Brave New Kitty

People, especially women, who are out of touch with their anger also tend to be out of touch with their power. For this reason, they can confuse power with cruelty, and this can cripple the process of becoming a whole human being.

I first noticed this after I started working on my anger. I noticed that I gravitated to people who were non-threatening. For me, this meant people who were also out of touch with their anger and uncomfortable with their own power. “Threatening” people consisted of almost everybody else, including people who were ambitious, assertive, or even just comfortable with stating what they wanted.

To women like us, anger was a dirty word, and power seemed to be in the same general category. The more I unraveled my anger, the more I became aware of this, and the more I wondered why it was the case. Here’s what I came up with.

I had a father who abused his power as family leader. He was quick-tempered, mean-spirited, profane, unpredictable, and rageful. He yelled a lot. Daily. And he could go off about anything, and you never knew what it might be. I dreaded the time of day when he got home from work.

I lived with this fear my entire childhood until I moved out at age eighteen. For the first week or so in my new place, I couldn’t figure out what felt so different. Duh! It was the feeling of peacefulness. It was palpable, filling me with a glee I didn’t yet understand. When I tried to talk to my roommate about it, he didn’t get it; his father was the strong silent type, and a nice man besides.

But anyone who’s grown up with a tyrannical parent knows what I’m talking about. When you’re small and at the mercy of someone who abuses his (or her) power, you learn to lump power in with cruelty (few children have the capacity to do otherwise). Because you aren’t allowed your own feelings of anger, you dissociate from them—you must to survive—but you also dissociate from your power.

For some, mostly men, this means becoming a tyrant like your parent. For others, mostly women, it means becoming overly meek. Both are unhealthy ways to cope with scary feelings about anger and a skewed sense of what personal power means.

Power and anger are not synonymous, but they’re closely related. I think this is because in order to feel powerful, you must know you can draw on your anger, in all of its various forms (assertion, confrontation, indignation, self-defense, sense of fair play) whenever necessary. You must be comfortable with the possibility of getting angry. If you’ve got anger fused with cruelty, then this is not likely to be the case.

If you are ever to be comfortable with your power, it’s important to:

• Own your dissociated anger
• Differentiate healthy anger from cruelty.

Own dissociated anger. Owning anger is kind of like taking the First Step in AA: you have to admit there’s a problem before you can do anything about it. This is not as easy as it might sound. There’s often a tremendous amount of shame connected with realizing you’re an angry person (especially for women). If we see ourselves as not angry, it can be devastating to think that we really are. We can have all sorts of value judgments about it in our heads: it means we’re bad, it means we’re cruel, it means we’re like the parent we want so much not to be like. In reality, none of these are true. The only thing that’s true is that we don’t have a good relationship with our anger, and if we want to feel better, we need to work on it. That’s all.

Dissociated anger is at the root of many (maybe most) psychological and emotional blocks, so this work can reap benefits in a lot of areas. If you’ve been stuck, depressed, or have recurring issues and don’t know why, dissociated anger is likely to be part of the problem.

Differentiate healthy anger from cruelty. Cruelty in any form can really mess a child up. Basics like trust and kindness are up for grabs. As adults, we often trust the wrong people, make the wrong decisions, and as much as we hate it, find ourselves victimized repeatedly by mean, selfish people. (This is our shadow, I suppose, trying to work through the problem on its own, without benefit of conscious awareness.)

Our cruelty antenna is broken. We’re not good at differentiating it from healthy power. To protect ourselves, we tend to avoid powerful people altogether. It actually seems logical when you look at it this way, doesn’t it? And it is, but it’s not a very good solution.

Healthy anger is not cruelty. Healthy anger is how you assert yourself, defend yourself, and take care of yourself. You must become comfortable with the idea that anger is a healthy emotion that allows you to tap into your strength. Just because somebody used it against you when you were unable to protect yourself is no reason to turn your back on it.

I recently watched “The Lord of the Rings” movies again, and wow, they are full of great examples of healthy anger and power. Gandalf the wizard almost single-handedly orchestrates the battle for Middle Earth. In one scene, he protects the rest of the Fellowship of the Ring from a nasty demon, almost perishing in the process. With all his strength, power, and anger, he stands up to the mighty demon with a bravery and nobility that never fails to bring tears to my eyes. Then there is Aragorn, who fights seemingly hopeless battles again and again, merely because it is the right thing to do. He would rather die bravely than live in chains.

You may be thinking that these are just fairy tales and real life is not like that. But the Lord of the Rings, like all mythical tales, is a giant metaphor for how noble people meet the struggles and battles in their own lives. We can all have the courage of Gandalf and Aragorn, even if it’s just to face our own demons. In fact, that’s the whole point.

If Gandalf and Aragorn are too out there for you to see as role models of healthy power, find someone closer to home. How about Oprah, who built an empire on her courage to address spiritual topics on television? Or Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard-educated doctor who has never taken a salary and uses all of his money helping the destitute people of Haiti? There are countless others who stand up to evil and injustice in this world. Their common bond is a healthy sense of their own power.

