Advanced Adulting

Adulting is a big subject, as you know, and there is no one right way to do or be an adult.  And there is no magick do it/fix it/be it button that any of us can push and bingo, we are there. It is an ongoing process that we live and refine and expand and deepen.

Adulting is not something we get up and go do.  Time to feed the cat. Time for work. Time to get something to eat. Gotta go adulting. No. We must consciously choose to become an adult -mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Our bodies do the work automatically for us physically in aging us but aging physically does not guarantee that we will become an adult. You see lots of grown people in our world behaving like adolescents or children. Further, we won’t somehow become adults once we get that job or house or relationship that we’ve been wanting. It is fine to want and to have those things, they just won’t deliver you to adulthood. Those things may saddle you with more responsibility but they won’t, in and of themselves, deliver that magical quality of being an adult.

Becoming and being an adult is a choice that must be made consciously. It isn’t something that can happen by default or osmoses or just by being successful. We all must find our own way. There will be no one right way and no one wrong way to adult. There is no playbook but there are things that we can do and become that will get us ever closer to the goal. There are lots of choices to be made along the way. “What if I make a wrong choice?” You will. We all do. The point is to forgive yourself and then make a new and, hopefully, better choice.

One of the choices we learn over time to make is to show up and direct our impact. When you find yourself in a situation where either you are needed and have been called upon or just happen to find yourself - show up.  That means bringing all of you, your strengths, talents, your abilities, your intellect, your compassion etc., – to the situation in trying to help ensure a positive and responsible outcome. It is about consciously directing the positive impact you are wanting to have on others or in a situation. That doesn’t mean the outcome will always go the way you are intending as there are always other humans involved in the process. However, you will be able to look at yourself in a mirror and be proud of what you contributed, proud of how you conducted yourself.

Be as present as you can and bring as much of the best of you as you can. Leave trying to be perfect out of the equation.

Secondly, Adults know when to call a time out, if you will. To take a step back. Take a breath. The old truth - think before you speak will save you more problems and heartache than you can imagine. Be sure before you decide to fight, bleed and die on some hill that the principle or idea or perspective you are willing to die for is still something that you either believe or still has real value and is important for you. And that, whatever it is you feel so strongly about is actually applicable to the situation you find yourself encountering. Also, put life on pause every so often to take some time to replenish when you need it. We all need time to replenish and recharge.

Thirdly, adults continually add to their self-esteem. Now I have posted a two-part blog post and a two-part podcast about a process that, if worked with, will not only help you generate a real and tangible self-esteem that you can lean on, but it can also potentially change who you are and change your life. It did mine when I learned it. It is also essential to adulthood. It is an on-going process and practice of self-care whose benefits cannot be overstated. Remember, real self-esteem is not some ego-driven excuse to make everything all about you. This process is indispensable to becoming and being an adult.

Adults put their best foot forward out of respect for themselves. Even when you don’t have but 25% to give whomever or whatever, you give the best 25% you can. For many, settling for being mediocre, just getting by, doing just enough, is all many think is required. In truth, a life of mediocrity is seriously soul crushing. In mediocrity, there is no soaring, there is no experiencing the heights. There is no transcendence. And there is no magic.

Adults trust. They learn to trust themselves – beginning with knowing and trusting their own mental and emotional processes. When you really are conversant with knowing and trusting your process, you will then have a sturdy foundation on which to build the ability to trust yourself and others. Trust is also integral to self-esteem. And there is a blog and podcast devoted to trust available to you as well.

Adults are flexible. Are you flexible enough to change? Are you flexible enough to let love change you? Are you flexible enough to grow and change? Are you flexible enough to do something or many things differently? Change your beliefs? Change the choices you habitually make? This is a very big subject. But just looking at how flexible or inflexible you are is a great way into some very valuable self-reflection. Adults self-reflect.

And, yes, adults do enjoy their lives and have fun – lots of it. Only fun changes and evolves over time, as it should. Everybody may have loved your slow cooker chili in college, and you may have been a great cook back then and you may still love cooking for those you love and care about. However, your repertoire hopefully will have grown and expanded by now. You get the point. But yes, have fun and enjoy the gift of your life. Keep expanding and exploring new ways to have fun and let go of things that aren’t so much fun anymore.

Now, all of the above, if nothing else, will get you a long, long way toward and even into real honest-to-goodness adulting. But wait, there’s more. Adulting is an on-going process. In the process of growth, there is always more.

One last quality of being an adult and for many, this is very hard. Adults are future oriented and always looking to the future we want to create. When many of us think about the future, we simply take our past and throw it into the future with the intent that it will have all of the good things that we have liked about our life, but that the future will be an even better version of that past. Or, for the pessimists, we don’t expect anything to change and resign ourselves to it, hoping it really won’t be all that bad. Now there are all sorts of permutations about what we want and/or expect our future to be like. Humans like continuity, comfort, safety, having a sense of belonging. There is nothing wrong with any of that, to a point. There is nothing wrong wit h having cherished traditions or rituals or favorite activities or whatever that we want our future to contain. Certainly not. But, as mentioned above, adults are flexible. Be willing to be flexible about even the good stuff we take from our past and throw out there in front of us, hoping it will be part of our future.

Now, we aren’t going to get sidetracked here discussing the future as it is a very big subject and is really a topic for another day. But here is the rub. What about the stuff you can’t imagine for your future? No matter how limited or expansive our imaginations are, it still has limits. 20 years ago, no one would have imagined living through the Great Recession, COVID, the spread and ubiquity of social media, the ability to have your McDonald’s and Starbucks delivered to your house, CGI driven movies, a Black President, school shootings, electric cars, or streaming. Yet here we are. All of us, in our lives, lived through things – good and bad, that we couldn’t have foreseen or imagined. In your forward thinking, be willing to hold space for the stuff you can’t yet imagine - good stuff, different stuff, and stuff that will call upon your strengths to deal with.

So how do we get there? How do we even begin to be the forward looking, future building adults we want to be and are capable of being?

It starts with – What qualities do you value in yourself and others? What are the things you strive for? I’ll give you an example. When I wrote the series on Dating, I wrote about qualities I would value in a relationship – Trust, Loyalty, Respect, Responsiveness, Mutual Reliance, Intimacy, Passion. And, in order to have those things with someone else, I have to develop those qualities within myself.  Those qualities are ideals that I strive for in who I am becoming though I will never fully reach them. I will never perfectly be 100% of any of those things, but as I strive toward those ideals, I will be more of them as I move into my future.

What are your ideals? Happiness? Joy? Wisdom? Truth? Love? Kindness? Compassion? Dignity? Hope? Well-being? Freedom? Perseverance? Responsibility? Imagination? Creativity? In pursuing those ideals in your life, what are the things you will and won’t do in that pursuit? For example, suppose happiness is one of the ideals you decide to pursue in the living of your life. What things will you and won’t you do to bring yourself closer to that ideal? Suppose you decide that, “Well, being able to do whatever I want whenever I want makes me happy, regardless of the impact it might have on others.” Is that really OK with you? Would it be OK to lie to someone (or yourself) in order to be happy? Would it be Ok to be hurtful, neglectful, or irresponsible toward someone, manipulating them into doing what I want them to do in order for me to be happy? Yes, I am exaggerating to make the point. That said, the things we will and won’t do in pursuit of our goals and ideals form our principles.

As you look to build your future, what ideals, like becoming a more understanding person, are worth aiming for? What principles will you adhere to in that quest? They will set the tone and tenor of so much of that future. Adults have ideals and they also develop the principles that they employ in the pursuit of those ideals. What lines, what boundaries will you and won’t you cross in seeking to be happy or truthful or persevering or understanding or compassionate? I will be responsible in my striving for happiness but I won’t be capricious or reckless or thoughtless in that same pursuit. The more we hold to those positive principles and the less we cross the boundary into those negative principles, the things we told ourself we wouldn’t do – lie, cheat steal, gossip, being unkind or thoughtless, or whatever – the more character we will develop and the more self-knowledge we will have.

Adults develop ideals that they strive for in their growth and principles of how they choose to live their lives – the things they consistently will and won’t do in the living of their lives. And when you combine ideals and principles, their synergy produces character. Adults develop character.

One last thing about values. Make sure that the values you choose to live by are yours and not those given to you along the way by parents, relatives, friends, co-workers, or whomever. Now, you may decide – consciously – that some of the values you’ve picked up along the way are fine and you want to keep them. And that is fine as long as it is your choice and not something you have chosen to adopt out of some sense of obligation or duty. A couple of examples.

FOMO. I have heard from clients and friends about the pressure they feel to keep up with everything and everyone in order to make sure they aren’t missing out on anything. Now, they often feel that that pressure is coming from others but in truth, they are choosing to put that pressure on themselves and live with it. I know of a young woman who is very accomplished in her career and works very very hard. She then goes home and gets on line where she spends hours trying to keep up with family, friends, trends, the latest going on with everybody, everywhere, about everything. This is obviously impossible. When does she squeeze in time for her live-in partner? When does she take time to decompress, for her own sanity? Whose rule is it that she or any of us must keep up on everything or we might miss out? Miss out on what? Of all she strives to keep up on or that any of us would try to keep up with, it can’t all have equal value for us. We have to learn to pick and choose what has value to us in the living of our lives and learn to let other things go.

I read recently that so many Millennial women and men have reached a point of exhaustion trying to be the perfect parent. They are bombarded with endless blogs, podcasts, videos, full of advice on what they must do in order to be the perfect parent who produces the perfect children who are over achievers and exceptional and are competitive to get into the best prs-schools, and who will excel at everything and if they don’t, they have failed as parents. They overschedule themselves and their kids in activities that keep them on the move constantly with their 100% focus on the exceptional development of their kids, leaving no time to maintain their relationships with anyone, often including their spouses – beside the division of labor of childrearing tasks – except for the time they can steal to document their lives for social media. The question would be, who are you living your life for? Who told you that the endless assault of information of what you must do trumps what you might figure out and enjoy living on your own? Humanity has somehow managed to survive 10,000 years without being enthralled to all of the self-appointed experts who have an opinion about how you should live your life and raise your kids and do it all perfectly.

What are the ideals you want to pursue? What are your principles that you live by? What do you value and are they your values or did you pick them up from someone else? Know why you value what you value.

