Acceptance

Most believe that to accept is to surrender. 

I think that’s a load of shit.

When negative emotions weasel their way into our conscious, our initial reaction is to wish them away. Although this is a natural reaction, it is also thoughtless. 

I can tell what you’re thinking already… “You can’t decide how you react to something, it just happens.”

Well, that’s where you’re wrong.

In an article on his website, author Mark Manson discusses the problems that arise due to emotional reactions, and how to thwart them. Manson proposes that instead of attempting to control our emotions, we should seek to control the meaning behind the feeling.

He suggests that our feelings don’t necessarily mean anything on their own - they mean whatever we allow them to mean. Feelings are; self-contained, temporary and inaccurate, yet as a society we struggle to separate the significance from the emotion. 

Granted, this isn’t an ability we are born with, or taught with any degree of knowledge. However it is a crucial skill when trying to assess a feeling’s validity. Not only in our assessment of it’s affect on our mood, but in our decision on how to act.

The problem with understanding this, is that we believe our emotions to be everlasting. However, there are theories to suggest that human’s have a ‘baseline’ of happiness. Receiving positive information may cause a temporary spike of satisfaction, whilst negative information may cause a drop, but we will almost always return to our baseline.

Just because a negative emotion is present currently, does not always mean that it will be there forever. Accepting it’s existence - rather than frantically attempting to remove or ignore the issue - allows us to gather our thoughts before coming up with the best course of action.

This is where another societal misconception has developed. 

Most believe that acceptance is a sign of weakness. However, I believe the weakness they are referring to, is related to a lack of subsequent action.

Just because you have accepted a situation or feeling, does not mean that you have surrendered to it. It means you have accepted it’s existence. The action that you take to rectify, reassess or cope with the information presented, is what determines your level of emotional strength.

Take a decision by someone close to you, that may impact you in a negative sense. Just because you accept their decision as ‘right for them’, doesn’t mean that you can’t take self-benefitting action after the fact. 

Allowing an emotion’s existence is not the same as being passive or helpless.

Accepting an emotion’s presence provides a mentally shift, from “I should be strong enough deal with this fear” to “Oh look, I’m fearful of that happening”.

Understanding how your body reacts to these situations, can help you decide how to proceed. 

For example:

I can sometimes neglect social connectivity. I spend a lot of time with my thoughts, and often get lost in my own head. This eventually leads to feelings of anxiety, and physical symptoms such as; headaches and tremors. Having experienced this quite a lot in the past, I now know the cause and how to alleviate the symptoms. 

The only way to gain this understanding is through practise. Now that I’m aware of what these feelings mean, I am able to take positive steps toward their removal. 

This is a concept used in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy know as ‘decentering’. Becoming aware and accepting these thoughts and emotions, without attaching or reacting to them. The process aims to aid individuals in detaching themselves from self-criticism, over-thinking and feeling of anxiety/depression.

Our current thoughts surrounding emotions, tend to drag these three pillars to the surface, leading us to treat them as constants that are out of our control. 

We feel, therefore we judge.

Perhaps once the concept of acceptance is brought to light through the teachings of CBT and MCBT, we can begin to think about our emotions in a completely different way.

We think, therefore we accept.

Improvements don’t come in a steady incline

“If it was easy, everyone would do it.”

How many times have you heard this, after spending 10 minutes explaining that you’re finding something difficult? I’m guessing a fair few. Although it may not seem supportive, nor helpful, our audience are conveying a very simple and important message.

Change is difficult, get used to it.

We as humans have the irrational belief that the process of improvement is linear. Deciding what you want to improve is the start point, improving in that area is the end point, with a steady rising gradient connecting the two. It’s a lovely fairytale, but it’s looking upon the issue with rose-tinted glasses. 

Your road to improvement - no matter how large or small - comes with peaks and troughs. 

Lets take an example; building muscle. 

Most lads (aged 18-30) will initiate the idea of going to the gym in the hope that they can ‘get hench/swole/big/etc’. The concept usually derives from some minor ribbing off their friends, or even glancing at the cover of one of the popular fitness magazines. They see, they want, they ‘commit’. 

