WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE?

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.    11-19

ABSTRACT:  The choices that all of us make (often unconsciously) that will significantly affect our lives are described, and greater conscious choice is advocated.

KEY WORDS:  life choices, life path, self-knowledge

Every human being has a certain amount of choice regarding self-development—i.e., who he or she will become over the lifespan.  All of us feel that we have meaningful choices and that our choices have consequences, some positive and some negative, some that we expect and some that we cannot envision.  Therefore, it will be to our advantage for us to exert what influence we do have over our futures, and our futures depend to a significant extent on who we are as persons—whether we are responsible or irresponsible, friendly or antagonistic, content or discontent, etc.  Some people may choose to simply flow through life without trying to shape or control it, but most of us want to live as happily as possible and think that our choices matter.

At every point at which we make choices about our futures, we are different people.  We start out with our somewhat unique genetic heritage, and we change over time as a result of all of the experiences that we have had, which are somewhat different from the experiences that anyone else has had.  It will be to our advantage to choose paths that allow us to increase our ability over time to make good decisions at each new decision point and to exercise our knowledge and abilities toward feeling good about ourselves, having positive relations with others, and attaining our most important goals. 

Choosing who you want to be and pursuing that goal can be approached on different levels and in different areas of life:

          1. being clear on your ultimate goals in life

          2. choosing your fundamental style of living

          3. choosing the kind of relationship that you want to have with
yourself

          4. choosing the kind of relationships that you want to have with others

          5. choosing how you make use of information and fantasy (your
relationship to reality and truth)

          6. choosing how you manage your emotions

          7. choosing the behaviors that can help you to move toward being the
person you want to be

ULTIMATE HUMAN LIFE GOALS

The fundamental goals of all human beings are—

          survival

          minimized pain (physically and emotionally)

          being in a positive (or at least neutral) emotional state as much as
possible

          having positive self-esteem

          having a reasonable sense of security   

sex and procreation, including the desire to protect and raise children

          gratifying relationships with others, including group acceptance for
oneself,

          protecting and defending one’s groups (family, nation, etc.) when
          necessary, and helping those of one’s groups in times of great need

All styles of living seek to maximize achievement of these goals, and there are no other goals for human beings.  All other behaviors (sports, worshipping, seeking elective office, playing video games, etc.) serve one or more of these basic goals (and being clear on this can help us to choose behaviors that have the greatest chance of helping us to achieve these goals).  We choose all of our moment-to-moment behaviors to maximize achievement of these fundamental goals.  Survival, minimization of physical and emotional pain, and sex and procreation are certainly hard-wired into our physical being.  We are fundamentally social beings and instinctively know that we need others.  Being in a positive emotional state and having gratifying relationships with others are pursued through a wide variety of behaviors that we choose relative to our abilities, our environmental possibilities, and our conditioned preferences.

The most general emotional goal we have as human beings can be summarized as “happiness.”  In the list of fundamental goals above, “a positive emotional state” includes all pleasant emotional states, not just happiness, but happiness is still a useful catch-all term for positive emotions.  (Happiness also requires at least adequate survival and a tolerable pain level.)  We should consider, though, the short-term and long-term results for us of various positive emotions.  For a child, most happiness is momentary and fleeting—e.g., the happiness of getting desired presents on Christmas, followed by a period of valuing these presents and then by a time of diminishing happiness in this regard as the child becomes bored, realizes that these presents are not as wonderful as she had imagined, and turns to other environmental possibilities.  Many adults maintain this relationship with happiness, looking daily for a concrete happiness “fix” (movies, alcohol or drugs, drag racing, counting one’s money, being invited to a high-class social gathering, having sex, etc.)—all activities that may bring short-term happiness.  When we look at more mature and wiser adults, we find that they favor longer-term happiness—specifically satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment, all of which require some reflection on one’s experience and all of which can be relatively lasting.

Dictionary.Com defines happiness as “good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy” and notes that “happiness results from the possession or attainment of what one considers good.”  This definition is less than adequate, since for one thing, happiness is not equivalent to good fortune but is a feeling that usually results from having good fortune.  Similarly, happiness is not equivalent to pleasure but is rather that feeling state that usually results from feeling pleased.   Joy is better understood as a stronger version of happiness, and as you will see below, contentment is a separate feeling from happiness.  It is the conclusion of the author, after observing lives both professionally and personally, that the greatest happiness, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment are made possible by (1) having good relationships with others and (2) utilizing freely and completely your skills and abilities in the service of goals and outcomes that are meaningful to you.

To most people, style of living does not seem like a choice—it simply happens as they respond to their particular experiences, but having choice gives us more opportunities and more opportunities to change.  Hopefully the reader will realize in reading this that he or she can make a choice, that he or she can change styles, if desired, to one that makes for a better life for him or her.  By implication, if you are quite satisfied with your life and how you make that life work, you may not be interested in changing to make your life better.  (Since our brain process of accommodation to any feeling state reduces its intensity over time, there is a practical, neurological limit to happiness.)

Societal institutions could help to educate people to the fact that they can choose to change.  Families, schools, and churches (and even governments) could teach their particular takes on appropriateness and morality as recognizable styles and choices for living, so that the young person knows that there could be choices.  Of course this would mean that the institution would be admitting that a person could have choices, instead of teaching that that institution’s preference for the young person was the only acceptable choice!

It might seem that the call to shape one’s self would apply only to the young, but even older persons can learn better routes to happiness, which might involve changing some beliefs and attitudes. Of course, many older persons have already reached an acceptable level of happiness, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment and need only “be themselves” to continue having a good life!

SELF-ASSESSMENT

In order to help you to think about yourself in a more objective and organized way, here are some questions about yourself that you can answer or think about.

Do you know what is best for you?  Do you do what will be best for you and in your best interest?  

Do you criticize and blame yourself enough to significantly affect your happiness?

Are you using all of your abilities to achieve your goals?

Do you have sufficient behavioral skills to get what you want in life?

          Do you have sufficient social skills?

          Do you express your needs effectively in a social context?

          Are you appropriately assertive regarding your rights and needs?

Do you have sufficient knowledge to get what you want in life?

          Do you understand other people?

Do you know and understand yourself?

          Do you understand the world?

Do you have sufficient emotional skills to get what you want in life?

          Do you have sufficient empathy?

          Do you manage your emotions effectively?

          Are you aware of all of your sensations, perceptions, emotions, needs,
thoughts, motives, and potentials?

Do you know what the truth is?

Do you tell the truth, to yourself and to others?

Do you take care of your responsibilities (are you responsible for yourself and for those who are dependent on you, and do you do what you say you will do)?

Do you love yourself?

Do you treat yourself lovingly and well?

Do you have compassion for yourself?

Do you meet your needs acceptably?

Do you comfort yourself when you need it?

Do you take good care of yourself and do good things for yourself?

Are you responsible and trustworthy toward yourself?

Do you alter punishing relationships in accord with how you want them to be, including giving up roles and relationships that define you unfairly as being inferior to others or as getting less than others?

Are you able to seek and enjoy new, more supportive, affirming, and gratifying relationships?

Do you accept everything about yourself?  What do you not accept?

Do you respect yourself?

Do you treat yourself with respect at all times?

Do you insist that others give you respect and equal treatment?

Do you insist on being treated as being fundamentally the equal of others?

Do you assert your worth and value in response to cultural and societal attitudes that act against self-esteem.

Do you enjoy being yourself?

Do you enjoy being with yourself?

Do you accept a certain amount of stress, pain, and unpleasant emotions as

acceptable and unavoidable aspects of life?

Do you treat others well?

Can you feel emotionally close to some people?

Do you cooperate effectively with others to get what you want,

without causing harm to them?

Are you supporting yourself (to the extent possible given your

limitations and the limitations of the environment)?

Your answers to some of these questions may suggest ways in which change could bring greater happiness!

STYLES OF LIVING

We tend to choose a general style of living, and there are many possible choices for this.  Here are a few that you may recognize in others or in yourself.  Try to think of someone you know who embodies each of these as you read them.

• calmness/peace/love/cooperation (the choice focused on most here)

These people like to stay calm and interact with others in peaceful and cooperative ways.  Love is a primary value and goal for them.  They do not like conflict or violence.

• dominance/authority

These individuals strive to be dominant over others, and they try to get into positions of authority.  They tolerate conflict and are often willing to threaten violence or even be violent if their dominance is threatened.

• status

These persons strive to be at the top of the human status hierarchy, in order to feel good for being “better than” everyone else. 

• striving/competition

These individuals are always seeking “more,” often in all areas (material life, income, status), and their striving necessitates competition with others in order to surpass them and to have “more.”  “Besting” or winning over others is a strong motivation for them.  (Those with dominance or status motives may strive, but they have specific goals–wanting to be in control or be better than others, while the striving/competition person has no end goal but rather lives to seek and strive.)

• taking/using

These persons wish to live by taking from others, either legally or illegally, and are often (but not always) criminals.  Persons with this style focus on ways to take advantage of others to get what they want (cheating, blackmailing, extorting, lying, deceiving, manipulating, etc.).  This style is probably motivated by anger at feeling emotionally deprived or abused in some way in earlier years and, as a result, feeling resentment regarding conforming to expectations and supporting oneself.  It can be compounded by laziness.

• having needs satisfied by others

These persons focus on ways of getting other people to meet their needs and wants (instead of doing it themselves), through such things as pleasing, acting inadequate, acting helpless, acting sick, being sick, begging, presenting as pathetic, being a “yes man,” being a sycophant, staying immature instead of maturing, and acting childish.

• taking care of others

These person concentrate on taking care of others, which necessitates finding others to take care of, as well as sometimes not encouraging them to take care of themselves.