Finally, a few other things to think about. Who are performing your life for? When I was in graduate school, one of my professors introduced me to the idea of the insentient other. The insentient other is the person or people or deities in the back of our minds who we feel is always watching us with an approving or disapproving eye and we tailor our lives, our behaviors, our goals, everything we do is either for their approval or to be more like them and, in being like them, gaining their approval. That insentient other can be a parent, sibling, some other relative, or teacher or clergy member or some public figure. They can be someone we admire or someone whose censure we fear. For some, it is God’s judgment we run from, rather than becoming the kind of person we’d be unafraid to present to our Maker.

Keeping someone always present in the back of our mind to whom we perform our lives – friends, family, co-workers, society – the folks up in the cheap seats, is a behavior that has been around for a very long time. What has made it ever more complicated is the age of social media in which we now live. We aren’t playing our lives to someone we keep in the back of our minds. We are playing our lives very publicly to anyone who will watch and listen. Everything we do, say, think, everywhere we go, gets documented and presented to what we hope will be an adoring public for their approval. This is crazy making and, at its extreme, can wind up exhausting you and alienating you from yourself because, in truth, the attention and approval you are seeking needs to come from you. The standards on which you evaluate yourself, your goals, hopes, dream desires, you character, etc., needs to come from you. That doesn’t mean you are oblivious to feedback you get along the way. But it does mean that you become the final authority – ever growing, ever changing, ever expanding – who gets the final word on your life and who you are choosing to be and become.

If you find yourself playing your life to either the cheap seats or to some particular other who is always present in the back of your mind, always watching, always judging, begin taking your power back. It will be a process that will take time but, in the end, you will be way more empowered, less exhausted, and healthier physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. “They” may never give you the approval you seek and desire. But as you begin to be the one to evaluate and approve of yourself, it will be like the credit card commercial says – “Priceless.”

As we talked about when we talked about self- esteem, some people get their self-esteem from what they intend to do some day, but they never get around to it. Never finding the time or the means or the method of initiating those plans, projects, goals. But they derive their self-esteem from their intention to someday do or be whatever. Or the goals set are unrealistic or fanciful. “I intend to be the influencer of all influencers forever.” I will become the perfect . . . whatever.” “I will never have a bad day or a down moment or make a mistake.” You get the idea. Certainly, set goals and hopes and dreams and then begin taking realistic steps toward implementing them, realizing that it won’t happen overnight. You will make mistakes along the way that you can learn from. And you will learn about yourself and your abilities and strengths and ability to persevere along the way. One more thing, remember that self- esteem comes from a self-evaluation process that you conduct within, not from something outside of yourself. For further information, we have blog posts and podcasts on self-esteem available to you.

This goes along with who are you playing your life to? When you do something well or right or do something good for someone else, is it enough for you to know or do you need to tell everybody? Adults are content with that knowledge within themselves. When they act with integrity – doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do, even when no one else is looking, holding tenaciously to their principles – it is enough for them to know. It needn’t be broadcast.

Do you have your own definition of success? What does success mean to you? What would be fulfilling? We don’t all need or want the same things and most often, however much we may enjoy the things, the trappings (car, house, job, etc.) that success may bring, those trappings rarely bring the fulfillment we anticipate from being successful. How do you define success?

Regarding self-esteem, developing character, and operating within your principles - Are you one of those people who believes that the ends justify the means or that the ends never justify the means – getting there at any price, by any means. Life is a process and everything we do and seek is part of that process. As we strive for what we want out of life, how we get there is all that matters. The means never justify the ends. Ever. It is how you get there, wherever and whatever there is, and who you become in the process is all that matters. So, are you adding, in a positive sense, to who you are becoming?

As you can see, adulting is not about doing so much as it is about being but that is true for life. All of the above are things to think and feel about and apply as life calls on you be more and more the adult in a world where there are too many people with grown bodies who have never progressed beyond being children or adolescents. In our society, you see society tolerating behaviors from other adults that we would never abide in our kids. Become more and more of an adult. Bring that light to a world that needs it. You will be amazed how it will improve your life. It won’t always be a walk on the beach but in the end, the peace of mind; the self-esteem and self-value; the strengths and abilities; you’ll learn and develop will be worth every ounce of effort expended in that process of becoming a true adult.

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Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc; on Instagram – livingskillsatlanta; You Tube - Living Skills@livingskillsinc, Facebook - Living Skills, Inc

Adulting

I love the term “adulting.” It sounds like something we are going to get dressed up for and go do. Nothing like a night on the town adulting. Right? The thing is, adulting is something and someone we become and be, not something that we get up and go do.

Now, clearly, adulting would be a lot easier if someone would tell us what the hell an adult really is and what they are supposed to do and how to do it. Our bodies, like it or not, deliver us physically to adulthood. We suddenly reach age 21 and we can legally vote and drink and can serve in the armed forces and are supposed to be able to fend for ourselves. No manuals. “Just do it,” is what is expected. But how prepared are we to be an adult, especially when we aren’t quite sure what that means? We may have arrived at physical adulthood but that is no guarantee that we are ready for what life is going to throw at us.

By that age I was my sole support in the world financially. So, I had to focus on survival. I knew how to do laundry, make my bed, keep a clean house, grocery shop, pay my bills, treat others the way I’d like to be treated, etc., but that all seemed to fit into the whole “these are things that are part of survival” motif that characterized my 20s. Work and chores were great places to hide from the terror of the question – Now what?

As many of us think that adulting is something we go do, we often fall into the misconception that if we do enough “doing,” that we will somehow, in all of that doing, become an adult by default. “By God, they kept at it long enough and it paid off.” We think – “Once I graduate college; once I get married; once I get that job or that title or that salary; then I’ll be an adult. Once I become a parent; once I buy my own house; once I do or have whatever, then it will just happen somehow. Some secret knowledge about adulting will be imparted to me or I will be changed by having whatever and then I’ll know what being an adult means and how to do it.” Those things are all fine, but they are trappings, things that adults can have. But having them won’t make you something or someone you weren’t previously to that except that you may now be someone with an expensive car to pay off or high mortgage payments or a high stress job.

Others are so terrified by the prospect of “having” to be an adult, that they avoid the trappings and anything that goes with them like the plague. “Don’t want to grow up and be an adult. Don’t need or want house payments, car payments, job pressures, or anything or anyone who keeps me from doing whatever I want whenever I want without any hassles.” And we have all known people like that. I understand that motivation all too well. “Just leave me alone and don’t bother me with all of that bs. Leave me be.” OK. But that is just as much of a choice as single-mindedly pursuing the things we want in life and taking on all of those responsibilities that we think once shouldered, will make us an adult.

Becoming and being an adult is a choice that must be made consciously. It isn’t something that can happen by default or osmoses or just by being successful.

Some of us turn into either our parents or the parent we think the rest of the world needs. We become super-judgmental about what “they” are doing – whether that be on a personal or professional or citizen level. “They” need to grow up and get it right, do it right, pull themselves up by the bootstraps, be responsible, etc. And we have no reservations about letting them know what we think. One dirty secret here is that we also often turn those judgments on ourselves and deny to ourselves that we are doing it. And the more we judge ourselves and others, the more alienated we can begin to feel because we are not like “those” people and that makes us feel more superior. We begin to judge things in terms of things are black or white and there are no gray areas. As example, you see a lot this kind of behavior in our current politics. Judgment of others that leads to feeling alienated from people who think or feel differently from us. In that feeling of alienation from those who don’t agree with us on everything, we become more and more distant from others as we become more and more trapped by the better-thans of our ego, all-the-while telling ourselves that we are just being responsible adults.

Remember early in the Trump administration when an anonymous letter was published, I believed in the New York Times, assuring the rest of us and the world that there were indeed adults in the room, working to keep his worst or most misguided impulses in check? The thing is you aren’t an adult if you could have done something upfront to have prevented your now having to step up, in whatever the situation is, and anoint yourself an adult and the adult who is going to now, after the fact, make things all better. That kind of behavior won’t get you there either even if you did tell them so before things went awry.

Some of us try becoming adults by either being just like Mom and Dad or we decide to be the exact opposite of them. Two sides of the same coin. Some of us had great parents who we admire and respect. We take them as our roles models and try to do it just like they did but we can’t because we are not them. We may develop some of their most admirable traits like compassion, humor, even-temperedness, fairness, curiosity about the world, or expertise in a particular subject, being well-read, never being late. Whatever. And there is nothing wrong with developing for yourself traits that you admire in others. But we have to learn to do it our way. As example, your mother may have been an amazing cook and family dinner was a time of reconnecting with one another and re-establishing those familial bonds on a daily basis. But times have changed. What traditions will you develop and establish with your family that help reconnection and bonding in an age where time is at a premium and there are so many competing interests for your time and attention?

Others decide they won’t be anything like their parents, for whatever their reasons. My friend Fred knows a guy who had a very distant father. Dad worked a lot and was never around and had little interest or involvement in his life except as provider. So, Fred’s friend was very involved in his kids’ lives while they were young. But as they got older, and he and his wife divorced, and he wasn’t around nearly as much. He retreated into work and over time defaulted into being just like his father in more ways than anyone would ever dare mention to him.

The point here is how you do adulting will involve a series of many choices, lots of trial and error, and finding your own way. My parents came from a generation that was told by the “experts” that being affectionate toward your children – hugging, picking them up, kissing them, etc. – was not good for them as that kind of mollycoddling would not prepare them to navigate their own way in a tough world. In today’s world, we’ve gone to the other extreme where people complain about helicopter parents who are so over-involved with their kids that those kids can’t function without checking in with Mom and Dad first. And so it goes in all arenas of life. Who do you trust and listen to on “how to” do the many things that adulthood requires of you in many arenas? We all have to find our own way. No, we don’t and won’t do that in a void. But there will be no one right way and no one wrong way to adult.

Some people believe that adults must be serious all the time. “You’ve got responsibilities now.” You are expected to always have your wits about you and always know what to do in every situation. No spontaneity. No new dreams or new goals. No flying off the handle emotionally. No being silly. Be practical and rational. All of that is nonsense. Spontaneity at times can bring a sense of refreshment to life in a way nothing else will. You just can’t plan being spontaneous. If you look back over your life, you will see that there were many times you spontaneously took an action – whether work or fun – you made a decision and took an action and only in looking back do you realize that it was spontaneously done. Yes, you can have fun and still be an adult. Just please do it responsibly. And no, you won’t know what to do in every situation but what will save you is your process of thinking and feeling things through and arriving at good decisions and choices that you know you can trust.