Fast-forward 3-6 months… 

The majority of our fledgling Mr Olympias have hung up their lifting belts, and slumped right back into their old habits - but why?

These guys saw what they wanted and assumed it was an upward trajectory from the second they walked onto the gym floor. They thought that all they had to do was pick up heavy shit like the rest of the meathead bodybuilders, and they’d be big in no time. 

Well, weren’t they disappointed. 

Their intentions were positive, but their expectations were not. The men you see on the front of those magazines have spent the majority of their time on this earth living the fitness model lifestyle. 

They spend 2-3 hours in the gym, 7 days a week. 

They eat a ridiculously low amount, regardless of the time of year.

They skip out on enjoying social occasions and birthdays, fearing their body will turn to mush overnight. 

These guys commit; 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to get that physique, and you were expecting to smash it out in 3 months? 

So expectations were high, surely as humans we have the capabilities to realign our forecast with reality, and continue to progress regardless? 

Possibly, but unlikely. 

Imagine jumping on a bronco whilst under the impression that it enjoys being ridden, and inevitably (at least to everyone else) being launched 6ft into the air and crashing to the ground. Would you re-saddle without question?

So, now we’ve crashed back down to earth, with our expectations looking like they’ve gone through the set of Honey I Shrunk The Kids, how about we tackle the whys?

Let’s go back to our previous example; why can’t any old person just walk into the gym, pick stuff up and eventually gain muscle?

They can, with emphasis on the word ‘eventually’.

Most believe that if your form is correct and you lift ‘heavy’ weight frequently, you’ll achieve your goal. Even though this belief has the basics covered, there’s a whole world of variables that are left in the cold. Namely; protein intake, sleep, nutrition, stress, anxiety, individual pain threshold, individual perceived levels of exertion, water intake, illness, diseases, age of individual, hormonal imbalance, injuries, handicaps, calorie intake, etc. Some of these things we can control, others not so much. 

These factors vary and fluctuate from day-to-day, hour-to-hour and minute-to-minute. It all boils down to something I like to call, indirect variability. 

How on earth could our gradient of improvement remain stable, when all these inconsistencies are at play? 

In fact, I would go as far as to call it a miracle if you managed to go 6 weeks with consistent improvements, never mind 6 months. 

So instead of entering the world of self-improvement with your eyes shut, start by accepting the unavoidable negatives as par for the course. 

You will have moments where you feel like you’ve regressed.

You will have negative thoughts and emotions about your progress.

You will go to bed some nights feeling like you’ve failed.

You will feel like quitting… a lot.

All of this is part and parcel of self-development and it’s not only normal, it’s inescapable.

Difficult, stressful and mentally draining times, are what help our minds grow, adapt and prosper. Bad days are what put the successes into perspective. They give us a memory to look back on, when we finally achieve what we set out to do. They don’t feel like gifts at the time, but it’s exactly what they are. 

After all; how would we know what a good day was, if that’s all that we lived?

Loving the process

Have you ever wondered why the fulfilment you feel after reaching a target is so short-lived?

It doesn’t matter; how big an achievement is, how long it’s taken to get there or how much you’ve sacrificed to be successful, the satisfaction post-completion is always short-term. 

Why is that? 

The fact is that the vast majority of people who realise a long-term ambition, respond with more negative emotions than positive. It’s as if the structure they have built into everyday life is filling a void which only becomes clear after the need for it has been removed.

How do we avoid this?

Most people tend to jump straight into their next goal. However, I believe that a person that jumps from one achievement to the next is stuck on a road to short-term happiness. They spend so much time looking to the future, that they don’t stop to think about the here and now.

What makes me think this? This was me in a nutshell. 

I’d say that I’ve spent around 95% of my life thinking about the future and what it might hold, never appreciating what I had in the present. This isn’t me shitting on future-proofing yourself - that’s just smart life-admin - but I don’t believe for a second that the happiest people in the world are the one’s who think with the (what I like to call) ‘I’ll be happy when’ mindset.