• attention/fame

Persons who value fame and the attention of others above all else cultivate behavioral skills that get and hold attention, often providing something diverting or emotional for onlookers as a reward for giving their attention.  (We call this “entertainment.”)  Because of their greater partner needs, women are usually more developed in these skills than men.

• stimulation/hedonism/sensory pleasure

The focus of these persons is on being stimulated, for the most part, pleasurably.  This is their major route to enjoying life.

• intellectual life

These persons find their meaning and pleasure in thought and ideas and can easily be lost in their intellectual pursuits to the exclusion of other people and activities.

• conform/fit in/be good

The constant focus of this group of people is on maintaining acceptance and approval and avoiding disapproval by conforming to rules and expectations.  “Being good” is often the way that they understand this effort, and “being nice” is frequently a characteristic.

• asceticism

These persons attempt to minimize sensory inputs as controlling factors in their lives, learning to ignore pain and focus the mind in ways that distract one from sensation.  Some Eastern religious traditions make much use of asceticism to pursue purity and living on a “higher plane.”

• religion/mysticism

Many people make at least partial use of this style, which may include (1) giving over control of one’s life to an outside power (such as God), (2) believing that all things are controlled or destined by an outside power, (3) making one’s relationship to an outside power the primary relationship in one’s life, and /or (4) believing in magic as a source of determination for what occurs.

• don’t stand out

Some persons believe that it is dangerous to be the focus of attention to others, since it increases, in their view, the possibility of being attacked or otherwise targeted in whatever games are going on in the group.  They therefore adopt a style of being just another group member (family, peer group, work group) with no cause for being a focus of attention.  Such persons do not strive to be the best at anything, and they adopt the beliefs and assumptions of the group rather than develop their own.  They will not be distinguishable in terms of appearance or actions.  If the group beliefs and assumptions change, theirs will change in the same way.

A few people keep their style partially secret from others and practice it only in private, and some people have not focused their energies and efforts in any specific way and appear not to have a style.  Many people, of course, utilize various elements of several different styles, but quite often we can recognize a person’s most emphasized style.

All styles address the fundamental goals of human beings above, although styles that emphasize abstracting oneself from sensation (intellectual styles, ascetic styles, and religious styles) would make survival, minimization of pain, and feeling good somewhat less important, and they would also invite us to have more of a separate life from constant contact with others (to have time to reflect or meditate, to value the products of one’s thought more highly than in more contact-oriented styles).  Some styles deal with sex as a threat to other goals and call on us to assume a somewhat hypocritical attitude toward sex (public repudiation together with secret engagement). 

Every set of goals and every system for fulfilling them will have its potential drawbacks as well as its good points.  For instance, the calmness/peace/love/cooperation system of ideas advocated here will tend to make people less aggressive and more content, and the self-awareness and compassion advocated will cause people to see others differently, with all of their flaws as well as their good points (as well as being less upset with their flaws).  Being less aggressive could be seen as being more passive, though the responsibility and compassion advocated here will cause followers of these ideas to stand up for what is right in the end.  Being more content might result in less focus on gaining wealth and possessions, leading to a slightly lower standard of living (at least according to the values of our current consumer society).  Those who choose the calmness/peace/love/cooperation approach would be in a good position to focus their energies toward what is really more important for happiness in life—quality relationships and personal fulfillment.  Seeing others through this new lens of self-awareness and understanding will change how a person chooses to invest her time and energy in relationships—resulting in better outcomes for the individual but possibly leading to spending less time with those she had associated with previously.

The calmness/peace/love/cooperation style results in more harmonious, less conflictful relationships with others than most of the other styles noted here, as well as a better relationship with yourself. 

• The dominance/authority style aims at controlling other people, and obviously this control can sometimes be harmful to those being controlled if it is self-aggrandizing for the controller (as it almost always is).  Assertiveness is an important element in this style, and assertiveness is an important adaptive element for all of us who wish to have healthy relationships with others.
• The status style aims to put you above others, so that you feel superior to and better than others, and this almost always causes those others to feel inferior, which is damaging to their self-esteem and self-confidence and therefore reduces their success in life.
• The striving/competition style makes your self-worth dependent on always doing better and always doing better than others, so when you do not do better than others or better than you did before, you will feel bad about yourself.  Striving to do better than others is almost always an effort to establish status, which damages others’ self-esteem and self-confidence.  (Competition, such as in sports, can be “fun” as long as you recognize that winning does not make you fundamentally any better than others.  Nor does winning by itself make you worthwhile.)
• The taking/using style seeks to gain things and esteem by taking them from others.  Some taking, like theft, is illegal, so some takers are always risking trouble with the law.  Some takers, though, try taking that is just on the legal side of the border between legal and illegal.  Takers are automatically users (treating others as existing totally for the taker’s benefit and treating others in ways that harm them).  There are users who operate totally in the emotional area (rather than the objects area), manipulating what others think and feel so as to gain esteem, position, or material goods.
• Having your needs satisfied by others (finding people to take care of you) repeats your position as a child of being taken care of by parents, motivated sometimes because you felt you did not get enough from your parents and sometimes because finding others to take care of you seems just easier than taking care of yourself.  Sometimes your desire to be taken care of fits with another person’s desire to take care of someone, but if it does not fit, then your efforts to be taken care of will cause strife between you.  Having your needs satisfied by others also prevents you from maturing into an adult and keeps you emotionally a child.
• The style of taking care of others allows one to feel like an adult to the other person’s child, so it replays the parent-child caretaking relationship of the childhood period.  Taking care of others can be a good thing episodically (e.g., helping someone out during a difficult period in his life), but the caretaking style involves relatively permanent caretaking.  This style often makes one’s own self-esteem dependent on the choices and actions of the person being taken care of, so that he has some power over you, just as you have some authority power over him.
• The attention/fame style makes one reliant on acting in ways that elicit positive attention from others (praise, esteem, payment).  We all in one way or another seek to have generally positive responses from others, but the practitioners of this style become professionals at it, usually in a defined role (actor, singer, speaker, or other performer).  Often attention and fame are sought as substitutes for actual love, and those using this style often never feel certain of being loved.
• The stimulation/hedonism/sensory pleasure style equates pleasurable stimulation with happiness, and such persons are usually unhappy whenever they are not experiencing pleasurable stimulation, which drives them on to find more pleasurable stimulation and even to try to find a way to have constant pleasurable stimulation, which is as a practical matter impossible for human beings.  This desire can lead to addictions.  An internal limit to the success of this style is that our nervous system “accommodates” to any stimulation, so that we feel it less the longer it goes on (e.g, “tolerance,” with respect to drug effects).  This style is very self-focused on external stimulation and leaves little room for serious focus on others.
• The intellectual style is focused largely on one’s internal thoughts, emotions, and experiences, rather than on other people, usually relying on written or aural matter produced by others (books, art, music, etc.).  Such people can be passionate about their interests and creative, but they can live in their internal world most of the time, which prevents them from developing social skills or benefiting from relationships.
• Users of the style conform/fit in/be good try to avoid the displeasure of others (originally parents but later on, everyone) by never breaking rules and always appearing to do the right thing.  While this style may result in people who are “nice” and who avoid harming others, it also prevents others from benefiting from the full range of creativity of the users of this style, since creativity could risk being outside of accepted norms.  This style emphasizes the power of others over one and leaves one perpetually in a dependent child position.  Part of growing up for most people is asserting a person’s right to make his or her own decisions about behavior (adolescent rebellion), and using this style as an adult prevents one from ever becoming a true equal of others.  Practitioners of the calmness/peace/love/cooperation style may also practice some of the “niceness” implied in the conform/fit in/be good style, but for their calmness and love to be genuine, they would have to have matured enough to be able to stand against others when necessary.
• The asceticism style emphasizes self-denial, which could affect relationships if the practice of the style included requiring similar self-denial by the other person.  On the other hand, becoming good at self-denial could enhance relationships since the practitioner would probably be more able to adjust to the compromises needed to maintain a healthy and complex relationship.  This style would tend to help the practitioner of it to recognize the finitude and self-centeredness of the species in general, which would tend to make him more tolerant and accepting of others.
• The religion/mysticism style can provide support and comfort to its practitioners, both from other members of one’s religious group and from one’s connection with the divine.  It is similar to the asceticism style in its effects on others around one.  If you require others to believe as you believe or practice rituals that you practice, this may or may not fit with the needs and desires of the other person.  The best effects of religion (and mysticism as a variant of religion) are to help the practitioner to recognize her imperfections and to be more accepting, understanding, compassionate, and tolerant of others as a result.
• The practitioner of the don’t stand out style is likely to hide his inner self from others in general, which can make him less annoying but also make him harder to know in a deep way.  This style suppresses one’s expressiveness in general (and therefore one’s enthusiasm and joy in living).

The dominance/authority, taking/using, status, and striving/competition styles directly harm others and are therefore not to be recommended.  The styles of having your needs satisfied by others, taking care of others, conform/fit in/be good, and don’t stand out tend to limit your own emotional growth and autonomy.  The intellectual, attention/fame, and stimulation/hedonism/sensory pleasure styles limit your ability to focus in relationships on others and their feelings and needs.  The asceticism and religion/mysticism styles can promote self-growth depending on one’s attitudes, but they can also lead one to settle into habits and rituals that are ultimately limiting to growth (instead of staying fully in touch with one’s own growing edges and creativity).  As stated already, the calmness/peace/love/cooperation style has the advantages of promoting healthy relationships with yourself and with others, minimizing societal conflict, and allowing for desired personal growth and maturation and is therefore the most desirable of these various styles.

We can also work on creating our own styles by combining various compatible attitudes and behaviors, and we will examine this later on in the context of four areas of functioning that are necessary for having a good life.