Can you still be practical and rational as an adult and have happy endings or is that only in fairy tales? I mean you have responsibilities now. Yes, you can have lots of happy ending. And no, adulting does not mean being perfect. That is not possible and for many, trying to be perfect leads them into the trap of needing to be right all the time. That isn’t possible either.

One of the best ways to become an adult is to practice just showing up. Good times, bad times, you show up. It is a form of being responsible. Now I don’t mean being a martyr about it. The whole, “All I’ve done for you, sacrificed for you, etc.,” thing. No. But in any situation where either you are needed or just find yourself, you show up willing to help try to ensure a positive and responsible outcome. It is about consciously directing the positive impact you are wanting to have on others. No whining, even when you don’t want to be involved. No finger pointing and blaming. Taking care of business when it needs taking care of and also be willing to have fun and celebrate when it is called for. It isn’t all about good and purposeful work all the time. Being powerful – willing and able to take an action when needed, even if that action is just being there and listening to someone who needs in that moment to be heard and acknowledged. Show up and direct your impact.

I’ll give you a quick example about directing impact. A young supervisor, who has a ton of potential, used to react at the level of her employees. If they were mad or upset, that is the way she’d react – mad or upset. She would match their level of intensity, over-powering their volume to try to force them into submission, which always resulted in escalating the situation. She learned to control her reactions and she learned to listen, worked to de-escalate the employee or the situation and then she’d decide calmly on a solution. Her staff respected her for it and trusted her more. She became the adult in the room.

Adults also know when to step back and take a break. Pause. Sometimes pause can mean taking a breath before responding to something or someone in haste. Hasty responses are usually not a good idea. Think before you open your mouth. It will lead to more directing of your impact and better outcomes. Often times pause means to take a break when you need to replenish, recharge. Quiet time or walk in nature or music or meditation or whatever works for you. Regularly take some time to think and reflect and let go of whatever you are holding on to that is no longer needed. And, certainly, on occasion, whether alone or with a loved and trusted other, do the whining I told you above you not to do. Whine. Bitch. Yell. Stomp your feet. Rant. Rave. Get it all the fuck out of your system. Seriously. And then let all that crap go. It will save your nerve body.

Show up. Direct your impact. Be conscious. Do it responsibly for all involved. Be willing to take responsible actions as needed. But do remember that you are not responsible for everything or everybody, everywhere, all the time, etc. Know when to take a break. And know how to set appropriate boundaries.

Adults continually add to their self-esteem. Now, I have posted a two-part blog post and a two-part podcast about what real self-esteem is and how to do it in a very practical way. Thing is, even when we have plenty, it is always good to add more. Self-esteem is our evaluation of ourselves. We evaluate ourselves on several criteria. Are we honest with ourselves and with others all of the time? I talked about dealing with ourselves in bad faith. Being brutally honest with ourselves is a tremendous strength and a sign of courage. Brutally honest with ourselves about everything and tactfully and compassionately honest with others. About everything. Honesty is the key and will see you through. Self-esteem comes from having personal integrity – doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. Keeping our commitments as best we can. Saying what we mean and doing what we say. Self-esteem comes from being responsible. And it comes from being trustworthy and learning to trust yourself. There is more to it, and it is available for you to read or listen to.

Always put your best foot forward. Don’t do things half-assed. Why? Out of respect for yourself. No, none of us is always ready in every moment to do that. There will be times where we’re tired or something has thrown us off our game and putting 100% of our best out there just ain’t gonna happen. Then give it 75% or 50% or even 25% if that’s all you got right then. But even during those 25% times, don’t do it half-baked or half-hearted. This is not a demand of perfection decreed to us by the universe. It is about being present, focused, and paying attention to details. A side benefit of that is that it helps you become more proactive in your own life. You’ll respect yourself more and be proud of the way you conducted yourself. Those are the kinds of things adults do.

Adults always keep tucked in the back of their minds a vision, and a feeling, of where they want their life to go, what they want to create for themselves as far as the experience of and direction of their lives. Who and what do you want to become? And then you take whatever life dishes out to you and make it in service of that larger vision, that larger feeling. Life can seem at times out to get us. As the old saying rightly goes, it isn’t what happens to you in life that matters. It is what you do with what happens to you. Who do you want to be? Where do you want your life to go? What do you want the experience to feel like? Having dreams and visions of where your life is going and who you are becoming very directly informs your responses in the present. Thus,  doing what I am doing because of what is happening to me – good, bad or neutral – is influenced by the future I am trying and wanting to create for myself and my life.

Adults trust. Now, I’ve done a blog and podcast on some of the basics. It is available to you. I want to add a couple more pieces. Adults learn to trust themselves, meaning, they trust their intellect, their thought processes. We talked about this as also being a part of self-esteem. Adults trust their intuitions. That does not mean demanding that your intuitions be 100% accurate. Clearly not. Trusting yourself emotionally, what you are feeling. Trusting your body to tell you what it needs as you learn to listen to its messages. Honor your body in that way. Pay attention to it. As we learn to trust these different parts of ourselves, we become more trusting of the whole, more trusting of ourselves.

Adults are flexible. In our busyness, many of us get really invested in our routines, routines that help manage the chaos by bringing some consistency to it. But there is also the risk that in seeking that consistency, we also become it – responding the same way in every situation, eventually losing our ability to adopt new perspectives while becoming rigid, unyielding, unchanging. Reacting the same way to everything in the name of consistency or habit. The last angry man or the perpetual victim. You lose perspective and the ability to make new and different choices. Not a good look. Leave yourself the flexibility to react in a way that feeds your self-esteem and helps you to learn more about yourself as you grow and change. There is no one right way or only one way to run your life. There are many paths to where you want to go. And there are many you’s – friend, parent, worker, boss, sibling, nerd, spouse, artist, poet, dancer, gamer, singer, baker, writer, son or daughter, etc. Don’t be inflexible in those roles either. Allow them to evolve with you as you grow and change.

Finally, adults seek to have fun and enjoy their lives. Not suggesting it’s party time all the time. Enjoying and loving your life, yes, and in that, consciously creating fun. And as you grow and change, what is fun will change as well. I mean if you are still honoring that promise that you made to yourself when you were 16 that you’d always be a head-banger, at age 40 - maybe not so much. Consciously seek fun and create some joy responsibly.

Those are some of the salient qualities of an adult. The self-esteem posts are a gold mine of things that separately and as a whole will be invaluable in getting you to a place where you will actually welcome and claim and embrace being an adult. There are lots of distractions out there that could keep you away from the many gifts from making and staking this claim. And there’s lots of misinformation about what it’s about and how to do it.

One last piece regarding being an adult, it isn’t so much about what you do but how you do it. What you do is important, yes, but it is how you do the doing. The ends never justify the means. It is all about process – your process. All of the above will help. And one day, when you least expect it, not only will you discover with some surprise that you no longer fear or misunderstand adulting, but you will also discover – Yes, I am an adult.

© 2022   Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Self-Care Is Self-Esteem – Part 2

Last time we talked about the fact that self-esteem is a real, on-going need. It is fundamental that we work toward meeting our real needs. Additionally, when you learn how to earn it from yourself, self-esteem can help you make better decisions and choices in life. You can be inspired to not let your life get stale or routine or become trapped in old emotional or mental patterns that can be limiting, if not destructive.

There are all kinds of ideas out there in popular culture about what self-esteem is and isn’t. The bottom line is that self-esteem is your evaluation of you.

In Part 1, we talked about that in order to have more self-esteem, you need to determine that you are a powerful person meaning - you give yourself the permission to take actions in life, to make decisions, etc. You don’t wait on others to tell you it is OK to do so. You don’t rely on others telling you what to do. And you do already have the authority to give yourself that permission - to be powerful enough to take the actions you need to take. None of us are helpless and we are not victims. Power is the willingness and the ability to act, to take action.

Also, self-esteem comes from working to get better and better at thinking and feeling. Look at and reflect upon your patterns of doing each and see where you can improve and grow. Finally, it is essential to evaluate your character. Do you act with integrity? Always? There is no self-esteem without integrity.

We concluded that discussion with Three Things to Do Daily - Be brutally honest with yourself about everything and tactfully honest with others. Be responsible. All or at least most of the time and always about the big things. You don’t have to be perfect. And integrity - Doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do.

All of the above is very doable and most of you do some or most of this already. If you have not read Part 1 or listened to the podcast, I would encourage you to do so. All of that said, what else is there to Self-Esteem?

A big part of self-care and, thus, self-esteem, is seeking to understand yourself. Why are you the way you are? As a silly example - “Well, I’m a Taurus, so that’s why I’m stubborn.” Seriously? Would you accept that excuse from someone else? Why are you stubborn? You like to be right? You hate change? You think you know it all? You don’t trust other people’s opinions or knowledge? What? You get the point. No, you don’t need to call me and do six months of counseling to figure out why you like strawberry ice cream. You just do. OK. Fine. But when you start to run into things like you realize that your lack of trust in love is messing up your relationships, then maybe it would be a good idea to understand why you don’t trust love rather than do without it in your life. Just saying. Learn to understand yourself.

Why do you immediately get defensive when someone asks you a question? Why do you fear losing yourself in a relationship? Why do you like challenges? Why do you hate challenges? Why do you feel like you have to prove yourself to everybody else? Why do you love the thrill of rollercoasters? Why do you love change? Why do you hate change? Why are you always drawn to the “bad” boys or “bad” girls? It is those kinds of things that can trip us up that we should start with. Once you have recognized and acknowledged the pattern, go deeper. Why do I hold on to these patterns or habits? What can I learn about me here?

Also, it is of paramount importance to seek to understand, at least on a working level, other people. Understanding does not mean that you have to agree or be the same, nor does it mean that you have to convert them to your way of thinking or being, nor be converted to their way of thinking or being. It is part of respect – toward self or others – to acknowledge differences and we all are different. I will give you an example of how this might play out in a relationship.

In Dating – Part 4 – Preparing Yourself for the Rigors of Dating – we talked about the Five Love Languages. The 5 Love Languages is a method of understanding how people prefer to give and receive affection. How, in some sense, we feel loved. Comprehending what has meaning to us in a relationship. I recently worked with someone who is in what she reported to be a really good relationship but there was one hurdle. Her partner expressed affection through lots of touching. She didn’t like being touched all of the time. Didn’t mean she didn’t like sex. She did. She just did not like the feeling of having her boundaries, her physical space, invaded all of the time by constantly being touched. She is like me in that our primary love language is acts of service.