This mindset encapsulates the exact type of person I was describing. They set a target, achieve it, indulge in short-term feelings of gratification and move on to the next thing. Sure, they’re experiencing so many things in their lives that others could only dream of, but are they really learning and gaining enjoyment from those experiences?

Most tend to see achievement as a process of hard work over a stretch of time, in a bid to achieve something that will improve their life. Though this is sort of true, it describes a direct outcome for your time and effort, but mentions nothing about the indirect outcomes. I believe the experience gained whilst attaining a goal is what people are overlooking in their search for higher levels of fulfilment. 

You don’t enjoy whatever hobbies float your boat for the outcome, you enjoy them for the process. Even though your mind is excited at the prospect of being able to complete the task, the act of engaging with the activity’s intricacies is what really ramps up your enthusiasm for doing it.

Think about it like this:

You and your friend love badminton, and get together to play each other every Tuesday. How unsatisfying would Tuesday's badminton session become, if your mate turned up, admitted you were the superior player and crowned you as victorious?

It doesn’t matter if we’re discussing your life’s hobbies or your life’s ambitions. We have to gain enjoyment and experience from the everyday grind, or the outcome will be worth nothing. To learn from your achievements and gain positive long-lasting experience from each one, you must be fulfilled by the process.

Between the years of 1992 and 1997, one name reigned supreme across the world of bodybuilding - Dorian Yates. Yates won the international bodybuilding competition ‘Mr. Olympia’ for 6 consecutive years, placing himself as the 5th most successful winner of all time. Yates became synonymous for removing himself from the public eye during the off-season and waltzing straight to the top of the podium on show day, earning himself the nickname of ‘The Shadow’.

But what’s Dorian Yates got to do with anything?

Yates is the absolute personification of loving the process. 

Bodybuilders are some of the most vain, narcissistic and self-obsessed sportspeople in the world. However, Yates was different. As his nickname suggests, he wasn’t in it for the admiration. He would rock up to a contest dressed in a baggy hoody and sweatpants, whip his kit off for the judges, smile/tense, get handed his winner’s trophy and slip off back into the darkness. In fact, Dorian has suggested that posing for pictures on contest day, wasn’t where he found his enjoyment for the sport. He found it his preparation. Contest day wasn’t where Yates found his competition, he found it on the gym floor. 

Like Dorian, we should be aiming to seek out the knowledge and experiences that our process presents. Without taking stock of our short-term improvements, we are destined to live a life of transient episodic happiness. 

If you feel like you don’t love the day-to-day slog of whatever you’re doing, I’d question whether the outcome will ever be worth it. Though for arguments sake, let’s say it is - who cares? 

Much like Yates himself, that feeling will disappear into the darkness by the time the champagne cork hits the ceiling. 

Comparison Disease

Jealousy is a touchy subject. Most of us experience it regularly and yet pretend we’re immune to it’s ever-growing hold on the world. The feeling that someone else has more than you, is happier than you or is better than you, dominates the psyche of the anxious. This constant bombardment allows no rest from the negativity that invariably arrives as we are constantly viewing our lives as a state of ‘what ifs’. 

I guarantee that the people you feel belittled by would kill for some of the things you have. Yet, our mind has an intriguing way of focusing on the things we don’t have, rather than the things we do. This is ever present and envelops our mind on a daily basis, but it is especially prevalent during our time spent on social media. 

The internet was invented with the idea of connecting the world in a way that information could be passed and shared freely and quickly, dramatically reducing the social and economic gap that had emerged across the globe. However there were side effects that came along with the instantaneous dispense and consume culture that was cultivated. Over the years, this sharing of information has slowly turned from a creative encyclopaedia of factual intelligence to an incomprehensible dick-swinging contest. 

The internet was supposed to be a place of learning, yet it’s regression has taken the shape of a window into the life you wish you had. I highly doubt the inventors of the internet were sitting their on day dot, hoping that one day Mary from Derby could tell her 296 Facebook friends how many expensive holidays she’d been on this year - but here we are. The most fucked up thing about this whole situation is the consumers can see the chaos unfolding in front of them, but attempt nothing to avoid it. 