CHOOSING THE CALMNESS/PEACE/LOVE/COOPERATION STYLE

It is posited that the calmness/peace/love/cooperation approach will give you the greatest chance of having maximum amounts of happiness, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment, when compared with other approaches to living, and the remainder of this writing will focus on that approach to living.  Since the calmness/peace/love/cooperation approach emphasizes the skills that lead to good, positive interpersonal relationships, the skills that help us to accomplish our goals, and the skills that help us stay focused on meaning as well as success, it is a valuable approach to living.

The advantages of being a calm person are that one has more equanimity, can be more focused, is able to respond to challenges more successfully, seems more trustworthy to others, is not subject to distressing swings of emotion, and is not focused on or affected as much by stress.  Being calm, one may miss out on some of the excitement that others feel, but it is possible to be both open to all of one’s feelings and calm at the same time.

The advantages of being a peaceful person are that one gets along well with others by seeking appropriate compromises in joint decisions that benefit everyone and not just oneself.  A potential disadvantage is not being assertive enough regarding one’s needs and therefore allowing others to take advantage of one, but it is possible to pursue peaceful relations and be calmly assertive at the same time.

The advantages of being a loving person are having a greater chance of finding truly loving and intimate relationships and treating oneself more lovingly and thus having better self-esteem.

The advantages of being a cooperative person are that one can engage others more readily in joint actions that will benefit all involved and that one will be perceived as beneficial to others so that more people will wish to relate to one.

It can be argued that seeing reality clearly, thinking for oneself, knowing the truth, gaining knowledge about self, others, and the world, and developing accurate empathy, which are emphasized in this style, could be usefully employed in other lifestyles a well, but there are additional reasons supporting the above claim that the calmness/peace/love/cooperation lifestyle is a better bet for happiness, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment.  We should compare approaches as to whether they help us to be ourselves fully and effectively in the world and help us to feel close to others, since these are the sources of the greatest happiness in life.  (Remember Freud’s popular adage that life is fundamentally about love and work.)

• The calmness/peace/love/cooperation approach to living emphasizes feeling your emotions fully, particularly unpleasant emotions that you have about reality.  Being open to all of your feelings and being relatively comfortable with them makes it possible to tolerate more of reality and therefore make better informed decisions in life, as well as making it possible to relate positively to a wider range of other people.
• This approach emphasizes having a good relationship with yourself, including respecting, accepting, and loving yourself and treating yourself well, all of which lead immediately to more pleasure in life.  This helps you to love others and allows you to interact confidently and assertively in the world and therefore to have the best chance of success in goal attainment and in relationships with others.

• The calmness/peace/love/cooperation style emphasizes an attitude of acceptance with regard to yourself, others, and the world, which allows you to stop finding yourself, others, and human life wanting, thus making satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment more possible.  Most other approaches emphasize striving but without defining when you have done enough to justify feeling good about your success (how much is enough).
• This approach emphasizes doing what is truly best for yourself (not just what you most feel like doing), which adds to self-esteem and to success in the world.  Since treating others well is essential to success in life (and is therefore is truly best for you), doing what is truly best for you (by treating others well) frees you from the endless internal conflict that most people endure about whether to “be good” or mistreat and take from others.
• This approach emphasizes treating others well at all times, which maximizes receiving good treatment back from others and maximizes gaining more from cooperation with them.  Some other approaches utilize treating others badly as a means to personal gain.
• This approach teaches being reasonably self-sufficient, which makes it possible to approach others with openness, interest, and good will, instead of always wondering what you can get from them or worrying about what others could take away from you.  Thus, this approach to others maximizes the chance of positive reactions from them.
• This approach emphasizes seeking (and being willing to accept) being satisfied, content, and fulfilled, which are the experiences most likely to enable you to say that you have (or have had) a good life.  Most other approaches teach constant striving and achievement or constant attention to whether you can take advantage of others, with no end point in sight.
• Research has shown us that what people find most meaningful in life are good connections with others and doing work that uses our talents and contributes to the welfare of others as well as ourselves.  This approach focuses on being in loving relationships and finding satisfaction in one’s work, which move us in the direction of being content and fulfilled.
• The other styles defined initially above all involve (1) manipulating or otherwise taking advantage of others, rather than being responsible for oneself (stealing; putting others down; status; domination; etc.); (2) denial or suspicion regarding normal and natural human needs and desires (asceticism; religion/mysticism); (3) constriction of human activity to foci that do not include human relations as primary (asceticism; intellectual); or (4) beliefs about reality for which we have no direct evidence (religion/mysticism).  These can all divert our attention from what makes people happiest and most fulfilled in life—self-acceptance and positive self-esteem, seeing reality clearly, having rewarding human relationships, and using our skills and abilities to benefit both ourselves and others.

For these reasons, it is reasonable to believe that living calmly, peacefully, lovingly, and cooperatively, compared to other approaches to living, has the greatest likelihood of enabling you to maximize happiness, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment in your life.  (If this is still not clear, look at each of the other styles above, and judge for yourself whether they would lead to happiness satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment.) 

The attitudes and skills involved in becoming comfortable with all of your emotions, having a good relationship with yourself, being basically accepting, doing what it truly best for yourself, and being relatively self-sufficient all make it possible to be joyfully and fully yourself in the world (including using your talents and abilities in performing meaningful work), and adding empathy development and treating others well at all times to these makes it possible to find true closeness with at least some others.  Of course, if you do not choose the goals of finding maximum happiness, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment in your life, you will want to choose another way of life!

It is certainly appropriate to ask why, if the calmness/peace/love/cooperation approach is to promising, so many people do not adopt it.  The choices of most people of style or basic approach to living occur unconsciously through imitation of people around them in early years, rather than being conscious choices.  If those around you are always striving for status (over you), it is quite likely that you will do the same and become a competitor for status in the household.  Most people cannot imagine any other way of being, once they have fallen into a style.  The purpose of this writing is to raise the possibility with you of now making a conscious choice about who you want to be, to others and to yourself.

It might seem that the calmness/peace/love/cooperation approach to living is more compatible with the expectations and roles of women in our society than those of men.  In the traditional roles, women are expected to be more peaceable, openly loving and supportive, and cooperative, while men are expected to be more aggressive (in order to protect the family and other groups) and less flexible, but these expectations don’t have to continue to be the way they have been.  Women have expanded their roles in recent decades to perform more leadership roles, and some men have taken more equal responsibilities in the home.  The issue is whether either gender can have more than one major role and do both (or all) or them effectively.  It appears that women can exercise authority in some daily circumstances and also be supportive and loving in other daily circumstances, so men may be capable of being more peaceable in most circumstances but also aggressive in defending loved ones and the nation in other, less common circumstances.  Effectiveness in these various roles is maximized, of course, if an individual is shown how to perform in them and it is made clear that these various behaviors are desired and rewarded.  Boys can be educated and trained (through exposure and practice) to stand up for themselves and for those they love at the same time that they are encouraged and permitted to be more nurturing as well.

Here is a first look at some of the specific behaviors and skills that would make for success in pursuing the calmness/peace/love/cooperation approach to life.

            be calm (so as not to disturb others)

           be responsible (to promote positive relationships)

           be cooperative (to maximize success in cooperative goal efforts, and
to cause other to see us in a positive light)

           be fair (to demonstrate to others that one takes their welfare
seriously)

           be honest (so as to promote honesty and trust from others)

           be understanding with others (to enable us to value others’ needs and
to establish a norm of reasonable forgiveness)

            be loving (so as to invite love from others)

            be compassionate (to promote others being compassionate toward
us)

            treat others well (to promote peaceful, loving, cooperative
relationships)

            be able to be emotionally close with some others (so we will be
available for emotionally close relationships when another person is
also available)

            be generally happy with oneself, others, and life (so that others will
like to be around one)

If a person, on the other hand, chose a life focus of dominance/authority, she would choose other skills and methods of maximizing the benefits from that lifestyle, such as—

           understand others (so as to be able to know what behaviors are most
likely to establish her dominance over them)

           control her empathy (so that she  does not feel others’ pain when she
           causes them pain in order to get them to do what she wants)

           establish reward networks of associates/assistants to ensure loyalty to
           herself as dominant  

             sense others’ vulnerabilities accurately so they can be exploited

             deceive others effectively in order to maintain power

             keep relationships alive even while she is harming others

             pretending to have others’ interests at heart, while actually pursuing
her own goals

PAUSE FOR SELF-REFLECTION

Who do you want to be—for yourself and for others?  What parts of your desired self are not in place now or are not working as you would like them to?  When your life is almost over, how do you think you will evaluate your self, your history, and your life?

Are you currently using one of the styles described above?  (Define your own style or self if you are using behaviors and skills from several different styles described above!)

Are you interested in using some other style or incorporating some aspects of another style into your current style?  Are you interested in creating your own style by combining desirable qualities from various styles?

What do you like about your current self or style?

What are the disadvantages of your current self or style?  Does it help you to have the kind of connections with other people that you want?  Does it help you to attain your goals?  Does it help you to have more satisfaction, contentment, and/or fulfillment?

What approach or style is most compatible with your own personality, predilections, and tendencies?  It is not always best overall to choose the easiest path, but the less natural certain actions and thoughts are for you, the more difficult it will be to adopt them comfortably.

What approach or style “feels” best when you think about what it would be like to live in that way?

What approach or style seems the happiest to you when you imagine living it and when you watch others who embody that approach or style?

What are the ideals and beliefs that you want to embody and express by how you live?  You will be happiest with yourself if your whole life is a joyful expression of what you think is most important and if your whole life has the impact on others that you want it to.

How much change are you contemplating?  Don’t be discouraged if you think that you couldn’t possibly do some of the key elements of the style you would like (e.g., even if you find it difficult to express your feelings, you can learn to do it more comfortably).