We are all capable of this. It is, in fact, our birthright. If we don’t have a good relationship with our own source of power, it is a malfunction that needs to be corrected if we are to live happy, satisfying lives.

How do we get there? It’s hard work, and it can be delicate and complex because it deals with the shadow and so many sensitive areas of the psyche. If you’ve come this far without a therapist, it’s probably time to get one. You’re unlikely to get very far without an objective guiding voice. (If I hadn’t had a good therapist to help me, I would probably still be insisting I wasn’t angry, having unsatisfying relationships, and wondering why I felt so stuck and drained all the time.)

Read books about heroic people. Watch movies about heroic characters. Seek out the strong people in your life and observe how they operate. Ask them questions if you can. And as always, journal, journal, journal. Face your issues with courage, then take this courage into other aspects of your life.

Acknowledge your own heroism, and enjoy the process. Getting in touch with your power can be a lot of fun.

People ought not be scary merely because they’re powerful. Give them a chance. When you find yourself gravitating toward people like this, you’ll know you’re becoming more comfortable with your own power.

Good luck.

A couple of lifetimes ago, when I was newly sober, I was at an AA speaker meeting (a meeting where one person tells an audience the story of how she got sober) where the speaker, a woman, said, “If you come in fearful, you’re going to have to deal with your anger. If you come in angry, you’re going to have to deal with your fear.” I didn’t realize for many years that she was speaking directly to me.

When I first got sober, I was as fearful a person as you could imagine. My first 4th and 5th Steps—4, make a personal inventory, and 5, dump it all on an objective person and be free of it—was one part anger, ten parts fear. Literally. I had one page of people and things I was angry at and ten pages of people and things I was afraid of. Sure, I was angry at my parents and a couple of ex-boyfriends, but it was fear that was really screwing up my life, holding me back from the self-actualization I so badly desired.

I was told many times over the years that I was angry, but overwhelming anxiety prevented me from really taking it in. I always heard it as an accusation of wrongdoing, not as a statement of fact. The thought of being an “angry person” felt so shameful and bad that I couldn’t process it. It made me so anxious, I got physically ill.

One day though, I listened. The circumstances were unremarkable. I think I’d just done enough work to not fall to pieces at the thought of it anymore. At first I felt like I’d been through a terrible ordeal. I would wake up and remember with a shock, “I’m an angry person,” like somebody had died. It bumped around in the back of my mind constantly, letting me get used to it. After awhile, it didn’t seem so bad anymore, and I was able to say it without feeling hopeless: I am an angry person! I was finally able to see my anger, and anger in general, objectively, and it was liberating.

One of the first things I realized was, “Of course I’m angry.” I had two angry parents who (unconsciously) taught me to be angry while simultaneously not permitting me to express my anger without risk of physical consequences. My siblings were angry, I was angry, and upon further inspection, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were all angry people, too. On both sides I had unresolved, largely unrecognized, anger in my lineage.

Not only was it in my bloodline, it had piled up inside me over the span of my childhood. When a child is treated badly, it is her natural inclination to be angry. It’s healthy to be angry about being treated badly. So when a child grows up with a barrage of bad treatment, and no way to express anger about it, the resulting adult is going to have a surplus of angry feelings. Sometimes they’re suppressed so hard and for so long, it’s difficult to remember they’re there. This is what happened to me (and I think to many other people walking around the planet, too).

Anger is healthy. Like all our emotions, it lets us know when we’re fulfilling our needs (see John Bradshaw). Anger is what we feel when we’re treated badly, when we witness injustice, when we need adrenaline to fight for our rights or those of others. It’s what a mother feels when protecting her babies, what a union organizer feels when he takes a stand against oppression, what a poet feels when he writes a poem about needless poverty and the misery it causes. Anger is a normal, natural, and necessary part of being human. Sometimes it’s even noble.

Anger, I realized, is how you tap into your power. When I repressed my anger, I also dissociated from my sense of power. I had unwittingly thrown the baby out with the bathwater. This came out in feelings of helplessness, frustration, and a victim mentality that I hated about myself. I see now that this is exactly what an abusive parent (or any abuser) would want, because if you feel powerless, you aren’t going to make much of a stand against poor treatment, are you?

Having almost no relationship with my power set me up for poor treatment as an adult. I had a number of abusive relationships, and my friends generally fell into two camps: they were either domineering or other victims. Inside I was seething much of the time, but outside, I was meek, mild-mannered, and passive. I remember a coworker once saying to me, “You don’t have an angry bone in your body.” Either he was as out of touch with his feelings as I was, or I put on one hell of an amazing act. Probably, it was a little bit of both.

In any case, because I was so out of touch with my power, I didn’t know how to have good relationships. I couldn’t be myself because the risk of rejection was so scary. I couldn’t state what I wanted because the risk of not getting it was so scary. I couldn’t be assertive, because when I was, I felt ashamed almost instantly. I was dishonest in almost every way that mattered, and I wasn’t even aware of it. The worst part was that when all the clamped down feelings came out, they came out in a flurry of rage that I felt powerless to control.