How many times whilst scrolling through Instagram have you said/thought something like: “I don’t care what you are eating”. Or how about: “May as well delete Facebook, just a load of people I barely know posting stuff about shite I don’t care about.”

Yet we continue to haemorrhage our time and effort into mulling over the goings on of other people’s lives, most of who we don’t even care about. That’s seriously fucked up.

These problems would be alleviated if our brains processed information based solely on logic and reason. However our mind has an unfortunate habit that it just can’t seem to kick - Comparison.

“Comparison is the thief of joy” - Theodore Roosevelt

In a time were sensitivity runs roughshod and anxiety prevails, comparison is the greatest enemy to one’s happiness. 

Your insatiable hunger for information consumption, coupled with the holy bond between your mind’s worst habits, has resulted in a constant state of comparison. 

“Is my car as nice as his is?"

“I wished I looked like her in that dress.”

“She’s on holiday again? She’s so lucky.”

We realise we’re doing it and we understand that we have to stop, but like an addict hooked on their town’s most stepped on substance, we just can’t seem to put down the pipe. 

We’re consumed with consuming. It’s taken over us like a viral infection takes over it’s host. It’s our default setting, our return to balance, our homeostasis. 

There are huge portions of your life that are not only under appreciated, but completely ignored. Every single relationship you hold dear is one day closer to ending whilst you sit there comparing. Your kids are one day closer to leaving home, your partner is one day closer to giving up hope, and your parents are one day closer to being laid out in a box. All whilst you sit there contemplating what you could have, instead of what you do.

When asked about the subject of jealousy in terms of wanting what somebody else had, Jamie Alderton had this to say:

“If you wouldn’t swap your entire life with someone else’s, then why feel jealous?”

If you wish it were you going on 3 holidays a year instead of Mary, would you be willing to give up your kids to get there?

If you wish you could have as good a relationship as Steve and Jane, would you swap your parents for their’s to achieve that?

If you wish you could look as good in that dress as Sarah does, would you be willing to divorce your husband to get there?

I think not. There’s a good chance that if you sit down to consider what you find important in life, that you already have the majority of those things sitting right in front of you. You’re just that busy comparing the inconsequential details that you can’t see the wood for the trees.

Happiness is wanting what you already have. So put down your fucking phone and appreciate it, because one day it will all be taken away.

The sunk cost fallacy

During our lives, we invest our time into lots of different things. Relationships, friendships, hobbies, jobs, learning and experiences, tend to be the key areas that absorb the majority of that time. However when it is clear that something is no longer benefitting our lives, but we have invested a large amount of time into that something, we find it difficult to depart from our current trajectory. This is the sunk cost fallacy.

There is a belief that because we’ve invested a hefty amount of time into areas such as; who we spend our time with and where we spend our time, that moving on from them would mean that time was somehow wasted. This is a misapprehension that the mind has devised, in the hope that being victim to this will some how bring us stability.

The sunk cost fallacy is a concept that could be considered the key difference between the settle and strive mentalities. Do I remain in comfort and stability, or do I advance into the unknown?

It is the belief that we make rational decisions based on the value that relationships, investments and experiences can bring us in the present and in the future.

This is a part of the web of lies that we have spun, in an attempt to convince ourselves that we are creatures of logic. Entities that are able to judge the circumstances based on their context, arrive at the most appropriate implementable measures and put those measures into effect. Not only is this not true, in most cases it’s the complete opposite.

Your mind craves equilibrium.  

In your mind, a stable equilibrium helps to harness a feeling of control and security across your life. In other words, your mind wishes to remain in homeostasis. A state where you are comfortable, confident and in control. If your mind is offered a change in circumstance that comes with drawbacks, it will be swiftly rejected. This isn’t to prevent you from adding more to your life, your mind is merely forming ways to remove the possibility for movement in the scale of stability. 

