I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
I will be responsible for building part of the new business
A little experiment in an affirmation. (I heard Scott Adams of Dilbert fame talking about them on the Tim Ferriss podcast this morning.) Big changes are being implemented in my professional environment and I want to be a big player in some new spaces. There is no clear picture of what the leadership wants to establish, but the outline that they have shared is enough to tell me that there will be plenty of opportunities for those willing to claim them.
This is the time to put my MBA out there. Not that it will be key in any success that I may have in some new role, but it's the credential that could make the decision makers willing to take a chance on me.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Running away by pursuing that next big thing
Striving. It's my constant companion. It's always there, a constant hum amid the flux and oscillations of my life. I can't imagine life without a desire to attain some kind of achievement. Acquisition of some achievement is my central value. I don't know how to just be. I don't know what my life would look like if I just was.
Let's take a look at my current pursuits.
40 books read this year. It's so utterly arbitrary and meaningless in the grand scheme of life. That doesn't matter. It's a goal to pursue. (Just in case you were wondering, I'm still on track to make that goal, although my current reading may put me a little behind.)
Professional status. I'm always looking for ways to move up, have an impact, and get more clout.
Lower times on my runs. Why run easy when you can run hard.
I keep track of how often my wife and I are intimate. The number has gotten bigger every year that I've been keeping track. Should that really be a factor in our love life?
Then there is the never ending quest for more, better, improvement, a restless chasing of some ill-defined thing. Pursuing covers up the feelings of insufficiency and inadequacy. If I constantly go after that ideal off in the distance, I won't have to stop and acknowledge my current state.
The crazy part is that there is nothing wrong with my current state. At least there is nothing objectively wrong with my current state. Not that I've ever stopped running after that other thing out there to actually recognize what I'm feeling. That's really the point after all. Avoiding my feelings. The more they're buried, ignored, subsumed under some quest for a glimmer of improvement, the less I have to actually experience those feelings.
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Letting go
There are two trash bags full of books in my garage. There will be more by the time I'm finished. I've read most of the books that I am discarding, but there a good number in there that I have not read. Those are the ones that I've had for years and have a very difficult time imagining myself actually reading. I've held onto them because I've always told myself that there will come a time when I may want to read that book. It's time to let them go. It's time to let go of books that I've read but know I will never read again (I very, very rarely reread books, the only books I can recall reading were from long series.). I've always fought against my desire to buy books. A few years ago I questioned spending the money. Now it's the space. I've had books stashed all over my house. The shelves are full so they've spread to piles on my desk and stashes in different drawers and cabinets.
The pressure of having all these books bearing down on me has become inhibiting. I can't move forward because I have all of these books, accumulated over most of my life. I just put some Stephen King books that I read in high school into the trash bags, and those aren't the only high school era books that I am letting go. I've had some them for over 20 years and they're unread. Why keep them around? Those were books that were intriguing to me when I was a teenager. Those are artifacts of a different time in my life. By getting rid of the books, I feel like I'm freeing myself to move forward from that time.
The books and my hero narrative are vestiges of a different life. I chose to have the books in my life, but the hero narrative seeped in and has refused to let go. I've clung to these books, telling myself that I can't let them go just like I've maintained a fierce grip on this whole hero thing. There are roles that I must play, family dynamics that I must preserve. No, these are not things that I must do. They are relics of my emotional history. Books were my refuge during the time that I developed my hero thing. Books surely contributed to its strength and persistence. In stepping away from some of these books, I'm stepping away from a part of my past that weakens me. In turning away from the past, I can turn more completely to the present. I am less encumbered to pursue depth and meaning.
The past is not a burden that I am obligated to carry. I can choose to set it down and leave it behind. I make that choice.
The pressure of having all these books bearing down on me has become inhibiting. I can't move forward because I have all of these books, accumulated over most of my life. I just put some Stephen King books that I read in high school into the trash bags, and those aren't the only high school era books that I am letting go. I've had some them for over 20 years and they're unread. Why keep them around? Those were books that were intriguing to me when I was a teenager. Those are artifacts of a different time in my life. By getting rid of the books, I feel like I'm freeing myself to move forward from that time.
The books and my hero narrative are vestiges of a different life. I chose to have the books in my life, but the hero narrative seeped in and has refused to let go. I've clung to these books, telling myself that I can't let them go just like I've maintained a fierce grip on this whole hero thing. There are roles that I must play, family dynamics that I must preserve. No, these are not things that I must do. They are relics of my emotional history. Books were my refuge during the time that I developed my hero thing. Books surely contributed to its strength and persistence. In stepping away from some of these books, I'm stepping away from a part of my past that weakens me. In turning away from the past, I can turn more completely to the present. I am less encumbered to pursue depth and meaning.
The past is not a burden that I am obligated to carry. I can choose to set it down and leave it behind. I make that choice.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
More musings on the role of the heroic, why it's pathetic and what it means going forward
Recognition of this hero narrative as a driver for my behaviors, preferences, and other unconscious motives isn't necessarily a trigger to rethink my entire life and identity. It's a chance to hijack that immediate response to something heroic and replace that impulse with something more intentional. That happened this morning. One of the books in the Kindle Daily Deal was a memoir by an F-16 pilot. My hero pleasure centers lit up at the potential of this book. There was all kinds of elite level stuff, doing things that are hard, being the best, it was all right there. Of course I was ready to buy it, but I stopped and took a moment to think about what I was feeling. I didn't see it right away, but the realization of the link to my hero thing came into focus pretty quickly. I didn't buy the book.
It's not that the pursuit of the heroic if necessarily bad. It's more about recognizing what I'm responding to and finding a different way to react. I've spent too long going with the automatic appeal of these types of stories. Stopping to take a look at what was so enticing about a book describing flying an F-16 against SAM sites lets me see a little deeper into what I have going on under the surface. It's the appeal of the best of the best, the elite, the distinct and clearly different level of performance. Those are the stories that I crave. Winning the competition, being thought of as special, that's what makes my psyche really sing when I come across these things. The stories are definitely exciting and highly entertaining, but it's the elite status of the story teller that really makes all the difference for me.
Pursuing the heroic isn't about going after what you want, it's all about doing what others find unique, valuable, and difficult. Decisions and actions are not based on what I find inherently appealing. My life turns into a pursuit of opportunities to impress other people. It's not even what other people will find legitimately appealing. It's about what I think should be impressive to other people. It's possible to end up doing something that I don't find all that appealing in an effort to impress people I don't even know by doing something that they might not even find all that impressive. It's crazy! Well, I should say it was crazy because that tendency was much stronger in my youth, but it's echo is still very strong in my life as an adult.
That's another aspect of this whole thing that has me disturbed. If the other orientation wasn't bad enough, the persistence of this immature motivation deep into my adulthood just adds another level of desperation. I can cut myself some slack and see that wanting to emulate heroes was a pretty decent way to deal with a lack of affection from my parents, a pretty weak self-image, and a guide for the right way to behave when I was a kid. It served its purpose and I should have moved on to more mature ways of engaging with life. That didn't happen, at least not as completely as it could have. I carried that legacy into my marriage and parenting and career. The hero encompasses so much of my identity it even colors which books I choose to read!
Seeing myself as the hero and doing all that I could to make that image a reality was limiting. The adoption of that orientation immediately put typical youth activities out of bounds. The hero adheres to all expectations (at least the conception of the heroic that I adhered to) and strives to stay within the lines of cultural expectations. The hero isn't a rebel. The hero accepts the challenges placed before him. To reject those challenges would be unthinkable. I wanted to be praised and adored by authority figures and those who could speak to my superior character, intelligence, and ability. There was no need to explore boundaries or wander off into unpopular but personally appealing activities. The hero makers were pretty clear on what they wanted so I went about giving it to them.
It's easy to take this idea and beat myself with it. But how will this insight impact me as I continue to live my life? Recognizing its role in my choices is a good first step. I don't need to reinvent myself, but consciously moving away from what a much younger version of myself used to get through the day will allow me to embrace and accept me. Chasing some idea of the heroic is really just a way to replace some negative view of myself with something more appealing. (Saving my brother, a task set by my mother, yet another way for me to pursue the hero. I'm really starting to hope that I'm just taking this whole idea too far...) Rejecting the heroic as the ideal allows me to just do what feels right rather that what I SHOULD be doing. Simple example, I was on a kick a month or so ago about reading harder books. The hero should suffer to go beyond the merely mortal and strive for more, and as such he should be willing to tackle the really challenging novels. Breaking that train of thought would be a good first step.
It's not that the pursuit of the heroic if necessarily bad. It's more about recognizing what I'm responding to and finding a different way to react. I've spent too long going with the automatic appeal of these types of stories. Stopping to take a look at what was so enticing about a book describing flying an F-16 against SAM sites lets me see a little deeper into what I have going on under the surface. It's the appeal of the best of the best, the elite, the distinct and clearly different level of performance. Those are the stories that I crave. Winning the competition, being thought of as special, that's what makes my psyche really sing when I come across these things. The stories are definitely exciting and highly entertaining, but it's the elite status of the story teller that really makes all the difference for me.