How will the style or approach to living that you are considering affect your relationships with others?  Will they accept you if you change some things about yourself?  Will you view them differently as a result of changing some things about yourself?

Will your contemplated approach or style bring you the true happiness of (1) meaningful and satisfying relationships, (2) activities that express your true self, (3) opportunities to contribute to the happiness and welfare of others, since these three are your best route to satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment?

MAJOR AREAS OF FUNCTIONING RELEVANT TO SUCCESS IN LIFE

Each of us has tried to figure out how best to get along in the world, including how to get love and support from our parents, how to get acceptance from peers, how to do useful things for others so that we can earn enough to support ourselves, and how to establish a rewarding and stable partner relationship.  Here are some of the behaviors and skills that will help us to succeed maximally in life.  (Taken together, you could consider the following behaviors as a complete toolkit for pursuing and embodying the calmness/peace/love/cooperation approach to living.)

General Attitudes

be in charge of your life

vs. going with the flow of whatever happens and whatever others want you to do

be generally happy with yourself, others, and life

vs. be generally unhappy with yourself, others, and life

approach life with positive expectations

vs. approach life with negative expectations

accept that there is inevitable pain in life

vs. fight against all pain whenever it comes

be generally accepting of reality (self, others, life)

vs. generally fighting against realities you dislike

be generally at peace with yourself, others, and life

vs. generally feeling antagonistic toward self, others, and life

be realistic and appropriately humble about yourself

vs. claim great ability and blame all failure on causes other than yourself

There are four major areas in which we must succeed in order to succeed in life—our relations with reality, our relations with ourselves, our relations with others, and managing our emotions

Our Relations With Reality

Our sensory organs give us information about the world, and we also get a great deal of information from others, orally and in books or other written sources.  We must interpret this information in order to make it useful to us.  In our first few years we must establish a visual model of what we see (this is not given at birth but must be developed through experience).  We must also become adept at evaluating the information that we get from others, most especially to be able to tell accurate information from inaccurate information.  Unfortunately many people slant or distort the information that they give us in hopes that this incorrect information will cause us to do something that is to their advantage but not necessarily to our own advantage.  Also, we ourselves tend to distort what we think and believe when to do so would make us feel better (when the true information is painful to perceive, such as that our spouse is having an affair).  We must learn to self-correct for our own tendencies to distort.

Behaviors and skills that help us to perceive reality fully and accurately—

have or gain a sufficient amount of accurate knowledge about self, others,
and the world
vs. avoid new knowledge as threatening and make poor decisions and
choices

develop the degree of motor coordination and behavior organizing skills
needed to accomplish desired goal attainments
vs. fail frequently to take good care of yourself

gain specific vocational skills in an area where working will make you feel good about yourself and joyful about livin
vs. risk depression and despair

think independently
vs. think only what others think which is therefore safe to think

be able to tell what is likely to be true and what is likely to be untrue
vs. think whatever others think

know what is good for you and what it truly best for you
vs. do whatever feels good at the moment or whatever others are doing

know your particular inclinations to distort the truth
vs. believe your view of the world to be true no matter what

have a higher commitment to truth than to your own immediate comfort

vs. believe whatever makes you feel better

tell the truth to yourself and to others
vs. deceive yourself and others

Our Relations With Ourselves

Self-esteem is the feeling you have in response to being aware of yourself.  Your feelings about and attitudes toward yourself have great influence on whether you live happily or unhappily.  If we learn to view ourselves in negative ways (as unworthy, undeserving, “bad”), we will be unhappy every day of our lives.  The key elements in having good self-esteem (having a good relationship with yourself) are (1) respect yourself and treat yourself with respect at all times; (2) love yourself and treat yourself lovingly; (3) accept yourself as you are; and (4) treat yourself well.  Our feelings and attitudes toward ourselves are formed in childhood as we imitate the feelings and attitudes toward us that our parents and other important persons in our lives have.  As adults we can improve our self-esteem by practicing respecting ourselves, loving ourselves, accepting ourselves, and treating ourselves well, as well as by causing good outcomes for ourselves as much as possible.

Behaviors and skills that help us to have a good relationship with ourselves—

be self-aware (of all your thoughts, emotions, motives)
vs. avoid self-awareness as dangerous and painful

think about yourself objectively
vs. create an image of yourself out of only the input of others

have a good relationship with yourself
vs. have a critical, demeaning relationship with self

feel love for yourself
vs. have negative feelings toward yourself

be self-confident
vs. be self-doubting

have good self-control
vs. express emotions and act physically toward others impulsively

do what is good for you and what is truly best for you
vs. criticize and blame yourself, neglect yourself, harm yourself

treat yourself well
vs. treat yourself badly to punish yourself or to control yourself with fear
and punishment

meet your needs acceptably       
vs. neglect yourself or treat yourself badly

be understanding of yourself
vs. be demanding of yourself

be honest with yourself
vs. deceive yourself about painful things

take care of yourself
vs. get others to take care of you

Our Relations With Others

As human beings, we are all trapped within our own skins, feel only our own needs, naturally see things our own way, and understandably think that our needs are more important than those of others.  We have evolved to use violence to protect ourselves and to get what we want.  We often mistreat others both individually and as part of our groups; we are ready to cheat persons not in our group and to make war on other groups.

At every moment each of us has desires and goals.  Human conflict arises when we perceive our goals to be incompatible with the goals of others and when we treat each other poorly in the course of pursuing our own goals, either in perceiving that someone else is keeping us from getting what we want or in trying to get someone else to do something that will help us get what we want.  The only escape from this selfishness and the only way to reduce conflicts with others is to take others’ needs and wants more seriously and to care more for others’ feelings than we do now (which will have great benefits for ourselves as well).

“Good” or “positive” relationships are ones in which both parties feel comfortable and safe (as a result of understanding each other and feeling treated appropriately by the other person) and in which the interaction enhances the welfare of both parties, often through cooperation to achieve mutually agreeable goals.  These interactions succeed through understanding and cooperation and result in minimum amounts of conflict and violence between people. 

We treat others poorly while pursuing our goals by (1) causing them harm so that we can get what we want (pushing them down in a race so we can win; selling them a product that we know is defective); (2) lying to them or not honoring our promises or obligations to them (saying “I love you” when we don’t; “this product is guaranteed…” when it isn’t); (3) ignoring their needs and goals in favor of our own (“I want this TV right now, and there’s only one of them on the shelf, so I’ll take it and you can do without”); and (4) treating them unfairly (“if you give me $100, I’ll give you something worth $90”–isn’t that great?”; “since I’m better than you, I deserve more of the profits”).

Since we always do what we think is overall in our best interest, our relationships will never get better unless we believe that we can get more out of life by cooperating with and having good relations with others than we can by trying to get things by taking advantage of others or treating others badly.       

Behaviors and skills that help us to have good relationships with others—

be calm
vs. be more stimulating for others

have a positive attitude toward others
vs. have a negative, suspicious attitude toward others

be responsible
vs. be irresponsible (life works best if you are responsible for your feelings and your behavior; others rarely “make” you feel or do things)

be cooperative
vs. be oppositional or aloof

treat others with basic respect and courtesy at all times
vs. treat others as inferiors; disrespect others to try to become superior to them

give others basic acceptance
vs. find fault with others as a means of becoming superior

accept that others have their views of things
vs. reject all views that are different from your own

be fair
vs. be unfair (don’t cheat; expect the same from yourself that you do
from others; don’t get/seek more than others get, both positive and
negative, for the same behavior)

be honest
vs. be dishonest and lie to get what you want

view yourself as a basic equal with others
vs. view yourself as superior (or inferior) to others (stop trying to be better than others)

be understanding with others
vs. be demanding of others

be loving
vs. be uncaring or competitive

be compassionate
vs. be uncaring

treat others well
vs. take advantage of others

seek good relations with everyone
vs. seek good relationships with only a few trusted others

feel others’ feelings empathically
vs. isolate yourself from others’ feelings

seek good outcomes for both yourself and others
vs. seek good outcomes only for yourself

have good self-control
vs. express emotions and act physically toward others impulsively

stop harming others and treating others badly
vs. harm others and treat others badly on purpose to gain advantage over
them (avoid shaming and guilting; stop lying to others;  consider others’ needs; want them to feel good; balance your needs and feelings with those of others)  (“Let the buyer beware” and “It’s just business” are self-justifying rationalizations.) 

tolerate differences
vs. criticize others for being different

stop trying to get from others what they can’t or don’t want to give
vs. continue to fight over not getting what others can’t or don’t want to give (be satisfied with their basic respect, basic acceptance, and love, or move on)

have sufficient knowledge about male and female sexual physiology and about what pleases most males and females sexually
vs. impose your own desires on your partners

manage birth control carefully
vs. have children you are unprepared for

take responsibility for those you have fathered or mothered
vs. put more uncared for children into the world

persist in caretaking and childrearing until children are able to support themselves
vs. put more children into the world who are unprepared to care for themselves

Managing Our Emotions

Emotions are your own internal signals to yourself, carrying information about what should be attended to, what is desirable, what should be avoided, what may be painful or dangerous, and what may be pleasant or unpleasant.  Most emotional reactions are learned, though a few are automatic (e.g., terror, fear of the unknown, horror).  Emotions can readily become associated with other things, and we learn much of what we know about how to behave from having some of our more painful emotions (shame, guilt, rejection) associated with our parents’ anger or other dangerous (and hopefully passing) feelings toward us.  Dealing with your emotions in healthy ways is mostly a process of becoming able to feel all of your feelings fully, take what information you can get from them and learn from it, and delay your responses long enough that your responses can be adaptive.

allow yourself to feel all of your emotions fully
vs. suppress most emotions

manage and control your emotions and behavior yourself
vs. use others’ influence and actions to control your own emotions (e.g., doing what is “right” because of fear of others’ reactions)

be comfortable with your emotions
vs. view all emotions as a threat to self-esteem or to others’ esteem of you

assess the information provided by emotions and learn about yourself from it
vs. assume that your emotions are true and immutable (simply given)

delay your response to your emotions so as to ensure an adaptive response
vs. respond impulsively since you view emotions as simply given

see through your use of “cover” emotions (to avoid other emotions)
vs. assume that your emotions are simply given and cannot be changed

accept all of your emotions without criticizing or demeaning yourself and without shame, guilt, or embarrassment
vs. punish yourself for having emotions and use this punishment as a means of controlling yourself

support, soothe, and comfort yourself in response to emotional pain
vs. punish yourself for having emotions

take responsibility for your emotions
vs. blame others for your feelings

distinguish clearly your own emotions from those of others (and take responsibility only for your own emotions and behavior)
vs. assume that others cause your emotions and that you can “make” others
feel certain things

insist on accuracy in knowing your emotions
vs. distort and rationalize your emotions in order to feel better immediately

In the back of this book there are pages with a line running from each end of the continua just described here to the other end.  You can place a mark on each line for where you see yourself now.  Are you more like the left side or the right side, or somewhere in the middle?