However, in your mind’s attempt to avoid imbalances, it also removes the possibility for positive growth. Here is the conundrum. This is the supernatural force that coerces a population to settle, rather than strive.

Here’s the bad news, short of becoming a human cyborg there is no way to remove emotion from our thought processes. However, what we can do is attempt to alter our mindset when presented with situations similar to those described. 

In Mark Manson’s book, Everything is f*cked, he discusses a psychological visualisation that can be used to allow your mind to chose the way it reacts to certain situations. Here is a brief overview:

Your mind is a car with two steering wheels and two sets of peddles. On one side is your thinking brain. This is the part of your mind that allows you to make rational decisions based upon the facts you have to hand. On the other side is your feeling brain. This is the part of the mind that imparts emotion into our lives. As you can see, these two parts of the mind have to coexist for someone to be both in control of their actions/decisions and well, human.

So, how does this apply to the sunk cost fallacy.

In our case, limiting the feeling brains ability to manoeuvre the vehicle will allow you to assess each case on it’s own merits/deficiencies. This isn’t about removing the feeling brains ability to contribute (again, we’re not robots), but allowing the thinking brain to assume control.

If we are able to wrestle the wheel from the hands of our feeling brain, we can begin to arrive at more rational outcomes. All that’s left after that is to put these choices into practise. 

Having the confidence to do that will not come overnight, but with consistency comes progression. We all have the ability to make these changes to our lives, we just have to implement minor alterations in the way that we think to get us there. 

Just because you’ve spent a long period of time doing something, or being with someone, doesn’t mean you have to continue. 

You may believe your time has been wasted if you give up now. 

Well, that’s all the more reason to not waste anymore of it. 

You may believe you are too emotionally invested. 

I’m sure you’ve had some great times with this partner/friend or job, but to arrive at a crossroads were you are considering a future without it, can only mean that there are undying feelings of negativity.

If you’re looking for a speech that you’re thinking will somehow force you into making the changes we’ve spoke about, I don’t have one. But I will leave you with this:

People often refer to life as this ‘journey’. A route to follow consisting of forks representing the decisions that we are faced with. I personally think it’s all a bit Disney-ish, but the underlying lessons are concrete. 

Craving equilibrium, though natural and pleasant, shortens your journey and limits your experiences, because at the end of the day, everyone’s journey ends with them lying in a box in the ground. 

Stop seeking comfort and start striving. 

“Be willing to be uncomfortable. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. It may get tough, but it's a small price to pay for living a dream.” - Peter McWilliams

You have to be selfish to be selfless

Confused already? I don’t blame you. Since an early age, we’ve been taught that being selfish is a negative trait. Now, I’m not here to say that we should strive to be impulsively selfish regardless of the consequences or circumstances. I’m suggesting that, as with the majority of other behavioural concepts, there is a grey area that we should strive to live within. In fact, not only should we be looking to exist between these two poles, we should be erring on the side of selfishness.

Negative reactions enforce negative connotations

Here’s a hypothetical scenario that will highlight why we find it so difficult to be selfish…

Your recent actions have not only affected you, but the people surrounding you. One of the members of that group takes umbrage with your choices, and reveals their distaste. It may go down like so:

“Why have you said/done that? That is so selfish.” 

How would that make you feel?

I’m guessing a number of negative emotions/thoughts would be begin to surface. These sorts of confrontations tend to lead to conclusions such as:

“Oh no. I’ve done/said something without taking into the consideration how it could effect those around me. What an awful person I am.” 

This is completely normal. You would have to be a complete narcissist to constantly ignore the gripes of those around you, especially when it was your actions that lead them to feel this way. However, reacting in this manner puts a certain expectation on that group’s ability to identify what true selfish behaviour is. This is the grey area I was talking about earlier. 

The selfishness spectrum

Now that you have a grasp on why we find it so difficult to be selfish, let’s delve into the reasoning behind people’s struggle to contextualise the actions of those around them.

The majority of concepts lie on the spectrum. Left is white, right is black with a grey area separates the two. So why when it comes to the topic of selfishness do we think in terms of black and white, instead of the vast area of grey that divides them?