Her partner could not understand that.  His primary love language is physical touch. So, who has to change here? Neither of them, in truth. The place to start is having the understanding of each other’s priorities. Have that conversation or series of conversations rather than, “Well, you don’t love me because you won’t let me touch you whenever I want to,” or “You never help me around the house.” So, instead of packing up my marbles and storming off, as we understand one another (and ourselves here), we can build stronger and longer lasting bridges toward one another by making accommodations over time out of respect and understanding. And in that seeking to honestly understand ourselves and someone else or other people in general, we also will generate more self-esteem from ourselves for ourselves.

Also, in seeking understanding, seek meaning. What do things mean to you? You are the only one who has the authority to make that decision. In the example above, what does it mean that one partner does not want to feel like she is being pawed or petted all of the time? It means, at least to her, that she wants to be related to in a way where she feels seen and heard as something and someone more than a sex partner. She wants to be related to on all levels as someone worthy of attention, affection, respect, compassion, and being understood, rather than constantly dealing with, “If you don’t let me touch your endlessly, you don’t love me,” which would not be true. Now I am exaggerating this a bit to make the point.

What do things mean to you? Another seemingly silly example. “If I can’t get to the grocery store early in the week, it causes me anxiety.” OK. We have established that understanding. Now, what does that mean? Well, it could mean I like to have my chores out of the way, so my weekend is free. It could mean that when I go, it gives me some time alone to decompress and be productive at the same time. It could mean that when I go on the weekend and the shelves are picked over and the store is out of what I need and want, it makes me unhappy. What do things mean to you? And what does something mean to someone else? I know someone with chronic pain issues, and they say, “I feel like shit,” a lot. Yeah, I understand that part, but I have no idea what that means. Does it mean the same thing every time they say it? Is it always about their physical discomfort or does it mean something else?

Bottom line – seek to understand yourself and then seek to understand others, even if you don’t agree with them or have the same belief system as them or have any desire to be like them. And seek to understand what things actually mean to you – The Kroger cashier was short-tempered with you. Does that mean they dislike you or were having a bad day or they were just really busy? And seek to understand what things mean to others. I am not trying to turn you all into therapists but if you will work with understanding and meaning, you will become better humans with more self-esteem.

This next step correlates to the third step in Part 1, in which I recommended that you evaluate your own character. We talked about it in terms of looking at establishing integrity and principles, and thus character. Do I live by my principles like not consciously hurting others? Do I do have integrity? Am I a person who keeps my word, etc.? Do I have the courage of my convictions? In this step, take it to the next level. Look at and evaluate your motivations. What motivates the actions you take? Are my actions taken with the motivation, the intention, of being honest; having integrity; being a caring person; establishing a greater level of closeness; whatever; or am I motivated by expediency? Expediency meaning - “I’ll get to all of the character stuff later when I have time or when it is more convenient but for right now, let’s keep things simple at all costs.” (or) “Let’s just go with whatever feels good at the moment or with what meets my desire for immediate gratification.” “I need leverage here, so I am going to manipulate the situation. I’ll just try to see what I can get away with here.”

Now, in Part 1, we talked at some length about dealing with yourself in bad faith. When you look at your motivations and intentions, you will know what is true for you, though you might hate to think it true. In a relationship, I want this and you want that, and that can be anything from where we go to dinner to establishing the boundaries and rules of our relationship and anything in between. And instead of working through the process of understanding, and that can be a quick process, I choose to manipulate you to get what I want whether that means Chinese for dinner rather than Mexican, or having an open relationship even though that is not what you want. Suppose you are having a disagreement with a family member or friend or loved one and they will say and do anything to be right, to win the argument, or they just want to shut you down. They want this to happen now – thus the sense of expediency. Clearly this kind of behavior is not OK, even if it reflects their lack of self-esteem.

A work example. How many of you have had the experience of working for a supervisor or manager who will say and do anything, out of a sense of expediency, to get you to do what they want right then? What they are saying or what they want may not even make rational or logical sense but nevertheless, they want you to do X and they will manipulate you into doing it. Or a manager who is such a control freak that if you walked in and said, “The sky is blue,” the response would be either, “Yeah but except when . . .,” or, “It is not. It’s . . .,” and they will argue you to the mat until you give up in exhaustion. This is obviously neither leadership nor even good or effective management. But, for them, it is expedient. It is what they need and want right in the moment. These people will not have much of any self-esteem to speak of and, having had exposure to these kinds of managers at some point in your life, you are acquainted with this kind of behavior and its potential impact.

Evaluate your own motivations and intentions. Are they motivated from character and integrity or from a need of expediency? The more of this kind of evaluation you do, and the happier you are with what you find, the more self-esteem you will have. And if you don’t like what you find, you are always in a position of power to do something about it.

Next step, this corresponds to the second step in Part 1 which is about honestly evaluating how good you are at thinking and feeling. How good are you at each? What are your patterns? Where can you improve or deepen these abilities? In this step, look at how well you integrate thought and feeling. As example. If you wake up in the middle of the night and hear someone moving about downstairs and you live alone, you are rightfully going to be afraid. Absolutely. However, if you suddenly wake up afraid in the middle of the night, does that automatically mean that there is an intruder downstairs? If someone says something that hurts your feelings, yes, you are going to feel hurt or at least a bit peevish. Right? But if for some reason you are feeling hurt, does that mean someone else said or did something to make you feel hurt or is it just a feeling passing through? If someone does something deceitful behind your back, you are going to be angry. But if you feel angry, does that necessarily mean someone went behind your back?

That you feel something does not always mean that there is a thought of fact behind it. As we have talked about before, that you have a feeling come up, in and of itself, is not a cause for either alarm or celebration. Is the feeling causing the alarm or desire to celebrate tied to anything? Or is it just a feeling passing through that floated up out of your subconscious mind and you need to let it go? In Self-Care is Knowing Your Default Reaction, we talked about habitual emotional responses. “I’m mad because you are late as always even though you knew we had to be on time for this event.” OK. But if I feel mad that doesn’t mean you were late. Anger, remember, is one of the default settings.

All feelings are legitimate in that you are feeling them. But not all feelings are legitimate if the thinking that generates them is not accurate. “You’ve been sneaking around a lot lately, so you must be up to something. You’ve been very secretive and that must mean you are seeing someone else, and I am jealous and hurt.” “No, actually I have been trying to plan a surprise birthday party for you and you know I have a terrible poker face. I can’t hide anything well.” But when you feel something, acknowledge the feeling and then see if you have any valid or logical reason to feel that way rather than denying your feelings. Just don’t let your feelings run your life. And if the feeling isn’t tied to something in fact, let it go.

“If it feels good, do it.” Remember that old trope? That it feels good doesn’t mean it is a good idea. “I really like feeling mellow at work, so I am going to smoke a blunt before work.” But walking into work reeking of weed and looking buzzed may not be a good idea. Also, we need to become really well acquainted with ourselves and our patterns and to learn to differentiate between real feelings and the urgings of our ego. We may feel, for example, that our boss is a complete toadstool and that they deserve to be informed of that posthaste. However, looking at the logic of that, maybe not so much. More likely what our ego wants here is for us to express to them that we consider ourselves better than or superior to them. Probably wouldn’t be good for job security.

You need thinking and feeling together in order to make decisions on what actions to take in your life and then you need to be able to evaluate how good of an idea it was after the fact. So, the question in this step is – How good are you at integrating your thinking and feeling? Do you do just fine until a feeling comes up and then it all goes off the rails? (see blog and podcast Feelings, Wo-O-O Feelings) Or do you think and think and ruminate and stay all up in your head and won’t go near feelings for love or money? “Doesn’t matter what I felt. I think this or thought that.” When you try to separate rather than integrate thinking and feeling, self-esteem tanks. Not only will the integration of thought and feeling boost your self-esteem, it will give you a much firmer foundation for honestly evaluating yourself. And you will also be amazed at how it will help your sanity levels.

The last step and it goes along with the first step of claiming your power. Here, and this in integral, is the determination of and commitment to the fact that we are not helpless. And yes, there are times when we find ourselves between a rock and hard place and can’t imagine a solution. But the determination to eventually find one will get us through it. Ask for help from loved ones and trusted associates, or from professionals in whatever field. Do research if necessary. Certainly, take a step back and see if you can gain some new perspective on the issue. Remember to breathe. Be patient, meaning look and listen over time for answers that make sense and feel right (see previous step). Keep on keeping on and that determination that you are not helpless, will help you find more personal power and generate more self-esteem.

Each of the steps, on its own, has value and will serve you well. Each of us must determine to be powerful and determine that we are not helpless. We evaluate our ability to think and feeling and then we evaluate our ability to integrate what we think and feel. We evaluate whether we are living by our principles, ideals, character, and we evaluate our motivations in everything we do. And we must seek understanding and meaning. This is a process that you can learn to work.

Finally, in Part 1 I told you three things to do daily that will change your life. They are – Honesty; Responsibility; and Integrity.

To those three, I want to add four more:

Trust. Now, my very first blog post and my very first Podcast are entitled But, But, I Trusted You. Learn to trust yourself and then others. A couple of take-aways from that short post. Say what you mean and do what you say. You will be more trustworthy. (Yes, you earn trust from yourself as well, not just from others.) Then evaluate - Do your actions match your words? You can learn to trust peoples’ behaviors, not necessarily what they say. As example. My brother, for a variety of reasons, is always late. Always. He will tell you he is in the process of getting ready early. He may tell you he is working on getting out the door. What I know I can trust is that he will be late. It’s money in the bank. Trust is a very big subject, but this can be a good starting point. Are you trustworthy? Are they? Do you/they say what they mean and do what they say? Do actions match words? How consistent are actions? It is through evaluating those actions and patterns of actions that you can learn what you can and can’t trust.

Listen to the messages life sends you. Pay attention to your life, not your phone. Life, the universe, whatever you want to call it, has a funny way of sending all of us messages. A song you hear that may strike a chord. A poem you read that resonates emotionally. A conversation you overhear that tells you something you needed to hear. Someone reacts to you in an unexpected (good or bad) way. Whatever it may be, pay attention to information coming into you from a variety of sources, especially those from beyond your phone screen. Yes, this is more esoteric, but it will trigger thought and feeling and, in so doing, kick you into evaluating and then integrating your thinking and feeling.

Let yourself listen to your feelings. Listen to your feelings, understand your feelings about this or that, and use the input to make better decisions, without letting your life be run by your feelings. What does your gut – not your ego – but your gut tell you about something or someone? Are your feelings in concordance or at odds with what you are thinking? Thought plus feeling equals emotions. And honor your hopes, goals, dreams, and desires as they are important to you, revising them as necessary.