After perusing this illustration of methods of achieving the fundamental human goals using the calmness/peace/love/cooperation style, it should be clear that a person who chooses and tries to be good at the particular skills and methods that I have emphasized is someone who places greatest emphasis on having sufficient knowledge, being able to manage her emotions, having good self-esteem, and treating others well.  Others might choose a different array of methods to achieve the same goals.  For example, for goal 1 (life maintenance and support), the overall method described by my chosen skills is to know how to accomplish the goal and to work well with others (cooperating, being helpful, helping others reach their goals, too) in order to get what one wants.  Other alternative approaches are (1) to use power over others to make them do what one wants them to do (in order to get what one wants), (2) to take advantage of others whenever possible (stealing, extorting, lying, etc.), and (3) to pretend to be needy or ill in order to get others to take care of one.  Most people use some combination of the skills involved in more than one of these overall approaches. 

As noted already above, if one chose the method of taking advantage of others whenever possible, one would wish to cultivate such skills as sensing others’ vulnerabilities, deceiving others effectively, keeping relationships alive even while you are harming others, pretending to have others’ interests at heart, etc.  If one chose the power option approach, one would wish to cultivate abilities to make expectations and consequences very clear, punish any deviation from expectations, subtly carry out extortion and blackmail, etc.

CHOOSING CALMNESS/PEACE/LOVE/COOPERATION BEHAVIORS TO REACH THE FUNDAMENTAL GOALS

Another format to help you think about who you want to be is to identify the behaviors and skills (using the same set of behaviors and skills used above) that would be most likely to help you to do well with regard to each of the fundamental human goals in life.  The following illustrates specifically how choosing behaviors might be done for the calmness/peace/love/cooperation lifestyle (which also seeks to minimize conflict, hatred, and violence) to achieve success in all of our fundamental human goals.  (You could also do the same exercise with any other lifestyle or approach to living, together with its particular enabling behaviors and skills.)

1-life maintenance and support (sufficient capacities and goal attainment to enable you to meet your basic needs at least adequately and to take care of yourself and those legitimately dependent on you)

In order to have the best chance of fulfilling this goal, I believe that it would work best to—

have or gain a sufficient amount of accurate knowledge about self, others,
and the world

 develop the degree of motor coordination and behavior organizing
skills needed to accomplish desired goal attainments

 gain specific vocational skills in an area where working will also make
you feel good about yourself and joyful about living

 be responsible (to maximize cooperation)

 take charge of your life (since you know more about yourself than anyone else)

 be cooperative (to maximize goal attainment success)

 be fair (to induce others to trust you)

be self-confident (to maximize coping success)

have good self-control (so as to be able to stay focused as needed)

have good self-control (so as not to create negative interactions)

be able to have “good” or “positive” interactions with people (which are
defined as interactions in which both parties feel comfortable and
safe, as a result of understanding each other and feeling treated
appropriately by the other person, and in which both parties are
motivated to cooperate to achieve mutually agreeable goals)

be able to manage your emotions effectively (so that others will be likely
to cooperate with you in working toward getting what you need to
survive and thrive)

be able to manage your emotions effectively (so as to be able to be calm
and to have reliably positive interactions with others, in order to live
peaceably and cooperatively)

approach others and life with positive expectations

be generally accepting of reality (self, others, life) (so you don’t have to fight what you don’t like all the time)

be able to tell what is likely to be true and what is likely to be untrue (to better plan and choose)

feel love for yourself (so you will want to survive)

meet your needs acceptably (so you can love yourself)        

treat others well (to maximize cooperation and good will)

seek good outcomes for both yourself and others (to maximize cooperation,
good will, and positive relationships)

stop harming others and treating others badly

2-having no more than a minimal or at least no more than a tolerable level of physical pain and bodily damage (recognizing that some amount of physical and emotional pain are normal aspects of human life and the human adaptation)

In order to have the best chance of fulfilling this goal, I believe it will work best to—

have or gain a sufficient amount of accurate knowledge about self, others, and the world

develop the degree of motor coordination and behavior organizing skills needed to avoid injury and to accomplish goal fulfillments

be able to have good or positive interactions with others (so as to avoid being harmed by them)

accept that there is inevitable pain in life

know what is good for you and what it truly best for you (to minimize self-harm and bad choices)

have a good relationship with yourself (so that you care about minimizing pain)

have good self-control (to ensure not harming yourself and not harming yourself by harming others)

treat yourself well

treat others well (to minimize harm from them)

3-having some pleasure and pleasant emotion in your life (including feeling some amounts of happiness and hope, and ultimately some (for many people, small) amounts of satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment), mainly through–

3a-having a good relationship with and good feelings toward yourself (which may include loving yourself, respecting yourself, accepting yourself, and treating yourself well, and which in large measure arise from being loved, respected, and accepted by others in early life and from creating good outcomes for yourself)

In order to have the best chance of fulfilling this goal (3a), it will work best to—

be self-aware (of all your thoughts, emotions, motives)

allow yourself to feel all of your emotions fully

accept all of your emotions without criticizing or demeaning yourself and without shame, guilt, or embarrassment

be able to manage your emotions effectively (so as to be able to
be calm and to have reliably positive interactions with others, in order to     live peaceably and cooperatively)

take charge of your life (so as not to live your life mainly for the benefit of
others)

determine your feelings about yourself for yourself (instead of allowing others’

          feelings and views of you to determine your self-image and self-esteem)

be honest with yourself (to maximize opportunity for self-improvement)

be loving with yourself (so you will be a positive object for yourself)

be accepting (of self, others, and the inevitable pain of living) (so as to be able to be at peace)

be compassionate toward yourself

treat yourself well (so you can love yourself)

have good self-control (so as to minimize self-harm and poor choices)

do what will be best for you and in your best interest (so you can trust yourself)

meet your needs acceptably (so you can love yourself)

3b-having minimal or at least a tolerable level of emotional pain and internal conflict (though recognizing that some degree of conflict and pain is inherent in being human)

In order to have the best chance of fulfilling this goal (3b), it will work best to—

approach life with positive expectations

be generally accepting of reality (self, others, life)

be at peace with yourself, others, and life

treat others well (so that they don’t cause you pain)

have positive emotional relationships with others

have a good relationship with yourself (so you are not causing yourself pain)

be accepting

accept that there is inevitable pain in life

be calm (so you can use your thinking to good advantage)

be able to be emotionally close with some others

be generally happy with yourself, others, and life (so that others will like to be around you)

know what is good for you and what is truly best for you

do what will be best for you and in your best interest

be self-aware (all of your thoughts, emotions, motives)

know your particular inclinations to distort the truth

allow yourself to feel all of your emotions fully

accept all of your emotions without criticizing or demeaning yourself and without shame, guilt, or embarrassment

be comfortable with your emotions

delay your response to your emotions so as to ensure an adaptive response

support, soothe, and comfort yourself in response to emotional pain

take responsibility for your emotions

distinguish clearly your own emotions from those of others (and take
responsibility only for your own emotions and behavior)

feel love for yourself

have good self-control (so as not to cause yourself pain)

treat yourself well (so as not to cause yourself pain)

meet your needs acceptably       

be understanding of yourself

view yourself as a basic equal with others

seek good outcomes for both yourself and others (to minimize harm from others)

stop harming others and treating others badly

tolerate differences

3c-feeling an adequate level of security

In order to have the best chance of fulfilling this goal (3c), it will work best to—

have or gain a sufficient amount of accurate knowledge about self, others, and the world (so as to minimize self-harming mistakes)

be able to tell what is likely to be true and what is likely to be untrue (to minimize self-harming mistakes)

be in charge of your life (since you know what is best for you better than others)

have good self-control (so as not to cause yourself problems)

allow yourself to feel all of your emotions fully

accept all of your emotions without criticizing or demeaning yourself and without shame, guilt, or embarrassment (so you are not insecure from fearing your emotions and emotional responses)

delay your response to your emotions so as to ensure an adaptive response

have positive relationships with others (to minimize harm from them)

accept that there is inevitable pain in life

be fair (to minimize unnecessary conflict with others)

be calm (to be able to best solve interpersonal conflicts)

be at peace with yourself, others, and life (to minimize existential anxiety)

meet your needs acceptably (so you are not worrying about physical needs)         

take care of yourself

be responsible (to minimize harm from others and to be able to trust yourself)

treat others well (to minimize harm from them)

3d-having gratifying relationships with others (see 5 below)