As society’s need for extremist division rises, so do the illusions surrounding the life lessons that invariably impregnate our psyche. In other words, our need to slot people into categories has become so integral to the way we judge others, that people must fall into a category for the situation to be understood. This craving for identifiable viewpoints which we can use to brand one another has generated misconceptions when identifying selfishness in others (or even selflessness, for that matter).

For most of us, the first experience of this happens at a young age. We are taught from as early as we can understand, that sharing things such as; toys, food, games, etc, is the appropriate way to behave. If a child fails to grasp this concept, and acts in an improper and possibly selfish manner, it is seen as the responsibility of the parent to correct the child. This creates the most primitive of correlations in a child’s mind. Not sharing is bad, sharing is good. Or, selfishness is bad, selflessness is good.

The mind of a child would struggle to think in more detail than this, but as adults our brains should be able to delve into the complexities of a situation and judge accordingly, right?

Wrong.

Here is where the generationally recycled life lesson comes back to bite us on the proverbial arse. The concept is forced with such validity, that people are taking these beliefs into adulthood. This wouldn’t be an issue if our brain allowed us to develop these lessons by adding situational context. However, the way we think and therefore judge a situation, tends to be an outcome of the environment in which we spend our time. Meaning, if you spend all your time frantically assigning people into categories during your day-to-day life, how could you begin to add rational context to your thought process?

Try this on for size. 

Your sibling has dinner plans with their partner, but has run into trouble as their normal babysitter has cancelled due to ill health. You are asked if you can look after your siblings children for the night, whilst your sibling and their partner go out for the meal. You have prior commitments with a friend, and therefore cannot help.

If your sibling was to react without rational thought, they would deem you as selfish and uncharitable in their time of need. However applying context to the situation allows the sibling to realise that it isn’t your fault that this situation has arisen, and that you probably would have helped if you hadn’t already made plans.

This example highlights the need to alter our own mindset, rather than blaming our deficiencies on the society we have created. Adding context to situations based on the facts that we are presented with, should be something that we actively pursue. After all, this constant pigeon holing isn’t just preventing you from growing into a fully functioning adult who is able to rationalise, it is cultivating a society in which people are marginalised for being ‘different’.

The selfishness paradox

After gaining an understanding for our reasons for avoiding selfishness and our abilities to judge situations based on their nuances, we have arrived at the epicentre of the problem. The belief we have established is that selfishness is do things to benefit oneself. Whilst selfless people do things to benefit others. The truth is slightly different. 

To be truly selfless you must possess the capabilities to be able to have a positive impact on a person’s life. These capabilities will include things like; energy, experience and positivity itself. For example, if someone is struggling to be consistently positive, it is unlikely that a downbeat relative would be of any assistance.

As I spoke about on a previous post, relieving your mind of it’s own issues is paramount to a clear and positive mindset (an essential aspect of selflessness). The byproducts of this mindset (knowledge, experience and time), provide you with a foundation to be able to help those around you to the best of your ability. Meaning not only is putting your needs before others going to help YOU in the long run, it will allow you to be in a position to help OTHERS. 

If you are your number one priority in life, the people directly surrounding you will feel the benefits from that. This comes as a consequence of your happiness. If you are happy, positive and able to help, you will find that the attitudes of the people surrounding you will follow suit. 

The majority of people follow the example set by others, especially when it seems like that person has got their shit together. This kind of person (successful, mentally and physically healthy, fun to be around and most importantly happy) will have made choices in their life that society would deem ‘selfish’. This is exactly why selfishness isn’t inherently a negative trait to hold. In fact it’s possibly the most integral trait one could hold.

Your success is predicated on your ability to be selfish in key moments. Your happiness is dependent on how you find the answers to your own problems and needs before assisting others. You can’t be happy without being selfish, and you can’t be selfless without being selfish. 

So, the next time your actions are deemed to be selfish, ask yourself:

• Does this person understand that putting myself first will invariably allow me to help others?
• Is this person applying context to the situation and judging my actions accordingly?