Finally, never ever ever consciously hurt other people or yourself. That doesn’t mean you may not inadvertently hurt someone else’s feelings. But there was no intention to do so present. We aren’t perfect and sometimes we say or do the wrong thing, or we miss the opportunity to say or do the right thing. But never intentionally hurt someone else or yourself. “Well, I told you not to make me mad. You got what you deserved.” Nope. “I told you not to go there.” Nope. It isn’t what you say but how you say it and why you say it that will immediately impact your self-esteem.

Now, you don’t have to take my word that what all I’ve described will work to help you generate more real self-esteem and that it will be rock solid enough to lean on. Try it on your own. Give it some time and be open to the process and what can come of it. As you work with the components and the process itself, you and your life can change and don’t be surprised if and when it does. Let us know if you have questions or if we can help.

© 2022   Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Perfect

I clearly remember when I started hearing the response, “Perfect,” to pretty much anything said in a conversational exchange. Could be on the phone with customer service about my computer or the cable company and as they are asking me to try different things to get everything working, I would respond that I’d done whatever they had said to do. “Perfect,” was the response every time. “Well,” I tell a friend, “I’ve got to go to the grocery store tomorrow.” “Perfect.” “Then I thought I’d finally pick up the extension cord I’ve been needing.” “Perfect.” “I want to see if my right big toe will fit in my left nostril.” “Perfect.”

Now “Perfect” used to be reserved and used as a superlative indicating something was exceptional or had surpassed expectations in some way. Now it substitutes for, “OK.” At first, hearing the word more than I was used to was oddly comforting. We all like praise for doing well. But as it became more ubiquitous, it became oddly disconcerting. Things were being referred to as being perfect, but those things didn’t rise to a level where perfection should even have been a consideration.

Now I am reading in the press that the drive for individual perfectionist tendencies has become widespread and problematic since the early 00s. (Perfectionism Is Increasing Over Time: A Meta-Analysis of Birth Cohort Differences From 1989 to 2016 – published in the Psychological Bulletin of the American Psychological Association in 2017) The authors, Thomas Curran, University of Bath, and Andrew P. Hill, York St. John University write, “From the 1980s onward, neoliberal governance in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom has emphasized competitive individualism and people have seemingly responded, in kind, by agitating to perfect themselves and their lifestyles. . . Cross-temporal meta-analysis revealed that levels of self-oriented perfectionism, socially prescribed perfectionism, and other-oriented perfectionism have linearly increased. . . the findings indicate that recent generations of young people perceive that others are more demanding of them, are more demanding of others, and are more demanding of themselves.”

While there are societal pressures eliciting this kind of behavior, let’s take a step back and have a look at how misleading and potentially dangerous this striving ultimately is.

Often, when we feel we have to do something perfectly or everything perfectly, we immediately run into two problems. First, perfect is the enemy of good enough. In truth, good enough is good enough. Why? Because, problem number two, for something to be perfect it must remain unchanging, static. Perfection is a static state. Works of art like a Monet painting are perfect because they hang on a wall and never change. They are perfect just the way they are. Humans are constantly growing, changing, and evolving. We are imperfect. Therefore, it is neither possible nor desirable for us to remain fixed because we learn, we change, we grow.

“I have the perfect solution,” and, therefore, we must do it this way. “I have the perfect idea or perfect concept.” Problem herein is that once something has been deemed perfect, it is given no room to change and evolve. We get so caught up in something being the one true way, that it almost becomes dogma versus a living, breathing process. We block out learning along the way. We can become absolutist rather giving ourselves the space to explore and learn. Why must something be perfect in order to merit taking action? Why isn’t it enough that a solution or idea is practical or workable or even a good interim step?

Are we allowed to make missteps or mistakes? Of course we are. Whose rules are these that we can’t? How else can we learn? Where else would the motivation come from to take risks, try new things? One thing I have learned as truth is that when I make a mistake, I need to be the one to hold my hand up, say, “Yeah, I did it.” And then ask for help or forgiveness or both. People will break their backs to help you. They won’t if you make excuses, try to place blame elsewhere, deny responsibility, or whine about how hard something is. But admit something isn’t working or didn’t work and, “Here, let me help you,” will be the response. And next time and the time after that and the time after that you’ll get better and better and better at problem solving or coming up with better courses of action, personally and professionally.

Very often, when we feel we must do something perfectly, what we are telling ourselves is that we don’t trust ourselves – our judgment, our thought processes, the quality of our work, our ability to honestly communicate in relationships, or our ability to be and do good enough. Think about what has become a stock answer to the interview question, “What is your greatest weakness?” “I tend to be a perfectionist in my work.” Problem here is that not only is it a cop-out answer, it can hide tendencies of being unyielding, intemperate, uncooperative, or unwilling to see other people’s point of view.

Beneath that, what is the fear? If we are not perfect at work, what will happen? Will we be disciplined? Demoted? Ostracized? Fired? In that process we will, in some way, undermine our own judgment and ability to think critically or creatively, and our trust in our own work. And it is us doing it to ourselves. How realistic are those fears? Yeah, the workplace is competitive and, in too many workplaces, the idea is that we are all replaceable in a moment’s notice. “Well, Schmendrick made a mistake or their work was less than perfect so let’s get rid of them.” Is that the kind of place you’d want to work? Are the people you work for really like that? Any great inventor, thinker, writer, etc., will tell you that they failed many times along the way to their greatest successes as it was those mistakes and the places where they fell short that they learned and changed their perspectives, or got new ideas or new inspiration, or found a new direction or solution.

In relationships, how can you or anybody possibly be perfect? What you will most likely do is wind up doing one of two things. One is that you will walk on egg shells around your friends or family or significant other. Heaven forbid you say or do the wrong thing. You could piss them off or make them unhappy and they won’t like/love you anymore. Or they will abandon/betray/humiliate you because you weren’t perfect? Or you accept whatever they throw at you, good and bad, so as to not jeopardize your standing with them and potentially lose the relationship. You wind up diminishing or invalidating your own needs in the relationship so as to not be demanding and, therefore, less than perfect. Or you lose yourself completely in trying to meet all of their needs so that they deem you the perfect friend, partner, relative, parent.

Think about the people who try to be the perfect parent. They often fall into the trap of trying to be their kids’ best friend instead of the person who teaches them how to best make their way through life and what it means to be fully and completely human in the very best sense of what that can mean. Teaching them to love and care and have compassion for themselves and others. Encouraging their dreams. Being there when they fall short. And also teaching them that everything in life comes with consequences – both good and bad - depending on the choices made. Thus, teach them how to make good choices. But nowhere in that is there a demand of doing it perfectly.

Think about the stress we place on ourselves when we hold ourselves to the standard of perfection. “I must succeed in doing the impossible.” Stress eventually wears us down and affects our physical, emotional, and mental health. Anxious, fearful, undermining our strengths and abilities, and what we know as our own sound judgment. We begin to question and doubt ourselves and self-doubt – whether you are doubting yourself or making someone else doubt themselves – is very damaging. Yes, be skeptical so that you can re-examine the way you approach your life and its problems. Yes, learn from that re-examination and that willingness to see things differently. But swan diving into self-doubt because you can’t be perfect is a no win proposition.

The demand of being perfect has been shown to lead to things like eating disorders and PTSD. It has also been linked to such issues as bulimia, anorexia, depression, anxiety, and more. It is not a healthy behavior and yet, I can hear someone thinking – “Well, at least we know what can happen. Perfect.”

Certainly in life, strive to do your best. Putting your best foot forward, in that sense, at work or with friends or family and, most importantly, with yourself, is a good thing. It means that you are open to doing better with everything you do, learning along the way, but also enjoying the journey in a way that demanding perfection never will allow. Some days you will be glorious in your achievements and other days – meh. Welcome to the human experience. Winston Churchill put it best, “"To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often." Change is really the only constant in life, as much as we may tell ourselves we hate change. But when we learn that we can improve almost anything in our lives, just a little bit every day, then we have opened the door to the potential of ongoing happiness and continued success.

© 2021   Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Attention vs Affection

Attention and affection are both very important needs but they are different. Be clear as to which you are seeking and why.

Attention is a big deal. It is in the giving and receiving of attention that we become equal in one another’s eyes. If I pay attention to you or you to me, that means we have decided that this person is worth the time and effort and acknowledgment that attention provides. Nothing drives people up a wall faster than being ignored. It is certainly one of my pet peeves. There is an eyeglass store in Midtown Atlanta that has been in its location for a number of years now. Every time I have been in that store, none of the sales people have ever bothered to acknowledge my existence. Doesn’t matter how I am dressed, the time of day, nor the placement of the stars in the heavens.

We all want attention. We all seek attention. Why? Because it provides a sort of validation from others that in their eyes, we are worth them paying attention to. And as you have seen, in our current world, it seems like everyone is seeking to stand out and garner, and in many cases monetize the attention, recognition and validation they are getting, mostly via social media. Others use social media to hookup. They want the attention that provides, as long as it is “no strings attached” but the minute emotion, affection enters the picture, they move on despite the fact that what they are most likely seeking on a deeper level, is true affection.

Conversely, others of us, mostly us introverts, do not like attention or being in the spotlight. For many years I actively practiced hiding in plain sight and am still quite adept at being invisible, especially in a crowded room, in contrast to the people who strive to be the center of attention. They feed off the energy that the attention provides them, whereas for me, I find it exhausting after a while. I prefer operating quietly, behind the scenes, and am very effective in that role of making things happen without it having to be all about me. We shun the spotlight but that does not mean we shun accomplishment.

But regardless of whether you are a person who actively seeks attention, or welcomes it in limited quantities on occasion, or you do your best to avoid it, it is always – ALWAYS – useful to look at what you pay attention to in your life. The things you feed your attention to tend to grow and the things/people/places/activities we withhold attention from tend to wither and fall away in our lives. Do you only give attention to getting more and more attention or do you give attention, for example, to things like the important relationships in your life? Hard to do when you are constantly giving your attention to your phone. Just sayin’.

Do you give attention to needs like what makes you feel safe and secure in life – physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually? Do you give attention to generating a real sense of self-esteem from within or do you get caught in the insatiable and impossible task of seeking it from others?  Do you pay attention to your need to be really creative – rather than just pumping out content to stay relevant on social media? Do you give attention to creating and producing substantive accomplishments or are you relying on whatever captures your attention at the time? Needless to say, attention to self and one’s deeper needs like self-esteem, like being creative and being productive, is not only important but is paramount. Those deeper needs do not go away even when we get the dopamine hit that momentary attention provides.

