So, after my success with last night's post, I decided that today I would take the time to try and set down the essential principles of my work on a single page.  To do that, I had to leave out any attempt at justifying the principles, providing supporting evidence or examples, or anything like that.

It turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be, though.  I had expected to cover the page with a lot of brief references to complex ideas, but I ended up instead with just eight fairly basic principles:

1. Success does not require you to become someone else -- just you, with less baggage.

2. Indecision is the source and essence of all "effort" and "suffering" -- and indecision's sole source is the fear of loss.

3. Fear of loss is an emotional attachment to something you believe you have, and it should not be confused with the merely rational desire to trade as little as possible to get what you want!

4. The worst fears of loss are ego-based: fear of disrupting the image we project to others.  These fears are the worst because, unlike a legitimate crisis, they can never end.

5. Fears -- no matter how trivial -- tend to engage the brain's "crisis management" mode, causing us to conserve energy, avoid risk, be less intelligent and creative, and to shrink from pain instead of reaching towards pleasure.

6. Opposing fear through willpower is useless, since this does not eliminate the fear itself, and therefore keeps the brain in crisis-management mode.  To live a happy life, therefore, does not require courage: it rather requires the absence of spurious fear.

7. Likewise, any change which is produced by forced attention to one's actions, is not really a change at all!  It is nothing more than a split between one's previous attachments, and one's current intentions.  (A new inner conflict, in other words!)  Therefore, if your actions do not serve you, change the cause of those actions, rather than the actions themselves.

8. Our essential nature is fearless, pleasure seeking, and creative.  But these qualities are blunted and suppressed by our learned programming.  Thus, we cannot attain these qualities by adding more mental programming!  Instead, we must edit or delete the existing programs whose output is fear.  Otherwise, we are simply increasing our sources of inner conflict... and therefore, our suffering.

Not particularly poetic or eloquent, but not a bad synopsis.  These ideas essentially explain why trying to copy successful people doesn't help people who are stuck, why popular conceptions of change and self-improvement are so unhelpful, and so on.

On the flip side, these ideas say nothing at all about how to edit or delete the existing programs, but that's to be expected.  That stuff is technology, rather than science or philosophy.  And by its nature, technology is a complex beast.  The brain includes many different routes through which to arrive at fear: conditioned responses, social codes, personal judgments, perceived social rank, subconscious prediction...  just to name the first ones that come to mind, that I currently have methods for finding, editing, and deleting.

(And that's not even counting the fact that the brain loves to hide its fears under layers of rationalization.  Sometimes I have to drag a client kicking and screaming through a series of, "and what's bad about that?" questions until they get to an ego-fear like, "Well then I'd be a failure.")

But anyway, this is a start.  If we're really going to change human nature, one human at a time, we sure could do a lot worse than to begin with these ideas.

In the last few weeks I've been working off and on, trying to jump-start a book project.  I've brainstormed titles, written outlines, and written literally almost a dozen "chapter ones".

And the more I work on the damn thing, the more I realize that I have absolutely no idea what to say, or who I'm saying it to.

Oh, sure, I know exactly what needs to be communicated.  I know what skills are needed to solve a huge host of problems that I've had, and that other people have.  I know what beliefs are necessary, and which ones get in the way.

What I'm not convinced of -- as yet -- is that I can actually say any of this stuff in a way that will get people to really  believe it, and take action.

At one level of detail, I could write it all very simply, just stating what I know and how it works.  But presented at that level, rather a lot of it would sound like any other self-help book: vague, over-optimistic, and lacking in tangible reasoning behind its recommendations.

And We Can't Have That, Can We?

At another level, I could write a scathing critique and expose' of the self-help industry and why most of what is recommended simply does not work for most people, most of the time.

But that likely wouldn't appeal to anyone besides skeptics...  who probably wouldn't like me pointing out the things that do work!

In a way, what I really want most is to write something that I could have read and benefited from, back when I was young and in pain and thought it was only me who was broken.

But it almost seems as if the body of knowledge I have now acquired is inextricably bound to the journey of learning through which I acquired it.  That the only way to learn it besides repeating that journey, is to accept it on faith.

And taking things on faith, I find myself thinking, is not something I would have done, back then, when I needed these understandings most.

But then a deeper reflection tells me...  

That's probably not true.

Because the real reason, I think, that I hesitate to write, is that I also want the book to reflect well on me.

So it should do well in the market.  Be easy to get PR for.  Easy to condense to media soundbites when I'm interviewed.

And of course it should be unique and distinctive, while also being nothing less than the purest distillation of my knowledge and skills.  No simplification of the facts just to make it more "accessible".  And it must be immediately obvious from the book's positioning why it is absolutely nothing like any other self-help book ever written, so that even the most cynical of people won't hesitate to snatch up a copy in a bookstore feeding frenzy.

(Hm.  Inner conflicts, much?)

This, of course, is the exact same pattern that we all fall into.  We want to eat our cake, but still have it.  Indecision is suffering, and that is all that suffering is.

Suffering is a clash between mental control systems, the hot and cold flashes we would feel in a room with two thermostats set to different temperatures!  It's impossible to satisfy both settings at the same time, and so we suffer.

But this suffering doesn't come about because we desire things.  It comes about because...

We Won't Give Any Of Them Up!

See, people think that "non-attachment" means you don't want anything, or that you don't pursue what you want.  But they're wrong.  Attachment is not about whether you get what you want, it's about not losing what you think you have.

In my case, I fear that writing a simplified form of my learnings will somehow corrupt or cheapen them.  That not sufficiently communicating their uniqueness, or using too much emotion and not enough logic will make me "just like everyone else".  That I will, in some sense, "lose my soul".

And yet, when it really comes right down to it, I have already very nearly stated the heart and soul of my philosophy here in this post.  Indecision is suffering, and the fear of losing is the one thing that stands between feeling like a loser, and being naturally successful.  (As opposed to the pump-yourself-up, willpower-based variety of success that's never worked for me.)

Now sometimes, the way we stop being afraid of losing is by "hitting bottom" and feeling we have nothing else to lose.  And sometimes, we realize that what we're afraid of losing is...

Something we never had in the first place!

But other times, the path is not so desperate or dramatic.  Sometimes, we just systematically work to eradicate our fears.  Not by willpower or affirmation, but by understanding the nature of the mind.

And above all else, by knowing what to look for.  If you don't know that fears of loss and failure are perhaps the only difference between succeeding and failing (due to the differences in brain mode), then you won't spend the time needed to find them...  or eliminate them.

And if you don't know why it makes a difference, you won't be motivated to try.  You will think it's just the same old same old, that you've heard before...  and didn't do anything about.

In other words, it'll just be another "neat idea" to you.

Now I suppose I feel that in my live workshops and one-on-one sessions I have at least some small chance of figuratively grabbing my listener by the throat and making them see.  And after this last weekend's workshop, I got notes from a few of the participants saying that the exercise I put them through sparked a breakthrough for them, and telling me about the cool results they've achieved since then.

