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You are free to choose what you think

Keeping an open mind, Seeing the truth, Sense of self 2 Responses »

Mar 262013

We are all shaped by the cultural environment in which we grow up. Our attitudes, inclinations and prejudices are instilled in us at an early age by our parent-figures, our schools, the media and all the other influences of modern society. There is no getting away from this and in any case I don’t believe it is inherently a bad thing; it’s just the way it is. One of the main interests for me in going abroad is to see how differently people in other countries view the world.

It sounds as if I’ve kicked off by contradicting the title and message of this week’s post and, at one level, I suppose I have. None of us is created and nurtured in a vacuum, and in terms of cultural values, ethics and politics, nothing much exists by way of objective truth. We can each only do our best to think and behave with honesty and integrity and remember that someone who has reached the opposite conclusion on any given issue may well have done so with equal honesty and integrity, but approaching from a different perspective.

I was well into my 30s before I realised how many of my opinions were imported holus bolus from my mother. Of course, I knew we agreed about almost everything, but I genuinely believed I had thought things through for myself and just happened to end up thinking what my mother thought because she was right. As I began to detach from her psychologically and emotionally, it became clear to me I’d been fooling myself, that I had trained myself to agree with her because it was the most self-protective course of action. My mother has a strong sense that those who don’t see the world exactly as she does are weird, inferior, possibly deficient, usually rather unpleasant, to be pitied or despised.

What I’m trying to do today is to encourage you to examine your beliefs and opinions and make sure they are really your own. A good way to do this is to get talking to people who hold beliefs and opinions that are different from yours and keep an open mind as you discuss things with them. If you’d like to do this in a safe environment, I recommend a debating society or some sort of discussion group that is chaired and where people don’t resort to personal insults. I’ve been going to a couple of these groups for about eighteen months now and I can tell you they have done me no end of good. I’m learning so much from listening to other people and it’s also immensely reassuring and empowering to know that, although many members of the group may fundamentally disagree with my stance on any given subject, I always feel welcome there. Holding ‘incorrect’ views has historically been an existentialist issue for me and it’s been an absolute liberation to discover there are people to whom I am acceptable even if I think differently from them.

Prejudice is something we take in with our mother’s milk and we cannot be blamed for that. It’s the same, to a greater or lesser extent, for every single person who has ever been born. However, what we can be blamed for is allowing those prejudices to persist, by avoiding or dismissing information that challenges them. We owe it to ourselves and to the world to learn as much as possible and always to keep an open mind. This doesn’t mean we should go through life never forming a solid opinion – far from it – but it does mean we need to keep listening and re-evaluating.

Challenging and changing your views can be quite a disorientating experience but it can also be an exhilarating ride, as you shed your baggage and find out what you really think. In certain areas, you may unearth a truth that blinds you as soon as you uncover it; in other areas, you may decide you were right all along; in yet others, you may go on fine-tuning your views over decades. To me, this is all part of the interest and the growing. You can never be your own person until the views you hold are your own.

And remember that all this cuts the other way too: if your views are based on your own knowledge, experience and open-minded debate, you are on firm ground. There will always be people who disagree with you but, as I was saying last week, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re wrong. Actually, there is great strength in being able to admit when you’re wrong or you’ve changed your position and if you can get used to doing that with grace and without fear, you’ll get a reputation as someone measured, reasonable and probably even wise. Then, when you are unshakeable on a particular topic, you’ll have more authority and – who knows? – you may even change the minds of some of your listeners.

You are free to choose how you feel

Seeing the truth, Sense of self 4 Responses »

Mar 192013

I’ve quoted Eleanor Roosevelt on this blog before and I’m sure I’ll do it again after today; she was a woman after my own heart and I have benefitted from her wisdom on many occasions. A quotation I keep coming back to is this:

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

It took me several years to understand this and accept its truth. Other people’s opinions had shaped my self-image all my life, at such a deep level that I didn’t even realise it was happening, and the idea that I played any part in the process seemed alien and unfathomable. But gradually it became clear to me I’m not the person that, in a doomed effort to fit the mould I felt I was expected to fit, I was trying so hard to be. This was bewildering at first but began to feel more and more liberating, as I came to understand why it was that I felt so stuck and as if my life had run into the sand. The reason I was finding it such an immense effort was that I was was trying to live a life for which I’m not suited: it was the story of the square peg and the round hole. Once I shifted my energy into creating the life I do want and for which I am suited, suddenly things began to fall into place.