4-sex and procreation, including the desire to protect and raise children

have sufficient knowledge about male and female sexual physiology
and about what pleases most males and females sexually

be able to have good relationships with others in general, so that sexual
interactions can be comfortable and enjoyable

manage birth control carefully

take responsibility for those you have fathered or mothered

allow yourself to feel fully the natural human desire to care for children
(ensure that this feeling is not interfered with by your own past                   experience)

persist in family caretaking and childrearing until children are able to support themselves

assess the information provided by emotions and learn about yourself from it (so you are clear about what you want from others)

delay your response to your emotions so as to ensure an adaptive response (to minimize harming your children)

know what is good for you and what is truly best for you

have good self-control (so as not to harm others)

be responsible (to maximize being able to take care of self and others)

treat others with basic respect and courtesy at all times

accept that others have their views of things

be fair (so you can be trusted by others)

be honest (so you can be trusted by others)

view yourself as a basic equal with others (so you don’t think you have status to take advantage of them)

be understanding with others

be loving

treat others well

be emotionally close to some others

feel others’ feelings empathically

seek good outcomes for both yourself and others

tolerate differences

stop trying to get from others what they can’t or don’t want to give

5-gratifying relationships with others, including group acceptance for yourself, protecting and defending your groups (family, nation, etc.) when
necessary, and helping those of your groups in times of great need

In order to have the best chance of fulfilling this goal, it will work best to—

be able to tell what is likely to be true and what is likely to be untrue

tell the truth to yourself and to others (so you can be trusted)

be honest (so you can be trusted)

allow yourself to feel all of your emotions fully (so you can relate well)

accept all of your emotions without criticizing or demeaning yourself and without shame, guilt, or embarrassment (to minimize their interference with your relationships)

be comfortable with your emotions

delay your response to your emotions so as to ensure an adaptive response
(to minimize harming others)

support, soothe, and comfort yourself in response to emotional pain (so you don’t have to depend totally on others)

take responsibility for your emotions (so you can appear as an equal to others)

distinguish clearly your own emotions from those of others (and take            responsibility only for your own emotions and behavior)

be responsible (so you can be trusted)

be cooperative (so all can benefit)

feel others feelings empathically (to maximize your good treatment of them)

be compassionate

be understanding with others

treat others well (so they can value you)

be able to be emotionally close with some others

have good self-control (so as not to drive others away)

approach others and life with positive expectations

be fair (to demonstrate that you take others’ welfare seriously)

be loving (so as to invite love from others)

allow yourself to feel fully the natural human desires to help and protect those you love and those in your groups (ensure that your own past experience does not dilute these feelings)

be generally happy with yourself, others, and life

be realistic and appropriately humble about yourself (so as to appear as an equal to others)

be self-aware (of all your thoughts, emotions, motives)

feel love for yourself

treat yourself well (to take responsibility for yourself)

have a positive attitude toward others

treat others with basic respect and courtesy at all times

give others basic acceptance

tolerate differences (to minimize unnecessary conflicts)

accept that others have their views of things

view yourself as a basic equal with others

seek good relations with everyone

seek good outcomes for both yourself and others

stop harming others and treating others badly

stop trying to get from others what they can’t or don’t want to give

After perusing this illustration of methods of achieving the fundamental human goals using the calmness/peace/love/cooperation style, it should be clear that a person who chooses and tries to be good at the particular skills and methods that I have emphasized is someone who places greatest emphasis on having sufficient knowledge, being able to manage her emotions, having good self-esteem, and treating others well. 

CHOOSING A BETTER LIFE

We each choose how to focus our energies in life.  You can choose to improve yourself in many of the fundamental skills and attitudes highlighted here.  These are key choices that we can consciously make that will support our efforts to learn new skills, become more adaptive, and have better lives.  These choices each “make sense,” but to some degree they are also matters of faith, since we have to choose and affirm them before we really know that they will pay off for us (a “leap of faith”).

You can choose to know yourself better and to be aware of everything that goes on inside you—all of your thoughts, feelings, and sensations.  Knowing everything that is going on inside you enables you to make better decisions and not “shoot yourself in the foot” by favoring one part of yourself at significant cost to other parts.  The biggest barrier to self-awareness is not wanting to recognize or face up to aspects of ourselves of which we are ashamed (or guilty about) or which we think would be rejected by those around us.  An important product of self-awareness is accurate self-knowledge, which inevitably leads to appropriate humility about ourselves!

You can choose to be as aware as possible not only about yourself but also about others and the world, so that you can interpret accurately things that help you to make good choices and avoid harm.

You can choose to be honest with yourself, even when you don’t want to see certain things about yourself, others, and life.  You can choose to be honest with others, so that they can trust you not to take advantage of them and so that you do not harm them by withholding needed information or misleading them.  Good self-awareness will result in being honest with yourself about yourself (and greater humility), which, again, helps you make better decisions. Being honest with others builds trust and willingness to cooperate, because others come to believe that you are not just in it for yourself.  If you do not opt to be honest, you will continue to worry that others will see you for who you really are, and you will continue to lie and worry about covering up your lies (and people who know you won’t trust you).

You can choose to get better at knowing what is true and what is not, including being clear about your own desires and inclinations to distort the truth.  This, together with the self-knowledge that comes from self-awareness, will give you a much better chance of making good decisions.  Figuring out what is true takes time and patience, and note that it depends on having accurate information to work with (acquired through study and from being as aware as possible in the world).  If you don’t become good at figuring out what is true, you will bumble through life and be unable to stand up effectively for what you really believe.

If you choose not to be self-aware, not to be honest, and not to pay attention to what is true and what is not, you will continue to make decisions that lead you toward conflict and failure. 

You can choose to be appropriately humble and realistic about yourself, which will help you to see yourself more accurately and to avoid the temptation to view yourself as being worth more than others and “better than” others.  If you don’t choose to be realistically humble and realistic about yourself, others will see you as egotistical and self-centered.

You can choose to nurture positive self-esteem in yourself, so that you can feel good about being yourself and can use your capacities in life to the fullest, by respecting yourself, accepting yourself, loving yourself, taking good care of yourself, and doing what is truly best for yourself at all times.   If you don’t, you will continue to feel bad about yourself and be ambivalent about deserving good things in life and from others.

Since how we feel in our daily lives and how far we get in having a truly good life are highly dependent on how we feel about ourselves, it is important to have a good relationship with yourself and to feel good about yourself (with self-esteem defined as having positive emotions in response to the awareness of the self).  As adults we may need to revise our earlier learned negative attitudes toward ourselves, and our greatest tool for increasing our self-esteem as adults is to create good outcomes for ourselves every day.  This is not narcissism or over-weening self-regard based on unrealistic views of self but a knowing and compassionate attitude toward yourself, including appropriate humility.

To have good self-esteem, you must view (and feel about) yourself as being worthy of respect, the most important element of which is seeing yourself as a basic equal with others.  To be respected by others is basically to be viewed as an equal and accepted as a member of the group.  Respecting yourself means seeing yourself as basically the equal of others and equally worthy of basic status and membership in the group.  Treating yourself with respect means treating yourself as well as you think others should be treated and disputing any efforts by others to downgrade your basic equality.

You can choose to be more accepting of yourself, others, and life, so that you can stop goading and punishing yourself for not being good enough and for failing in life.  If you choose not to love, respect, and accept yourself, you will continue to feel bad (embarrassed, ashamed, guilty, afraid) about yourself.  Acceptance is basically “letting be,” allowing ourselves and circumstances to be as they are in reality, without an immediate need to change or challenge anything.  Acceptance allows us to let go of much of our anger, shame, and guilt reaction tendencies, and this allows us to make more thoughtful and fair decisions.  We may still wish to change things about ourselves or the world, but we do not feel pressed to do so.

You can choose to develop your capacity to love, so you can love yourself and can love others more comfortably, even when you don’t get love back.  Love is perhaps the most desired feeling and situation of all, though we are speaking here of something more than attraction and sex.  Love is “a positive, warm, affectionate feeling involving attachment feelings, identification with the loved one, desire to be close or closer with the loved one, the wish for good things for the loved one, and pleasure experienced in contact with or contemplation of the loved one.”  Love and approaching others with a loving attitude helps to make life the best it can be.

An essential result (and cause) of good self-esteem is treating yourself well–seeing yourself as deserving of good treatment, doing good things for yourself, and insisting on good treatment from others.  Treating yourself badly results from seeing yourself as being unworthy of better treatment, either because you have violated your own expectations and standards for yourself or because you think that others view you as unworthy.  Since human beings are often jockeying for status or position (if they wish to have more than others or if they are unsure of their value and worth), treating others badly (harming or putting down others) is a common method of seeking to be seen as “better than” others and therefore to get more.  On the positive side, treating yourself well reinforces good feelings about yourself and helps your self-esteem.

You can choose to take care of yourself more instead of getting everything from others, so you can build self-esteem, confidence, and pride in yourself and not feel so threatened by how others see you and feel toward you.  If you choose to be dependent on others and not use your strength to take proper care of yourself, you will continue to be ambivalent about how others are treating you and about how you feel toward them.  A mature adult is able and willing to take care of himself or herself as much as possible, thus giving him or her a certain amount of autonomy. (Of course, as social beings, we can never be completely autonomous.)  Autonomy is undergirded by the fact that you can take better care of yourself than anyone else can.  Autonomy is augmented by the ability to think for yourself and not to simply do what everyone else is doing, especially when what everyone else is doing is destructive.  It takes a strong sense of responsibility and a determination to know the truth to be appropriately autonomous.