Pursuing the heroic isn't about going after what you want, it's all about doing what others find unique, valuable, and difficult. Decisions and actions are not based on what I find inherently appealing. My life turns into a pursuit of opportunities to impress other people. It's not even what other people will find legitimately appealing. It's about what I think should be impressive to other people. It's possible to end up doing something that I don't find all that appealing in an effort to impress people I don't even know by doing something that they might not even find all that impressive. It's crazy! Well, I should say it was crazy because that tendency was much stronger in my youth, but it's echo is still very strong in my life as an adult.
That's another aspect of this whole thing that has me disturbed. If the other orientation wasn't bad enough, the persistence of this immature motivation deep into my adulthood just adds another level of desperation. I can cut myself some slack and see that wanting to emulate heroes was a pretty decent way to deal with a lack of affection from my parents, a pretty weak self-image, and a guide for the right way to behave when I was a kid. It served its purpose and I should have moved on to more mature ways of engaging with life. That didn't happen, at least not as completely as it could have. I carried that legacy into my marriage and parenting and career. The hero encompasses so much of my identity it even colors which books I choose to read!
Seeing myself as the hero and doing all that I could to make that image a reality was limiting. The adoption of that orientation immediately put typical youth activities out of bounds. The hero adheres to all expectations (at least the conception of the heroic that I adhered to) and strives to stay within the lines of cultural expectations. The hero isn't a rebel. The hero accepts the challenges placed before him. To reject those challenges would be unthinkable. I wanted to be praised and adored by authority figures and those who could speak to my superior character, intelligence, and ability. There was no need to explore boundaries or wander off into unpopular but personally appealing activities. The hero makers were pretty clear on what they wanted so I went about giving it to them.
It's easy to take this idea and beat myself with it. But how will this insight impact me as I continue to live my life? Recognizing its role in my choices is a good first step. I don't need to reinvent myself, but consciously moving away from what a much younger version of myself used to get through the day will allow me to embrace and accept me. Chasing some idea of the heroic is really just a way to replace some negative view of myself with something more appealing. (Saving my brother, a task set by my mother, yet another way for me to pursue the hero. I'm really starting to hope that I'm just taking this whole idea too far...) Rejecting the heroic as the ideal allows me to just do what feels right rather that what I SHOULD be doing. Simple example, I was on a kick a month or so ago about reading harder books. The hero should suffer to go beyond the merely mortal and strive for more, and as such he should be willing to tackle the really challenging novels. Breaking that train of thought would be a good first step.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Always trying to be the hero
So my part of the giant corporation is undergoing a strategic refresh. Maybe it's time for me to refresh my strategy. I've been dancing around doing something like this for awhile, but I've dismissed it as just another way for me to think and plan without actually doing anything. A quick little insight into one of my big patterns (something that was really evident in my youth that has ebbed in import over the years but still pulls on my orientation to life) has me rethinking the value of coming up with a new something to center my life.
I've always wanted to be the hero. I came to this insight in a round about manner, but the key to the realization came when I thought about my favorite movies, particularly the movies that really moved me when I was a kid. Top Gun was a favorite. I watched Last of the Mohicans every time I passed over it on TV. Star Wars was my life for a big chunk of my youth. The trend continues into adulthood. Braveheart. Gladiator. Spartacus was the first show that I watched using Netflix. The hero story is not limited to movies. You're always the hero when you play video games. I preferred games where with quests that could be completed. Sports games were never really my thing (unless I was beating my brother). I read comic books and played sports. Making the winning play, being the hero of the game, was one of my go to daydreams when I was in high school. I tried so hard to convince myself that I was distinct and special.
The desire to be the hero captures so much of what has resonated strongly in my life. There are other memories that I can think of, things that are too difficult to record in something like this post, that are consistent with this hero narrative. These recollections (like the predominant story I acted out when I was playing in the trees behind my house or when I was riding my bike back and forth along the road behind a different house) give the role that these heroic stories from popular culture had in my life much greater relevance than simply being stuff that most guys like. I just can't ignore the centrality of the hero image as a core part of my self-image.
As I look back over the patterns that I've followed for the last few years, this idea of trying to be the hero pops up again and again. Heroes go on quests. School has been one of my quests. Getting into law school. Getting my MBA. Those were trials I used to prove my perseverance and mettle. My PhD falls into that category as well. The pursuit of that degree was the driving motivation of my life from my senior year of college until I finished the degree. That's almost 10 years spent focused on achieving a difficult goal. That's not to say it was all about this hero thing, but it's consistency with the hero's journey. Even my decision to volunteer to help with challenging things at work fit into this idea of being the hero. My work on launching new products came after a failure to launch similar products with a different company. That was my way of saving the day. The same thinking applies to my current efforts to get a product through the FDA approval process. It's a chance to save the day.
My initial response to this insight is not positive. This pursuit of the heroic hints at desperation and need for acceptance. This is why I think it's time to rethink my approach. Well, rethinking my approach isn't really the crux of the matter. It's more about figuring out what gets me motivated and excited and decoupling that from this quest for recognition and special status. It's the status seeking inherent in wanting to be the hero that really bothers me.
I've always wanted to be the hero. I came to this insight in a round about manner, but the key to the realization came when I thought about my favorite movies, particularly the movies that really moved me when I was a kid. Top Gun was a favorite. I watched Last of the Mohicans every time I passed over it on TV. Star Wars was my life for a big chunk of my youth. The trend continues into adulthood. Braveheart. Gladiator. Spartacus was the first show that I watched using Netflix. The hero story is not limited to movies. You're always the hero when you play video games. I preferred games where with quests that could be completed. Sports games were never really my thing (unless I was beating my brother). I read comic books and played sports. Making the winning play, being the hero of the game, was one of my go to daydreams when I was in high school. I tried so hard to convince myself that I was distinct and special.
The desire to be the hero captures so much of what has resonated strongly in my life. There are other memories that I can think of, things that are too difficult to record in something like this post, that are consistent with this hero narrative. These recollections (like the predominant story I acted out when I was playing in the trees behind my house or when I was riding my bike back and forth along the road behind a different house) give the role that these heroic stories from popular culture had in my life much greater relevance than simply being stuff that most guys like. I just can't ignore the centrality of the hero image as a core part of my self-image.
As I look back over the patterns that I've followed for the last few years, this idea of trying to be the hero pops up again and again. Heroes go on quests. School has been one of my quests. Getting into law school. Getting my MBA. Those were trials I used to prove my perseverance and mettle. My PhD falls into that category as well. The pursuit of that degree was the driving motivation of my life from my senior year of college until I finished the degree. That's almost 10 years spent focused on achieving a difficult goal. That's not to say it was all about this hero thing, but it's consistency with the hero's journey. Even my decision to volunteer to help with challenging things at work fit into this idea of being the hero. My work on launching new products came after a failure to launch similar products with a different company. That was my way of saving the day. The same thinking applies to my current efforts to get a product through the FDA approval process. It's a chance to save the day.
My initial response to this insight is not positive. This pursuit of the heroic hints at desperation and need for acceptance. This is why I think it's time to rethink my approach. Well, rethinking my approach isn't really the crux of the matter. It's more about figuring out what gets me motivated and excited and decoupling that from this quest for recognition and special status. It's the status seeking inherent in wanting to be the hero that really bothers me.
Saturday, August 8, 2015
Predicting the future
My boss's boss is just trying to protect his own ass. This was my realization as I was running through a fancy neighborhood with huge houses (way too close together) this morning. All signs point to this strategic refresh resulting in an organization along the lines of our brands. The people who run my group are actively trying to prevent that kind of fracture. The kind of things we do can't get done if you break the groups into tiny pieces, at least that's their take on the situation. They haven't really thought about what it would take to make that kind of organization a reality. (Writing that sentence gives me some ideas, this could finally be the chance to split the routine regulatory kind of work from the innovative product development stuff.) They're only looking to protect their role and position. Breaking things up would definitely diminish their influence. That's all they see. They're not looking at what this whole refresh is trying to accomplish and looking for the best way to make that happen. And that's why this refresh will likely fail.
The whole point of this reorganization is to expand the business. The targets are not small incremental steps. This is an effort to get things growing now. You can't keep doing business as usual to make the new revenue targets. The business needs to be reshaped, reoriented, and rebuilt. The culture has to change. To make this happen, it looks to me like our new president is making an effort to cut back on the bureaucracy and oversight to give the brands space to innovate and grow (that's the kernel for one tough question). The culture of going up every rung of the ladder to get approval must be replaced by people taking accountability for doing what they feel needs to get done to make projects move forward.