Because I was out of touch with my anger/power, my emotions controlled me. In daily life, I don’t think there is a worse feeling than this.

Accepting my anger was the beginning of so much change. I was able to start separating healthy anger from resentment, hostility, and rage. I was able to be present with my anger without instantly becoming ashamed. I was able to state angry feelings and have civil conversations about them. I began to feel hopeful that the kinds of relationships I wanted were actually possible.

Perhaps most importantly, I got in touch with my sense of power, the stream that nourishes all the other growth. This personal power had been lying dormant my whole life, and connecting with it was validating and life-affirming. It felt cleaner and more honest than any work I’d done since getting sober. It cracked everything wide open for me. It was just right.

I’m angry! Woo-hoo! Just to say it was empowering.

Accepting my anger clicked many pieces into place. I did not like many of the things I saw, but they had to be seen if I was to move past them. It’s no coincidence that around this time I first had a sense of shifting from healing to self-actualization.

Understanding how healthy anger (like power) differs from unhealthy anger (like rage, resentment, and hostility) is of life-changing significance. Owning your anger allows you to do that. It is, in fact, the only thing that allows you to do that. It’s like seeing life from a mountaintop after a lifetime of viewing it from a valley.

Unacknowledged anger festers like an untreated wound. It is an infection that feeds on hope and energy, chokes truth, and clouds vision. If it is to heal, it must be brought to the surface, where it can be examined, and the work of separating healthy anger from resentment, hostility, and rage can begin.

I learned “do the next right thing” in my first home group Alcoholics Anonymous meeting (a home group is the meeting at which you are a regular member, and it’s an important concept for most alcoholics and addicts in early recovery because we typically have such dismal relationships with commitment and accountability). I don’t remember who I first heard it from. It could have been Edmund, the bright but chronically depressed attorney; or Ann, the dogmatic middle-aged woman with emotional problems who’d been sober for decades; or Tom, the businessman who dropped in occasionally but said wise and wonderful things that resonated with all of us; or my first sponsor, Lynda, beautiful, brilliant, highly educated, and the reason I “kept comin’ back” in those early days.

It doesn’t matter, I suppose (but ahhh, those are some great memories). I heard it, and I grabbed onto it. It’s become a sort of default view that I recently realized has become such an ingrained part of my decision-making process, I barely notice it anymore.

“Do the next right thing” is kind of a catchall phrase. A cliché, even (12 Step groups are bursting with them). But most clichés exist because they express an essential truth. If you want to look deeper into one, you will probably learn something, about yourself, about human nature, or about the world; possibly about all of the above.

Looking more deeply into “do the next right thing” certainly taught me some things about human nature, the world, and myself. Prior to getting sober, well, I’m not going to say I was a horrible person who thought only of myself, because I wasn’t. But I was miserably unhappy and my life was not moving in a positive direction. This was largely because I didn’t know how to be happy, and I didn’t know what a positive direction was. Prior to sobriety, every time I started to do something good for myself, I got so uncomfortable that I always managed to find a way to sabotage it. This included friendships, relationships, therapy, college, career (or lack thereof), and simple self-care, such as diet and exercise. Essentially, I had to learn almost from scratch how to take proper care of myself and what it meant to be a productive, useful human being.

This was a tall order for someone who had a lifetime of self-destructive behavior to overcome. Thus, when I heard “do the next right thing,” it was like a dinner bell ringing out over the countryside, calling me home. I realized, in a sudden, powerful, and visceral way, that I didn’t have to figure it all out at once, I just had to try to do the next thing in front of me to do, whatever it was. At work, it meant doing the best job I could. With friends, it meant trying to be kind and supportive and a good listener. In self-care, there were simple, tangible tasks, like improving my diet, being more active, going to AA meetings regularly, and—this is a big one—forgiving myself when I fall short in any of these.

Somehow, “do the next right thing” broke everything down into manageable chunks. I suppose it brought me into the present moment and kept me there, and this was critical, because if I focused on what was in front of me in the present, I stopped focusing on all the dark possibilities my mind could conjure (and there were a lot!). The darkness didn’t go away, but it did lose a lot of its potency.

Wow, what a powerful tool! I had been living on the edge of the abyss my entire life, and suddenly, I was able to step back from it, and it wasn’t even that difficult. It was so simple, in fact, that there was almost an effortlessness about it. There was also a huge sense of relief. I didn’t have to live on the dark side anymore; brooding became completely optional. But I also didn’t have to be insincerely positive. All I had to do was the next right thing; actually, all I had to do was try.