Hand in hand with this insight came the revelation that I can choose how I feel. Before, this had always seemed to me the sort of insensitive, trite suggestion people with no inkling of how I felt used to make, in a misguided attempt to help me ‘cheer up’. Snap out of it, get over it, choose to be happy. Even now, the crassness of this advice induces a surge of fury and frustration in me – so let me reassure you, this is not where I am coming from at all!

Choosing how I feel is not about denying or discounting my suffering, it’s not about putting on a brave face for the sake of everyone else. It’s about realising the extent of my power. Not only do I not have to squeeze myself into a shape I don’t want to be, I don’t have to berate myself for not fitting the hole carved out for me by others. No longer struggling to be round, I can embrace and enjoy my squareness. From here, it’s but a small step to acknowledging that other people cannot ‘make’ me feel anything. Their behaviour and attitudes towards me may have more or less impact on me, depending on the relationships and situation, but in the end I am the one who decides how I feel. If being sad, angry, scared or happy fits the circumstances, then there we are. What I’m talking about is feeling negative emotions, such as guilt and shame, when there really is no reason to. Just because somebody is criticising me, it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with me or that I have failed in any way. Of course, if I have made a mistake, I need to own up and apologise, but making a mistake does not mean I’m inferior. I am not inferior, I am just as good as everybody else. Anyone who pretends otherwise has their own agenda and I am not going to buy into it.

Give yourself priority

Seeing the truth, Sense of self 2 Responses »

Feb 262013

Following on from last week’s post about the dangers of giving too much, I thought it might be useful to cover broadly the same ground again but with a more positive twist. For me, finding the right balance between giving and taking is important in itself but it’s also part of a bigger quest to find out who I really am. I used to be a rock, an earth-mother, the big, strong, capable one who could always be relied on. While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, as it became more and more apparent to me that nobody could be relied on to return the favour in my hour of need, I began to feel not only resentful but scared and lonely.

What has helped me enormously is to realise: you can’t please everybody, so just be yourself. This is easy to say and may sound rather trite but, when you really think about it, you can’t deny that whatever you choose to do or not do, there’s a chance someone won’t like it. If you let other people’s opinions guide your every decision, you’ll spend your life walking a tightrope and almost certainly feeling restricted and unfulfilled. I don’t know about you but I’ve made some essential, life-changing decisions based on what I believed people thought, without even checking with them to see if I was right. It was an unconscious process but it resulted in my becoming so confused and frustrated that I slumped into a depression that lasted many years.

It doesn’t matter what other people think! Now, I wouldn’t say that to everybody but, since you’re reading this, my guess is you care a great deal about what other people think and you’ll never turn into a selfish bulldozer. Of course it’s important to be polite, considerate and reliable, but this does NOT mean you have to subordinate your needs, wants and dreams to everyone else’s on a constant basis. Live your own life, plough your own furrow. Those who criticise will probably do so whatever you do, so you’ve got nothing to lose. And you stand to gain the life you want.

I’m still working on this but it’s been so liberating to understand that I can put myself first sometimes and the sky is not going to fall. I don’t need other people’s approval. Making my own decisions, doing and saying and being what I want to do and say and be without being crippled by shame afterwards is an absolute joy! And the strange thing is, nobody is treating me any differently from how they did before. Could it be they haven’t noticed how profoundly my life has changed? I suspect they see only that I’m much happier and lighter than I used to be.

You are important

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Feb 192013

Those of us who struggle with perfectionism and are prone to excessive feelings of guilt and shame often labour under the misapprehension that everyone else is more important than we are. It’s only in the past couple of years that I’ve begun to find a better balance between my needs and others’, a balance that allows me to be who I am and not always subordinate my own needs, while also maintaining relationships and being the good friend and relation I would like to be. After much soul-searching and analysis, here are some of the lessons I’ve learnt.

Giving too much damages relationships. Whether or not they are consciously aware of it, people know when a relationship is out of balance. Of course things won’t be perfectly equal all the time; there is going to be an ebb and flow as we are all carried by life’s tides, but a healthy relationship is balanced overall. If you are consistently giving more than the other person is, this will get more and more uncomfortable for both of you. I’ve made this mistake so many times, hoping that if I just gave a bit more I could bounce the other person into appreciating me. It doesn’t work like that. I felt more and more resentful – and so did the other person. Put yourself in that person’s position for a minute. In front of you stands someone who is clearly needy, doing more and more for you in the hope of getting something back, something you are increasingly reluctant to give as you feel more and more cajoled and manipulated. Hmmm… it suddenly doesn’t seem such a good idea, does it?