That is so opposite of the way the culture works now, I just don't see how a culture of doing whatever it takes to move a project forward replaces the need to get approval at every single step. I would love to see the governance of my building get eviscerated, but nobody would be able to function without some kind of organizational coverage. I've realized over the last year and half that the primary role of a manager in my building is to take accountable for other people's decisions. Nobody wants to be wrong, which makes them uncomfortable doing what they know needs to get done. They want permission, which shifts the accountability for the action to the person who granted permission. This is not the mindset of a nimble organization.
Culture isn't the only problem. I also struggle to see how the company grows revenues without taking a hit on profit margins. Margins kill so many of our projects. How much a hit to margins will we be willing to take to grow revenues? If the goal is grow revenues and preserve margins, that dictates a big part of what kind of projects we'll be able to pursue.
Senior staff protecting their turf, culture, margins, these are big company problems. If this refresh is an effort to get a big company to think and act like a small company, there is no way it will work.
The whole point of this reorganization is to expand the business. The targets are not small incremental steps. This is an effort to get things growing now. You can't keep doing business as usual to make the new revenue targets. The business needs to be reshaped, reoriented, and rebuilt. The culture has to change. To make this happen, it looks to me like our new president is making an effort to cut back on the bureaucracy and oversight to give the brands space to innovate and grow (that's the kernel for one tough question). The culture of going up every rung of the ladder to get approval must be replaced by people taking accountability for doing what they feel needs to get done to make projects move forward.
That is so opposite of the way the culture works now, I just don't see how a culture of doing whatever it takes to move a project forward replaces the need to get approval at every single step. I would love to see the governance of my building get eviscerated, but nobody would be able to function without some kind of organizational coverage. I've realized over the last year and half that the primary role of a manager in my building is to take accountable for other people's decisions. Nobody wants to be wrong, which makes them uncomfortable doing what they know needs to get done. They want permission, which shifts the accountability for the action to the person who granted permission. This is not the mindset of a nimble organization.
Culture isn't the only problem. I also struggle to see how the company grows revenues without taking a hit on profit margins. Margins kill so many of our projects. How much a hit to margins will we be willing to take to grow revenues? If the goal is grow revenues and preserve margins, that dictates a big part of what kind of projects we'll be able to pursue.
Senior staff protecting their turf, culture, margins, these are big company problems. If this refresh is an effort to get a big company to think and act like a small company, there is no way it will work.
Thursday, August 6, 2015
This is my chance to finally make a difference
I spent the week before my vacation questioning what I was doing at work. Bored, listless, unmotivated; these are not optimal states. Yet another exploration into what I really wanted out of life was in the offing. I imagined taking this deep plunge into my values to see what I could find. I usually talked myself into doing something work related rather than conduct this largely useless and most likely fruitless mental exercise. Thinking about what matters to me and coming up with a plan to get more engaged with my work wasn't going to do much. I have to actually do something to make a change.
Or other people in my organization can decide to flip the business upside down and make those changes for me. That's what happening now. The actual details of the change have not been shared, but reading between the lines has given me a pretty good sense of what is coming. This is a pivotal moment. The principled part of me wants to stomp its figurative foot and pout about the de-emphasis in the science. The careerist part of me sees the opportunity in this change. This plan is meant to be a paradigm shift in how we do business. People will work hard to keep things from changing too much. They will go back to other organizational plans that were similar and use that anchor to keep things from being too different.
I've been looking for ways to influence and change the organization for years. The biggest obstacle that I've faced in making a difference is the blockade of seniority that resists big changes. That big change is here. This is my chance. I have to take it.
Or other people in my organization can decide to flip the business upside down and make those changes for me. That's what happening now. The actual details of the change have not been shared, but reading between the lines has given me a pretty good sense of what is coming. This is a pivotal moment. The principled part of me wants to stomp its figurative foot and pout about the de-emphasis in the science. The careerist part of me sees the opportunity in this change. This plan is meant to be a paradigm shift in how we do business. People will work hard to keep things from changing too much. They will go back to other organizational plans that were similar and use that anchor to keep things from being too different.
I've been looking for ways to influence and change the organization for years. The biggest obstacle that I've faced in making a difference is the blockade of seniority that resists big changes. That big change is here. This is my chance. I have to take it.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Clarity of purpose? Or something else?
Check marks on a list give me unreasonable levels of satisfaction. I can't help but think that I read so I can make lists of books that I should read. Every book that I finish gets a check mark. I love how the Audible apps lists books as finished. As a lonely teenager in a windy New Mexico military outpost, I had a list of Nintendo games that I had beaten. I wasn't a fan of sports games because there wasn't really a way to beat them. There was no final boss to defeat. Just beating the computer didn't have that thrill of accomplishment. There is a clarity of purpose in those games. The target is clear. The rules are clear. You just have to figure out how to make it through all the challenges.
The sense of listlessness that I've been feeling may simply be the lack of clarity of purpose. What I am trying to do? I'm going in a direction towards a vague goal off in the distance, but it's too far to really be very motivating. I've felt this way before. Hell, I wrote about feeling this way last year. This is when I do things like look for another job, decide to apply to another graduate school, or develop some complex and utterly useless personal challenge. All of those tasks have an unambiguous goal and a clear path. You can see your progress and you know when you've succeeded.
I don't really know what I want to accomplish professionally. I have never thought to give myself goals as a parent or as a husband. I'm not sure a simple goal will cut it these days. It's more about finding what makes me happy. I don't know what that is. Maybe that's what's missing.
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Opportunities for meaning
The goal was 10 miles, but he only ran a little over 8 this morning. The waves of frustration and teeth gnashing that were expected never came. A goal was missed, but meeting that goal would have pushed his body too far. There is no point in inflicting injury just to achieve some arbitrary distance on a run. It was hot and humid. He had some water stashed along the route, but it was fairly deep into the run, near the halfway point. The run didn't go as planned, but he was able to get out there and run, push himself a little, and be in a condition where he was there for his family for the rest of the day and is ready to take on another run a few days from now. It didn't meet the plan, but it was a success.
Are there any retail transactions more irksome than buying a car? It takes weeks to shop for the right car, understand the options provided in the different models, and find a dealer who can deliver the right car in an acceptable color. Once that happens, you still have the pleasure of spending a couple of hours at the dealership while all of the various forms are filled out and approved. After all of that, you leave with a new car that loses a huge chunk of it's value the second you leave the lot and a new loan that will take years to pay off. Today it was about being there for her. Sure, he could have been negative and complained and been totally disengaged from the process, but he needed to support her through this challenging process. It wasn't about what he was feeling, it was about what she was experiencing. She needed to have support and reassurance. Being negative would just have added to the stress of an already stressful situation. Positive, reassuring, supportive. That's how things went today. And we're that much closer to finishing the aggravation of buying a new car.
The comments about thinking and reading aren't about thinking and reading. They're about how thinking and reading are a way to hide and disengage from the life that's happening right now. They represent a turning away. It's something that's all about me rather than something that is about us. And it's not that all of my life needs to be about us, but the balance is off. Too much living in my head and not enough living with the family. There is meaning all around us. We don't need to seek it internally or plot a course through life that will deliver us at the portal to profundity and enlightenment. You just need to look around you and engage with what we already possess. It's not about finding or getting more.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Weighty issues hang in the balance...
Go to the beach or buy a new car. With that whole gay marriage thing resolved by judicial fiat and racial strife being mended by the erasure of critical historical moments (or core memories to put it in Pixar terms), this is the raging topic of the day in my small world. Both positions in this vigorous debate were dealt with earlier this year and felt satisfactorily resolved, but some open rooms in our favorite hotel and random car wonkiness (just a nail in a tire, but next time it could be something really dreadful) have put these two issues at odds in our happy home. Fun now (the beach trip would be this weekend, or This Weeknd to put it in hip-hop terms) or all the pain in the ass aggravation of actually buying a new car now with the longer term satisfaction of having a long simmering issue resolved are the issues under discussion. There is no easy answer. Maybe we can just do both?
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Chasing my tail
Just sit here quietly and listen. I named my first Tumblr blog non-random Brownian motion. Oh you clever scientist you. Brownian motion IS random. To call it non-random is to call it something other than Brownian. Watching my focus zipping around from one thing to another feels like a random walk through my aspirations and status seeking goals. Take a look at that Primal Leadership book as a potential way to get that leadership program going? No, that feels too mercenary. Read some of The Recognitions? That's too demanding, besides, I just finished a book earlier tonight. How about Awaken the Giant Within? That's been dragging on forever. I can just focus on reading that and get it wrapped up. But is it worth the time to actually read it? It feels so New Bourgeois. I could write about that, the New Bourgeois, all of these productivity/entrepreneur/self-improvement bloggers who peddle the middle class aspirations of a new generation. That sounds demanding. Play Tetris? Bookworm? Why waste the time. I should do something more constructive and creative. I have all this energy just pent up. Maybe I should just go to bed. Or have another beer.