But still...

I worry about the ones who didn't send me notes!

Because I want everyone to have a breakthrough.  I want to be the Oprah of breakthroughs: "You get a breakthrough!  And you get a breakthrough!  And you, and you, and you..."

Now on an intellectual level, I realize this is purest ego on my part.  I'm sure that nobody, not even Jesus and the Buddha got 100% breakthroughs from every talk they gave!

And most people think ego is about self-aggrandizement, but in my case at least, it usually masquerades as an excess of altruism.  Among writers and speakers creating their first product, it usually manifests as a desire to make sure the product is of sufficiently "high quality" -- which is usually code for "the packaging reflects well on me", rather than "actually helps people".

(The same thing also applies to most of us computer programmers, by the way.  We don't like to release a program that hasn't been polished enough to stand up to the scrutiny of our peers... even if people are already willing to pay good money for it.  But I digress.)

And in truth, I must admit I do not have a perfect philosophy or method.  It must be applied in order to work, and it must be applied to each new area of life I come into contact with.  And although I will certainly be able to use my methods to banish the fears I just exposed by writing this, it will not foreclose the possibility that as I tackle bigger goals...

I'll find new fears.

My consolation, however, is that each time I get stuck, I can simply turn back to the basics of my method: examine what I want, find the conflicts, identify the fears of losing...  and eliminate them.

And as for the people who don't get a breakthrough from just one reading or talk, I suppose they will just have to wait for the next one.  Because I know that when I take away the belief that I have "failed" by not being the perfect guru, I will feel...  and not just think...  the message of the starfish story.

You know, that story about an adult who sees a boy throwing starfish back in the water after a storm, trying to save them from drying out and dying on the shore?   The adult says, "there are thousands of starfish washed up here, but only one of you -- so what makes you think you can make a difference?"

And the boy smiles as he throws one back in the water.  "It sure makes a difference to that one."

And who knows, maybe the tears welling up in my eyes right now, threatening to pour down my cheeks at any moment, could be some indication that I'm already beginning...

To feel that way, too.

For the longest time, I would hesitate before taking action -- any action.

Or so it seemed.

I mean, I didn't hesitate to turn on the TV or check my email or any other habitual action like that.  I didn't even hesitate that much before semi-routine but not-quite habitual actions, like taking out the trash.

It was only goal-directed actions that I hesitated before.  Like when I was about to start a new programming project, or take the next step in one that I'd already started.  Like when I was thinking about exercising, or thinking about cleaning up a bit around the house.

I noticed this yesterday while doing some programming.  I would think about the next test to be written, and get to a point of thinking, "Yes, I should do that next."

And then, nothing.

I would just sit there, quietly.  Thinking, "Yep, I should definitely do that."

Silence.

"Okay, this is getting silly now."

Nothing.

Finally, I just sort of seize control of my body and force my fingers to start typing something, anything.  And I get the test written.

Now, I'm making it sound like a big deal, but it's actually something I'm pretty used to.  Until I get into the "flow", it's always like that, or at least, it always has been for me.  And fortunately, I'm good enough at what I do that I'm still more productive than most, even after taking this little hesitation habit into consideration.

But it still bugged me. 

Because, in other areas of my life, I don't have that extra edge of skill (and determination to push through) that makes up for it.  When I flinch at exercise, I usually don't exercise.  When I flinch at cleaning or organizing, I usually don't clean or organize.  And when I flinch at my planning or writing, it doesn't get done, and the work piles up until I make an all-out-effort to do it at the last minute.

So today, I resolved to find out what the hell was up with this hesitation thing.

And what I discovered, surprised the heck out of me.

Because the cause of the hesitation wasn't anything like what I'd expected.

I thought that perhaps I was hesitating because there had been some historical consequence to taking action.  That maybe I'd boldly done something as a kid and gotten smacked for it, either by a sibling or schoolmate or parent.

But that wasn't it at all.

As it turns out, the real cause of the hesitation -- and a bunch of other things as well -- was a rather innocent-sounding belief I'd had since childhood:

"Imagination isn't real."

Now, it's important to understand that the words of a belief are not the same thing as the belief itself.  If you look at "imagination isn't real", it sounds on the surface like a perfectly sane belief, that no-one in their right mind would want to tamper with.

However, like nearly all beliefs, platitudes and self-help sayings, the words themselves are merely a summary of a more complex process or map embedded in your brain.

In this case, the foundation experience for my "imagination isn't real" belief was actually an experience of trying to make something real by believing in it.  Specifically, at a certain age I thought that what I read in fiction could be made real by acting it out, as long as you believed in it.

And after trying to build the "weather machine" described in a story, and finding that it did not, in fact, change the weather, I decided that you couldn't make things real by believing in them.  And I have a vague recollection of a grownup saying something about things in books being imaginary and not real.

These and other experiences formed my "evidence file" for the belief.  The words "imagination isn't real" were merely a label that goes on the outside of this file, for reference and retrieval purposes, like a link to a web page.  So saying "imagination isn't real" would call up the experience as a prototype for my behavior.  And so did any attempt to...

Make something I imagined...  real.

Realizing this hit me like a ton of bricks.  I could suddenly see the common thread between this one kind of hesitation, and a whole host of other issues I've tended to have in my life.  If things in books aren't real, and imagining and believing won't make them so, then it stands to reason why I've rarely, if ever, sustained a change I've made based on something in a book.

And why, the more I wanted the change, the less likely it would be to become real.

Because the "evidence file" for my belief was full of disappointment at not being able to make real, things I desperately wanted to make real.

And as I skimmed forward and backward through the movie of my life, I saw the part of my teen years where I tried to build lots of things out of books, and tried various handicrafts, and mostly failed at them, before taking up computers.

Because, as it happens...

Computers weren't really "real", either!

I could "make" things inside of them, and I viewed it as being like just a direct extension of my imagination.  I mean, computers don't actually do anything -- they just show pictures or make sounds.  How can you call that "real"?

It's no wonder I dropped the handicrafts and wound up a programmer.  No wonder that so many things I've tried didn't work, and other things did.  If it came out of a book or I imagined it, my mental model implicitly included failure and disappointment as the ultimate result of any attempt to make it real. 

And even if I succeeded part-way, or for a time, I always found a way to bring things back around to disappointment, creating a life-long cycle of ups and downs.

Even though I've successfully helped other people get out of cycles like these, it always bothered me that I never seemed to be as successful at helping myself, as I was at helping others.  But talking to someone and helping them sort out their brain, wasn't quite the same thing as...

Making something I want, real.

The irony, of course, is that this "imagination barrier" I created for myself, is itself an imaginary creation, made real.

And in the moment I really see that, the belief disappears in a puff of logic.  After all, if it's imaginary, it can't be real!

And a moment later, I know what belief I want to replace it with.