It was the simplest, yet most complete approach to living I had ever experienced. In that cliché, I found salvation. In daily life, it helped me stay sober and be productive. In quandaries, I would ask, what is the next right thing? I didn’t always figure it out right away, but I discovered that if the next right thing is a main concern, a person is in little danger of making tragic mistakes in either action or judgment. This awareness alleviated my anxiety to a tremendous degree and made just about everything easier and less stressful.

“Do the next right thing” has been an upward spiral of change for me in every way. Over the years, my definition of what the next right thing is has changed (I think almost universally for the better), but the principle has not. It always grounds me in what’s in front of me to do, what I can accomplish, how I can make myself useful. I can’t think of a better philosophy for everyday living, even if it is a cliché.

If you’ve ever called a friend with something on your mind and found yourself monopolizing the conversation, don’t feel bad about it. Hearing yourself talk often holds the key to figuring out whatever it is that you need to figure out.

Working through problems can follow a number of different paths, often simultaneously. You do your research, think it through, sleep on it, write it out or journal about it, ask for advice, and talk it over with friends. Each method works at a problem from a different angle, all helping to crack through its exterior and get at the meat of it. One of the most useful ways to figure something out or make a decision is to just talk about it.

After you’ve done the research and looked at a problem logically, talking aloud about it seems to get at another part of your brain, and this is the part that’s going to make a decision. You need to look at problems rationally, but you also need to figure out what’s best for you and what you really want. These are less tangible concerns but equally important as “what makes the most sense.” In fact, if you do not allow yourself time to moodle and muse about what you want, if your focus is totally on the rational, you will have a hard time even knowing what you really want, and an even harder time figuring it out.

This is especially true if what you want doesn’t seem rational. Kris Kristofferson, the great singer/songwriter and actor, ended up in Nashville writing songs because of a decision that, on the surface, made no sense. He came from a military family, was an accomplished helicopter pilot and a Rhodes scholar with a wife and two small children. He had just taken a position as an English Literature professor at West Point when he decided to chuck his academic career to move to Nashville to try to make it as a songwriter. The rest, as they say, is history.

Kris Kristofferson’s decision looked completely irrational from almost every point of view except the one that mattered, which was that it was what he wanted. He must have agonized for quite awhile before finally taking that leap. He had spent years in college preparing himself for a career in academia, he had just gotten hired at the best military school in the country (probably in the world), and yet he was somehow able to look past all of that and take into account what he really wanted. (Can you imagine the conversations he must have had with his parents and wife?)

I think this is an extraordinary example of “following your bliss.” I don’t know what his process for arriving at his decision was (I’d love to ask him if I ever get an opportunity), but you can bet it involved talking it through with someone he respected; it would be tough to make such a huge leap of faith without trusted and supportive confidantes. And you can also bet that nobody said to him, “Yes, I think you should give up West Point and move to Nashville to write country music, even though you have no solid prospects or opportunities.” But he probably had one or two close friends who just let him talk his stuff through until he was sure about what he wanted and what he was going to do.

The world of extraordinary accomplishments is full of stories like this. They illustrate the importance of taking into account different sides of an issue, including the sides that don’t seem rational, but are just as important, perhaps even more important. And often, the way to get at these aspects is by musing and talking with no particular outcome in mind.

Finally, if you’re on the other end of the conversation, this information should come as some relief. You aren’t on the hook to say wise and wonderful things, because what you say really doesn’t matter very much. The best way to help someone solve a problem is usually by being a good listener and encouraging her to talk her way into her own solutions. Let go of the sense of obligation to think of thought-provoking questions and clever responses and focus on listening. And know that, when the situation is reversed, your friend will do the same for you.

Figuring out what you really want is the first step in getting it. Hearing yourself talk helps, so do so with relish and without reserve. I can’t think of a better reason to monopolize a conversation.

We all have limitations. Recognizing them is not a way to be hard on yourself or focus on the negative. Rather, it is part of taking a realistic inventory of your strengths and weaknesses. Knowing both is important to success.

Knowing your limitations may at first glance seem contrary to a personal growth message, but it is not. It is very much the opposite. Knowing limitations is a key to being successful at whatever you choose to do. Unrecognized limitations are your Achilles heel, your fatal flaw, the wrench in your cogs. If you don’t what know your limitations are, they will always trip you up.

When you start a job, you will know some skills, and other skills you will have to learn. The way to excel in a new job is to hone what you do well to higher and higher levels of expertise while incorporating new skills into your repertoire. If you’re unsure of your performance, you won’t be after your first review with your manager. He or she will happily let you know what you’re good at and what you need to work on. Your limitations will be spelled out clearly and, if you’re lucky, your manager will help you devise a plan to conquer them.

The reason the manager does this is not to be cruel or sadistic. Unless he is a complete buffoon, he wants you to excel at your job. He wants you to do well if for no other reason than to make him look good. Discussing your weak areas with you—so you can improve—is one of the ways he does that.

The performance review is a good analogy for figuring out limitations. Just as you do in a work setting, you can figure out your personal limitations for yourself and devise your own action plan for working on them, working around them, or accepting them, whatever the case may be.