We all need love and happiness; and passion and compassion; and hope and trust; and the thrill, the eagerness, excitement, the enthusiasm of just being alive. We also want to feel optimistic about our lives and need and want a sense of well-being. Do we pay attention to the primacy of those needs within ourselves and seek to meet them or do we focus our attention solely on the hit of a response to a text message?

The things we pay attention to are often what we manifest in our lives. So it is useful to inventory and review the things we feed with our attention. The things we feed with our attention often become habituated. Do you feed your hope or your cynicism, for example? Do you feed competitiveness, your jealousies, your grudges, your feelings of being unappreciated? Or do you feed joy and love and friendship and fun?

Attention seeking is also a way to try to staunch the pain, frustration and even despair of loneliness. As connected as we all are, there is a lot of loneliness out there in our world and that loneliness will not be assuaged by surface level connection. The worst loneliness is being lonely in a loving relationship or even when surrounded by friends. I have long referred to it as the howl of loneliness wherein the sense of isolation and alienation and even despair can be so overwhelming that there seems no way out. Many of us have all felt, at one time or another in our lives, that unanswered and unanswerable howl.

I have a column planned on the subject of loneliness as it is a big subject, just as is attention. But one of the surest symptoms of loneliness is becoming consumed with being superficially popular. That driving need to be popular, having lots and lots of superficial friends and acquaintances but none of those relationships having any depth or substance. How many people do you know who make no distinction between acquaintances and real friends? Real friends – the people who will drop everything and be there – good times and bad – when you need and/or want them there. Ask Dickens wrote in Nicholas Nickleby, “Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we’d give blood.”

The need for attention and the desire to staunch the howl of loneliness often replaces, for many, the real need of affection. The withdrawal of affection or, even worse, the absence of affection from those we love or care about threatens to leave us lonely and alone. And that loss or absence of affection causes pain, real mental, emotional and spiritual pain. The Dalai Lama said, “We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.”

We all need affection and that need for genuine affection is something worth paying attention to. Our friends at Oxford Languages via Google say that affection is “a gentle feeling of fondness or liking.” If you look at the many definitions of affection available online, fondness is one of the most common words used in relation to describing what affection is. Merriam-Webster.com also defines affection as, “a feeling of liking and caring for someone or something.” We all want to be liked and cared for and have people feel fond of us. Yes, love is also included in affection but it need not be what we feel to feel affectionate toward someone. “Affectionate attachment” is another term found commonly.

There are all kinds of ways to express or give affection. Physically things like cuddling, holding hands, hugging, etc. Words of affirmation; acts of service; receiving gifts; quality time; and physical touch are commonly associated with ways affection is shown or given. These five things are often associated with what has come to be called the languages of love but they are ways of expressing and receiving affection.

It is an important need. Yet do we pay any attention to giving affection to ourselves or is it always better if someone else gives it to us? How do we give ourselves any affirmation about who we are and what we do and accomplish and who we are becoming? What acts of service do we provide for ourselves or do we tend to treat ourselves in a very utilitarian manner? What do we give of ourselves, to ourselves, like our humor, compassion, intellect, patience? Can we spend quality time alone with ourselves or would we rather chew glass than be alone with ourselves? When was the last time you made yourself laugh because you thought of something funny that only you would understand?

Too often in our current world people substitute and settle for attention, any kind of attention, any port in a storm, rather than seek and cultivate real affection from themselves and from others. Attention, as discussed above, is valuable and essential in our lives but it will not replace the genuine need for affection. Affection, like trust, is something that grows and is earned over time. There is no easy or quick fix to meeting that need. So, by all means, grab all the attention you think or feel you need and want but be careful about thinking it will meet the deeper and more important need of genuine affection.

© 2021   Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Dramatic vs. Drama

There is drama and there is being dramatic. Being dramatic is an act of expressing what feel like big emotions. Drama is elevating the trivial or less significant things or events to an inappropriate level of meaning and significance.

Now, admittedly, being dramatic can be fun for both the person being dramatic and the people listening in the sense of dramatization. Think of the people who are great story tellers or great writers. They have a way of elevating the mundane into something compelling and interesting. They are often articulate and very observant and have a way of using their observations to embellish and enrich the stories that they are telling. They often are very funny and in touch with the irony of a situation. A woman I have known for many years has a way of making a trip to the store for tomato paste fascinating. The preparation for the excursion; the trip itself; the process of finding the tomato paste, or not, the people she met in the process, all carefully wrought and expressed in a way that leaves you hungering for more.

Or the writers who can fully imagine a world and its inhabitants and bring them to life in such a way as to make it not only real but they also fully immerse you in the world of their creation. My favorite novelist, Richard Russo, has a brilliant way of tackling tough events and situations and sometimes heart-rending emotions in a way that is unmatched. And, he can also be very funny when it serves his purposes of dramatization.  People like this are to be cherished for their dramatic skills.

Sometimes, being dramatic is a way good way of expressing emotions that feel, at the moment, too big or too overwhelming or too unbelievable or too wonderful. I have been known to go on dramatic rants when I am frustrated with something that makes no sense to me. These rants are often very funny to the people listening and allow me to blow off steam, but they are a rare occurrence and not a daily activity nor my usual way of expressing what I am thinking and feeling. And yes, sometimes being dramatic serves us well in expressing the good stuff sometimes.

Dramatization can play an important role in understanding. People have new ideas and inspirations and goals all the time. But how often do they stop to evaluate if the idea or inspiration or goal is a good idea or achievable or desirable? Do they stop and evaluate the potential outcomes of their thoughts or decisions or actions? And, as you have all experienced, there are times a colleague or friend or loved one just doesn’t see it. You are trying to get them to see what could happen or why this is not a good path to take or it could be harmful to them and you might as well talk to the garage door.

Storytelling, in a sense, can help people to see. By dramatizing what outcomes could be, you are painting a picture. You are telling a story and that often can be very helpful rather than declarations or judgments or even threats. Rather than, “That’s the dumbest damned thing I have ever heard,” or, “You must have lost your mind to think of something that stupid,” or, “If you do that, I’ll . . .” Paint them a picture. Now this can also work well when someone needs encouragement because they are not sure they are ready to take the risk, or they really can’t see how wonderful something could turn out or they just aren’t sure – but you can see it. By bringing it to light through dramatization, if you will, you may help kindle the spark they need for that chance or for that next step to happen.

Drama is a whole different story. OMG. EVERYTHING rises to the same level of earth-shattering importance. Whether it was the butcher at the supermarket seemingly ignoring them or their best friend not listening to them completely, it is all a concern or crisis that must be talked about and processed to death and resolved before they can move on.

Our culture revels in drama. I don’t know about y’all, but because of the whole Brad-Angelina-Jen thing, I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in years. Right? So much of what now drives our popular culture is the constant swirl of drama that surrounds the people who produce that culture. What are the latest details about Britney and her fight with her conservators? Name your celebrity or influencer and there is bound to be controversy somewhere. Why? Because it sells and keeps people’s names in the news, regardless of their art or accomplishments.

We are surrounded by drama. Now, again, admittedly, a lot of the cultural drama is done in the service of monetization of that drama. But beside the few who might profit, for the overwhelming majority of us, all the drama does is leave us hanging on by the final thread of our very last nerve.

Now let’s take this down a notch to the more practical. We have all experienced or know someone who has experienced being caught up in some drama of their own making. At my friend Fred’s workplace, people began leaving. At the time the job market was OK but not great but good enough for people to be able to find jobs. Rather than really delving into the reasons people were leaving this particular workplace, Fred chose instead to focus on the drama going on in the management level just above him as he was also a manager. He spent hours trying to decipher what this person meant when they said or did this or that. Months worrying and not sleeping over the current or possible next daily crisis. And this focus on other people’s drama distracted him from the fact that he had seen the writing on the wall that it was time to leave.

Finally his job was eliminated. He had had several years in which to send out applications, network, interview, etc., but instead focused on trying to control the effect that other people’s drama could have on his livelihood.

Why do people get caught up in drama – either their own or that of others’? Because something has to give our lives meaning and significance. That is a basic human need. What do I mean?

Significance. You go to your mechanic for a long overdue oil change. He or she says that they are too backed up with work and asks you to come back tomorrow or the day after. How significant is that? Well, that would depend on what shape you car is in. If you are down to very low oil level and a filthy filter, it is certainly way more significant than if your vehicle hasn’t reached that point. Is something significant to you? Your partner’s birthday or your anniversary? Some people hate celebrating special events. Other people love to celebrate everything they can. The Black Friday sales. Is it significant to you because that is when you traditionally do your XMAS shopping hoping for the best deals or a you’re one of those people who couldn’t be paid to set foot in a mall on Black Friday?

Meaning. What does something mean to you? You mechanic says to come back in a day or two. Does that mean he is swamped or he hates you and hopes your car falls apart so there is more for him to fix? You are the one who has to remind your partner of significant dates or events. Does that mean they don’t care or their mind just doesn’t work that way? What does something mean to you? Big gestures mean very little to me. An expensive gift or sudden declaration of whatever means a lots less to me than how you treat me on a daily basis. For me the little things mean more and I assign them greater significance.

Who gets to decide what is and is not significant in your life and what the event or problem or happy occasion means to you? You do. And there are no right or wrong answers and you can change your mind at any time. But a clue that you are a drama junkie is giving everything the same level of life-changing significance and meaning. That everything means the same thing and has the same significance – that life as you know it will change – is not only not true but impossible. Practice assigning meaning – what does this really mean to me? Practice assigning significance – yeah it happened but is it really significant? Is it really all that important to me? As you do this, you will find that your life gets a lot easier.

© 2021   Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

The Hydra Head of COVID

According to Greek mythology, the Hydra is a nine-headed gigantic water-snake-like monster.  Like the Hydra, there have been many faces to the impact COVID has had on people. For some it has been as traumatic as losing a loved one. For others, outside of being a major inconvenience, it really hasn’t that bad. During these troubling and challenging times, Hercules has not been available to come and rescue us from this monster. We’ve been thrown back onto our own resources to save ourselves.

For people who are more introverted like me, in many ways, it has been an unexpected gift of time. The exile imposed by COVID allowed me time to read, think, meditate, reflect and enjoy the peace that came with the slowing down of the outside world. That said, I was not immune to the fact that life as we all knew it had come to a screeching halt and that all of our heartfelt desires for life to return to return to normal as soon as possible were not going to be answered. And in the course of the last 20 months, my life has changed, and I have changed profoundly in ways that I could neither have foreseen nor imagined.