The belief, that for the rest of the day so far, has propelled me -- without hesitation -- into everything I choose to do.

The belief that if I can imagine it...

I can make it real.

"I feel kind of angry", he confessed.

"Good!  That means you're improving."

I was doing a one-on-one, helping him to move from shyness to sociability.  And in the process, we were changing his feelings about certain kinds of actions.

"There is a spectrum of emotions.  Nobody quite agrees on the precise order, but nearly everybody agrees that being angry is better than being sad or afraid."

(After all, when books as diverse as a spiritual guide to the Law of Attraction and a salesperson's guide to practical leadership agree on something...

It's probably worth a closer look!)

"Oftentimes, negative feelings occur in stacks.  First, we get angry at something that's happened, that we want to change.  Then, if we get beaten down and stopped -- whether it's by parents, other kids, or other adults -- we begin to become afraid of what will happen if we take action.  Finally, we decide it's hopeless and become sad."

"And when we apply feeling elimination or other techniques to these feelings, there's a tendency for them to come out in the reverse order.  After getting rid of sadness, you may feel fear.  After the fear, you may get angry."

And this is good, because anger lies on the threshhold between the brain's success and failure modes.  It's the energy to choose a new direction and make a change.  The crossover point from moving away from one thing, and moving towards another.

In fact, there are certain types of change, where, if you haven't passed through the "angry point", there's a good chance that...

You're Not Going To Change At All

For example, before people make identity-level changes -- changes to who they are -- passing through the angry point is a critical step.  To become a different person, you have to be truly fed up with the person you were before...  which often means being angry, with yourself or with your results.

And if you listen to people who have successfully made changes like that...  people who've made extremely rapid, major shifts in their personality, behavior, or lifestyle, you will find that they have this one thing in common.  At some point, they decided that enough was enough, and enough was too much.

In NLP terminology, they "went over threshhold".  In essence, they got mad enough to be willing to do whatever it takes to make the change.

And I've been studying this stuff lately, because I'm developing a systematic set of principles and processes for doing rapid personality makeovers.  In the last month, I've made a few minor adjustments to my own personality, including making myself a lot neater, and a lot more decisive.

And the really great thing about this kind of change is that, once you do it, it's completely automatic.  I don't have to think or try to be neater or more decisive.  It just happens.

Even when I don't necessarily want it to!

Sometimes I find myself expecting to hesitate over a decision...  and then I notice that I've already made the right decision and am taking action.  For example, looking at a catalog that came in the mail, I might be thinking to myself, "Gosh I wonder if I should keep this..."  and then I notice that my hands have already gone and thrown the thing in the trash!

Sometimes it almost seems like my body has been possessed....  by a friendly and helpful demon.

And I've been helping my clients to make similar changes, too.  The one I mentioned earlier, who I was helping become more sociable, later described the sensation of finding himself acting more sociable in similar terms: like being literally possessed by the new self we'd spent an hour or so designing and installing.

Now don't get me wrong: this sensation of being repeatedly surprised by your own behavior in a positive way may be a teensy bit spooky at first, but...

It's absolutely not a bad thing!

And that's why I've decided to go ahead and share with the world some of my first steps towards developing this powerful change technology.  In the February issue of Change Without Pain, Life Without Struggle, I wrote extensively about some of the groundwork that's needed to make personality changes like these, including the importance of switching the mind from "failure mode" to "success mode".

And although the newsletter is normally made available only to Friend or higher-level members of the Owners' Circle, I'm making it available to you, for a limited time, as a free PDF download.

I'm doing this because I believe that some of the people reading my blog have reached a point in their lives where they're almost "fed up" enough to make a big change.

Sure, a whole lot of people -- the majority of people, in fact -- are going to just read it, nod and agree (or pat themselves on the back for "already knowing that"), and then go on to the next link in their web surfing.  But those people, I can't do anything about.

And so I'm doing this on the slim chance that you might be one of those few people who are "on the bubble" -- wavering between the person you've been, and the person you'd like to become.

Because if you are, then this material is going to be like rocket fuel for you.  Download the PDF, and get started now.  Get angry... and get ready to change.

When I was a kid, my first bicycle was a one-speed.  Instead of hand brakes, you stopped it by pedalling backwards.  Later on, I had some trouble adjusting to a 3-speed bicycle, because I kept trying to stop by pedalling backwards.

And I always wondered, why they bothered to have the pedals even able to turn backwards.  After all, it's not like pedalling backwards does anything.

And I used to wonder the same thing about a book I read when I was about 11 or 12 years old.

The book was called "Psycho-Cybernetics", and it claimed that our brains included both a "success mechanism" and a "failure mechanism".

Now, I could easily buy the idea that God or nature could have put a mechanism in our brains to help us succeed...

But why include a failure mechanism?

For nearly thirty years, that idea made absolutely no sense to me.  Indeed, the more I learned about evolution, the less sense it seemed to make.  The idea of having a "failure mechanism" seemed about as useful as pedalling backwards on a 10-speed bike.

But as it turns out, our brains are actually a lot more like my first bicycle.

Because pedalling backwards -- i.e., the "failure mechanism", is actually how you make it stop.

So it's really just the names of the two mechanisms that confused me.  If the book's author had called them the "acquisition mechanism" and "protection mechanism"...

• Or the "leader mechanism" and "follower mechanism"...
• Or the "offense mechanism" and "defense mechanism"...
• Or the "creation mechanism" and "preservation mechanism"...
• Or the "pursuit mechanism" and "escape mechanism"...
• Or the "pleasure mechanism" and "anti-pain mechanism"...
• Or the "opportunity mechanism" and "threat mechanism"...

I might have understood it a lot sooner!

You see, every animal in its natural state requires both of these systems, and their operation is governed by a simple, but iron-clad law:

In the presence of a perceived threat, the threat mechanism is AUTOMATICALLY activated.  In the presence of perceived safety, the opportunity mechanism MAY BE ALLOWED to activate.

So think about that for a second.  Suppose a tiger twice the size of your desk suddenly charged towards you right now, leaping towards your face.

Would you think about what to do next?

Or would you already be running or diving for cover before you even knew what was happening?

Yeah, I thought so.

So the reason Dr. Maltz (the author of Psycho-Cybernetics) called this subsystem the "failure" mechanism, is because in modern life...

Most threats are imaginary!

And as a result, we're always running and diving for cover...  even from our goals!

Because if you even imagine a threat, or remember pain, your defenses can automatically kick in.

And procrastination, lack of "motivation" or "willpower", fighting yourself, and inability to follow through, are all just symptoms of this defense system kicking in.

Worse, you can't stop these symptoms by trying to!

Why?

Because that would simply mean...

You see them as a threat!

And that, ironically enough, just locks your brain deeper into protection mode!