Another consideration here is that your doing too much for someone is denying him or her the opportunity to grow. We all need to explore, test ourselves, try things out – and even fail sometimes. If you’re standing in the way of someone’s doing this, you are not doing that person any favours at all. Back off!

People may not even notice your sacrifices. The way you think, the decisions you make, what you give, what you need, all these things are inside you and, despite what you may, at some level, believe, they are invisible to everyone else. You may think it’s clear for all to see how overwhelmingly you long for X, but it really isn’t. All they see, if they think about it at all, is that, for whatever reason, you’re not pursuing it. What good does this do anybody? You are the centre of your own world, as everyone else is of theirs, and you alone are responsible for shaping your own life. Sacrificing your dreams for somebody else, particularly without even consulting him or her, is putting a huge and completely uncalled-for and unfair burden on that person. It’s actually an irresponsible thing to do. It also runs a very high risk of chucking your dreams away for nothing.

If you think people love you only for what you do for them, stop doing it. Should anyone confirm your suspicions and withdraw love because you’re no longer ‘earning’ it, doesn’t this suggest you would be better off sweeping them out of your life? But I would bet heavily that the majority of people will surprise you by going on loving you just as much. In fact, they will probably have positive feelings around it, including respect for you finally rebalancing things and giving yourself equal priority.

In the end, if you’re drained and resentful and you have a (not always well) hidden agenda to your giving, you may in truth not be giving as much as you think you are. If you continue with this, everyone loses.

Instead, remember that you are important. Deep down, you know this, which is why you get resentful when others don’t acknowledge it. Once you can come to terms with the fact (yes, the objective fact) that you are just as important as everyone else – no more, no less, but equally – you can start to be honest with yourself and everyone else about getting your needs met. If you behave as if you are less important than those around you, you’re giving a false impression and asking for trouble. Either people will take it at face value and exploit you or they will understand that it is, at some level, a strategy and they’ll feel manipulated.

The Biblical commandment to love thy neighbour as thyself sums this up in a nutshell. We are all equal. Of course we need to love others and to be good neighbours, but we also need to love and cherish ourselves.

Magical thinking

Seeing the truth 2 Responses »

Feb 052013

Perfectionism (the subject of last week’s post) is one way in which people whose formative years were stormy and unpredictable attempt to control the world. In order to avoid the wrath of my parents, I was very careful not to make any mistakes. In order to avoid the wrath of my partner/boss/friends, I am very careful not to make any mistakes. It’s an exhausting and impossible quest.

Unaware that the parents are worried about money or any number of other things, as well as struggling to prevent their own relationship from falling apart, the child knows only that she has to tread carefully. Sometimes, everything is fine and we can have fun together. Then, suddenly, without warning, something is triggered in one of the parents and war breaks out. The child’s life becomes focused on finding ways to keep the peace and she grows up believing her own behaviour is the key to it – although the rules and boundaries are always rather fluid and she has to work hard to stay one step ahead.

As that child grows up, she retains the distorted sense of responsibility for the world around her. It’s a sad paradox that a person who is excessively controlled in childhood often develops an inflated idea of her own power, which undermines her from both directions.

On the negative side, she carries around a huge burden of guilt for events that either were not her fault or that really don’t matter. The tendency to exaggerate one’s own shortcomings and their consequences we’ll talk about next week but I encourage you to reflect this week on how many times you curse yourself for things that are, in reality, out of your control. For instance, I was giving a friend a lift to an appointment the other day and we got stuck in traffic – not foreseeable rush-hour traffic but a jam caused by an accident on the motorway. It was just bad luck and yet I felt completely responsible and kept apologising to my friend for the fact he was going to be late.

On what may sound like the positive side, she may set herself up for failure by letting her unrealistic view of her own capabilities, her magical thinking, lead her to throw herself into a situation unprepared. There’s a good example of this, along with a clear analysis of it, on this blog about public speaking.

How often do you say, “I can do that!”, without thinking it through to make sure you really can? When the task goes wrong, do you attack yourself fiercely? If this is a pattern for you, my guess is it’s for a reason similar to the one I’ve outlined. These things are turning out badly not because you’re not a strong, capable person but purely because you’re not giving yourself a fair chance. Next time you catch yourself about to embark on one of these doomed missions, stop and think about it, prepare thoroughly – and you’ll find you get a much better result.

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