And that's how most of my uncommitted time gets used up. It just slips away as I spend most of it trying to figure out what I should do next. Should is the right word there. It's not what I WANT to do next. I'm not sure I even know what I would really want to do. It's what I SHOULD do. What would be the action that would garner me the most of what I think I want. Do I want to continue my search for the ideology that will fill my soul with meaning and give me a purpose and direction? My small little life with it's joys and pleasures can't be enough. There must be something more right? I should create something. I feel so trapped in a cage at work, running around and doing other people's bidding, this is my time to do what I need to do to feel fulfilled. Maybe I should figure out just what that would be before I get started on that kind of project. I need to do some research. What book should I read for that? And so the wheel goes around and around until I just give up and go to bed.
And that's how most of my uncommitted time gets used up. It just slips away as I spend most of it trying to figure out what I should do next. Should is the right word there. It's not what I WANT to do next. I'm not sure I even know what I would really want to do. It's what I SHOULD do. What would be the action that would garner me the most of what I think I want. Do I want to continue my search for the ideology that will fill my soul with meaning and give me a purpose and direction? My small little life with it's joys and pleasures can't be enough. There must be something more right? I should create something. I feel so trapped in a cage at work, running around and doing other people's bidding, this is my time to do what I need to do to feel fulfilled. Maybe I should figure out just what that would be before I get started on that kind of project. I need to do some research. What book should I read for that? And so the wheel goes around and around until I just give up and go to bed.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Idealized future state
Much of my life has been built around a the search for meaning through the pursuit of an idealized future. If I can just get a little closer to that ideal, life will saturate with meaning and significance. This is yet another youthful defense against the burden of emotions and vulnerability. The right college will bring meaning, the right graduate school experience, the right career, becoming who my wife needs in order to fulfill all of her needs. It's been a constant effort to mold myself to what is deemed significant and meaningful. The answers will find me if I can just get to where they can find me.
This blog is one giant trail of my relentless pursuit of that one elusive thing. The whole premise of the URL, a set of New Year's Resolutions is nothing but a program to obtain some vision of an idealized future. All the bad stuff that I'm feeling now will sublimate to nothingness as I get closer and closer to a smaller waist, check another Dickens book off of my to be read list, or get accepted to law school. My pursuit of other career opportunities. My obsession with The Edge. All this groping for some sense of what I'm about, what I should be doing, what I can do to finally feel accepted and fulfilled.
It's a futile effort. I've made progress towards the career goals that I thought would bring deeper meaning and purpose to my life. Work will never be the principle source of meaning in my life. The gap between what I wanted from work and what it actually provides has been nothing but an inexhaustible source of frustration and disappointment. The truth is that I have it awfully good where I am now. It's comfortable, but that's not a bad thing. There is no mystical office out there that will vanquish all of my doubts and provide a clear route to a deep and meaningful career. It's a job. It doesn't have to be devoid of significance, but every day at work doesn't need to be a spiritual quest either.
No book will provide the answers for how to live my life or where I can find meaning and fulfillment in every moment of my life. Books can expand my life, make it richer and more complex, but the key to that something else that I've always sought will never reveal itself, no matter how difficult the book is to read. There is no something else. It's all right here. Everything I need is already in my life, but I've been to busy filling my emotional needs and keeping the potential of any bad feelings away by distracting myself with silly little stunts that offer the illusion of getting that much closer to the idealized future.
I don't need to become somebody else for my wife to love me more or to fulfill her emotional needs. I just need to be me. That's all that she's ever wanted from me. She wants to feel valuable and important, that she matters, that she's desired and wanted and pursued. I feel all of those things for her. It's just a matter of sharing that with her, being in the moment with her, hearing everything she says, not just with her voice, but with her body, her gestures, her actions. The answers aren't out there waiting for me to find them. They're inside each of us, trying to find their way out, but we have to work together to coax them out. I'm getting better, we're getting better. It's not about the ideal. It's about us.
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
It's not that a goal is unattainable, it's just hard
I was all set to write a weepy post where I chided myself for not making much progress on goals that I've had since I stated writing this blog. (I was thinking about getting in shape and publishing a research paper in case you were curious what long term goals I had in mind.) This feeling was prompted by some old posts that I reread while looking for my reading list from the first years of writing this blog. The topics that I was writing about then are still issues that I think about and deal with today. Weight loss, fitness, reading and buying books, getting a better sense of who I am and what I'm about. Where is the progress, where is the accomplishment?
The frustration really amped up when I read some of my comments on writing a research paper. I'm still working on that same paper! Shouldn't I have finished that by now? I say these things are important to me, but my status doesn't seem to change. I had this whole internal narrative about the appeal of unattainable goals playing in my head. Just as my self-loathing was really starting to ramp up, I challenged myself to take a look at my supposed failures from a different perspective.
I challenged this idea that I'm all about unattainable goals? What if I just choose to pursue activities that require lots of hard work, but haven't put in the effort needed to perform at a desired level? Hard goals are hard for a reason. They require consistent effort. I may face set backs. I might have to start all over again on some of them. Activities may conflict from time to time. I can't pursue all of them with the same level of intensity for an extended period of time. Hard activities are not fun. They require focus and commitment and sacrifice. I have a busy life. It's a fantastic, wonderful life. I make sure that the people who matter most to me have as much of me as they need. Should I really beat myself up if I slip a little bit in my workouts or avoid working on a research paper?
That's when I realized what is really bothering me. I haven't finished anything in awhile. I've finished a few books, but I need to finish Toll the Hounds. It's a huge book. I've made it a point to get through that series this year. Finishing it will feel like progress in a way that getting through some other books just can't match. That damn manuscript has been hanging over me for years. I did finish the version that I mentioned in that early blog post. I submitted it to a journal and it was rejected. I took a look at my paper after that rejection and realized that it needed to be totally reworked. I am close to finishing that reworked draft. There is tremendous progress on that project, but it doesn't feel like I've made any progress because the work remains unpublished.
I'm also still figuring out how to capture a sense of progress and achievement as a manager. I record and note all kinds of activities because I relish the sense of getting something done. When I was working at the bench, getting something done meant testing some samples or completing an analysis. Now getting something done means keeping a project on track over the course of months. I'm also not the one doing the work. That dilutes the sense of something getting done. I need to find ways to make my team's accomplishments more real. That will go a long way towards making me more satisfied with my work life.
The frustration really amped up when I read some of my comments on writing a research paper. I'm still working on that same paper! Shouldn't I have finished that by now? I say these things are important to me, but my status doesn't seem to change. I had this whole internal narrative about the appeal of unattainable goals playing in my head. Just as my self-loathing was really starting to ramp up, I challenged myself to take a look at my supposed failures from a different perspective.
I challenged this idea that I'm all about unattainable goals? What if I just choose to pursue activities that require lots of hard work, but haven't put in the effort needed to perform at a desired level? Hard goals are hard for a reason. They require consistent effort. I may face set backs. I might have to start all over again on some of them. Activities may conflict from time to time. I can't pursue all of them with the same level of intensity for an extended period of time. Hard activities are not fun. They require focus and commitment and sacrifice. I have a busy life. It's a fantastic, wonderful life. I make sure that the people who matter most to me have as much of me as they need. Should I really beat myself up if I slip a little bit in my workouts or avoid working on a research paper?
That's when I realized what is really bothering me. I haven't finished anything in awhile. I've finished a few books, but I need to finish Toll the Hounds. It's a huge book. I've made it a point to get through that series this year. Finishing it will feel like progress in a way that getting through some other books just can't match. That damn manuscript has been hanging over me for years. I did finish the version that I mentioned in that early blog post. I submitted it to a journal and it was rejected. I took a look at my paper after that rejection and realized that it needed to be totally reworked. I am close to finishing that reworked draft. There is tremendous progress on that project, but it doesn't feel like I've made any progress because the work remains unpublished.
I'm also still figuring out how to capture a sense of progress and achievement as a manager. I record and note all kinds of activities because I relish the sense of getting something done. When I was working at the bench, getting something done meant testing some samples or completing an analysis. Now getting something done means keeping a project on track over the course of months. I'm also not the one doing the work. That dilutes the sense of something getting done. I need to find ways to make my team's accomplishments more real. That will go a long way towards making me more satisfied with my work life.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Difficult feeling avoidance strategy
"Rather than learning how to tolerate difficult feelings, many of us have learned only to avoid them...[O]ur inclination is often to run from our emotions because they carry with them the threat of destruction. Indulging ourselves in thinking as a protective alternative, we try to avoid our fear by staying aloof of our feelings." Mark Epstein, in Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart
One sentence captures what I've been struggling to express for many, many months. This sentence slapped me when I read it this morning. I was stunned. To see in such plain terms made it's reality all the more stark. The undercurrent of fear in so many of pursuits, the hint of it that I had spotted last week, was made all the more clear.