Why is it important to know your limitations? The main reason is so you have an accurate self-perception, important because:

• If you don’t have an accurate self-perception, you won’t focus on the right issues. You can polish a car until the cows come home, but if it has a broken drive train, it still won’t get you anywhere. It’s often just human nature to focus on the problems with easy solutions. If this means ignoring the harder issues that really need work, then you risk seriously limiting your capacity for growth. Often these harder issues are our areas of greatest limitation.

• If you don’t have an accurate self-perception, you are probably also unaware of your talents. An inaccurate self-perception usually goes both ways. Improving your self-perception in any capacity is going to improve your self-perception overall. The more able you are to assess your self accurately, the more likely you are to become aware of weaknesses and strengths. There is no darkness without light, no up without down, no good without bad. Knowing one means knowing the other; assessing one will always shed light on the other.In this sense, you could start with your strengths and subsequently find weaknesses. However, it seems to work best the other way around in most cases. We learn from mistakes, we are motivated by pain, and we are more likely to achieve a well-balanced sense of who we are if we start with our limitations. That said, this is not an invitation to flagellate yourself. When working with shortcomings and limitations, always be gentle and sweet to yourself. Otherwise, you’ve missed the entire point of doing the work.

• An inaccurate self-perception makes true personal change very difficult. How can you grow at maximum capacity if hindered by unacknowledged limitations and weaknesses? The better you know yourself, and the more willing you are to know yourself at ever-deepening levels, the more likely you are to reach the heights of achievement you desire. Another yin/yang principle: the deeper you can dig, the higher you can fly.When you watch successful people talk about their success, note their impressive sense of self-perception, at least in the area in which they’ve excelled. This is not accidental; it is an integral ingredient of the success recipe. When this keen perception extends to wider areas of personal awareness, the successful person is usually also happy and fulfilled. Don’t hate or envy them; learn from them.

How do you figure out your limitations? This is a big topic, and one that I’m not going to attempt to cover in any detail here. The general method involves developing the regular habit of personal inventory. This usually means writing down the things you seem stuck on or bothered by and checking them out with a person whom you respect and trust… It doesn’t matter so much how you do it as that you devise some type of plan and commit to doing it.

Making a personal inventory a regular part of your life will enhance it in every way. You will improve not only your self-perception, but also your self-image, your self-esteem, and your personal and professional relationships. It’s also fun: Getting to know your self intimately is a lifelong adventure full of infinite challenge and never-ending amazement. Once on the path, you will continually surprise yourself with new insights, discoveries, and directions. To miss out on such an adventure is to miss out, in many ways, on the point of life itself.

The great myths about heroic adventures, and also most biblical stories, including Christ’s crucifixion and a-rising from the dead, are metaphors for this great inner journey of discovering and overcoming limitations. If you really want to be “born again,” go inward. That’s where it starts.

You’ve no doubt heard this expression, but what does it mean? Does it have any significance other than consolation when an outcome is not what you wanted?

I think it does. I can think of two important concepts underlying this expression. One is that if you’re too focused on outcomes, you’re probably afraid to try new things, since trying new things is usually accompanied by failure. The second is that, if you are too focused on outcomes, you miss out on most of your life.

Trying New Things
It’s important to try new things. This is how we grow. Whether it’s scuba diving or therapy, meditation or motorcycling, every new thing you try takes you out of your comfort zone and into uncharted territory. Uncharted territory is how we challenge ourselves, how we learn what we’re made of, and how we expand our comfort zone to a larger circumference. If you follow this to its logical conclusion, the more new things we try, the fewer and fewer things there will be that cause us anxiety. In fact, the process of trying new things sort of becomes an end in itself in that the more you do it, the less and less anxiety you will have the next time you do it. That is, if trying new things becomes a regular habit, your anxiety level about the unknown and unexperienced will decrease significantly. In this sense, trying new things is a fairly easy way to deal with your anxiety. You just have to be willing to not be good something the first few times you do it.

I know this is easier said than done. In my family of origin, ridicule was the normal response when somebody didn’t know how to do something. Even as a child—perhaps especially as a child—I was ridiculed and made fun of when having to do something I was unfamiliar with. To this day, one of my greatest fears is looking stupid in public. And I know I’m not alone. You probably don’t even have to come from a family background like mine, because, in general, skill is a valued commodity and lack of skill is not. This might even be hard-wired into our evolutionary development, as our greatest survival tool is our brain (we survive by being good at figuring things out). But the only way to become good at something is to study it, practice it, and be willing to fail at it until you, well, stop failing at it.

The world is full of inspirational stories of people who failed many, many times before they succeeded. Thomas Edison, for example, tried several thousand times before the light bulb went on, literally. Talented writers and actors and musicians can toil in poverty and in the face of cold rejection for years before they succeed in their chosen field. Some never do, but if it’s something they love, they find ways to believe in themselves and keep at it.