If both or either of these questions result in a no, I wouldn’t waste your time worrying about the outcome. To be selfish is a positive step toward being exactly the type of person you want to be, you just have to take it. After all, as you’ve continuously heard from flight attendants all around the world;

"Only when you have secured your own mask, should you attend to children or other passengers.”

You do you

We’ve all heard this before, right? Mostly from Fiat 500 driving, self empowered young women on the majority of social media platforms. It tends to be hollered as a form of superficial quip, gesticulating support for a close friend’s actions or decisions. But let’s side step that particular landmine for now, and focus on the words themselves.

You do you. It could be taken a number of ways. 

To concentrate on ones own progress, instead of the progress of others?

To look after your self interests because if you don’t, who will?

To promote self worth in an otherwise under appreciated individual?

I’m sure there’s plenty of other meanings, but we’re going to stick to one in particular.

Concentrate on solving your own issues, not the issues of others

Have you ever done something just to please someone else? I don’t mean offering to take the bins out, or buying a gift for your better half. I mean dropping all of your wants, all of your needs, all of your desires, just to make someone else happy? I’m guessing the majority of you have (even if it was just the once). Let’s visit that feeling for a second. 

How did it go for you? 

Did you get pleasure out of it? 

Did it make your life better?

Fuck, did it even make that person happy? 

At best, it may have brought that person a short-lived feeling of gratitude or relief that they no longer had to face this particular problem. Do you know why this is short lived, and can even sometimes feel under appreciated? 

It’s because you dropping everything you believe in to please someone else, not only doesn’t make any sense to you (now that you’re sat there thinking about it), but it doesn’t make any sense to the person you’re doing it for either. 

Allow me to explain.

Creatures who crave problem solving

Here I’m going to lay the groundwork for the processes that one can go through when attempting to take responsibility for the actions/decisions of others - especially in terms of problem solving. 

Example: You get some flatpack coffee table/sideboard bullshit from Ikea. What’s the first thing you do, when all the pieces are laid out in front of you? You throw the instructions to the side, and have a crack at putting it together. Sure, following the instructions of how to build this particular Swedish jigsaw would save you time, and make your life a whole lot easier. Still, it’s just not the same, is it?

Let’s relate this to something a little closer to home than Scandinavian furniture. You come across a problem in your personal life. Perhaps it feels like your boss is singling you out for criticism. Perhaps your best friend has bailed on some plans that you were really looking forward to. Perhaps, despite studying relatively hard, you still failed a recent exam. What is the first thing you do when confronted with these or similar issues? 

Whether it is conscious or not, your mind will attempt to solve the riddle, and come to a conclusion on what the next course of action should be. 

Side note : Not all people are like this. Some may cast aside any responsibility for their problems as soon as they encounter them. People you and I would refer to as, narcissists. We’ve all met them. Those people who believe themselves to be above the inconveniences of the rest of the world. People who proceed to funnel all of their problems downstream, for someone with less self-privilege to fix. Although this post isn’t about narcissists, I will say this:

Identify and remove these people from your life. No explanations, no apologies. 

These people are happiness vacuums, ready to suffocate everyone they come into contact with, 

and should be avoided without exception.   

But, let’s assume for now that we’re not narcissistic in nature, and possess the natural urge to fix our own problems. 

What happens when our mind comes back empty? If you can’t ‘do you’, what is the solution? 

You may ask a close friend or relative for their assistance. You may seek out answers from your preferred search engine. You may even throw caution to the wind, and write in to one of the many ‘help me, my life is fucked’ columns in your chosen tabloid newspaper/magazine. There are correlations with these reactions, but what is it?

Despite the fact that you’re asking for a helping hand, you are NOT asking for your problems to be fixed for you. You still want to ‘do you’, but now require a small amount of assistance. 

This is the part where the respondent (henceforth known as the facilitator) has a decision to make. They either attempt to guide you (the troubled) onto the path they may have chosen, therefore narrowing your options in terms of appropriate actions to rectify your issue. Or, they fix the problem for you. 