You can choose to do what is truly best for yourself, which will result in greater self-esteem, less conflict with others, and greater success in life.  This does not mean doing what you would impulsively like to do for immediate rewards (eat too much, use substances maladaptively, put others down or take advantage of them, call in sick when you are not, etc.), but doing what will be best for you and your life when all of the consequences of your actions are added up.  Doing what is truly best for yourself is also often different from what others want you to do (for their benefit and advantage), and it requires a certain amount of autonomy (thinking for yourself and standing up for yourself). It also requires a certain amount of delay of gratification (persisting in effortful, goal-directed behavior over time for the sake of a longer-term goal).

You can choose to have a positive attitude toward others and to treat others well, so that they like you and want to help you.  If you don’t, others will see you as selfish and negative, especially if you opt to try to get what you want by taking advantage of them whenever possible.  The most meaningful source of good feelings for most people is their relations with others, so it is important to be the kind of person who naturally has good relations with others.  Dealing with others with honesty, responsibility, acceptance, empathy, love, and fairness, with attitudes of equality and cooperativeness, will achieve this goal.  It is especially important to approach others with the hope of helping them to have a good life also, instead of maintaining the childhood attitudes of many that one will get more out of life by trying whenever possible to take advantage of others.  Treating others well is augmented by trying to make all of your actions beneficial for others as well as for yourself (or at least not harmful to them) (the “win-win” approach).

You can choose to treat others with respect and courtesy, so they will feel valued.  If you don’t, others will see you as not caring or as trying to make them feel inferior.

You can be understanding toward others, to minimize unnecessary conflict and better predict their feelings and behavior.  To understand others better, you can develop your empathy capacities (sensing how others feel and how the world looks to them), so that you can predict what they will do accurately and can treat them better.  Empathy is the cognitive/emotional tool that contributes the most to having good relationships with others, since it helps us to understand “where they are coming from” from an experiential standpoint in addition to our purely behavioral observations.  Our empathy is not always accurate, but if we work at it, we can become reasonably good at knowing how others are experiencing their lives.  If you choose not to develop adequate empathy, you will be confused by how others act and continue to feel distant from them. 

You can choose to be compassionate toward others–attending to them, appreciating their suffering, and wishing the best for them.  If you don’t, people will view you as dangerous and as being out just for yourself.

You can choose to be more responsible, so that you do what you agree or promise to do, no matter what.  If you act irresponsibly, others will view you as untrustworthy and dangerous.  Being responsible includes acknowledging mistakes and failures instead of making excuses or hiding mistakes.  Being responsible tells others that they can trust you, and it allows them to be more comfortable being responsible as well, since you have made yourself vulnerable by admitting your errors.  Being responsible requires that you tolerate (and hopefully work through) whatever shame or guilt that you might feel about yourself and your behavior, instead of trying to hide from it.  It also requires that you tolerate the temporary embarrassment that comes from admitting your mistakes or inadequacy.  (Most people will like you for being willing to feel that embarrassment, since they also feel and fear it.)

You can choose to feel like a basic equal with others and to treat others as basic equals at all times, so you can stop expecting too much of yourself, control your basic human tendency to grandiosity, feel closer with others as members of the human family, and feel more comfortable around others.  If you don’t, you are implicitly saying that you are worth more than others, which will continually provoke envy and conflict.  If we understand equality in its full meaning, it leads us to see that no one is “better than” anyone else.  It is one thing to treat others as equals overtly, but it is another to really see oneself as no better than others and not deserving more than others simply be being who one is.  To think that we deserve more than others or should have more than others is to cling to infantile views of reality—understandable in our early years but immature and uncivilized in adults.

You can choose to treat everyone fairly, so that they can trust you.  Being fair reassures others that you are not looking for ways to take advantage of them, which improves the quality of your relationships, but it requires you to apply the same standards to yourself that you apply with others, which gives us a continuing lesson in appropriate humility.

You can choose to cooperate better with others, so that you and they can get more out of life, or you can try to get what you want by going it alone or by taking advantage of others whenever you can (by lying, deceiving, cheating, stealing), both of which will  limit your success in life.  Cooperation is the function that allows us as limited human beings to band together to accomplish great things.  The enemy of cooperation is the wish to take advantage of others whenever possible.  Cooperation requires a number of skills, including communication, deciding on agreeable joint goals, playing your part in the joint venture even if it is not the part that you would prefer, subordinating your own views and desires temporarily to the needs of the cooperative project, and persevering sufficiently to finish the project.

If you choose not to treat others with greater acceptance, love, fairness, equality, and cooperation, you will continue to have interpersonal problems every day of your life. 

You can choose to deal with frustration and disappointment by adaptive means rather than with anger and destructiveness, including focusing on both the positive and the negative instead of just the negative, avoiding blaming, figuring out what went wrong, realistically correcting your behavior for the future, forgiving yourself if needed, and being compassionate toward yourself in the future instead of beating yourself up.

You can choose to get more comfortable with your emotions, to accept them, and to manage them, so that you can be more peaceful inside and manage your behavior better.  If you choose not to be acquainted with and live comfortably with your emotions, you will continue to feel chaotic inside and troubled too much of the time.  Our emotions are at the heart of our experience and make that experience rich, but they are from relatively more primitive parts of our brains and sometimes give us guidance that does not fit with living in a complex society (e.g., telling us to either fight or flee, to murder or get revenge, or to struggle with others for dominance).  By allowing ourselves to feel our emotions fully but still make decisions using all of our faculties gives us the best of both worlds.

You can choose to control your behavior toward others, so that you can treat them better and get their trust and cooperation.  If you choose not to consider when to act and when not to act (based on what is best for the welfare of both yourself and those around you) and how to control your behavior so as to maximize your options and success in life, you will continue to make social mistakes and drive people away from you.  Self-control means having both a good sense of what is in the best interest of self and others and the ability and attitude to not act at times when our immediate and emotional reaction pushes us to impulsive action.  Self-control allows us to build complex and civilized societies in which to live.

You can choose to develop your capacity for delaying gratification so that you can persevere in reaching long-term and complex goals.  If you don’t, you will live only in the present, as other animals do.

You can choose to be a good person and to live an ethical and moral life, in order to minimize shame, guilt, and conflicts within yourself and maximize the quality of your relationships with others.  If you don’t, others will view you as inconsistent and untrustworthy.

If you can become good at these skills and adopt these attitudes, you can have a very good life!   You should take note, though, that this is a comprehensive program for living.  It is not in any sense a “quick fix,” and there is no single principle that will take care of all of your problems.  As you read, you can be thinking about whether you believe that “working” the total program will be in your best interest. 

Bear in mind that it is not being suggested here that you “should” be or do any of these things, but rather that if you do them (voluntarily, because you decide that it is in your best interest to) you will have a better life than if you don’t do them.  This is all about what is actually best for you.  The proof will be in the quality of your life after you adopt these principles.  Improvement in any one of the above skills and attitudes will make your life better, but the ultimate goal will be reached only by attention to all of the principles. 

The more of these dimensions you choose not to improve, the more limited you will be in how much you can improve your life.  You can learn about and get better at all of these things.  It’s up to you to choose whether to do it!  You may feel as if you are incapable of doing better, but that is the product of your past unfortunate experience.  If you want to improve and learn, and you make a commitment to yourself to do as much as you can, you can improve.  It’s not really that complicated.  If you treat yourself better, you will feel better about yourself.  If you treat others better, they will treat you better.  If you try to learn more and discern what is true and what is not, you will have a more orderly and successful life.

Now you can go to the back of the book again, to the pages of behaviors and skills, and place a second mark (perhaps a little circle, if you used a slash the first time around?) on each line for where you would optimally like to be.  This will give you some goals to work toward!

OBJECTIONS TO THE CALMNESS/PEACE/LOVE/COOPERATION STYLE

No one likes change, so even if you can see some benefits of the calmness/peace/love/cooperation style, you will probably have objections to trying it out.

A near-universal objection for men is “If I try out this style, people will see me as weak, a namby-pamby, a wuss, or ‘pussy-whipped.’  In order to compete in this world, I need to appear strong and be ready to fight at all times.”  Many women have been conditioned to defer to men and accept an assumption of inferiority to men, and they, too, would object to any system that urged them not to assert themselves; fortunately that is not the case here.

There may be people who use the calmness/peace/love/cooperation style to avoid conflict and who are in fact relatively weak, but you don’t have to be one of them.  Just because you are calm, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have feelings.  Just because you are peaceful and like others to be peaceful doesn’t mean that you can’t stand up for yourself when necessary.  Just because you have a loving attitude toward everyone doesn’t mean that you will let others take advantage of you.  Just because you cooperate thoughtfully and dependably with others doesn’t mean that you won’t insist on fairness and on getting a fair share of the benefits of that cooperation.

In order not to endure being taken advantage of, you can express your feelings (especially your deeper feelings of sadness, fear, or rejection) naturally rather than cut them off and hide them.  There are certainly many people in the world who will try to make people expressing feelings feel even worse by teasing or putting them down (because they are so afraid of their own feelings and because they take every opportunity to try to make themselves appear superior to anyone else).  You no doubt have encountered these bullies or predators in your childhood, and some of them were probably in your own family!  You must therefore learn not be embarrassed or ashamed of your feelings or your true strength.  Feeling and expressing your feelings doesn’t make you weaker; it is a cleansing process that can help you understand yourself better.