For the more extroverted among us who thrive on social interaction and get energized by being around others and engaging in out-of-the-house activities, it has been a tough time. Unable to safely and freely move about and be on the go, separated from the touch of friends and loved ones, missing favorite activities, having to find new ways to have fun and connect, has been more difficult. Some have slipped into depression. Others have felt hopeless or helpless or even a sense of despair. Some have gotten very angry. That anger has shown itself in a variety of ways. Angry at politicians. Angry at those who sought to protect themselves by wearing masks. Angry about getting or not getting the vaccines. Angry about others getting or not getting the vaccines. Angry about businesses shutting down. Angry that life as we had known it has gone away.

Life has changed. Many of us would like to say that it was all the result of COVID but many of the changes in our world have been brewing for a long time. In our world, old structures - whether that be media, healthcare, politics, education, international relations, supply chains, alliances, etc. – have and are breaking down and we don’t yet have the new structures to replace the old. In some cases these changes are coming slowly and in other cases coming more rapidly. Some changes are more subtle than others but the old ways, the old traditions of how we thought our world worked or was supposed to work, are breaking down. Order will eventually emerge from the chaos but right now we don’t know what that world will look like and that is bringing up a lot of fear and anxiety and stress in people. COVID added to all that.

Many people felt that they and/or their world was in crisis. The demands made on them - to help stop the spread, to stay home, to give up many of life’s pleasures - were coming too quickly; changes too fast to process; their normal routine, their daily routine had been disrupted and things just weren’t working the way they were supposed to. But we did what we needed to do – we established new routines; processed the changes one step at a time; and we handled the new demands coming from every facet of life as best we could. And this was easier for some than for others. Humans don’t really like change.

Many of us ran into the fact that just because something had worked in the past – job, relationship, hobby, perspectives, goals – did not mean that it would continue to work. Things that we had taken for granted could no longer be taken for granted. Our health, our safety, our survival, our relationships, the things that brought us joy, even our ability to purchase paper towels could no longer be counted on in quite the same way. Spouses and or families having to spend real time together. For some, the increased contact only strengthened the already existing closeness and bonds. Other found themselves looking at loved ones and wondering, “Who are you?”

Many people discovered a desire to not constantly be tied into work and wanting more of a work/life balance. Wanting more flexibility in work schedules. Tired of missing their kids grow up. Quality of life becoming more important than living by arbitrary rules imposed by the workplace. This Hydra-head occasioned the re-prioritizing of life.

Some people found new or alternative or additional ways to make money and survive. Some moved to new places – whether out of choice or by necessity. Many are currently seeking new jobs. That may be for better working conditions, better money, better living conditions or just something new to do as they have become bored and restless.

Having been locked down in our houses for so long, it has been interesting to see people emerge with the drive to be seen and heard. When I was younger, sequins, flashy, sparkly dress was something that was reserved for a very dressy or formal occasion. Now everything glitters, including bedroom shoes – which have moved from the bedroom to everyday footwear. Bling has become de rigueur. Informality in dress and appearance has also become more commonplace. So, in some senses, COVID has changed the way we present ourselves to others as we re-emerge.

COVID also forced people to deal with themselves and then those close to them in ways that they could have avoided before. In the busyness of life, I can keep myself distracted from dealing with me. When I am stuck at home with not a lot to do, eventually binging my fave TV shows, eating, playing with the dog, etc., only will go so far. And then the things like that vague unease you have been feeling starts knocking at the inside of your head. Some people began to rethink what really matters and what is important to them. Others began running into the aspects of themselves that didn’t work for them anymore. Some began to realize how stale their lives had become.

Some began to look at the relationships in their lives and whether they were still important or past their expiration date. The people we cherished and longed for. The touches, the hugs, the warmth of their presence that we so desperately missed but had previously taken for granted. In other cases, people began to get on our nerves – like our spouse or friends who disrupt our equanimity or relatives who we kept in touch with out of a sense of duty and obligation. Nothing was immune from review. In certain cases, we clearly saw what and who we treasured and why, and in other cases, we saw what we had outgrown – people, habits, ways of living our lives.

Others began to dream new dreams and have different hopes and goals. Some went back to school or learned new things from a variety of available resources. Others took on new projects that they had not had the time for before like finally repainting the kitchen or remodeling a room.

We can’t begin to cover all the changes COVID has wrought in the world. COVID, in many senses, made us all realize that we’ve been going with what we know or knew to be good and true and right for us in life, at least up until the pandemic. Nevertheless, for so many of us, it forced us to come face-to-face with – Is this all there is? What now? What’s next? Do I want something more or new or different? Do I deserve more or new or different? Do I dare ask for that? The answer is always, “Yes.”

© 2021   Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Being Liked as a Manipulation

We all need and want to be liked. In being liked we get positive attention from others and that makes us feel valued and worthwhile. It helps us to feel that we are on equal footing with others. It is nice to know that others hold us in high esteem. Nothing sends us over the edge as quickly as when other people ignore us or deem us unworthy of their attention.

In our current Age of Social Media, many of us have become experts in “getting” people to like us. Lots of people openly express the idea that they love social media because you can present yourself as anyone you want to be or pretend to be. Doesn’t matter if that image is real or not. One Gen Z’er I recently spoke to is planning his own You Tube channel wherein he will play a character that is not himself but in so presenting this character, he hopes to gain a following and he tells me that lots of people do this. You get liked and you get followed and, hopefully, you eventually find a way to monetize your presentation and make money presenting yourself as someone else.

As a form of programming or publishing, I think that this is basically no different than an author presenting new characters in books or likeable characters in movies or television. The problem here is that these people are not real. So, in presenting yourself as someone you are not, you are still not being liked for who you actually are and you have to keep up the artifice or face significant backlash from your online community. But, for a group of our compatriots, this level and fashion of being liked may be fine, at least for a while. But it still is a paper-thin level of being liked and accepted, and what happens if and when your 15 minutes is over?

All of that said, that discussion is for another time. What I want to talk about here is about the people who in “real life,” whether that is in the workplace or with friends or family, manipulate you into liking them so they can get what they want out of the relationship - but nothing of value or mattering comes back from them. These are usually people who are, on the surface, very likeable people. They are most often very talkative and personable and almost constantly in motion, at least when you are watching. But they are also, underneath all of the collegiality and bonhomie, getting away with murder.

Some examples. Let’s start with work. Years ago, I bartended with a nice enough looking young guy who used his looks to get in good with our female manager. She walked it right up to the line in giving him preferred shifts and scheduling but not enough for anyone to accuse her of favoritism. Problem was that he wasn’t that good a bartender and didn’t really want to work that hard. What he was willing to work hard at was getting what he wanted from his manager and maintained a passable level of civility with the rest of his co-workers.

He certainly never went above or beyond for anything or anybody. One day his manager had to call him out about something that needed correction and she did it in front of other staff. It was procedural and the correction could have applied to any of us and was thus more of a reminder to all in hearing distance than it was a personal attack on him. He escalated the argument, attacking her and it went back and forth until he said something nasty to her and she announced, in front of the other staff, that he was a “lousy fuck.” Needless to say, neither his nor her employment lasted much longer at this particular establishment. But he had gotten what he wanted for as long as he could until it was time to move on.

How about the person in the office who is always fun and friendly and willing to briefly help others but never gets their own work done? They talk a great game. They suck up to management, who think them delightful. They get the scheduling they want. They get the time off they want. Senior management is always stopping to talk with them. Sometimes they even get to flout the dress code when no one else does. They often talk and talk and talk constantly and the rest of the staff likes them until they begin to realize that they never complete anything and, in many cases, never start anything they really don’t want to do. But they get away with it because they’re always so busy, busy, busy with everything and everyone else that for a while they can make it look like they are working themself to death. One particular woman was busy having fun with her co-workers and drinking on the job. She was popular, and on occasion did do enough work that she could show some accomplishments. But over time, people began to realize she was hardly ever at her desk. She was here and there and yon but rarely ever actually applying herself to her actual work. But they liked her.

A similar version of this was a young guy who was also a big talker. Talked mostly about himself and what he was doing and his exploits way from work, as did the lady above. But when he was unable to avoid a work task, he would do it but at a plodding snail’s pace. Regardless of the complexity of the task, it was done at a pace that was just above glacial. Usually someone would step in and help or take it over for him as otherwise he would never be finished. He often resented being told what to do and made no bones talking badly about managers who made demands on him, making sure that we knew he thought they are all assholes and not to be trusted. But he was well liked by staff and management and he moved on just as soon as more was expected of him. But until then, he got whatever he wanted and never did anything he didn’t want to do or could get out of because he got people to like him.

The point in these examples is that sooner or later people will see through the artifice. As the old saying goes, you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Eventually people will see through the constant talking, all the busy activity that accomplishes nothing and will also begin to resent the sucking up to those who they think can do them some good.  So, it goes with the friends or family from whom they take and take and give nothing back. You can’t help liking them until you get tired of being manipulated into giving them what they want, but when you actually need them, they are nowhere to be found. And the best part is that, in whatever circumstance, when you or someone else finally has had enough and says no to them, they feel a self-righteous sense of betrayal and abandonment. But when you finally say no it is because you are so tired of the constant barrage of talk that actually says nothing substantial and activity used to camouflage who they really are and what they really are about, that you feel nothing but relief.

Whether online as a persona in cyber space or in the actual living of life out among the other humans, people will watch you and figure out who you really are through your behavior. Behavior doesn’t lie. Why? Because, in general, people wind up doing the things they really want to do and they don’t do or procrastinate until the end of time the things they don’t really want to do, regardless of what they say. As charming or fun or personable or interesting as someone may present themselves to be, the truth will out as to whether there is any real substance there.

Playwright and poet Ben Jonson was named England's first ever Poet Laureate in 1616. (Wikipedia) He wrote, "True happiness Consists not in the multitude of friends, But in the worth and choice." Who you choose to be and become will reflect and express your true worth to yourself. And others will see whether there is someone of depth and consequence there through your actions and behavior, regardless of what comes out of your mouth and regardless of all the activity you use to distract others from seeing the truth of your being. Make good choices as to who you are as it will raise your value and worth to others and, most especially, to yourself. And it will spare you a lot of tap dancing.