You see, the goal of protection mode can be phrased fairly simply: "make the best of a bad situation," or maybe "try not to lose too badly".  And its rules work roughly like this:

• If the threat is nearby and inbound, duck and cover, or run like hell  
• If the threat is still at a distance, freeze and try to look like a rock or tree or something
• If the threat is a human of my tribe, placate or threaten it according to its relative status in the pecking order

And if you look at those rules closely, you'll see where a lot of self-defeating behavior comes from...  like procrastination (freezing when the threat's at a distance).

And you can't switch this machinery off... which is a good thing.  After all, if a tiger really burst into the room right now, you'd need the "duck and cover or run like hell" part to kick in.

You can try to override it by sheer willpower, but that only works for a short time.  Think about it: willpower is something you use to override your evolved instincts.  That means that if there was some evolutionary benefit to doing that all the time...

You'd have evolved different instincts!

So willpower is implicitly designed to be temporary.  (And no, I'm not implying the existence of a designer or ascribing "goals" to evolution.)

And, as scientists have found in experiment after experiment, willpower is a very limited resource, that is depleted by almost any kind of stress.

Like the stress of using willpower, for example!

Now, there is some evidence to suggest that concentration and willpower can be trained and exercised by meditation, actually causing new brain growth to support the enhanced ability.  But there's not a lot known about that yet, and in any event, it takes time, just like any other form of exercise.

So, willpower is definitely not a quick fix for the backpedalling of the failure mechanism.  Luckily, however...

Nature Left Us A Loophole

You see, the threat-response system or "failure mechanism" is triggered by detection of a "threat".  However, the response system is not responsible for defining what consitutes a threat.

You are!

Well, not exactly.  It's your memories, beliefs, and imagination that define threats.  And this can include things you saw in the movies, heard in a story, picked up from parents and peers, had happen to you, etc.  So your "threat portfolio" can contain an awful lot of stuff that you never consciously decided to put there.

But you can clean that stuff up, as my work on myself and my clients has shown.  You can "declassify" things as threats, thereby ramping down fear and avoidance responses.  You can delete imagined negative futures, and shut down and reroute your pain-avoidance beliefs and behaviors.

You can, in other words, turn every threat you face...  into "no big deal". 

And if you want to live a fulfilling life, it's incredibly important that you do so.  Because the problem with the "failure mechanism" is that it's all about avoiding losing.

Which Is Not The Same As Winning!

You see, when you're trying to avoid loss, you don't take risks.  You don't invest as much.  You don't commit to taking action.

In short, you duck and cover, in the hopes of minimizing the pounding you're going to take.

But to actually win at anything, you have to put yourself out there.  Expose yourself to pain.  And be willing to pay the price.

And that will never happen while you're in "failure mode".

Unfortunately, most self-help material completely ignores this basic fact, choosing instead to focus entirely on the "success mechanism", and the best methods for exploiting it.  Even Psycho-Cybernetics (whose author at least acknowleged the existence of the failure mechanism, as few others do)  had very little to say about how to turn it around.

That's why I'm doing a workshop this weekend called "The Art Of The 'No Big Deal'", to share with you the wealth of things I've learned about the failure mechanism.  Including how it works, and how to circumvent it.

So you can stop backpedalling.

And start living.

--PJE

P.S. The workshop is a conference call that will be held on Saturday, February 16th, at 3pm Eastern time, and you must be an Associate or Full member of the Circle in order to participate.  If you bought my Procrastination Cure course in the last few weeks during one of my special promotions, then yes, your trial month of Associate membership qualifies you to participate.

I used to think that criticism of my work and life didn't affect me that much.  I even blogged to that effect a while back.

But something my wife said last night made me realize that I was thinking about it in the wrong way.

It's true: actual criticism doesn't affect me that much, except emotionally.  I feel bad about it, and occasionally lash out.  But I very rarely consciously change anything in response to criticism, especially criticism of the spiteful variety.

But last night made me realize I've actually been doing something much worse:

Changing In Response To Imagined Criticism!

When I write, it's almost as if I have an entire team of imaginary critics poised just over my shoulder.  And the team consists of the very worst elements of the internet: armchair a**holes who've never created a meaningful thing in their lives, but love to trash the work of others.  People who rejoice in finding even the single, tiniest of holes or weaknesses in an idea, and gleefully trash anyone who finds any value in that idea.  People who love to think of themselves as Skeptics with a capital "S", as if that were somehow more important than coming up with good things to be skeptical about.

Now, my point isn't really to rant about those people -- after all, they're not really critiquing my work as I write.  (God, that would be hell on earth!)  No, the point is that my brain has seen them trash on plenty of other people whose work I like, and so has built up a model of what kind of attacks they employ.

And so, over the years, I've evolved an approach to everything I do, that's designed to minimize the number of available attack vectors and maximize the number of defense options.

And it all happens at a relatively-subconscious level.  I mean, I've been aware of the imagined criticisms themselves, but it never occurred to me to treat them as...

Anything But Real!

And while my subconscious figuratively pats itself on the back for avoiding loads of criticism, it also occurs to me that the real reason I'm not that criticized, has nothing to do with the quality of what I do, and everything to do with the fact that I'm not a big enough target yet.  (i.e., not successful enough to be worth "taking down a notch".)

Now, the criticial voice over my shoulder has just pointed out that the last paragraph is going to make me sound arrogant, self-centered, boring, yada yada yada.  It advised me that this paragraph should refocus on how all this relates to you, the reader, if you are not worried about whether you have a high enough profile to attract critics.

That actually sounds like a good suggestion, though.  After all, I didn't understand how this was affecting me, so if you're doing the same thing, chances are you're not aware of how it's affecting you, either.

But, as is so often the case when I'm writing a "real essay" -- that is, one like this one, where I'm writing as much to understand as I am to communicate -- I don't know the answers myself yet.

I do know, for me, that always following the advice of imaginary critics means you'll never get any real-world information.  You'll never know if people really like the real you, for example, or just the "censored you".  And even if they seem to like the censored you...

It won't feel like they like you!

Instead, you'll feel even more like the "real you" isn't worthwhile.

But unfortunately for me, I've never really thought all that much about the self-censorship I do.  (Especially since I've often gotten the message that I should self-censor more!)

Instead, I've just assumed that the voice over my shoulder is just "how things are", and believed it.

Worse, I've been taking its advice for a lot of things besides just its direct input on my writing.

Last week, I wrote about how I dropped my goals for 2008.  Afterwards, that same evening, I created a new goal list full of things I actually wanted to achieve in the following week, two weeks, month, quarter, and year.   I got really excited and passionate about these things, and started doing them.

In fact, I finished some of my two-week and one-month goals in the first week.

But then, I made the mistake of writing about this to the Circle mailing list, and suddenly...

All My Goals Became Chores Again!

Why?  Because now that I had written about it, I felt I had to keep doing everything perfectly in order to be consistent.  How can I claim (says the critical voice) that I know how to make goals enjoyable and achievable, if I should falter in the slightest, or finish one of my one-week goals on the eighth day instead of the seventh?