I think people who have the ability to keep trying in the face of adversity have developed a tenacity that others haven’t. But this isn’t an either/or. We are all fully capable of developing this tenacity. How do we do it? By trying new things, thereby increasing our tolerance for failure.

When the world’s response no longer has the power to put you down, you’re free.

Missing Out on Your Life
When you’re too focused on outcomes, you tend to not fully experience the moments of your life. This is because you’re spending too much time thinking about the future, about whether you’ll succeed or fail, get what you want or not, look good or look like a shmuck. Since life is composed of lots of moments, when you miss what’s going on in any given moment, you are essentially missing out on your life.

We’ve all had the experience of expecting some monumental sense of satisfaction to occur at some future point in our lives: when we graduate from college, when we get married, when we have a child, when we reach a pinnacle in our career, when we buy our dream house, when we retire. But the satisfaction you thought would accompany the event wasn’t there; that elusive sense of personal accomplishment remained out of reach. At some point along the way (and the sooner the better), you have to realize that this sense of satisfaction and personal accomplishment is not about reaching certain outcomes; it’s about something else. It comes from somewhere else.

Where?

Well, largely from wringing all the life you can out of each present moment, because, when all is said and done, there really is nothing else. Outcomes are just future present moments, no greater or less than the present moment that is happening right now. Whether you succeed or fail, get what you want or don’t, look good or don’t, it’s just another moment to experience as it occurs. And regardless of what you’ve emotionally or intellectually tied to a future moment, it’s going to be as full or empty as you make it, just as the moment you are experiencing now, and now, and now, ad infinitum.

This idea of the present moment is really, really important. I wrote about it awhile back in an essay called Be Here Now (and there is a book by Ram Dass of the same name). Many other fine books have been written about the importance of living in the present moment. If you are unfamiliar with this idea, please take some time to educate yourself on its grave importance to having a satisfying, meaningful life.

One final thought. Distraction, which is really just not experiencing the present, has become an epidemic in our high-tech culture. “Multi-tasking” is viewed as almost universally positive, even though it typically means that none of the tasks you’re engaged in you are engaged in fully. Many people can’t seem to carry out the simplest activities anymore without having a cell phone attached to their ear. And how many American households do you know in which the television is always on, regardless of whether anyone is watching it? Fully experiencing the present has become almost shameful in this culture that seems to perversely value the hectic and harried; if you’re not doing more than one thing at a time, you’re not doing enough.

If you have this mentality, like so many Americans, free yourself of it as quickly as possible. Distraction in the form of multi-tasking is one of the best ways to miss out on the moments of your life. Activity merely for the sake of keeping busy, or for the sake of what other people think, or because it’s what everybody else is doing, is one of the saddest ways to spend your time. It indicates a vast disengagement from your values, your sense of self, and your heart’s desire. All of these make fully experiencing the present moment almost impossible.

There are other reasons why effort is more important than outcome, but I think these two cover a lot of ground. “It’s the effort, not the outcome” is not just a platitude. If taken seriously and followed, it can help make the difference between looking back on a lifetime with satisfaction rather than with regret.

Have you ever been a witness at a news story, and when you watched it later on television, they got all kinds of facts wrong? You find yourself arguing with the television, as in, “No, that’s not right!” “You’re wrong!” “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” But of course, the television doesn’t care, and apparently, neither do the reporters who wrote the story. “Close enough” is good enough when it comes to little details that only matter if you actually do know them.

I’ve been “in the know” about news stories three or four times in my life, and every time, the news got at least one fact wrong. I don’t find this particularly disillusioning; it’s mostly accurate, and they’re running a business and doing the best they can. But it has taught me to consider everything I read and hear as speculative until I can follow it up with more research.

The bigger lesson for me, though, was to not settle for easy answers. If the news media routinely gets facts wrong, imagine how easy it is for other people and institutions to do so, yourself included. Add in all the people and all the businesses who have a vested interest in misconstruing facts in order to get what they want or to make a profit, and you realize that you’re wading through a shallow ocean of misinformation and lies every day of your life.

I don’t think I’m overstating this. If you want to understand the world, a certain amount of vigilance is required. You’ll still never get it all down, but you’ll be fighting the good fight, and that’s important: would you rather have a walk-on part in the war, or a lead role in a cage?

And if you want to understand yourself, it takes vigilance and more. You must make an agreement with yourself to not ever settle for easy answers, because settling for easy answers is the surest way to guarantee yourself a lifetime of ignorance and a false sense of security.

Anybody who says they have the answers, or worse, the answer, can be immediately dismissed as a charlatan. Anybody whose product guarantees peace of mind or unconditional love or some other facile solution to life’s difficult issues is selling snake oil.

This isn’t always easy to see. Sometimes you must invest a fair amount of critical thinking to figure out why something is too good to be true, or why certain promises ring hollow, or why what you’re reading or hearing is just somehow off, even though you find yourself wanting to believe it.