One sentence captures what I've been struggling to express for many, many months. This sentence slapped me when I read it this morning. I was stunned. To see in such plain terms made it's reality all the more stark. The undercurrent of fear in so many of pursuits, the hint of it that I had spotted last week, was made all the more clear.
Friday, May 8, 2015
What the future holds
So what in the future as I move beyond The Edge and slowly negate the influence of the anti-me? Big bummer coming, but I have to say that not much is going to change in my life. At least not in terms of where I am and what I'm doing. How I go about doing these things, how I relate to other people in my life, and my level of engagement are things that should be very different.
Imagining a greatly improved future was always a favorite hobby of mine as a kid. All the things that were holding me back would be gone and everything I wanted would be ready and waiting for me to enjoy. Status played a big role in those imaginings. I wanted status because I didn't really know anything else that was worth my effort. There was a certainty to status symbols that more abstract things just didn't seem to deliver. I was too busy looking past what made me worthwhile and looking for ways that would make other people take me seriously, like me, think I was valuable. I have extensively documented how I've sought similar status type things here. Law school, new jobs in new places.
So my new future is about all those things that I overlooked and failed to appreciate for all too much of my life. People, relationships, things that I enjoy no matter what the popular opinion of that activity may be. I still want a rewarding career, but I'm not about putting in mad hours and neglecting the rest of my life to make that happen. I still want to push myself and keep learning and getting stronger, but that's more about being more healthy and present than proving something to myself. I've always had this nagging sense that in order to really have proved something, to have really succeeded, I would have to really struggle and fight and battle to reach some impossible goal. My reluctance to take on that struggle felt like a failure. That's the vestige of something that I picked up at a time in my life that is no longer relevant. Throwing myself into the maelstrom was the essential step.
That's the absolutely wrong way to look at it. I was running on Thursday morning and rather than focus on the pain and fighting against it, struggling to stay strong in the presence of a sensation that was making me feel bad, I simply let it be. No struggle, no wanting it to go away. I experienced it, but I didn't feel like I was in it. It was like watching waves from the shore rather than standing right in the breakers. I was aware that they were there, but I wasn't letting that energy control my state of mind. That fear that always gripped me when things got a little uneasy just slipped away. There was nothing to be afraid of. I didn't have to fight against it. There was no need to battle. It was just a feeling. It was temporary, I was in control.
I didn't worry about feeling bad. I just kept on running. Bad feelings will come, but they will also go away. There is no need to fixate on them and force them into submission. Accept and acknowledge.
What does the future hold? I don't know, and, to a certain extent, I'm not going to burden myself with caring all that much. I'm going to live my life as deeply as possible.
Imagining a greatly improved future was always a favorite hobby of mine as a kid. All the things that were holding me back would be gone and everything I wanted would be ready and waiting for me to enjoy. Status played a big role in those imaginings. I wanted status because I didn't really know anything else that was worth my effort. There was a certainty to status symbols that more abstract things just didn't seem to deliver. I was too busy looking past what made me worthwhile and looking for ways that would make other people take me seriously, like me, think I was valuable. I have extensively documented how I've sought similar status type things here. Law school, new jobs in new places.
So my new future is about all those things that I overlooked and failed to appreciate for all too much of my life. People, relationships, things that I enjoy no matter what the popular opinion of that activity may be. I still want a rewarding career, but I'm not about putting in mad hours and neglecting the rest of my life to make that happen. I still want to push myself and keep learning and getting stronger, but that's more about being more healthy and present than proving something to myself. I've always had this nagging sense that in order to really have proved something, to have really succeeded, I would have to really struggle and fight and battle to reach some impossible goal. My reluctance to take on that struggle felt like a failure. That's the vestige of something that I picked up at a time in my life that is no longer relevant. Throwing myself into the maelstrom was the essential step.
That's the absolutely wrong way to look at it. I was running on Thursday morning and rather than focus on the pain and fighting against it, struggling to stay strong in the presence of a sensation that was making me feel bad, I simply let it be. No struggle, no wanting it to go away. I experienced it, but I didn't feel like I was in it. It was like watching waves from the shore rather than standing right in the breakers. I was aware that they were there, but I wasn't letting that energy control my state of mind. That fear that always gripped me when things got a little uneasy just slipped away. There was nothing to be afraid of. I didn't have to fight against it. There was no need to battle. It was just a feeling. It was temporary, I was in control.
I didn't worry about feeling bad. I just kept on running. Bad feelings will come, but they will also go away. There is no need to fixate on them and force them into submission. Accept and acknowledge.
What does the future hold? I don't know, and, to a certain extent, I'm not going to burden myself with caring all that much. I'm going to live my life as deeply as possible.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Fearful
The Edge, anti-me, the overseer, they are all ways that I have deflected and misdirected myself from clearly stating what's really at the core of the issues that I use this space to look at in as unflinching manner as I can handle at the moment.
Fear.
That's the core of so much that I've been wrestling with over the last couple of years. I've been scared to engage life in a certain way. I've gone off and pursued all kinds of different things to avoid dealing with things that are scary. And the worst part is that I really had nothing to be afraid of in the first place. The fears were almost entirely a product of broken beliefs about myself and how other people experience me. At some point I became convinced that bad things would happen to me if I did not conform just so to certain expectations. The only problem was I really had no idea of what those expectations were. So I've been inventing things in my head for all these years and feeling bad about myself when I failed to meet those expectations.
The pattern is pervasive. Everything in my life is in some way affected by these self-imposed limits. I've put the fewest limits on myself professionally, but that's also where expectations and acceptable behaviors are relatively well-defined. I didn't have to invent anything in my head. There's also lots of objective feedback in a professional environment. This feedback reduced the disparity between how I see myself and how others see me. It's really no wonder that sports and school have always been my comfort zone. Rules are defined. The desired outcomes are clearly defined. There was less space for me to wonder if I was doing the right thing.
As I've recognized that my fear of social shame, rejection by somebody else, or simple self-loathing are grounded in some ephemeral notion of "right" that I developed deep in my youth, I have been able to recognize the urge to give into that pathetic voice. When I hear it, I stop and really think about why I'm feeling afraid (I'm being very deliberate in my use of words associated with fear), I can talk myself out of simply responding to the environment in my standard way and do the thing that really needs doing. I have some examples to illustrate what I mean.
Saturday night was my daughter's Father/Daughter Dance. This was a very important event for her, so I went into it very aware of how my behavior could impact her experience. When we got there, we saw plenty of adults that I knew. My fearful self felt like I needed to chat with these people, participate in the social milieu because that's pretty much what everybody else was doing. Nope, this was about my daughter. I wanted to do what she wanted. So I hung out with her, I talked to her, and I danced with her as much as I wanted. I didn't worry about what the other dads were thinking. I did crazy dances with her, asked her what she wanted to do. I let the night be about her (rather than me, which was my old way, to make sure I did whatever I needed to do to alleviate the fears that I was feeling in the moment). By the end of the night, I think a few of the other dads were jealous. Their daughters were busy playing with their friends and wanted nothing to do with dad. My daughter was still excited about the dance the next day. I felt good about that. It made me feel like I had done my job well.
My son plays baseball. Last year I experienced all kind of anxiety every time he was at bat. I wasn't nervous for him as much as I was nervous for me. I didn't want people to judge me for his performance. I wanted him to perform at a certain level so I could feel better about myself and not have to worry about what other people thought. I wasn't so interested in who he was and loving him for that, but getting him to become who I needed him to be to relieve my fears and satisfy my petty emotional needs. Then I realized that so much of what I've been struggling with was a consequence of not feeling like who I am was enough for the people who were supposed to love me no matter what. I had to be what they wanted and hide everything else or they wouldn't love me anymore. I had to make things easy for them so they would accept me and make me feel loved. I didn't want to do that to him, so I decided to focus on what he did well in a baseball game and not worry too much about everything else. I also had to recognize how hard last year was for him (he got hit with the ball a couple of times) and to give him time to get comfortable. I was rushing him back to hard last year. I never really listened to him, I never gave him time to feel afraid. I didn't want to acknowledge his fear because that would mean that I would have to acknowledge my own. I've spent my entire life hiding from my fear. I hide from my fear because I am ashamed of it. I don't have all the anxiety this year. I just focus on accepting him for who he is. He is a wonderful person. He doesn't need to be fixed. Sure, there are things that we can do to help him get better at baseball, but those are just skills that he can learn. They're not defects that he needs to hide. That's how I felt growing up and it's taken me 30+ years to recognize that I'm not defective. He doesn't need to grow up with the same baggage.