© 2021   Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Self-Respect

An edited version of Self-Respect was published in the Georgia Voice paper and website on 7/23/2021: thegavoice.com

Photo 213490420 © Kukurund | Dreamstime.com

I don’t usually eavesdrop on conversations. That said, when someone is talking loud enough for me to hear, it’s on them. Right? So I am listening to this guy tell a friend that as he is now in his 50s, he has recently discovered self-respect and having done so, has put his wife and his twenty-something aged kids on notice that if they dare to disrespect him, they are all going to be sorry. He isn’t going to take it anymore. But wait, there’s more.

Not only is his family now on notice, but he isn’t taking it from anybody else either. So he finds himself on a surface street that is being blocked by two cars, one headed in one direction and one headed in another and they are having a conversation. When the one headed in the opposite direction of him moves, he drives around the person that has been blocking him, yelling something out the window at the driver. Then the driver catches up to him and starts yelling at him. This goes on with them now chasing one another so that the last person that got yelled at can yell back and get the last word. It escalates with an open water bottle being thrown back and forth between cars and then eventually an opened canned soda being thrown back and forth between the two cars.

The story teller eventually chases this other car into a cul-de-sac where they are both stopped with the cars facing one another. The yelling continues until the passenger in the other car gets out and pulls a gun on the guy telling the story, who then backs his car out of the cul-de-sac and goes home. But he feels vindicated, even though he almost got himself shot, because he wasn’t going to put up with being disrespected.

Respect is not something you can demand any more than you can demand that someone trust you. Respect, like trust, is earned. First from self and then from others. It is not unlike understanding. If you want people to understand you, you must first seek to be understanding of others. “Oh, no. They better ‘get’ that they need to understand/trust/respect me first.” Good luck with that. People that can’t or won’t treat others with respect, as clichéd as it sounds, usually have no idea what respect means or they don’t respect themselves.

So, where to start? Step one is to honestly and appropriately express all of your emotions. Back in March I wrote a blog post entitled, “Feelings, Wo-O-O Feelings,” about dealing with feelings so I am not going to belabor this now. However, first you have to be able to correctly identify what you are feeling. Are you angry or are you sad? Are you happy or just content? Are you really hurt or just disappointed? Once you have identified what you are feeling, then express it appropriately. If I am angry or confused, let’s say, sometimes just the admission of that can help clear it. If I acknowledge I am angry with myself or someone else, or, if I am confused about something or you are confusing me, then I can do something about it. And I will earn respect from myself for having identified the feeling and moved beyond it. But if I scream and holler at you because I am angry at you or I punish myself because I am angry with me, I am inflicting pain by my inappropriate expression and there is no basis there for earning respect from myself.

Further, too many people, like our friend above, get the idea in their heads that “out of self-respect, I get to tell you what a no good, dirty rotten, low down Communist I really think you are.” That isn’t acting out of self-respect. That is acting out of judgment and ego. Far better to just walk away from behavior you find offensive or inappropriate.

So it goes with positive emotions like love. Famed Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca wrote, “To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” Or suppose you are proud of yourself or someone else and instead of expressing that pride, you give them or yourself some kind of left-handed compliment or say something snarky instead. There will be no foundation on which to build self-respect. When you can appropriately express of your feelings, your estimation of yourself will rise.

Secondly, when you fail at something or fall short of your goal, stop and figure out what went wrong. Why did you not succeed as you had intended? Do not blame anybody or anything else. You can‘t fix what you won’t be responsible for. Whether it is a work project, a hobby, or a relationship, whatever the nature of that relationship, when something goes awry or doesn’t work or falls apart, look for what happened. Could it have been avoided? What decisions, actions, choices, beliefs, etc., led you to where things are now? And own and admit that you contributed to this outcome.

Now, a lot of us grew up with the idea that if we made a mistake, not only do we feel terrible about having done so, but we were supposed to be punished for it. No. I learned many years ago that when you hold up you hand, say, “Yeah, I did it,” and be responsible, people will break their backs to help you correct whatever went wrong. And you and others will respect that.

But what about when things go right, go well? How did you get here? What decisions, actions, choices, commitment, perseverance, got you here across the finish line? Own that. Not out of ego. Succeeding doesn’t make you better than. But it is important to figure out and know how you succeeded. Why? So you can do it again. ‘”It was just luck.” Really? Honor the process you used to succeed so that you can replicate, usually with adjustments for the situation, additional successes and greater successes. That you can and will respect.

And finally, always – always – operate from a place of integrity and character, meaning that the ends never ever justify the means. It is always about how you got there. The process. The steps taken. How you conducted yourself along the way, on a daily basis. Were you honest or did you manipulate others? Did you cut corners or did you make sure that the quality of work or product was not sacrificed in the name of expediency? Did you build bridges to others or did you burn bridges in your quest to be first? Did you seek to be understanding and compassionate of self and others or were you impatient, condescending and rude as you progressed? My personal yardstick has long been if I can look into my own eyes in the bathroom mirror at the end of the day and feel good about me, that is all that matters.

Life is a process in the big picture, and so are all of our days, in the little, immediate picture. No one is saying we have to be perfect. Clearly not. But process is the means to our ends and how, on a daily basis, we get to where we are going, is one of the surest ways we can and will learn to respect ourselves.  And, rather than risking getting ourselves shot in a dark cul-da-sac, we will be able to respect that maybe someone else was just having a bad day.

© 2021   Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc

Authenticity

Photo 167797555 © Pablo Avanzini | Dreamstime.com

Years ago, before Abercrombie & Fitch lost their minds, they used to sew patches onto their clothes that read: “A F (Original), Expert Quality, Guaranteed Durability, Genuine Performance,” and the year it was made, “Issue No. 1993” This patch was evidence of the garment’s authenticity. They had other versions of this on various labels, depending on the garment.

Dictionary.com defines authentic as - 1) not false or copied; genuine; real; 2) having an origin supported by unquestionable evidence; authenticated; verified; 3) representing one’s true nature or beliefs; true to oneself or to the person identified.

Given the above definition and demonstration of the use of the word, imagine my surprise when I read, in Esquire Magazine, an article entitled, “Meet One of the Most Popular Men on Tinder.” The article begins with the advice from a popular figure on Tinder who states that in the first pic of your profile, you have to be strategic about your smile. A closed mouth implies one negative thing and too wide a grin implies something else negative. The article states, regarding your smile, “Display the faintest whiff of inauthenticity and you’re done for.”

Well, wrong. Who makes up these rules? If you were actually being legitimate about it, you would display your natural smile and not some contrived version meant to send a signal that hopefully everyone knows how to interpret. And, if your eyes are your nicest feature, show them off instead. Just sayin’. Appearances have nothing to do with authenticity. You have all heard the old saying not to judge a book by its cover, and if you have ever read a book, you know that to be true. Appearance may be important as to the level of physical/sexual attractiveness, but otherwise, as they say, beauty is only skin deep.

The article then goes on to tout the wisdom of presenting a very sparse profile (4 items per category). This is fine unless you are not a sparse person and, thus, your brevity is a misleading representation of who you actually are. Suppose you are gregarious or funny or collegial or very extroverted and sparseness doesn’t really represent you? So much for realness. And if you are only allowed 4 photos, 4 interests, a 4 word bio, how credible can you really be?

Authenticity is a word that currently gets thrown around a lot. I see it on LinkedIn and in various “How to Job Hunt” articles that warn that you’d better be authentic in the process even though, as we spoke about in my previous post, you are also supposed to be a brand. And where are the official guidelines about how you do this in a resume? Honesty is a good idea. Accuracy as to your work history is a good idea. But how can you be authentic if, in your interview, you go in prepared to play the game and bury who you really are?

Or supposed you are on a date and the subject of favorite sandwich comes up. Theirs is arugula and spirulina on gluten-free Naan bread and yours is, in reality, peanut butter and sardines on white bread? Do you dare tell the truth? What happens when they find out later? If that is actually your favorite, in being true to yourself and admitting that sandwich preference, then you are way more authentic than someone who goes with the trends or goes with the politically correct foodie way to eat.

Authenticity is about self-knowledge, character, principles, and integrity. It is about knowing who you are. What you think and feel and believe. It is about the things you do and don’t do well. It is about what you like and don’t like, and the people and places you like and don’t like. It is about knowing how honest you are with yourself, about everything, all of the time. It’s about knowing what you got right, what you got wrong, where you can improve and how you can and will do better tomorrow.

Authenticity is about having and developing character. Character means having ideals that you live by – dignity: wisdom; love; courage; balance; being of service to others; virtue; loyalty; creativity; responsibility; compassion; caring; gratitude; being understanding; always being respectful of others. These are not the only examples but ideals that we seek in the living of life. We don’t ever completely master these, never completely grasp them, but we become more in seeking their bounty. Principles are the things we will and will not do in seeking those ideals. As example, as much as I may love you I will seek the ideal of never ever consciously hurting you. That doesn’t mean, if I am having a bad day or am preoccupied or whatever, that I always will be fully present with you or that I won’t forget something you asked me to do or that I won’t say something without thinking it through that is hurtful. But I will seek the ideal of never deliberately, consciously, making the choice to be hurtful to you. Character is measured by how frequently, or not, you implement your principles.

Integrity is doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do, even when no one is looking, and even when it is inconvenient. Integrity is living by my ideals and my ethics and morals. Integrity is keeping my word and keeping my commitments.

Authenticity will not be found by following someone else’s rules about who and what you are supposed to be. You have to make your own rules and live by them and deal with the consequences of those rules – revising them when necessary. Authenticity will not be found in your pics on social media, in getting the buzz words right, or trying to live your life by abiding by the decrees of influencers.  It will not be based on the number of social media friends or followers you have or in how many times you have been retweeted. It will be found in the depth that life calls on you to develop.

Sounds like a tall order. Right? It is. It is the work of a lifetime. Where can we begin? One the most authentic things we can do is to meet people where they are, let them be who they are, leave our judgments at home and practice being compassionate and understanding, and by being ourselves in all of our glory.

© 2021   Living Skills, Inc. All rights reserved in all media

Living Skills offers positive psychology counseling, spiritual counseling, and life coaching services in Atlanta, and online. We are sensitive to the needs of the LGBT community. Sessions available by Skype. Please email us at livingskillsinc@gmail.com or visit www.livingskills.pro. Podcast: “The Problem with Humans” now available on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, Google Podcast, Amazon Music, and Spotify, Overcast, Castro, Castbox, and Podfriend, as well as on my site. Follow us on Twitter - @livingskillsinc