When choosing the latter, a never ending cycle of relationship DIY begins. The facilitator feels the urge to service the troubled in a bid to alter their happiness. I call this, ‘The Hero Effect’. This effect provides the foundation for the majority of unhealthy relationships, and is a key driver toward the amount of progress an individual will make. In other words;

How can ‘you do you’ when you are expending all of your energy on the problems of others, and how can they do them when you are relieving them of that responsibility. 

The Hero Effect

A feeling of satisfaction that an individual achieves by solving the problems/issues of someone close to them.

The Hero Effect is detrimental for a number of reasons:

1. The facilitator is failing to allow the troubled to satisfy their urge to problem solve. This will cause the troubled to feel unconsciously dissatisfied.

2. Whilst enabling the needs of the troubled, the facilitator’s issues will go unsolved. This will result in a negative headspace for the facilitator, forcing him/her to look for an escape from that negativity.

3. Upon resolving the issue offered up by the troubled, the facilitator will feel short term satisfaction. This will trigger a recycling of past behaviours in a bid to relive that fleeting feeling. Not only does this continue the facilitator’s cycle of distraction, it also provides the escape from their self-constructed cell of negativity.

4. Over a period of time, the facilitator’s plights will reach capacity. Not only will the action required to begin solving their issues feel monumental, but they will most likely be on the brink of clinical depression. This forces the facilitator further into the distraction cycle, in the hope that contributing to someone else’s happiness will fulfil their own.

As you can see, ‘You do you’ is an extremely difficult motto to live by when you expend all of your time, effort and energy on the problems of another. But not only that, the word cycle infers exactly the reason why these behaviours lead to clinical depression - it’s continuous.

Scenario

Boy gets mad because he has a problem.

Girl feels responsible for the happiness of the boy.

Girl then goes out of her way to fix the problem for the boy.

Girl fixes the problem and feels relieved that the boy is now ‘happy’. 

Boy comes across next problem.

Repeat.

That’s the elephant in the room when it comes to this particular behavioural flaw. The fact that you’re putting someone else’s happiness before your own is merely the tip of the iceberg. The submerged-portion is that once you solve/fix/remove that first problem, you’re already staring into the eyes of the next.

In his book ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life’, author Mark Manson states:

"Life is essentially an endless series of problems. The solution to one problem is merely the creation of another."

So not only are you spiralling into a pit of misery - feeling like your life and aspirations are going down the tube - but the person who’s happiness you put before your own is producing problems on mass. This results in you working 24 hour shifts in their factory of meaningless servitude, hoping you’ll be able to put food (the endorphins transmitted through satisfaction) on the table (the neurons in which the endorphins are transmitted). 

Help me, my life is fucked

Now that you’ve got your head around the crux of the matter, you may begin to ask - I want to do me, but how do I break the cycle?

Scenario

Girl has a problem.

Boy enquires how he can help.

Girl explains her problem.

Boys listens, empathises, and offers solutions that the girl could put into action.

Girl chooses one of the options to fix her problem (or goes in a different direction entirely).

Girl eventually overcomes, solves or moves past her problem.

In this instance, the boy has aided the girl without the need to fix the problem himself. Leaving both parties satisfied with the outcome. 

This method may seem awkward at first, especially if you attempt to implement it into a relationship where the status quo has already been established. But you will not continue to grow by incessantly fixing the problems of others. In fact, your emotions will bounce from fleeting satisfaction to self loathing like clockwork. 

Not only will anxiety become your base emotion, it will become your identity. People who get shit done on a daily basis, were not born with that trait already instilled in their personality. It was conceived there through consistent behaviours contributing to that end. 

A person who eats well and exercises regularly was not born with this already programmed into their psyche. It took long term periods of committed action and endurance to implement those base behaviours. This then allows that person to see this as part of themselves, as part of their make up, as part of their identity. 

They did them, now you need to do you, without apology. Create your identity, establish your behaviours, be selfish. Because, as you’ll see in a future post, selfishness and selflessness are more alike than you think.