A failure to appropriately express my affections has been a big problem in my marriage. Expressing feelings means being vulnerable. That was a scary thought for me (even in the context of a relationship where it has been made very clear that my love and affection is shared and appreciated). Last night would have turned this morning into an emotionally painful time a year or so ago. I would have missed some very clear signs and left my wife feeling hurt and unappreciated. I was experiencing the feelings that used to make me disengage, but I recognized them for what they were and focused on what my wife was telling me. She wasn't saying anything with words, but with her actions. That's a mode of communication that is just as relevant to her as words, but has given me all kinds of problems over the years. Actions are open to all kinds of interpretations. While one part of me was reading the situation in the intended fashion, another part of me was too busy thinking of ways that things might go wrong and would do all that it could to prevent those possibilities from becoming a reality. I was able to get beyond that limit last night. Nothing I feared was true and the night was fantastic.
The limitations I've put on myself with fear is not restricted to my relationships with others. I was running yesterday. This was my weekly long run, but I wasn't sure that I was up to the distance that I had planned. I was feeling a little thirsty and a bit out of sorts. I recognized it as fear, fear of the pain, fear of boredom, and just kept going. I put the fear out of my mind and stopped fighting. I fight to keep the fear at bay rather than just letting the less than pleasant sensations have their moment and move beyond them. Feeling afraid, inadequate, hungry, thirsty, embarrassed, or ashamed will be a little unpleasant, but it will pass. Having those feelings doesn't make me weak or less of a man or an inferior person. Those feelings just make me human. Fighting against them won't prove anything. Not every accomplishment needs to be a monumental struggle. Sometimes surrendering to the moment, feeling the pain, feeling bad, is the best way to move forward. Those bad moments don't define you. It's ok to feel bad. That doesn't make you bad or weak or a waste.
Monday, April 13, 2015
Anti-me
I spend way too much time thinking about what I do, why I do it, and how I can get better at whatever it is that's on my mind at the moment. That's the legacy of this blog (if the web allows hyper-specialization in one arcane topic, I've specialized on myself). I once feared that this suggested some kind of narcissistic character, but the simple fact that I was concerned about being so self-involved shows that I'm not a narcissist. No, my concern with what I have going on professionally, academically, or in some kind of activity where I can be judged against some standard is rooted in my combat against the anti-me.
Oh yes, my nemesis the anti-me. The anti-me is all those things that I don't have, everything that I'm not. The anti-me is the antithesis of all of my short-comings and failures. It's a highly sophisticated construct that has been hounding me for my entire life. It's what I feared people would see that I'm missing if I opened up. It's all the things that I thought I should have but I lacked. It's the superior me, the self that I thought I should be. It's what I'm not rather than what I am.
I've never lived up to the ideals of the anti-me. Of course it's impossible to meet those expectations. No matter what I achieve, there's always something greater that could have been done. The satisfaction of accomplishment is always tinged with a note of the possibility of something more impressive. The anti-me was the handsome, acne-free version of myself. The anti-me was more aggressive on the football field, a better student, not so socially awkward. People loved the anti-me because he didn't have all the awkward undesirability that was such a central part of who I was for so much of my youth.
He's stalked me as an adult. His influence was just a bit more stealthy and insidious. He's the voice that keeps me from fully recognizing and appreciating all the great things in my life. He's all the doubt that keeps me from fully expressing myself, from being open and vulnerable. I may have projected some of the sentiments that I felt flowing from him onto other people in my life. How can anybody see me as capable of being a certain kind of husband, a certain kind of parent, a certain kind of friend if I'm lacking in all kinds of important traits.
All my crazy schemes, law school, the pursuit of new jobs, all my talk of The Alpha, even my fixation on The Edge, are my efforts to negate the impact of the anti-me. If the anti-me makes me feel undesirable, being found worthy of acceptance into a law school class or competent to fill some random industry role must mean that I have some desirable qualities. Even my reluctance to be open with my needs and desires in my most intimate relationships comes down to a fear of having my deficiencies confirmed. It's only safe to express those needs once it's been made clear that they will be accepted in a positive fashion.
So all of my focus on myself is really a focus on what I need to do to prove that I'm not as deficient and undesirable as my anti-me makes me feel. That negative voice, always emphasizing what I'm not, how I'm imperfect and a failure, has had a larger role in how I perceive myself than I've every fully appreciated. What I'm not has always claimed a greater share that what I am and what I have. I have started to see where the anti-me comes from. It's not a natural part of who I am. It's a response to stuff that was going on in my life, and the lives of the people around me. It's propelled me forward, but it's also held me back. It's presence is a sign of the most dysfunctional relationship in my life, the relationship that I have with myself.
It's time to quiet the anti-me.
Oh yes, my nemesis the anti-me. The anti-me is all those things that I don't have, everything that I'm not. The anti-me is the antithesis of all of my short-comings and failures. It's a highly sophisticated construct that has been hounding me for my entire life. It's what I feared people would see that I'm missing if I opened up. It's all the things that I thought I should have but I lacked. It's the superior me, the self that I thought I should be. It's what I'm not rather than what I am.
I've never lived up to the ideals of the anti-me. Of course it's impossible to meet those expectations. No matter what I achieve, there's always something greater that could have been done. The satisfaction of accomplishment is always tinged with a note of the possibility of something more impressive. The anti-me was the handsome, acne-free version of myself. The anti-me was more aggressive on the football field, a better student, not so socially awkward. People loved the anti-me because he didn't have all the awkward undesirability that was such a central part of who I was for so much of my youth.
He's stalked me as an adult. His influence was just a bit more stealthy and insidious. He's the voice that keeps me from fully recognizing and appreciating all the great things in my life. He's all the doubt that keeps me from fully expressing myself, from being open and vulnerable. I may have projected some of the sentiments that I felt flowing from him onto other people in my life. How can anybody see me as capable of being a certain kind of husband, a certain kind of parent, a certain kind of friend if I'm lacking in all kinds of important traits.
All my crazy schemes, law school, the pursuit of new jobs, all my talk of The Alpha, even my fixation on The Edge, are my efforts to negate the impact of the anti-me. If the anti-me makes me feel undesirable, being found worthy of acceptance into a law school class or competent to fill some random industry role must mean that I have some desirable qualities. Even my reluctance to be open with my needs and desires in my most intimate relationships comes down to a fear of having my deficiencies confirmed. It's only safe to express those needs once it's been made clear that they will be accepted in a positive fashion.
So all of my focus on myself is really a focus on what I need to do to prove that I'm not as deficient and undesirable as my anti-me makes me feel. That negative voice, always emphasizing what I'm not, how I'm imperfect and a failure, has had a larger role in how I perceive myself than I've every fully appreciated. What I'm not has always claimed a greater share that what I am and what I have. I have started to see where the anti-me comes from. It's not a natural part of who I am. It's a response to stuff that was going on in my life, and the lives of the people around me. It's propelled me forward, but it's also held me back. It's presence is a sign of the most dysfunctional relationship in my life, the relationship that I have with myself.
It's time to quiet the anti-me.
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Where did we lose the grandeur? How do we find it again?
Why are there no classes about being an adult? I can head over to Coursera (I literally just signed up for a class!) and find a class about pretty much any academic subject. I can sit in on a whole semester of classes at Yale, but there is really no place for me to get insight into what it means to be a fully formed person and what that means to me and the other people in my life. Of course a class is not the best way to learn about being human (classes really aren't the best way to learn about pretty much anything), but the extensive resources available for improving leadership skills or broadening project management or some other business skill would make you think that programs in more mundane things would be available to people. You can always go to counseling, but they're always trying to figure out what's wrong with you so they can start to apply their standard treatment rubric rather than really listening to you and helping you figure out what baggage you're carrying around that stops you from doing what you want.
Sure, there are all kinds of self-help books out there, but a book is only as useful as the person reading the book is willing to be honest and actually confront things that aren't very flattering about the way they parent or deal with their spouse. There are lots of websites that will help you learn new habits or improve different aspects of your life. But where do we go when we're struggling with what makes us happy or how to feel more satisfied? Where do we go when we don't like the person we've become or can't figure out why we can't see all the good things that are already in our life? How do we learn to stop striving for more and realize that what we have is already wonderful?
Sure, there are all kinds of self-help books out there, but a book is only as useful as the person reading the book is willing to be honest and actually confront things that aren't very flattering about the way they parent or deal with their spouse. There are lots of websites that will help you learn new habits or improve different aspects of your life. But where do we go when we're struggling with what makes us happy or how to feel more satisfied? Where do we go when we don't like the person we've become or can't figure out why we can't see all the good things that are already in our life? How do we learn to stop striving for more and realize that what we have is already wonderful?
Monday, March 2, 2015
The end of an era
There is a very negative slant to all of these blog entries. The constant rumination on what I don't have is my favorite subject. I've written about how much my job sucks, my short comings as a husband, and my various theories of why my self-perception doesn't seem to match with my reality. I write these things thinking that delving into these things will give me access to some version of the truth that will free me from all of these negative thoughts and tendencies. I can just dive down to the demon and eradicate its sour influence on my life.