"Heresy!  Sacrilege!  Faker and Fraud!  How dare you claim you know anything about goals...  oh, and don't let me catch you changing any of your goals either, despite the fact that the new travel plans required by your day job have just caused a weeks worth of your night/weekend time to disappear!"

And the truly sad thing about this voice, is that you really don't notice it's there, unless you think to look for it.  It just seems like reality, until you have something to compare it against.

This, of course, is what mentors and coaches are for.  (And, if you're really lucky, spouses or close friends!)  And hopefully, they're ones whose blind spots are just enough different from yours that they can see the plank in your eye, irrespective of the splinters in their own.

And during this week, my wife has been relentlessly critical -- in the best possible way! -- about the emails I've been sending to the extended Circle.  She's been telling me that I'm way too watered down, that I soften and sugarcoat everything that I'm telling people, and being too intellectual.  All very valid criticisms, and none of them things that my internal critic was paying any attention to.  In fact, those things were in the writing...

Precisely because of the critic!

My business coach, Matt Furey, writes a fitness newsletter in which he sometimes says rather mean or derogatory things about people who aren't fit.  (For example, he sometimes refers to people as "Lardassians".)  While this has often seemed a bit outrageous or unkind to me, I have also seen that it actually helps a lot of people get the motivation to do something different with their lives.

And as good as it would be for everyone to be motivated more towards "gaining pleasure" than "escaping pain", it is not the reality for many people, who desperately need to be put in the figurative "hot seat" before they'll take action.

But I've been extremely reluctant to even imply that someone reading any of my work might be a lazy slob, with the spine or self-discipline of a limp dishrag.  In part, that's because I know it's neither true nor relevant to their self-development.  (It doesn't really take what people think it takes to be successful; the actual answers are entirely elsewhere.)

But, when I think back to where I started, I have to admit that negative motivation (like the fear that I was a lazy slob)  had tremendous motivational power for me.  If somebody had been selling a "How to Stop Being A Lazy Incompetent Jackass" program, I'd probably have bought it in a heartbeat, in spite of the fact that I was not any such thing.  Not really.

But I Sure Felt Like I Was!

So, me being hesitant to "tell it like it is" -- or at least like it  seems to be, to people in that place -- probably isn't really helping the people who most need what I can teach!

And I not only water down the negative side, I dilute the positives as well.  I make only the most brief, and modest claims for most of the workshops and teachings that I give.  Mostly, I limit myself to talking about what I teach, for example, rather than emphasizing what kind of difference it'll make to people's lives, if and when they actually use the teachings.

At most, I'll usually talk about what something has done for me, about where I was "before" and "after" applying the material.  And even though I have testimonials, and plenty of people who'd be willing to give me more if I asked, I rarely include them in my writing, for fear of seeming too self-serving.

It's pretty disappointing to look back and realize that I still have such a long way to go, even after all the work I did a couple years back on being able to self-promote and ask people to buy things and such.

At the same time, it now makes a lot of sense to me why I still haven't put up even the most basic product information pages for any of the literally dozens of workshops, CDs, and other materials that I've produced.

Because on a subconscious level, I know that if I put those pages up...

I'll Have To Actually Say They're Good!

And that scares the crap out of me, even though I intellectually know they are good, especially compared to almost anything else on the market.  (At least, if you're looking to learn how to change, as opposed to getting a rah-rah speech about why you should change.  In which case, they're fantastic.)

Now the critic looks back over the last several paragraphs, pointing out all the places I've opened myself up to criticism.  "You call this kind of bragging 'brief and modest claims'?  I'd hate to see what you think hyperbole looks like!"  And the critic is now happy that at least I've relayed what it said: it thinks that by being first to take a shot at myself, I can pre-empt others from doing the same...  or at least stop it from hurting as much if they do.

But that's just superstition.  The critic believes I can control what other people say or do, when in fact I cannot.  All the available evidence suggests that mere success is more than sufficient to motivate critics.  It doesn't matter in the least what that success consists of: success itself is threatening to some people -- maybe all people.

In a recent Circle newsletter, I wrote about how I used to hate people who were well-organized, well-groomed, and charismatic...  as well as people who were fit and liked to exercise.  I didn't usually express this hatred outwardly, but the resentments I felt towards them prevented me from ever becoming any of those things myself.

And while I'm still not sure I'd describe myself as having fully acquired any of those characteristics, I've certainly made more progress to being them in the month or two since I shed the hate...

Than in the many years I tried to before!

So it helps a little to realize that I do understand the hate displayed by the kind of critic my subconscious is modelling.  It's not that they feel envy or jealousy consciously, and then actively seek to pull someone down.

Rather, what happens is that when someone gets what you don't believe you can have, it creates an uncomfortable feeling.  Your mental model is no longer consistent, so reality seems to need adjusting!  For example, if you believe that nobody can do or get the thing you want, then your tendency may be to put the successful person down as a fraud or charlatan or cheater of some kind.

Or, you may decide that "yeah, but some people just know the right people" or "some people are just born with it", or some other reasoning that allows your mental model to still fit the facts...  without actually changing your mind.

So knowing this helps a lot.  It makes it easier for me to forgive, and let go of, the hurtful things that people have said to or about me in the past.  To see that I don't need to conduct myself so as to avoid such things, because the truth is that such a critic is someone who really needs what I do: helping people see they can get what they want.

After all, if I'm stirring up enough cognitive dissonance for somebody to want to go on the offensive, it means they must believe they can't have what I say they can.

And clearly...

That Belief Needs Challenging!

Now, my inner critic informs me that some people might think that I'm saying I (or you) should ignore all criticism as being cognitive dissonance.  (And that's a helpful point for the critic to make, even though it made the point by picturing the whiny blog comments I would probably get if I didn't address this, and how annoyed it would make me to have to read and respond to them.)

So let me just clarify, in case it wasn't obvious: I'm not talking about criticism that actually seeks to improve you or me, or even straightforward statements of preference.  If somebody says they find my writing too long or whatever, cool, that's their opinion.  If a whole bunch of people say it, maybe it's even worth considering changing something.

But that's an entirely different kettle of fish, than the sort of critic whose only intention is to make you look bad.  I don't think they even care whether they make you feel bad, either.  All that's important is that they have something in writing that's an excuse to maintain their current thought pattern.  So there isn't anything worthwhile in this sort of criticism, because the person was only looking for flaws.

And if you look at anything long enough, or with enough motivation, you'll find flaws...

Even if you have to make them up!

But enough from my critic.  If I keep listening to that thing, I'm going to keep going off on tangents.

(After all, I wrote and am writing all this, mainly to figure things out.  Telling you about what I figure out, is just a bonus!)

So let me see if I can bring this to some kind of conclusion for myself, resolve all the loose ends and refactor my relationship with the inner critic.