In fact, this is one of the most powerful arguments for vigilance and for not settling: because we want to believe. Have you ever succumbed to a door-to-door salesman, or an advertisement for a weight loss product? You knew better, but did so anyway? Of course you have; we all have, because we all want to believe. But the easy answers are almost universally the wrong ones, particularly in the realm of human emotions.

True believerism is very appealing. People who possess “the truth” seem so confident, so at peace, so happy. But pay attention—there’s that vigilance again—and you will see that their belief system is a thin veneer that peels away with the lightest of scratches.

True believers surround themselves with people and ideas that support their beliefs and shun people and ideas that don’t. There’s a definite “us and them” mentality that shines through the instant you challenge any of their beliefs.

But they’re happy, you think. That confidence and peace of mind counts for something, doesn’t it? I want that, you think.

Well, of course you do. We all do. But if you’re human, if you have the capacity for rationality and you’re able to think abstractly and reason and draw conclusions, then you can’t settle for easy answers or true believerism without a large degree of self-delusion. Just because many, many people do so anyway is no reason for you to do so as well.

The problem is that the other way isn’t just hard; it’s really, really, really hard. To be a think-for-yourself, stand-on-your-own-two-feet, rational, reasoning, vigilant adult is hard. It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.

It’s also one of the few things that truly matters in your life. Your worldview—that is, your character, values, and philosophy—is all you really have. Everything and everyone else can go away, but you will always have your worldview. So it’s important—really, really important—to choose a good one.

And that takes vigilance.

We are surrounded by distractions that seem like answers but aren’t. Money, fame, beauty, marriage, parenthood, career. If you see these as ends in themselves and not as outcomes of your worldview, they will never be satisfying. Without a deep connection between your daily activities, your values, and your sense of well-being, you will feel disconnected from your life.

For example, there is a vast difference between fame as a result of becoming really good at something and fame merely for being rich or pretty. On a simpler scale, if you get married or have a child or choose a career because you think it’s what’s expected of you and not out of any personal desire, you’re making the decision for all the wrong reasons.

Above all else, to thine own self be true.

Nobody can do this for you. You have to do it yourself, and you have to do it every moment of every day for the rest of your life. Yes, it’s work, but it’s the best, most satisfying, most meaningful work you’ll ever do.

Don’t settle for easy answers about life. They shortchange you. They’re ultimately unsatisfying. And they are disrespectful to the universe and everything in it. You may be frustrated dealing in the infinite shades of gray this world is made up of, but it will be the sweetest frustration you will ever have the pleasure of experiencing. Don’t miss it.

If you’re stuck and don’t know why, it’s probably because, deep down, you don’t really believe you deserve good things.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the law of attraction. It says, in essence (for those of you who’ve been on an expedition to Antarctica), that we attract what we think about. It’s taken the personal growth world by storm, and people can’t seem to read enough about it or apply it in their lives fast enough.

There are a lot of serious logical flaws in this belief system, at least in how it’s presented by many new age thinkers, which I’ll explore at another time. That said, positive thinking is a very important habit to cultivate. Awhile back, a website I found had an article on the law of allowing, which it said was the most difficult part of the law of attraction for most people. The law of allowing says that we tend to resist what we don’t want in our lives rather than allowing what we do want. In doing so, we’re focused on the negative, and therefore not attracting positive energy into our lives.

I saw myself instantly. I knew at once that this negativity lived inside of me, and it was what I had been working to overcome, in one way or another, my whole adult life. The main form this negativity takes is not believing I deserve good things.

It was a tremendous epiphany, and if it hadn’t come to me all at once like it did, I may have found a way to avoid seeing it, because I didn’t like admitting it to myself.

I don’t believe I deserve good things. This is my comfort zone. It’s a buffer that’s protected me from disappointment, heartache, and failure. The problem is, as with all defense mechanisms, it’s also prevented me from reaching my full potential.

I don’t live there like I used to, this is true. I’ve developed a healthy enough self-image to take some risks and pursue interests I would never have dreamed of ten years ago. I suppose all the work I’ve done has brought me to this point, to facing this unpretty truth. I probably wouldn’t have seen it before now or have had the capacity to deal with it; that’s how growth seems to work.

Yep.

But I’m not alone. I also saw friends and acquaintances, relatives, and even virtual strangers who obviously do not believe they deserve good things. Many people seem to go out of their way to sabotage their lives, saddle themselves with burdens they don’t really want, and get stuck in patterns that leave them feeling depressed and hopeless. (If you want evidence of this, look to alcoholism, addiction, runaway consumerism, and the amazing growth of gambling as an acceptable pastime. Escapist activity has reached epidemic proportions in our post-industrial society, and I see this as an indication that a lot of people don’t like themselves, or their lives, very much. Here’s an article I wrote about this.)

I’ve come to believe that this core negativity is outrageously common. People learn early in life that they don’t deserve good things. It could come from an unloving parent (or parents) who treated you like you didn’t matter, a religious belief in “sin nature” (which completely misses the point about sin, god, and spirituality), or a stoic immigrant mentality that life is hard and full of misery, handed down through the generations of your family. Or from growing up in poverty, or from physiological leanings toward depression. It’s partly just our human nature to dwell on the negative; this is how we save ourselves from too much disappointment in life, particularly if we’ve had more than our share as a child.

