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Beating yourself up & tearing yourself down.

December 18, 2014 by Zero Dean

“My life sucks.”
“I’m a failure.”
“I’m not where I want to be.”

It should be obvious, but even if you’re not exactly where you want to be in life — or you’re unsatisfied with your current situation — beating yourself up over the fact that you aren’t where you wish to be only serves to make things worse.

Rather than help, this kind of negative thinking puts the one person most capable of fighting for your well-being at a disadvantage. It turns you into your own enemy.

You wouldn’t tolerate a friend belittling your accomplishments, rubbing your mistakes in your face, or trying to put you down. So why would you accept that kind of behavior from yourself?

You don’t win an award for seeing how low you can go or how miserable you can make yourself feel.

If you have a tendency to do this, it’s time to stop. It’s time to take note of when your line of thinking is leading you in a downward spiral. It’s time to remind yourself that making yourself feel worse about whatever situation you find yourself in isn’t helpful or necessary and no good will come of it.

“This isn’t helping me. I need to stop thinking this way. I need to stop revisiting these thoughts. I need to focus on something else. I need to remember that, ‘This, too, shall pass’.”

While you may not be able to immediately change the situation you find yourself in, you can change is your attitude about it. And rather than focus on your problems, you can focus on solutions to your problems. Even if the most immediate solution is to stop beating yourself up — because that’s a problem you can solve.

It’s important to remember that success in anything is often comprised of many failures. And comparing your life to others isn’t fair. We are each on our own unique journey. No two people are following the same exact paths in life.

And not only do people rarely make their struggles known, they often don’t highlight their failures either. What you see when you look at others’ lives is often only a fraction of a complete picture.

“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.” — Steve Furtick

If revisiting the past in your mind makes you miserable or comparing yourself to others makes you feel like a failure, stop doing it. Because no amount of thinking about these things in this way is going to help you. No matter what you do, you cannot change the past.

The only thing you have complete control over is your attitude and how you choose to act in this moment. This moment matters.

Rather than waste time and energy tearing yourself down, use that time to focus on what you want to achieve. Taking steps to stop yourself from feeling worse is a start.

You, more than anyone, have the ability to be your own best friend, it seems a shame to waste that opportunity by becoming your worst enemy.

Retire those tired old dysfunctional thoughts. Push forward with new ones. Be thankful for what you have and work with it and take positive action.

You can be the hero of your life and the champion of your well-being, but first you have fully commit to the role.

And that transformation will only take place after you stop beating yourself up & tearing yourself down.

Don’t give power to your unfriendly thoughts.

—

*This isn’t about positive thinking or negative thinking. This is about stopping the barrage of unfriendly thoughts that lead one down a debilitating downward spiral that often leaves one feeling helpless and hopeless.

Negative thinking can actually lead to positive change, but it requires that one be in a mental state capable of finding the motivation to initiate that change. There is a huge difference between focusing on self-abuse that makes one’s self miserable and using negative thinking to initiate positive changes.

As I’ve written before, it’s ok not to be happy.

Related:

One less rhinoceros (intentions vs actions & dealing with mean people)

December 1, 2014 by Zero Dean

Treating people poorly in order to teach them a lesson — or to change their behavior in a positive way — is extremely ineffective. Furthermore, being disrespectful to people — because you think they deserve it — in order to get them to behave better often has the opposite effect.

Rather than give those who offend you an incentive to change, it often makes them feel more justified when they act badly (from your perspective) or do something contrary to your desires.

“Get a job you dirty bum!” isn’t helpful.

There isn’t a bum in the world who’s going to respond by saying, “This is good advice. I didn’t think of that. Thank you, sir. I’ll do it!”

Being rude to someone in order to elicit a positive change in behavior helps no one.

What about mean people, surely they deserve it?

The thinking goes something along the lines of: “By showing someone how hurtful, rude, or offensive they are by being hurtful, rude, or offensive to them, they won’t ever want to be mean to anyone ever again.”

No, it doesn’t generally work out that way.

By being mean to a mean person, you’re simply showing that person a type of behavior they’re already familiar with. And because it’s not new, it teaches them nothing.

It isn’t a lesson.

In most cases, all your negative actions will do is demonstrate that you can stoop to their level — or worse, you’ve just made a good example of how being mean to someone can be effective at inflicting pain.

No one wins this game.

And now, instead of just one person acting badly, there are two. And two people acting badly does not solve the problem of one person acting badly.

“But they were rude to me! They were asking for it!”

Being rude to someone because they were rude to you isn’t an excuse to act badly. You are always responsible for how you act, regardless of your intentions or how you are feeling.

Just because someone else acts like an idiot isn’t a valid reason to also act like an idiot.

The Power of Perspective

It is important to note that we judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge others by their actions.

People don’t know what you’re thinking. They don’t hear your internal dialogue. They can only assume what you’re thinking by interpreting how you act.

Cutting a guy off in traffic to teach him a lesson because his driving offended you in some way doesn’t work. From the other person’s perspective, it’s you that’s being offensive, not them.

Your offensive actions — as justified as they may seem to you — are not reasonable to the person who has to deal with them.