Clearly, I need to -- and can, now -- forgive the people who've attacked me or my work in the past.  I'm okay, no harm done, and I understand.  I can also see that anybody who does it in the future, is someone who needs my compassion, and maybe my help.

But this is not a complete solution.  It makes me feel a lot better about past and future criticism of that kind, but it hasn't released the silent snare of the critic within.

But strangely, just as I wrote that last paragraph, something let go in my head, and the "test" I was using (imagining putting up a web page saying good things about my work and products) stopped producing apprehension.  I don't know what fixed it, exactly, although I think it was actually when I paused to see if I'd used the title phrase ("silent snare") anywhere else in the article yet.

That pause took place in the middle of me running the test, so I'd gotten to the place in my mind where the critic was about to object... 

And then I got distracted.

I think this actually ended up disrupting the automatic process, but that's just a wild guess.  The brain-as-computer metaphor only works so far, although I've taken it a lot farther than most.

Oh well.  The test "passes" now -- I can at least think about praising my work now, without the negative feeling kicking in.

Of course, whether it's a brain or a computer, testing a program isn't the same thing as actually using the program.  Reality always has to have the last word.  But in this case, I've already used it!  Two paragraphs back, I said "I've taken it a lot farther than most" -- an offhand positive remark about my work.  And I didn't even notice I'd done it until the middle of this paragraph, so it wasn't because I was consciously trying to praise myself!

And that is the always the real test of self-improvement, to me.  Anybody can use "willpower" to do something once, on purpose.

But the real test is what happens when you're not paying attention.  Are you spontaneously a better person, without needing to think about it?  If not, then...

You haven't really changed!

And that's only one of the ways my body of work improves upon "traditional" self-help and coaching approaches.  (More spontaneous positive remarks, yay!)

It's surprising how nice it feels to be able to say good things about my work now.  It's occurring to me that even when I did manage to say such things before, I had to force myself to do so, with my jaws unconsciously clenched.

By comparison, I feel so relaxed now.  It's like talking about the weather...  "Yeah, it's been really cloudy lately, and by the way, I'm making real advancements to the state of the self-help field that I really should be disseminating more widely."  No big deal at all!

Oh, and I suppose I should point out that that's another one of my contributions: the "no big deal" test.  The goal of self-improvement is not to pump you up and get you excited about doing the thing you fear -- because then you'll always need the excitement to overcome the fear.

Instead, the goal is to remove the drama, so that the thing is just ordinary: no big deal.

When you do that, your natural tendency to seek and prefer pleasure is more than enough to accomplish the necessary motivation for success.  The problem is simply that our danger and pain-avoidance systems impose priority overrides on our consciousness.

So removing the override, the Compulsion to Avoid Pain or CAP, as I call it, is usually more than enough.  We are naturally compassionate, friendly, peaceful, and motivated, as long as there is...

An absence of perceived threats!

Anyway, since I've now fixed the problem in myself that I set out to fix by writing this, and I have only about an hour before my next workshop starts ("How To Find Pleasure In A World Full Of Pain"), I think I'll wrap this essay up for now.  Thanks for listening, and I hope this gave you some insights you can use!

Yours in the Circle,

--PJE

It's Christmas morning, in a hotel room in Dallas, and I'm getting dressed for an early dinner with my wife's family.

And I'm thinking to myself about the fact that I'm about to go to meet with mostly the same people I just spent Christmas Eve with, only now I'm dressing up in fancier clothes to do it.  Not only that, but the night before that, we were dressed really casually for dining out with just Leslie's mom.

So I find myself wondering, why the difference in clothes?

And my knee-jerk reaction is, "well, with Leslie's mom, we can really just relax and be ourselves pretty much.  We don't have to be all formal and fake."

And then I think, "wait a minute...  that implies that the real me is scruffy and unkempt, and the nicely dressed me is a fake!"

Hmmmmm.  That doesn't make any logical sense, does it?  And how in blue blazes did I end up with that idea?

Almost immediately, images from childhood spring to mind, reminding me of all the times my mother hurriedly cleaned up for company, and admonished us to be on our best behavior.  All the times she put on false fronts when dealing with almost anyone outside the family, pretending to be the nice perfect mother in front of company, when ten minutes earlier she was screaming at us -- and would resume the screaming ten seconds after the guests were gone.

Huh.  So that's where I got it from.  Dressing up nice, acting nice, cleaning house... all that stuff is what you do to fool other people about who you really are.  And now that I'm writing about it, I see the places where my dad's actions and beliefs supported this idea in other ways.  For example, that clothing is either comfortable (and to be worn whenever possible) or good looking (to only be worn when necessary).

We had different sets of towels, linens, plates, and so forth: one for us, and the "good" ones, to be saved for company.  Indeed, the more I think about it now, the more examples I find of this peculiar dichotomy: the best is for appearances, the rest is for who we "really" are.

Now, I'm not blaming my parents, and it's not clear to me that the beliefs I picked up from them are necessarily the same beliefs they were living out. (After all, I imagine it's possible to believe that you should offer company the best you have, without necessarily believing you don't deserve good things yourself.)

In other words, any conclusions my brain drew, are my own responsibility.

But it's interesting to think about how much of "who we are" can be drawn from the background of our childhoods.  Not the foreground activity, the overt beliefs and behaviors our parents intentionally try to embed in us, but in the covert beliefs implied by our parents' choices and actions.

I suppose, as my father used to put it, "actions speak louder than words."  Which makes sense, since most of the machinery in our heads was evolved to deal with actions, not words.

So who do you think you are?  Do you identify with your best moments, the times you did things right?  The times you were kind or generous or compassionate?  The times you thought things through, stood up for what you believe in?

Or do you identify with your worst moments?  The times you gave up on yourself, the times you snapped at the people you love, the times you didn't follow through?

If we look at "just the facts", we see that both kinds of moments are equally "real", just as I have worn both casual clothes and formal ones.  So from a purely logical point of view, it makes no sense to label one set of experiences "real" and the other "fake".

But our culture doesn't always encourage us to label ourselves good, and we often get better treatment through being self-deprecating.  We can also sometimes avoid undesired responsibility or avoid disappointment, by emphasizing our flaws.  For that matter, we don't have to worry about others making fun of our failures, as they might if we claimed to be good at something beforehand.

Unfortunately, our brains don't compartmentalize this behavior as an act we put on for company.  And so we conclude that the person we are at our worst, is our "real" self.

And once we come to that conclusion, we start living as if it were true.  And before long, it is.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

You could believe in yourself, instead.

And that will make all the difference.

--PJE

P.S. Believing in yourself isn't some empty and meaningless platitude.  It's actually our natural state, once you take away the negative beliefs and blocks.  It's the removal of these beliefs and blocks that forms the core of my one-on-one consulting practice, and of most of my workshops as well.  If you have these kinds of issues, I encourage you to contact me via this form.  Be sure to mention that you're interested in a one-on-one consultation.

People sometimes tell me that they don't believe I can help them, because they've got to be the most messed-up person I've ever worked with.  And I usually just laugh, because I have yet to meet anybody who's as messed-up as I was!

Sure, I can't always fix everything, every single time, in one session, from halfway around the world, with one arm tied behind my back.  But to be honest with you, when somebody has a problem I've never seen before, it doesn't bother me at all.  If you've noticed from my blog, I really enjoy learning something new! So if you think you've got a problem I've never seen before, I'd be especially interested in hearing from you.

In the meantime, though, you might also want to check out my December workshop, "Think Big, Walk Tall, and Live Large".  In it, I taught how we create our "secret identities", and how to stop believing that our "smaller self" is our real self.  Also, I'm doing a new workshop, called "What Do You Really Want?  How to Find Pleasure In A World Full Of Pain".  That one will be next Saturday at 3pm Eastern.

And until Friday, you can get both of these workshops (one via MP3 recording, one by live attendance) for only $99, by joining my Circle as an Associate member.  You'll get a whole lot more, too: newsletters like this one, and CDs like these, delivered to your door every month.  Just fill out this registration form, and within 24 hours I'll send you your login information for both workshops and for the private web forum where you can send me your questions directly, and read about what's going on with other members.  And then you'll be on your way to discovering the true you: the one that's not blocked, and not afraid, and is ready to finally really live.

After Christmas, I tried to write a couple of articles to post here before the new year.  One about the nature of reality, the other about death and transcendence and the meaning of life.  And maybe it's because I was sick at the time, or maybe it's just that I don't feel the same way about such deep things any more, but I had a lot of trouble finishing them.

Or maybe it's just because the ideas that I had aren't clear enough yet in my own mind to explain them to anyone else.  It took me something like two months before I could write The Multiple Self, after I first got the idea behind it.

It's a funny thing, though, how ideas can change you.  Because the ideas that I was trying to write about, they kind of took away all my goals and ambitions, all my purpose and drive and determination about 2008.

In a good way.

Really.

I've spent most of my life trying to "win" something: to do so well at life that...  I don't know what, exactly.  I started out thinking you had to live well to stay out of hell, then later thinking that I wanted to be remembered.  I think on some level I also believed I had a Destiny to live up to.  And I was striving and struggling to get there.

Yeah, I spent the last year writing monthly issues of Change Without Pain, Life Without Struggle, but not-struggling was more in the nature of an ideal or aspiration for me, than a reality.  I had a lot of times in 2007 where I successfully stopped struggling, but they were of limited duration.

Because on some level, I still believed there was a point to all that struggle.

Now, I get it.  The struggle and drama that I created around my personal self-improvement efforts were just that: drama.

Don't get me wrong, though.  It was necessary drama.  I wouldn't be where I am now, if I hadn't gone through the struggle and the ideals and the aspirations and all that stuff.  While you're living in the drama of lack, unrealized dreams, and hopelessness, an understanding that it's all vapor doesn't actually help you get anywhere.  The illusion of destiny and meaning helps you cut through the illusion of despair.

It doesn't matter that they're both illusions.

After all, roughly 95% of what we consider reality exists only in our minds.  Those people laughing over there, are they talking about you?  That guy who cut you off in traffic, is he an a-hole?  Why are you so unlucky?

These kinds of questions obssess us, and they are all about crap our brains make up and obsess over.  "Am I good enough?", they incessantly ask.  "Will I survive and reproduce?"

Our brains don't care about our happiness.  They're not built for it.  They don't even care that much about reality, except as far it affects their obsessive, self-centered plans to survive and reproduce -- or what would have helped them to do those things in a tribal community of hunter-gatherers about 100,000 years ago.

Once you start to really get this, really dig it deep in your bones, you start to see through a lot of nonsense...  at least, other people's nonsense.  It's a lot tougher to see your own; so much easier to be the teacher than the student.  I've had to get my head smacked up a few times by reality this past year, in order to get the message about my own nonsense.

No big deal, though.  None of it is.  But since we're wired for tribal drama, it's naturally impossible for us to see the utter non-big-dealness of things at first glance.  I find myself thinking back to the words of various Zen masters about how reality is really very ordinary and, well, they don't use those exact words, but, "no big deal".

In actual reality...  unfiltered, undramatized reality...  life is no big deal.  It's been going on a long time, probably will for some time to come.  We live, we die.  No big deal!  To the extent that we think it's a big deal, we are tripping on drama drugs, cranked out by the pharmacies in our heads and bodies.

And it would be only natural, when you first get this idea, to think that this is bad.  That we should maybe all face "real" reality and stop the drama-drug tripping.  You want to yell at people to wake up and smell the dreaming.

But that's drama, too.

And before this really sunk in for me, before the specter of death showed me a couple of weeks ago how to really get over myself, I had a bunch of goals and plans for 2008.  I was really pumped about them, too.

Now, not so much.

It's not that they're bad, or anything.  I just see now that they won't change what happens to me after I die.

Not that I ever consciously thought they would!  But on some deep feeling level, everything about my life used to be so goddamn f***ing serious.  Because it was all about changing the world before I die.  About "being somebody".

And now I'm free.  Free!  Do you hear me?  Free!

And yet, when I think about the fact that I've finally acquired the personal characteristics I set out to gain -- courage, persistence, and true freedom -- I'm reminded of the Zen master who described "returning to his original home, empty-handed", or the other one who spoke of "vast emptiness and nothing which may be called holy."

Instead of finding victory and personal glory, I find grace, and maybe even a little humility.

So I don't know yet what I'm going to do with my life, in 2008, let alone the years beyond. It's quite likely that I'll do another book or two this year, and of course the workshops, newsletters, CDs, and other things will continue.  But I'm going to have to find my voice again, because I'm not that deadly-serious guy any more.

And I'm going to be doing other things, too.  I don't mean business, either.  I'm talking pleasure.  Sometime within the next two years, I'll take off a month or two to travel the country again.  And if my wife has her way, we'll tour Europe, too.  Maybe I'll mix in business a little, do some talks or workshops in person, blog and maybe videoblog the trips.  But that won't be the why, just the how.  (As in how I'll afford it!)

There is so much I haven't done, that I didn't even know how to want before, let alone do.

The tricky part for the business side of things is this: it used to be that I could create drama around the ideas I discovered and the things I teach, because I was close enough to the drama to live it and convey it directly.  Back then, I could say, "I was blind, and now I see."

But now I see that I wasn't blind: I just had my eyes closed.

And where's the drama, if you can just open them any time you want to?

Maybe it's in the new world that you see when you open them.  The one where life is "no big deal".  Or maybe, it's in the excitement of seeing the drama through new eyes: by understanding the pain of others, and helping them to see past it.

Perhaps it's the same spirit of play that makes children enjoy "peekaboo!", or why we watch TV and movies we know are not real.  We like being scared, involved, challenged...  and ultimately...  victorious.