There are so many ways to believe that you don’t deserve good things, it’s not too much short of a miracle to get fully past this limiting outlook.

But, if we want to squeeze the most juice out of life, get past it we must. In fact, I would submit that getting past limiting belief systems is the very essence of personal growth. It may be the key difference between people who get what they want, and those who lead lives of quiet desperation.

By getting past it, I mean specifically this: that, when you see something you want, your first thought is no longer that you’re not good/pretty/smart/talented/capable/deserving enough to get it, which you then must vanquish with the positive thinking you’ve worked so hard to cultivate. Instead, your first thought, your instinctive, knee-jerk, out-of-the-box, core-self reaction is, “How can I get/do/learn/become that?” Which you immediately follow up with a plan of pursuit.

Sounds pretty cool, huh?

So I’ve been thinking about how to eradicate negativity from my life and deeply, soulfully, and by default believe that I deserve good things. I don’t know if it’s possible to ever do that completely; I may always have to make a conscious effort to shift away from this unfortunate core-self belief. But what I’ve come up with so far is this.

As far as shifting my mindset in a positive direction:

• It’s pointless to fret about whether or not I can accomplish this. I know it’s the right direction, so I just have to keep trying.

• Introspection, honesty, sincerity, and gratitude have brought me everywhere I need to be and will continue to do so, even if the obstacles sometimes feel overwhelming.

• Just because the journey sometimes uncovers more questions than it answers doesn’t mean I’m moving in the wrong direction. In fact, it probably means I’m moving in a good direction, and that I’m willing to deal with what’s there rather than what I would like to be there.

• Owning my unattractive personality traits has tremendous transformative power.

• It’s always important to acknowledge how far I’ve come.

• Doing what I want—following my bliss—is really the only way to have meaning in my life, so it is essential to keep at it.

As far as actual work:

• Congratulate myself for my bravery rather than beat myself up for my failure.

• Shift my focus from avoiding what I don’t want to allowing into my life what I do. This will require some work, perhaps in the form of journaling, affirmations, and talking it through with supportive people (possibly a new stint in therapy).

• Strive to be of service to others (because being of service is the ultimate way to feel good about yourself).

And on a spiritual level:

• Understand that, even as I strive in the psychological realm for conquest over shortcomings, I’m perfect just as I am, in this moment and in every moment. I need only to recognize this perfection in myself to be free of all negative, limiting beliefs. This requires ongoing spiritual practice, which for me is meditation.

• Know that, in the Big Picture, all things are good, even if I don’t yet understand why.

Summary
I’ve realized that what I’m talking about here really comprises personal growth itself, and that I could substitute just about any concern, issue or shortcoming and arrive at the same bulleted list for change. Everything is about honesty, sincerity, and gratitude; everything has a personal and a transpersonal (spiritual) component; and all growth is about shedding limiting beliefs and moving toward the Great Wholeness.

I didn’t mean for this to get so generalized; I suppose because this belief that I don’t deserve good things in my life is so all encompassing and has such a vast effect, it was somewhat inevitable. But if you struggle with it as well, then maybe some of this will be helpful for you.

I hope so.

If you must engage in a New Year ritual, make it something meaningful. Resolutions disconnected from larger values and goals aren’t meaningful. But just as easy and considerably more helpful is to make an end-of-year gratitude list. You don’t have to write anything down, you just have to think about all the things in your life for which you’re grateful.

What’s gone right this year?

What obstacles have you overcome?

What opportunities fell into your lap? What opportunities did you create?

What are your accomplishments?

How have you grown? What lessons have you learned?

What awarenesses have given you direction for the upcoming phases of your life?

How many good people do you have in your life? Be grateful for every one of them, and use this as an opportunity to send some positive energy their way.

And of the bad things that did happen, what good came out of them?

Be grateful for all the things that didn’t go wrong, too. Be grateful for your health, your job, your home, your family, and all the little moments of joy you experienced throughout the year; the new music you discovered, the movies you loved, the jokes that made you laugh. Be grateful you have enough food to eat and enough money to pay your bills and a car to drive and a roof over your head.

Be grateful for having a grateful attitude; it will bring you a long way toward inner peace, much further than cynicism. And be grateful that you’re aware of how important it is to be grateful for all the goodness in your life.

Most of all, be grateful that you’re still upright and conscious. Where there’s life, there truly is hope.

Notice how good gratitude feels, and then maybe spend a few moments thinking about how you could incorporate gratitude into your life as a regular practice. It’s a small, simple thing that has tremendous power to improve your outlook on just about everything. Now that’s something you can feel good about all year long!

Best wishes to everyone for a happy, healthy, prosperous new year full of hope, opportunity, and growth. Namaste!