If you think about it, even though some parents and many other kids make fun of children expressing feelings (for the reasons just given), there is no real reason to be ashamed of one’s feelings.  Feelings of shame are common responses when people try to assert their superiority over you, but you don’t have to accept those assertions.  You may have felt ashamed when younger when you were put down, but now you can do something different.  When others try to make you feel ashamed, you can both feel your real feelings and stand up for yourself at the same time.  This does not require physical fighting.  All you have to do is act like you are not ashamed.  Don’t lower your eyes or hunch your shoulders.  Think to yourself that you are OK.  You are just fine the way you are (and you are healthier than they are for allowing yourself to have your feelings), so know yourself that you are OK and act like you are just fine.  If you like you can respond verbally to those who try to shame you by saying “You are trying to take advantage of me by claiming that I should feel ashamed, but I don’t agree—there’s no reason I should feel ashamed right now”; or “You are trying to take advantage of me by claiming that I should feel ashamed, but I don’t agree–shame on you for doing that,” or “You are just being silly and trying to take advantage of me; what you are saying doesn’t make any sense and just makes you look stupid,” or “If you weren’t so insecure yourself, you wouldn’t try to put me down.”  You may seek comfort or encouragement for some emotions, but seek it from those who can accept your feelings and not from those who will try to use your emotions to put you down.

In order not to allow others to take advantage of your calmness, peacefulness, loving attitude, and cooperation, you can assert your equality with others at all times.  You should get a fair share of the pie, which may require asserting that right strongly at times.  You will have to believe that you do deserve a fair share and not back down when others want to get more than you get.  If this requires escalating into a conflict then so be it.  You are not being calm, peaceful, loving, and cooperative because you are weak and can’t stand up for yourself.  You are choosing to be calm, peaceable, loving, and cooperative because it is a more pleasant and effective way to live.  Even if you choose not to come to blows over some issue, do not acknowledge that the other person is “right,” because they are not right.  They are doing something that is wrong, even if you don’t fight them about it. 

To respond to others peacefully and positively and stand up for yourself at the same time might seem inconsistent, but it is not.  There is no reason that you can’t be confident enough and feel good enough about yourself to remain peaceful and positive as you assertively press others to treat you appropriately.  In order to feel good enough about yourself that you can respond peacefully and lovingly to others’ efforts to put you down, you must take good care of yourself (and see yourself as deserving good care), and this requires insisting on your basic equality with others (both your deserving to be a member of the group in question and your deserving an equal share of the pie).

To respond peacefully and lovingly to others’ efforts to put you down might seem weak, but it is not.  In order to do this, you must know your worth and value so well that when others try to put you down, you instantly know that there is no basis for doing that and that those who do that don’t really know you at all.  They are just putting you down in order to put themselves up, using a social maneuver that they have seen others use to gain advantage.  It may take you some time and practice to know your own worth this well, but the more you reflect on it and the more it makes sense to you, the more you’ll be able to act on it in everyday life.

The error in seeing people who are peaceful as unable to stand up for themselves is overgeneralization—assuming that people act the same over all circumstances, which is of course not true.  A man or woman may be peaceful but fight like a tiger to protect loved ones or the nation.

The calmness/peace/love/cooperation style is more effective than other styles in making others comfortable with you, getting positive responses from others, encouraging others to like you and treat you well, and inducing others to work with you on joint goals.  These results of your style will get you more out of life in the long run than a lifestyle of trying to control others through power or violence.  We all know how good it feels to put a bully in his place or shame those who take advantage of others, but if the calmness/peace/love/cooperation style is working for you, then you can even forego these demeaning responses because you see clearly the weakness of the bully (trying to prove that he is worthy and strong when he doesn’t feel that inside) and the emptiness of the person whose greed makes her try to get more than others and be of more status than others.

If you live among people who all live by taking advantage of others, then you will either have to live with some mistreatment (while internally not feeling ashamed or inferior) or you will need to change your surroundings.  If you act unashamed and as if you have equal rights, there will be some in your group who would like to live that way too but are afraid to do it, and you can inspire a few of them to try it themselves.  If you cannot find any supportive persons in your groups, you will be better off leaving those people and finding people who are more like what you want to be and who can accept you and treat you better.  Even if this means being distant from your family or childhood friends, you may be better off having less contact with them.

A PERSONAL STORY

To illustrate anecdotally, here is how I view the ideas presented here in relation to my own life.  I grew up in a small, rural town in the Midwest, went off to Boston for college, then back to the Midwest for graduate school, spent seven years in the Air Force (after being drafted), and worked for thirty years after that as a psychologist in community mental health on the West Coast.

My family was quiet and peaceful and attended church every Sunday.  Sermons about loving one’s neighbor were particularly meaningful to me, though I noted that the individual behavior of church members was never discussed publically within the church.  Summer church camp was also meaningful, and I was active in the youth group of the church.

I believed in the ideals of my parents and the church and believed that those ideals were a pathway to being a good person and a good citizen and having a good life.  My parents were very accepting of me, and I felt no need for adolescent rebellion.  I was very good at schoolwork and coped with the possibility of social rejection (for being smart) by being nice to everyone.  I noticed that hardly anyone–adults or kids—was honest about themselves and that everyone seemed to spend much energy protecting and justifying themselves, as if they were in constant danger from attack by others.

I studied engineering but realized that I wanted a career that was more oriented toward people and meaningful values.  (I had rejected the idea of being a minister because the teachings of the church about God and Jesus seemed not believable to me, despite my agreement with the values promoted.)  I changed over to studying psychology and became a psychologist/therapist.  I had first hand opportunities then to look at the workings of peoples’ minds and the success of their beliefs and values as applied to their lives.

My choices about who to be seemed to flow rather naturally from my family and church environment—to be loving, accepting, responsible, caring, forgiving, and truthful–but I also concluded that these values and behaviors made for better lives for almost everyone regardless of background, if applied seriously.  I learned from observing others that most emotional problems stem from avoiding painful emotions (especially rejections and losses) and from lying to oneself about oneself, others, and life in general.  Facing the truth (after figuring out what the truth was) seemed to be the key to starting a change process—hence my emphasis on a fairly ruthless search for truth and seeing things as they really are, even if that is initially painful or others disagree.  I do not take what anyone says (parent, God, president, patient, etc.) at face value, since I know that few people give completely true information, since few know themselves well and most are afraid to give true information about themselves anyway.  Also, many people use communications only for trying to manipulate others and not for searching for the truth.  It is very important for your mental health that you are honest with yourself, and it is important for your social health that you are honest with others.

I concluded that seeing all people as basic equals was the only solution to our constant fighting over status and resources.  Most of us continue to want to be special (more special than others), just as we wanted to be special to our parents as a guarantee of their love and caretaking, but there is no need for us as adults to be special to the exclusion of others, since as adults we can now take care of ourselves.  Trying to be better than others, through appearance, achievements, family, ethnic background, religion, or anything else, simply sets up conflict with others that could be avoided by accepting others as equals (and accepting ourselves as not childishly special any longer).  You are good enough as you are, as long as you are taking care of yourself and are not harming others, and you can be satisfied with yourself simply for being able to function and maintain yourself in our complicated world.  (These ideas formed the basis for my first book, on self-esteem.)

I also saw that viewing ourselves as basic equals (and not having to strive for status or winning over others) allows us to understand more about other people and their lives and that we can then see that we are all quite similar in our basic needs and goals and frustrations.  We are all imperfect and all have flaws, and seeing this this makes it possible to basically accept each other (and ourselves).  Seeing our imperfections allows us to have more sympathy for others and be more willing to treat them as equals and partners in our various cooperative ventures.

As a practical matter, it seemed clear to me that if everyone were responsible (took responsibility for their own behavior and emotions, and did what they said they would do), we all would have easier lives.  The price of this, though, is doing what we say we will do, even if we are tired or overburdened.

My biggest problem area in earlier years was being comfortable socially, and I chose the field of psychology partly hoping to remedy that.  I discovered that seeing others clearly and deeply, with all their flaws and capacities, and therefore accepting them as equals was a way for me to feel comfortable with them socially, and I became able to give others sincere praise and affection, since I was no longer in competition with them or having to prove that I was better than them (still special).  Whenever I feel uncomfortable in a social situation, I reflect on the fact that almost everyone else is having to work at looking good because of their social fears.

We as individuals and as a society have difficulty determining how much is enough, or when to be satisfied.  To be basically satisfied, content, and fulfilled (through filling our lives with meaningful experiences and goals) is a much more enjoyable life than the endless striving (because nothing is enough) that many of us engage in.  Most of our anxiety and stress is due to this striving, and much of our depression is the result of feeling inadequate to this striving.

The calmness/peace/love/cooperation style has worked well for me.  Since I’m not trying to be superior to anyone, others are comfortable around me and accept me.  Since I am careful to be honest and responsible with others, they trust me and are willing to cooperate with me.  Since I am accepting and understanding of others, they are willing to share about their real, inner lives.  The drawbacks of this style are that I could be embarrassed through being honest, I have to carry through on everything I promise, I am no longer special, and I have given up getting what others don’t want or can’t reasonably give.  Not being motivated to gain power or status through placing myself above others has probably resulted in not gaining as much fame and notoriety in my profession as I could have otherwise, but I have been able to serve when nominated by others, and I believe that the good feelings that I have had through working with others as an equal far outweigh the feelings available through power and status.

GOOD WISHES

I hope that you can see some usefulness to the ideas presented above and that you will think seriously about who you want to be for the rest of your life.  You can take your time about change, and don’t think badly of yourself if it comes slowly.  Change is hard.  The most important thing you can do is simply to be aware of everything about yourself every minute of every day, so that you notice your behaviors and feelings that you don’t like and want to change.  Just seeing those on a daily basis gives you opportunities on a daily basis to do something different.  You can stop rationalizing and telling yourself falsehoods to hold up your self-esteem.  You can wonder why you believe what you believe and why you do what you do.  Don’t criticize yourself about the things that you want to change; you will change only when you believe that the change will be good for you (and not because you think you “should” change).  Seeing reality differently and feeling differently about it will feel unfamiliar and make you insecure, but if you keep at it (notice what you want to change, resolve to change it because it will be better for yourself, try out a new behavior or practice a new feeling about something) you will move toward your goal. 

from serensys and wisdomselfmgmtbk3

essays\whodoyouwanttobe