans. At the root of it all is the following problem: We’ve created a culture based on lies.    

(Among them:) Rich and successful people are worth more than poorer and less successful people. We pretend we don’t tell this lie, but our whole meritocracy points to it. The message of the meritocracy is that you are what you accomplish. The false promise of the meritocracy is that you can earn dignity by attaching yourself to prestigious brands. The emotion of the meritocracy is conditional love — that if you perform well, people will love you.      

No wonder it’s so hard to be a young adult today. No wonder our society is fragmenting. We’ve taken the lies of hyper-individualism and we’ve made them the unspoken assumptions that govern how we live.

David Brooks writing in The New York Times

5 internal contributions to anger

1-Self-esteem

People who try to be self-sufficient are easily frustrated and angered when they see evidence of their dependence on others. They get angry at themselves for needing others and they get angry at other people for “keeping” them in this weakness.

2-Desire for Power in Relationships

Some people feel threatened by the need to give up power in love relationships. For instance, a batterer may use anger to intimidate others in a quest for power. It’s a way to caution the abused person against using their own power. To avoid rousing their anger, spouses end up tiptoeing around the other to avoid confrontation because the price is too high to pay.

3-Desire to be Perfect

Unrealistic standards must be met for the person to feel worthwhile and accepted.

Whenever there is a perceived loss of perfection, the person becomes depressed (angry with themselves) for small failures. The student who gets a B-plus instead of an A, etc. These people also set up high standards for others to achieve and are quickly judgmental. They are hurt by others who do not join them in the quest for perfection. Even though they may be chronic confessors, but growth comes slow because they don’t want to accept their limitations.

4-Guilt

Unresolved guilt can lead to irritability. People have trouble admitting their faults.

5-Rejection

Rejection leaves people feeling hurt and worthless. When significant others disdain our contributions or act as if we are inferior and unimportant we bolster self-esteem by rejecting others ourselves, using the weapons of anger and hostility.  Since it does not heal the relationship or self-esteem, it is a temporary fix. 

Within Arms Reach

Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it's a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands.

The people who love me and will be there regardless of the outcome are within arms reach.

This realization changed everything. That's the wife and mother and friend that I now strive to be. I want our home to be a place where we can be our bravest selves are most fearful selves. Where we practice difficult conversations and share our shaming moments from school and work. I want to look at Steve and my kids and say, “I'm with you I'm in the arena. And when we fail, we’ll fail together, while daring greatly.”

We simply can't learn to be more vulnerable and courageous on our own. Sometimes our first and greatest dare is asking for support.

Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Social Media’s Outrage Mob

So what is it about social media that transforms ordinary internet users into pitchfork-wielding villagers? Futurologist David Brin notes that feelings of righteous indignation can give people a drug-like high. “You go into the bathroom during one of these [indignant] snits,” he says, “and you look in the mirror and you have to admit, this feels great! ‘I am so much smarter and better than my enemies!’” Everyone can now get an instant, ego-boosting high by opening their computer or smartphone and joining in the online shaming of a perceived offender. But they haven’t made the world any better. All they’ve done is made a stranger’s life a little worse.

Theunis Bates writing in The Week Magazine

Open Arms

Perhaps because your father questioned you for so long, you question yourself.. just out of habit. Despite the fact there's plenty of evidence to show that you are usually on the right track, a vague nagging feeling persists.  You may not measure up to your father's ideals.

Compare these expectations to those who love you; They don't ignore your inadequacies. Instead, they are willing to pitch in. They cheer for you. They don't run away when you fail. Their arms remain outstretched in acceptance.

Stephen Goforth

Selfishness and Self-love

If it is a virtue to love my neighbor as a human being, it must be a virtue and not a vice-to love myself since I am a human being too. There is no concept of man in which I myself am not included. A doctrine which proclaims such an exclusion proves itself to be intrinsically contradictory. The idea expressed in the Biblical “Love thy neighbor as thyself!” implies that respect for one’s own integrity and uniqueness, love for and understanding of one’s own self, can not be separated from respect for and love and understanding of another individual. The love for my own self is inseparably connected with the love for any other self.

The affirmation of one’s own life, happiness, growth, freedom, is rooted in one’s capacity to love, i.e., in care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself too; if he can love only others, he can not love at all.

The selfish person.. can see nothing but himself; he judges everyone and everything from its usefulness to him; he is basically unable to love. Does not this prove that concern for others and concern for oneself are unavoidable alternatives? This would be so if selfishness and self-love were identical. But.. selfishness and self-love, far from being identical, are actually opposites.

Eric Fromm, Man for Himself

do I have value?

To say a person has worth or value formulates only half a sentence. It begs two questions and raises a third: Worth what? To whom? Who says? These questions reveal a search for a source, a valuer, an authority behind the action of attaching worth. This quest implies our awareness of a person larger than us, who initiates relationships with us. Our parents stood as the original superhumans in whose eyes we wanted much worth. Now as adults, when we feel worthless, we ache with the dangling half-question. Do I have any value?  We used to seek evidence from Mom and Dad of our importance to them. Though we no longer look to them as our source, we have not yet identified a new one. We spin our wheels with the unanswered questions of our half-sentences. We wistfully yearn for some authority to come along and fill those gaps that our parents left.

Dennis Gibson, The Strong-Willed Adult

The Toll of a Negative self-concept

Your self-evaluations are important because they influence most areas of your behavior, defining the limits of what you will attempt. You avoid an activity if you self-concept predicts you will perform so badly as to humiliate yourself. For instance, if your self-concept includes the belief that you would be a poor ice skater, you might never try it, and will indeed remain a poor ice skater. Often people excuse themselves with “That’s just the way I am.” By using this excuse, they deny themselves opportunities for personal growth.

Sharon and Gordon Bower, Asserting Yourself

matchless

To run yourself down hinders you doing what you can. In effect, when you belittle yourself, you are belittling God. He made you who you are – with your unique talents and lacks. To compare yourself with others is not good. Remember, you are God’s unique original! What an honor and privilege it is to be designed by the Almighty God! He know the end from the beginning. He never makes a mistake. He created you an individual – none other like you – for a purpose.

Ella May Miller

Wings are best grown after you jump off the cliff anyway

Life after college is like getting hit by a bus you didn’t see coming because you were too busy texting to look both ways before crossing the street. And why would you? You’ve crossed that street every single day at the exact same time for 20 years and a bus has never run over you before. Here’s the thing: Up until this point, your entire life has been hinged upon a concept of preparation and reward. You study for a test, you get a good grade. You exhibit good behavior, you don’t get thrown in detention. You do your chores, you get an allowance. 

The real world doesn’t really care about any of that. Sometimes you fail when you should have succeeded. Sometimes you’re punished when you’ve done nothing wrong. Sometimes you lose, even when you did everything in your power to win. So lay down your ego and stop waving that degree around like it’s a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Jump in. Grow your wings.

Alex McDaniel

The power of sibling rivalry

Sibling rivalry can be a year-round tradition for some families. University of Missouri researchers followed more nearly 150 pairs of siblings for a year and found the conflict fell into two overall categories:

1. Conflicts about shared resources and responsibilities which focused on equality and fairness, like whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher or use the computer or ride in the front seat of the car. These siblings were more likely to become depressed.

2. Meanwhile, those who argued over privacy and personal space, such as borrowing clothes without asking or entering a room without permission, were more likely to be anxious and have low self-esteem. The most vulnerable for this twist were younger siblings.

The researchers say the way preteens and teens react to the conflict with siblings to the has to do with what they perceive is at stake. You'll find details about the study in the journal Child Development.

Stephen Goforth