I'm just wallowing in the negative version of myself that I wrap around my reality when I write these entries. All my striving has an element of self-loathing. I must work to get better because who I am is inadequate. I don't offer people anything. If I keep working I may eventually get to a point where people will acknowledge my value.
This attitude is a choice. I can choose to focus on what I don't have or I can focus on all the wonderful things that fill my life. I can choose to apply some kind of external criteria to my life, or I can simply be satisfied with the choices that I have made. At my core, I am very happy with my life, but there's always been a little voice that has chided me for not doing more, for not being better. That voice does not belong to me. It was all the insecurities of the people who influenced me in my youth being passed on to me. There was an overarching emphasis on what we were not as opposed to what we were.
I choose to reject that view. I have build a great life and I intend to wash away all of the pollution of the negative emotions that have marred my life. I have been angry over what my parents took away from me. It's time to take that back by moving beyond the emotional limits that they helped me build.
Monday, February 16, 2015
Observations on being an observer
I'm giving up beer for Lent. It's going to be a long forty some days. Aside from actually drinking it, trying a new kind of beer is the best part of having a bottle or two on the weekend. There are so many different kinds of beer and so many breweries constantly releasing variations on those varieties that it's easy to discover something really great. I won't be making any discoveries over the next several weeks. I've already had to pass on buying a new beer from one of my new favorite breweries.
It's this eagerness to try new beers that helps me convince myself that I'm not all that conventional. I can try new things. I don't limit myself to the choices that mass marketers put in front of us. I tell myself the same story with the books that I read and the restaurants that I'm willing to try. But in the end, sampling different kinds of beer or reading a variety of books is really just another way of observing the world. It may be more active than just watching things go by, but it's about consumption rather than production. I'm choosing to consume what others produce rather than producing something that makes a statement about who I am and what I'm about. I'm not really putting a part of myself out there for others to see. I'm just sitting back and judging what other people have produced.
I even try to put a spin on my day to day work in order to make me feel that I'm putting something out into the world that forces me to express my humanity. I'm a chemist. I work in a lab. I tell my wife all the time that my work is creative. It is creative in that I have to generate original insights into technical problems, but the creativity that grows from that process is more of a statement about the system I'm studying than a commentary on my preferences and taste. The problem defines the limits. The space is set for me. I don't have to put up the boundaries, or choose to ignore the boundaries put up by others. I'm merely capturing what nature has already expressed. I'm not expressing my view of the world.
Sharing my view of the world would be an active statement. That would mean saying that this is me, and, just as importantly, these things are not me. I would be open to judgement and criticism. My perspective would be open to commentary by others as either right or wrong. It would make little difference whether or not there is a right or wrong. Insecurity in my sense of what is right is my prime insecurity. In wanting to be right, I give up the ability to feel secure in my choices. To be right requires submission to an authority. The authority is always superior. Nobody will challenge my thoughts on a beer as I sit in my living room taking sips between these sentences.
A strong expression of self through clothes, appearance, or pursuit of a particular something, particularly when those things would make me stand out, shifts my position from observer to participant. Once I'm participating, I'm open to judgement, and that may mean rejection or criticism. Those are things that I just cannot abide, so I hang out in the shadows, blending in and repressing my vulnerabilities and emotional needs. I also have to ignore the needs of others. Noticing that somebody else in my life may need some reassurance would require me to make myself vulnerable and expose myself emotionally. That might hurt. It's easier just to watch. It's easier just to go along.
It's this eagerness to try new beers that helps me convince myself that I'm not all that conventional. I can try new things. I don't limit myself to the choices that mass marketers put in front of us. I tell myself the same story with the books that I read and the restaurants that I'm willing to try. But in the end, sampling different kinds of beer or reading a variety of books is really just another way of observing the world. It may be more active than just watching things go by, but it's about consumption rather than production. I'm choosing to consume what others produce rather than producing something that makes a statement about who I am and what I'm about. I'm not really putting a part of myself out there for others to see. I'm just sitting back and judging what other people have produced.
I even try to put a spin on my day to day work in order to make me feel that I'm putting something out into the world that forces me to express my humanity. I'm a chemist. I work in a lab. I tell my wife all the time that my work is creative. It is creative in that I have to generate original insights into technical problems, but the creativity that grows from that process is more of a statement about the system I'm studying than a commentary on my preferences and taste. The problem defines the limits. The space is set for me. I don't have to put up the boundaries, or choose to ignore the boundaries put up by others. I'm merely capturing what nature has already expressed. I'm not expressing my view of the world.
Sharing my view of the world would be an active statement. That would mean saying that this is me, and, just as importantly, these things are not me. I would be open to judgement and criticism. My perspective would be open to commentary by others as either right or wrong. It would make little difference whether or not there is a right or wrong. Insecurity in my sense of what is right is my prime insecurity. In wanting to be right, I give up the ability to feel secure in my choices. To be right requires submission to an authority. The authority is always superior. Nobody will challenge my thoughts on a beer as I sit in my living room taking sips between these sentences.
A strong expression of self through clothes, appearance, or pursuit of a particular something, particularly when those things would make me stand out, shifts my position from observer to participant. Once I'm participating, I'm open to judgement, and that may mean rejection or criticism. Those are things that I just cannot abide, so I hang out in the shadows, blending in and repressing my vulnerabilities and emotional needs. I also have to ignore the needs of others. Noticing that somebody else in my life may need some reassurance would require me to make myself vulnerable and expose myself emotionally. That might hurt. It's easier just to watch. It's easier just to go along.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Why shouldn't I be accommodating to myself?
I was all set to really think about my superpower (my short handed way of saying the thing about me that give me an advantage when it comes to one on one combat), but the more I thought about it the more I realized that there really wasn't any value in spending much time on this topic. I don't need to figure out what I can do to take advantage of my strengths. I'm pretty much already doing it. Some personality test I took for some leadership training told me that I'm a Coordinating Observer and gave me some insights into what that meant. Based on what a Coordinating Observer is good at, I'm already doing things that take advantage of my strengths. (I'm a chemist after all. If I was in sales or some other more people centered thing, my responsibilities may not be aligned with my preferences.)
The bigger challenge is to accept what makes me me. Over the last few years I've written plenty of posts about bashing myself. I seem to come here to unload my self-loathing on a pretty regular basis. This post is a pretty good example of me being hard on myself. There is a pretty clear sense that I am in some way insufficient and that I am not measuring up to some external standard of what a man should be. That personality test I took describes people like me as accommodating. Accommodating is just another way of being the nice guy, which is what I'm ripping about myself in that post that I linked to.
Nice guys leave a trail of fading impressions is what I said in that post. Is that really what I think about myself? I leave a trail of fading impressions? That's all people take away from meeting me? Surely I'm not that insignificant, but clearly some part of me thinks that I am. Why do I have such a hard time accepting myself? I essentially rejected that personality test because I didn't think it described me. I'm not a perfectionist who always has to do things the right way and know the right answer. That's what I told myself as I read the report for the first time. Then I gave it to the wife and she said it was 85% accurate. How can I just reject it when the person in the world who knows me best says that it's a pretty accurate description of who I am?
So after much reflection, I can admit that, yes, I can be a bit of a perfectionist. I know that my MBA GPA will have a minimal impact on my career prospects, but I put tremendous effort into my classes to get good grades. I had to make my papers the best that I could make them. That's perfectionism. I spent months preparing for a test and applying to schools that I know I would never attend. That's me showing that I can get the right answers and do things the right way. I have guilt over how I used that time. Granted, it definitely wasn't the healthiest way for me to be me, but I shouldn't beat myself up for wanting to be demonstrate my competence and getting recognition for my efforts. The means do not automatically impugn the ends.
I do have a deep seated need to have the right answer. So many of the social shortcomings that I berate myself over are rooted in my uncertainty in how to act in certain situations and my reluctance to do something that might be perceived as wrong. I'm so rooted in the objective, it's hard for me to see that many people are perfectly happy making judgments based on their subjective point of view. I don't have to constantly meet some ideal. People just have to find me pleasing in some way. That's the scale that matters. That external other thing that I'm always worrying about isn't such a big deal to many people. The people closest to me have already told me in many ways that they like me and find me appealing in so many ways. Why should I question their opinion?
It's okay for me to be accommodating. That just means that I'm not a jerk. I don't have a inherent need to prove my dominance at every opportunity. My tactic is not to challenge everyone and dare them to knock me down. I'm happy to work with the people to around me to achieve our common goals. You get what you want and I get what I want. What's wrong with that?