This difference in perspective is an important concept to understand because it affects every aspect of our lives where people are involved. Not only people, but companies and organizations as well.

Most people, no matter how badly they act, think they’re doing “good” for someone, even if that someone is simply themselves or, in the case of companies, their stockholders.

“I’m just following orders because I don’t want to lose my job. And if I lose my job, I won’t be able to support my family.”

Many poachers, for example, risk their lives to kill endangered animals not for sport and not because they don’t like the animals, but because it’s one of the few ways they know how to survive and support their families.

It doesn’t make it right, but from their perspective, they are justified in their actions.

“What is the life of a single rhinoceros if it can support my family for 5 years or more?”

And thus, we have one less rhinoceros. And then another. And another.

Everyone feels justified by their intentions in some way — regardless of what their actions may mean to other people, endangered species, or the environment.

Sometimes we’re the bad guy and we don’t even know it.

This is why an important habit to get into is to sometimes stop and ask yourself — regardless of your intentions — whether your actions in any given interaction are truly positive or negative.

“Is what I’m doing a true reflection of what I want out of this exchange and can I be proud of how I’m acting?”

Alternatively, it may help if you imagine the people you respect & admire most in the world are watching.

If your heroes were watching, would your behavior be something they would be proud of?

“Do I really want to raise my voice?”
“Do I really mean what I am saying?”
“Do my words really reflect how I feel inside?”
“Do I really want to act this way?”
“What would I say or do if I wasn’t so afraid of appearing vulnerable?”
“Is there a better way for me to act or to make a point?”

People only change when they want to.

You won’t change people for the better by treating them poorly, but you can influence people through caring, understanding, and by setting a good example.

You can treat and deal with people in a manner that suggests that there’s a better way than being rude, abusive, or revenge-seeking.

You can use the power of effective communication to say what you mean instead of resorting to offensive and aggressive tactics.

And sometimes it’s important to remember that it isn’t always other people that could benefit by altering their behavior and making changes for the better.

Sometimes it’s us.

Related:

Fear of self-expression is a form of self-imposed slavery

November 6, 2014 by Zero Dean

If you do the best you can to be a decent human being, show tolerance and kindness to others — and still live in fear of what people think of you, your possessions, your opinions, or your beliefs, and then alter your behavior to be “approved” by as many people as possible, that isn’t freedom, it’s a form of self-imposed slavery.

You become a slave to the idea that what other people might think is more important that exercising your ability to express your true self.

Have you ever avoided something as simple as clicking a “like” button or commenting on a post on social media because you were afraid of what people would think if they saw it? If so, then you’re doing it.

If your relationships are so fragile that something like a single like, share, or comment could end them (or cause an unfollow or other equivalent), then perhaps those are not the kind of relationships that are really adding any kind of value to your life.

And perhaps it’s time to ask yourself what the point of “collecting people” in your life is, if the sorts of people you’ve collected will judge you “unworthy” of their friendship and leave you the moment you truly express yourself.

This is an issue that goes far beyond how people act on social media, it’s a real-life problem as well.

Changing who you are to be liked by people may result in more people “liking” you, but it also means that those who “like” you are liking someone who is pretending to be someone or something they’re not.

And, ultimately, you’re sacrificing yourself (and your life) to do it. You’re sacrificing your freedom to express your true self in order to gain “friends” who don’t even like you for you.

In the end, this really makes no sense. Life is not a popularity contest. It’s not about collecting as many “friends” as possible. And no matter what you do, not everyone is going to like or agree with you anyway. That’s life.

Do you respect people who water themselves down, live in fear of being disliked, or pretend to be someone they’re not in order to gain favor? If not, then how can you expect to respect yourself if you do the same things?

“When you are brave enough to be yourself, you give others permission to do the same.”

Be your genuine self and you will find that those who stick around in your life are those who appreciate and respect you for who you truly are. They may not agree with everything you say, do, or believe, but they are far more likely to forgive you for your mistakes or lapses in judgement and stick by you not only during the high times in your life, but also the lows.

And you can live knowing that you’re not being judged by those who matter to you — and if you are, you still don’t live in fear of it, because it’s not your problem. When people judge you, it says more about them than it says about you.

And, in the off chance you suck as a human being and few people like you, then that’s perhaps a sign you have some things to work on to be a better person in an authentic way — and not someone who simply pretends to be one.

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

…

As far I’m concerned, if you’re tolerant and open-minded, I like having you in my life, regardless of your beliefs or some opinions you have that I don’t agree with (and vice-versa). Because ultimately, we help each other grow.

I’ve said it before, you don’t have to agree on everything to get along. And some of the best relationships are formed by people who don’t.

Related:

Confusing anger with passion

October 15, 2014 by Zero Dean

Probably the worst, patently false meme I’ve seen in a while:

“Listen to people when they are angry, because that is when the real truth comes out.”

People are much more likely to say intentionally hurtful things when they’re angry — and many times, these things are not at all a reflection of the truth.

“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.” — Ambrose Bierce

Anger is often referred to as a “secondary emotion” because it’s most often the result of feeling something else: hurt, rejected, scared, grief, or vulnerable.