And as long as you're trapped in your personal drama, all that stuff is real, at least to you, and perhaps to the people around you.

And while you're still there, you want to win at that drama, or at least get ahead in it.  The last thing you want, is for somebody to tell you "it's not real."

Because then, it seems like the other guys win .

And what I had to learn in '07, was that that's okay.

I don't need to win.  They don't need to lose.

And in fact, until you are okay with everybody being able to have the same thing as what you want -- and not just mentally, abstractly, consciously okay, but really truly in your secret heart of hearts okay -- you will not be able to get those things for yourself.

And your drama will remain...

Unresolved.

"I'm not going to make it."

In the back of my head, that's what I'm thinking/feeling, as I browse Bloglines one more time.  I've set myself an impossible amount of work -- well, not really impossible, just well beyond what I usually do.  And some part of me is seriously freaking out.

"There's not enough time."

I was doing okay at first, until I realized that the month is practically half over, and this is the last full weekend I'll have to work on the year-end wrapup materials for the Owners' Circle.  I've got two newsletters left to write, two CD's left to record, and a few items that I wanted to create as surprise gifts for members.  At this point, all I have done is outlines for the newsletters and CDs, and a sketch for one of the gifts.  Oh yeah, and I was going to review my notes for the workshop I'm giving on Saturday, too.  Peachy.

"I can't do this."

Ever since I first started giving workshops almost a year and a half ago (has it really been that long?), I've had a sort of love-hate relationship with the work.  I seem to panic before every deadline, and to do some sort of last-minute heroics in order to get everything together on time.  Since I added the monthly newsletter and CD to the mix, I have even more to panic about every month.

"What kind of self-help guru am I?"

And without fail, along with the deadline blues comes the self-doubt and self-pity -- even as I find myself spending time on other things.  Useful things, enjoyable things, sometimes even important things, but not the things I intended to spend time on.  (Like, for example, writing this article.)

"There's no way I'm going to finish this."

But as I wrote about in the last Circle newsletter, I recently made myself an important promise: never to force myself to do anything, ever again.  Because I've realized it doesn't help me learn or change anything.  Understanding, on the other hand, does.

"Why am I so stressed about this?"

I know I can do what needs to be done.  I actually wrote the last newsletter in a single afternoon, and laid it out, printed and shipped it the next morning -- a new speed record for me, and one I acheived precisely because I made that promise.  So why am I stressed?

"What am I thinking about?  What am I picturing?"

I turn my focus inwards, to contact my "emotional" brain -- the other half of my "multiple self".  It takes a while, because I don't really want to see.  I'm browsing the net and doing busywork precisely because I don't want to see.

"What am I so afraid of?"

I get out a pencil and a pad of paper.  I am the Life Mechanic;  I know how to do this.  I write the question down, quiet my mind, and prepare to "trust my feelings", like Luke getting ready to shoot down the Death Star.

- PANIC -

- SHAME -

- DESPAIR -

"It's alright, it's okay."

I get images, of previous deadline rushes, mostly at work, mostly from a good 15-20 years ago.  I recall being a young programmer taking on an overly-ambitious project, and feeling stupid and embarrassed, when, "halfway through", I realized I had no idea how long it would take to finish my project or if it even could be finished.

I remember working late into the nights after everyone left, not because I wanted to be there (the way I did when I first started programming), but because I knew the boss had trusted me against his better judgment, and was disappointed in the results.

"I forgive myself for not being able to finish."

So I try out the magic words now -- magic because I still don't know what the word "forgive" really means -- but when the words coincide just right with my state of mind, it has worked absolute wonders for me and other people.  I feel an easing, a slight relaxation, but not enough to release the iron grip of tension in my shoulders, my legs, my back.  I turn my eyes back to the notepad, where I've been writing the thoughts and impressions as I go.

As I trace the feeling of tension backwards through time, I don't get many hits, but they're strong ones.  Struggling to complete a home remodelling project before it was time to move in, struggling to move out again to go to Florida.  The ill-fated workshop I tried to conduct in college, and maybe a little of my early school days in Montserrat, having skipped a few grades and starting in the last month or two of the school year.  A third-grade science project my father ended up doing for me the night before the science fair.  And then...

"My parents are coming home!"

I get a really big hit, from childhood in Hawaii.  No real details.  Just a sense of total panic, an idea that I'd made some kind of mess, and was desperately trying to clean it up before my parents got home.  A vague idea of shame when they got there and found the mess.

And then, relief at my finding this mess, here and now.  Because even though understanding doesn't automatically bring change, it certainly enables it.  Among computer programmers, only beginners and incompetents would try to fix a bug without first trying to understand how the bug works.  The same is true, IMHO, of those of us who help people fix the bugs in their brains.

"It's okay.  I survived."

Finally, the tension begins to let go.  I can be aware, now, that my situation is not the same as it was.  My emotional brain has simply been bringing up states that match a pattern template -- no big deal.  Some reassurance, acceptance, and letting go, and the template is dropped.

And I take a few moments to reflect on how this pattern has influenced my career as a software developer.  I've been responsible for teams before, but I've avoided positions where I'd have had any responsibilities whose outcomes I couldn't control.  I always arrange and define my projects so I have fallback positions that allow me to meet deadlines without appearing to be late.

In some ways, this has been a positive thing, and certainly it has kept clients and employers happy.  In others, it has been an extremely negative thing for me personally.  Whenever I did commit to a project or deadline, it was always with hesitation and with a background sense of urgency and panic -- all the way through the project.  It was stressful, it was painful, and it was all so unnecessary.

- puzzlement -

"I can do this."

There is a paradox about these "brain bugs": we don't think we can do something, and then we really can't.  Even if the only thing stopping us is that feeling.  A self-fulfilling prophecy, a glitch in the matrix of our minds.  A word is made flesh, and dwells within us.  Then a window opens on the Source, we change it, and move on.

"No big deal."

Life, oddly enough, is only a big deal when we make it one.  And it doesn't matter if that big deal is positive or negative: an excess of hope and enthusiasm around something you're trying to change is usually just as indicative of a problem, as the despair and recrimination that follows the inevitable failure.

What successful people have in common is an efficiency of movement, a lack of fanfare, the sheer ease with which they perform.  If someone isn't making it look easy, they're not very good at what they do.

So I've learned to enjoy the paradox: when I help someone change, they're inevitably puzzled and surprised at the moment they realize that what used to be a problem is now "no big deal".  No excitement and enthusiasm, no struggle and frustration, just...

Normal.

"Just life".

No big deal.

Even when I do it to myself, like now, like today, I am still surprised.  Success and victory are not in the moments of great excitement and elation, but in the quiet moments where we sit down, and get to work.

I smile now, and turn to the computer.  Yes, I have a lot to do, but I can make enough time to blog about this.

Though the "dead line up" behind me, my future is still ahead.

And it's looking good.