The bigger challenge is to accept what makes me me. Over the last few years I've written plenty of posts about bashing myself. I seem to come here to unload my self-loathing on a pretty regular basis. This post is a pretty good example of me being hard on myself. There is a pretty clear sense that I am in some way insufficient and that I am not measuring up to some external standard of what a man should be. That personality test I took describes people like me as accommodating. Accommodating is just another way of being the nice guy, which is what I'm ripping about myself in that post that I linked to.
Nice guys leave a trail of fading impressions is what I said in that post. Is that really what I think about myself? I leave a trail of fading impressions? That's all people take away from meeting me? Surely I'm not that insignificant, but clearly some part of me thinks that I am. Why do I have such a hard time accepting myself? I essentially rejected that personality test because I didn't think it described me. I'm not a perfectionist who always has to do things the right way and know the right answer. That's what I told myself as I read the report for the first time. Then I gave it to the wife and she said it was 85% accurate. How can I just reject it when the person in the world who knows me best says that it's a pretty accurate description of who I am?
So after much reflection, I can admit that, yes, I can be a bit of a perfectionist. I know that my MBA GPA will have a minimal impact on my career prospects, but I put tremendous effort into my classes to get good grades. I had to make my papers the best that I could make them. That's perfectionism. I spent months preparing for a test and applying to schools that I know I would never attend. That's me showing that I can get the right answers and do things the right way. I have guilt over how I used that time. Granted, it definitely wasn't the healthiest way for me to be me, but I shouldn't beat myself up for wanting to be demonstrate my competence and getting recognition for my efforts. The means do not automatically impugn the ends.
I do have a deep seated need to have the right answer. So many of the social shortcomings that I berate myself over are rooted in my uncertainty in how to act in certain situations and my reluctance to do something that might be perceived as wrong. I'm so rooted in the objective, it's hard for me to see that many people are perfectly happy making judgments based on their subjective point of view. I don't have to constantly meet some ideal. People just have to find me pleasing in some way. That's the scale that matters. That external other thing that I'm always worrying about isn't such a big deal to many people. The people closest to me have already told me in many ways that they like me and find me appealing in so many ways. Why should I question their opinion?
It's okay for me to be accommodating. That just means that I'm not a jerk. I don't have a inherent need to prove my dominance at every opportunity. My tactic is not to challenge everyone and dare them to knock me down. I'm happy to work with the people to around me to achieve our common goals. You get what you want and I get what I want. What's wrong with that?
Saturday, February 7, 2015
The cavity
My wife always tells me that I think too much, but when she told me that again a few days ago, she added a new twist. Sometimes I should just do what I feel. I immediately thought about the times when my instincts were screaming at me to do something and the rational part of me stepped in and convinced me to do what I thought was best rather than what felt like the right thing to do. I have spent my life silencing the part of me that goes on what just seems right. I have willingly given up my feel for live in order to run everything through some kind of thinking process. It's not necessarily a rational process. Making sure that I'm not doing anything to put myself out there, to expose some vulnerability or giving somebody else a chance to make me feel bad about myself is what the thinking part of me always does. It's like a pathological need to always do what fits with my long held (and almost entirely unexamined) notion of who I am and how I should interface with the world.
It's really depressing for me to realize that a huge part of that unexamined idea of who I am is basically that I'm not worth other people's time and attention. I can't be friends with that person or share more about my thoughts and feelings because I just don't offer enough substance for somebody else to really want to engage with me in that way. Because I have no real regard for who I am just as I am, I give other people total control in determining how I should feel about myself. It makes sense that I don't trust myself to follow my feelings when I don't really hold myself in very high regard. All my thinking is me trying to come up with a way to trick the person I'm dealing with and get them to see not who I am but who I want them to see. If they saw the real me they would immediately lose interest. So when my feelings told me that somebody was interested in me, my mind would immediately say that that can't be right. Why would somebody be interested in me. I must be looking at this situation all wrong.
This view of myself does a pretty good job of explaining some of my more undesirable behaviors. My passivity is not a consequence of an absence of motivation, it's more an outcome of not feeling that my needs are worth other people's time. It's better for me to know what they want and try to be that rather than actively showing them who I am and letting them decide if that's something they like. I don't deserve the things I want when it comes to other people. Non-people things, on the other hand, are fair game. I can go after those things with plenty of zeal, especially when they reinforce the image that I want people to see when they interact with me. All that other stuff, where I went to school, what I studied, how many degrees I have, what kind of training I've undergone, might make up for my lack of real substance.
At the core, all these problems are really just a belief that my preferences and needs are not valid. The judgement of others is more important than any judgment that I make. My reading of a situation, especially when it comes to my relationships, can never be right. I don't get people, I don't understand these things. I have to be eager to please so people will like me. They're acceptance of me fills the cavity of regard that I choose not to fill myself.
It's really depressing for me to realize that a huge part of that unexamined idea of who I am is basically that I'm not worth other people's time and attention. I can't be friends with that person or share more about my thoughts and feelings because I just don't offer enough substance for somebody else to really want to engage with me in that way. Because I have no real regard for who I am just as I am, I give other people total control in determining how I should feel about myself. It makes sense that I don't trust myself to follow my feelings when I don't really hold myself in very high regard. All my thinking is me trying to come up with a way to trick the person I'm dealing with and get them to see not who I am but who I want them to see. If they saw the real me they would immediately lose interest. So when my feelings told me that somebody was interested in me, my mind would immediately say that that can't be right. Why would somebody be interested in me. I must be looking at this situation all wrong.
This view of myself does a pretty good job of explaining some of my more undesirable behaviors. My passivity is not a consequence of an absence of motivation, it's more an outcome of not feeling that my needs are worth other people's time. It's better for me to know what they want and try to be that rather than actively showing them who I am and letting them decide if that's something they like. I don't deserve the things I want when it comes to other people. Non-people things, on the other hand, are fair game. I can go after those things with plenty of zeal, especially when they reinforce the image that I want people to see when they interact with me. All that other stuff, where I went to school, what I studied, how many degrees I have, what kind of training I've undergone, might make up for my lack of real substance.
At the core, all these problems are really just a belief that my preferences and needs are not valid. The judgement of others is more important than any judgment that I make. My reading of a situation, especially when it comes to my relationships, can never be right. I don't get people, I don't understand these things. I have to be eager to please so people will like me. They're acceptance of me fills the cavity of regard that I choose not to fill myself.
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Overseer
Have you ever wondered why something is cool? I hadn't thought much about it either. At least not until I read stuff by other people exploring the idea of what makes something cool. What started as a little thought game (my favorite way to disconnect from the mundane moments of living) has me thinking about why I've never thought of myself as cool. Well, it's really more about why I've never really thought that I even had the capacity to be cool. Which makes me wonder if I've ever really looked at myself in a largely objective and non-judgmental way.
I look at the way I have treated my wife over the last few years. All the times that I trampled and stomped on her needs to pursue some vague notion of what I should be rather than just living with the way that I am. It's like I have this insidious internal overseer who makes sure that I don't get any ideas about leaving my assigned station. He's tasked with making sure that I stick to the script and don't try to convince myself that the image of the goofy, socially awkward, and undeserving bumbler may not be an accurate reflection of how other people experience me.
I've accepted an image of who I am that undermines the most important relationships in my life. The social leper must always hide. People would never want to be with you the way you are so you can never let them know what you're thinking or feeling. You'll be ridiculed if you ever let the real you emerge. Keep that under wraps. Live in fear. I can't recall ever thinking these words explicitly. They're representations of a cluster of feelings and reactions. I look at how hard I worked to find out where people thought I should go and how eagerly I've scrambled to get into that place. School. Work. Success will never come unless I continue to push and strive to be more than I am now. Salvation lies out there somewhere. Who you are at this moment is never enough. But maybe things will be different in the future.
I've given other people the power to make me feel good about myself. The more distant that person is from me, the better I would feel when they granted me their acceptance. They accepted the finely crafted and carefully honed version of me, the version of me that I built up over years of earning distinctions. I could hide behind distinctions. I wouldn't have to rely on anything personal. I've told myself that my success has been built on those distinctions. My failures are the result of my inherent insufficiency. All the proof that I need to confirm the influence of this inherent insufficiency on my engagement with the core of living, relationships, is my internal reaction to my wife's plea for affection. How can you expect me to give you something that I am incapable of offering? That was what I would hear in my head when she told me that she wanted to feel desired. I felt in my deepest depths that I was incapable of giving her that affection.
That's obviously not true. What I thought was my deepest depths were just fears and insecurities that were instilled in me years ago. I'm angry that I was made to feel that way about myself, but when I look at how the people who formed my world when I was so young feel about themselves and their place in the world, I realize that there was really no other way for me to view the world. I should be more angry at myself for passively sitting by and continually buying into this notion of who I am. The crazy thing is that I was given constant signals that other people did not experience me in the way that I thought they did. My overseer did a fantastic job of keeping me in line. The little fucker...
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)