When people are in this state is not a time others should rely on them to communicate clearly, or rationally. Nor is it a time when one should take special care to listen for the “real truth”.

“Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.” — Aristotle

Anyone who has ever been a teenager can probably remember saying something intentional hurtful to their friends or parents (such as, “I hate you!”) — because they were angry and wanted to inflict damage, not because they were expressing the truth.

The time to listen for the truth is not when people are angry. The time to listen for the truth is when they’re emotionally stable, clearly aware of what they’re saying, and capable of expressing it effectively.

“One of the greatest lessons we can learn in life is how to keep mute when the boiling ring of anger is dropped within us.” — Ikechukwu Izuakor

This meme is confusing anger with the positive aspects of passion.

You want to know what someone’s personal truth is?

Listen to people when they’re excited. Listen to the ideas they love to talk about. Listen when they speak with enthusiasm. Listen to what they speak about with passion.

Because the fire that lights people’s passions is a far more reliable source of truth than whatever it is they say when they are angry.

“It is wise to direct your anger towards problems — not people; to focus your energies on answers — not excuses.” — William Arthur Ward

Afterword: I should point out I’m separating passion (positive) from anger (negative), but according to the dictionary definition of “passion”, it can involve any intense emotion (including anger). But passion doesn’t necessarily involve anger — and anger doesn’t necessarily involve passion.

Passion, as I refer to it, is enthusiasm.

From the comments:

Mike: I think this flows out of a saying:

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off”. (This is attributed most often to Gloria Steinem, but other people are occasionally credited with it, too.)

And there is something there. Sometimes people are angry when they discover they’ve been deceived and use that anger to set the record straight.

The problem is in assuming that anger is a reliable indicator of truth, when it clearly isn’t.

Zero: Also:

“Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.” — Oscar Wilde

Like discontent, anger can sometimes have value as a trigger for change, but anger, as it is most often expressed, is negative. As a positive tool, anger is unreliable, at best.

Related:

Ignored vs unnoticed

September 4, 2014 by Zero Dean

There is a huge difference between being ignored and simply going unheard or unnoticed.

This applies to real life communication, but is especially applicable to social media.

Unless you have an audience of considerable numbers that is eagerly waiting to read whatever it is you have to say, it is not a question of if one of your social offerings will go unnoticed, but when.

And when it does happen, it’s important to realize that the lack of response is not at all an accurate reflection of what your audience thinks. Because if they didn’t see it, they can’t have an opinion about it.

There may also be times that your social offering simply isn’t best suited for the people who actually see it. This matters less when you have a huge audience, because the chances are good that at least some sampling of the people who follow you will see and like what you have to offer.

But if you are dealing with a smaller following, not having your post or comment connect with the first wave of people who “see” it can greatly reduce any chance it has of “getting out of the gate”

The reason for this is because of how social media posts are typically distributed. Popular (more interactive) posts get more popular. The more something is liked, shared, or commented on, the more it gets distributed — which results in more people seeing it, liking it, or commenting on it.

But there will be times when your post or comment, as great as it is, never gets out of the gate because it didn’t connect with the few people who first saw it.

And that’s normal. So if you’ve ever posted something and thought you were being ignored, it’s more likely you were going unnoticed.

And the vast majority of times this happens in real-life social situations, it is also not because people are actively ignoring you. It is again, simply because whatever you have said, done, or offered has gone unnoticed.

And if this happens to you often, this would be a good time to watch How to speak so that people want to listen.

Related:

Genuine kindness doesn’t have ulterior motives.

August 19, 2014 by Zero Dean

Genuine kindness doesn’t have ulterior motives.

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” — Samuel Johnson

The reward for being kind is inherent in the act of giving it.

“Love is always bestowed as a gift – freely, willingly and without expectation. We don’t love to be loved; we love to love.” — Leo Buscaglia

Give kindness and do good because you can. Because the world needs more people who do. And there’s no better person to do it than you.

Related:

Life is not a competition

April 30, 2014 by Zero Dean

“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” — Earl Nightingale

Never give up on what you desire in life just because someone else appears to have an easier time getting what they desire or is making progress more quickly than you are.

Remind yourself as necessary that life is not a competition and that some people will always make progress more quickly than others. That’s life.

But your life, your circumstances, and your goals are your own. Don’t let the simple fact that others are working on and achieving their goals deter you from working on and achieving your own.

Always remember that every little step you take towards a goal — no matter how small — is progress.

Related:

Accentuate the positive

February 7, 2014 by Zero Dean

Every day you have the power to bring out the best in people simply by sincerely highlighting those things you appreciate about them the most.

Whatever you focus on grows stronger. When you focus on those things you enjoy most about people (and life in general), you not only encourage more of the types of behaviors you like to see in others, you attract more of these types of things into your life.

The same is true when you look for the negative. Not only will you find it, you’ll magnify it.

This is why it’s important to be very deliberate with what you choose to focus on, because it is extremely easy to leapfrog from one negative thing to another until you suddenly find yourself overwhelmed, depressed, or in despair.

This is not to say we should ignore problems — or those traits in others we don’t like — only that when we direct out attention to these things, we remain solution-oriented, not problem focused.

Related: