The Lincoln Tunnel

When I was a kid, my parents would take my sister and I down to Long Island a few times a year to visit relatives and go to the beach. Given that said relatives lived about 45 or 50 miles East of Manhattan, we usually took the George Washington or Tappan Zee Bridges as to avoid an unnecessary slog through Mid or Lower Manhattan traffic. 

On one occasion, though, for some reason I can't remember, we were indeed in Midtown Manhattan, and were taking the Lincoln Tunnel out of the city. (For those of you who aren't familiar with NYC, the Lincoln Tunnel connects Midtown Manhattan with New Jersey.) 

The Lincoln Tunnel is rather narrow, especially to the eyes of a seven-year-old kid who is unaccustomed to such sights and riding in the back seat of his Dad's car. I watched the wall -- so close, it seemed, I could touch it -- in amazement as we sped through the tunnel. My Dad's from Brooklyn, and I knew two relevant facts: 1) he knew exactly what he was doing; and 2) he had driven all over New York City. Still, I wondered, "How are we not crashing into the wall? It's so close!"

(image of Lincoln Tunnel from guestofaguest.com, "Weird New York"

So I asked him. Little did I know his response would become one of the most important working metaphors of my life -- and one that I'd pass along to countless friends, family, and clients. His response went something like this:

"It's easier than you think. When you're driving, you have a tendency to steer the car toward where you're looking. So when you're driving through the tunnel, all you have to do is look ahead at the road -- at where you want to go. Because if I were to look at the wall, I'd drive right into it, or come dangerously close."

It was an "Ah-ha!" moment for me ("Coooool!") -- I'd been given insider information on one of those super awesome grown-up mysteries: I now knew how to drive through the Lincoln Tunnel. And that was satisfaction enough for me.

It's curious, but I whereas I remember that early, simple memory with precision and clarity, I couldn't tell you much about the moment, years later, when I recognized the deeper brilliance of what my Dad told me that day. It boils down to this:

If you focus on what you don't want (to hit the tunnel wall), you're setting yourself up to get what you don't want. But if you focus instead on what you do want (drive safely through the tunnel), you're setting yourself up to get that. 

In other words, our actions, and all their consequences, tend to follow our focus. 

I think it's possible in just about any situation to identify something you don't want; heck, I'll go out on a limb and say that's even what most of us are trained to do automatically. Think of it. How often do we say, "This sucks!" or "I don't want to do that." How often do we focus on our problems? (Hint: very often.)

It is far more useful, productive, and pleasant, frankly, to give your attention to what you want, i.e., your goals, and the outcomes you desire. There will be challenges and obstacles, but if you remain persistent in your focus on what you want, you will seek, and find, solutions. 

I can't stress enough what a powerful life skill this is. And the good news is that this type of perspective reorientation is a very simple matter of choice. All you have to do is be willing to say to yourself, "Okay, I'm very clear on what I don't want. What is it that I do want?" That simple thought will propel you forward; and, as I recently said in another post, your life will open up to you.

Thanks.

Snapshot: "Leaving Hell"

Snapshot: From "A Certain 'F You' Sensibility

James Altucher: Fear of the Future

There isn't much I can add -- James says it all. (And very succinctly, I might add.) If you're interested in hearing about being present (here and now), your goals, prosperity, and attitudes, check this out:

http://youtu.be/TPETzzM6j0c

The Nature of Working with Groups (In a variety of settings)

At a group’s onset, my philosophy is to explore our goals as a group; i.e., to identify group members’ endgame, or to ask, "We have convened here; what issue have we convened to tackle? What is our desired outcome? What is the next step beyond this group? What is the next level that we're all trying to get to?" While individual goals may differ, there will be similarities among the participants that the leader or facilitator can and should invoke; after all, the logic is simple: groups and organizations exist for a specific reason, and if an individual is part of that group or organization, there is an implicit thematic connection between the individual and the group or organization.

The work we all do as individuals, and, by extension, in groups and organizations, does not occur in a vacuum; rather, it is in view of the reality that we humans are all in 'place A' right now, and we will eventually be in 'place B.' In other words, in this life, change is constant, and we are always moving forward. That process is inexorable; but it becomes truly beneficial if and when we consciously recognize and engage it as the paradigm of life-as-evolution, and life-as-process. We are constantly in motion, encountering new information, meeting new people, and occupying never-before-experienced moments in time. All that "newness" represents the opportunity and potential to grow, and to expand into the authenticity of ourselves. We are here to learn, to make ourselves manifest, and to help others do the same.

Once these themes have been explored, we render the work more concrete; to do this, we ask the questions, “Ok, how do we get there (i.e., 'place B')? What do we have to do to get there?” The consideration of these questions becomes the roadmap of the work. It also becomes the lens, or the framework for everything that is discussed in the group, as well as everything that is worked on outside of the group. So, "How is this group member’s issue/participation/process, and how is the reflection and mutual aid that arises from group members’ issues/participation/processes, going to move us toward where we want to go? What can we learn from that setback? What can we take with us from that disagreement between group members?" The meta-themes (represented, again, by questions) are, “How are we going to tap into, and act upon, our deeper values? How are we going to gain access to the leader within ourselves, and, in turn, help others get where they want to go?” We must become curious, we must be willing to externalize our questions, we must be willing to explore, and we must be willing to provide others the supportive space necessary to do the same.

We do our best as humans when we connect our own mission with the missions of other individuals around us, and with the organizations, groups, and systems with which we are connected. Essentially, then, the facilitator's, or leader's, tasks are to invoke the path we are all traveling, and, by virtue of drawing connections between meta-evolution and the work at hand, to help participants along that path. By articulating goals, and bringing the endgame / termination plan into view, the leader brings focus to the work in a very practical sense, and reminds us that we’re here, in this room, for a clear purpose.

This process can apply in any work setting, and to any group. It could pertain to a focus group, a task group, or a therapy group, for example. These are principles, after all, and can be applied as needed; but we are all human beings, and when we convene for a purpose, we can let these principles guide our work.

Speculation on a Saturday

Have you ever heard or read the assertion, "There is nothing wrong with you"? What if you really believed it to be true? Think on it.

Much of this life, for many of us, is spent looking forward to something or other. We consciously or unconsciously identify personal and/or professional goals based on what we value, and we become heavily invested in attaining those goals. Such is the nature of things, and it's good.

What if, however, we refrained from basing our concept of self-worth, or of success, on our perceived ability to identify and attain those goals? What if instead we believed we are, by nature -- by default -- fantastically wonderful, amazing creatures, worthy of total admiration, love, and respect? And what if, in realizing those things, we discovered we can give those gifts to ourselves: that we can give ourselves unconditional admiration, love, and respect?

And what if such realizations were not mutually exclusive with living an actual human life? In other words, what if none of that stuff meant we had to live our lives as cloistered, levitating monks? Or that we wouldn't be periodically disappointed, disgusted, angry, guilty, sad, frustrated, unbalanced, unstable, irrational, or hurtful?

What if, instead, the foundational self-worth I'm speculating about enabled us to discover a truer compassion, truer forgiveness, truer remorse, truer kindness, truer intelligence, truer intuition, truer serenity, and truer freedom to pursue the goals and loves of our lives?

Food for thought.

Serenity Prayer, Saving Money, and Control Issues

“God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference."

That’s the Serenity Prayer. It is perhaps most commonly associated with Alcoholics Anonymous, which has adopted the prayer for the purposes of its program. I won’t be discussing addiction today, but I do think very highly of the Serenity Prayer. It reminds one that many, if not most, things in this life are out of the scope of one’s control. For example, none of us can control the existence of rush hour traffic, or a line at the grocery store, or another person’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. But we can accept, even begrudgingly, that we're in the traffic jam; we can breathe through our frustration and choose to wait patiently on line; and we can recognize others' autonomy. 

I’ll argue that much distress arises from what the very existence of the Serenity Prayer indicates; i.e., the human desire for control. We like to do, and to fix. Why? Well, because we are attached to other people, we are attached to expectations (our own and others’), and we are attached to outcomes. We get ideas about what "ought" or "ought not" be, and we take these as Capital-T Truth; we get fused to them, get married to them, and even give over our inherent power of thoughtful perspective to them. If we perceive a threat to what "ought to be," then, we tend to get worked up, and to seek a course of action.

Such attachments (and others) are universal conditions of human life. As such, the Serenity Prayer explicitly acknowledges the existence of impulses for control; but it invokes a re-calibration, so to speak, of one’s inner desire-to-control compass. It gives one hope that, with increased wisdom and clarity, one will be better-able to identify what is truly within and without the scope of one's control and influence; and when one has these realities in one's view, one is empowered to detach, as appropriate, from the impulse to control. And to reiterate: when people lose sight of what they can and can’t control, undue distress may ultimately follow.

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An illustration of this logic is money. I firmly believe that many of us have more control over our money situations than we perhaps would prefer to think we do. A commonly cited nugget of conventional wisdom is that one has to "have money to save money." Well, yes, this is partially true, in the sense that in the total absence of all money, one necessarily cannot save money. Now, please understand that what I’m about to describe doesn't apply to everyone; I’m speaking in particular to wage earners with a car or two, a house, some possessions, food on the table, etc. Many such wage earners are plagued by money problems, and with good reason: participation in modern life is very expensive. But that still does not mean one cannot save money.

Have you heard the principle, “Pay yourself first?” If not, it refers to a simple and effective money-saving strategy represented by what is essentially a mind game. Play along: Think of the bills you have to pay, and add another to the very top of that list – it’s your savings account. (If you don’t have one, you can open one for free, and with no minimum deposit requirement, with any number of banks.) In the “pay yourself first” system, you view saving money as being synonymous with paying a bill. Remember: you probably view bills as non-negotiable; i.e., you have to pay them. So why not give yourself and your financial security the same consideration? Listen, it can even be $5 a pay period to start with if that’s what you think you can do right now. The point is to engage the process and get in the habit: the results will follow.

I’ll bet many of you reading this are still skeptical. If so, here’s a real-world example of how it does, in fact, work: 401k plans (or any employer-sponsored retirement plan). You enroll in the plan, and a retirement account is set up. Concurrently, you determine a percentage of your gross pay to contribute to the plan; that amount is then automatically deducted from your wages. It never enters your cash flow, and you never see it in your paycheck. The amount left over is what you have to work with to pay bills, buy groceries, and put gas in your car. Amazingly, awesomely, as time passes, those deductions accumulate. Paying yourself first works the same exact way.

We are emotional creatures. We are highly fallible, impulsive, and prone to misjudgment. And we are prone to misjudgment about our purchases and cash flow management behaviors, and whether we do actually have money in our paychecks to set aside. My guess is that if you’re reading this, there are hidden expenses in your life you aren’t even aware of: things you could do without and really not even have to sacrifice too much by going without. Money represents an agreement, or an idea. It is governed by numbers and arithmetic and logic, all of which are decidedly a-emotional. Paying yourself first -- an inherently automatic, logic-driven process that falls outside the day-to-day scope of fallible decision-making -- is an emotionless process. It leverages the systems that govern financial processes. And it works as a savings strategy. I promise.

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We sometimes mistake our subjective, often-faulty perceptions for an objective, absolute reality. We sometimes reach conclusions that don’t tell the whole story; but we decide or assume they do. Sometimes, we can’t see a way out of something; and instead of seeking to learn about new, as-yet unknown ways forward, we decide that our limited perception is reality, and that if “I can’t see a way out now, there must not be a way out.” We have more power than this. We all have a genius within us; and the Serenity Prayer -- and other grounding tools like it -- can help us tap into that genius. 

I'll end with one of my favorite quotes:

"You will be much more in control if you realize how much you are not in control." -- Antonio Damasio

The Adaptive Nature of Emotions

As the title suggests, our emotions have an adaptive nature. That is, they have utility and purpose -- or, rather, they can have utility and purpose if we allow ourselves to see them that way. To paraphrase one of my former teachers, it can be helpful to conceptualize emotions as messengers, and to ask the question, "what is this feeling trying to communicate to me?" After all, emotions do not simply occur; they do not, like the cheese, stand alone. Emotions exist in relationship to our conscious and subconscious thoughts, hopes, goals, expectations, etc., and to our physical circumstances. Thus, it can be difficult, and even futile, to parse out our emotions in service of determining their origin, as they are likely tangled up with a lot of other stuff. But it can be very helpful and grounding to seek out what they're trying to tell us. 

I'll use myself as an example. I'm looking for work, and it's a slow process. It's frustrating, in fact. I periodically find myself sighing, shaking my head, feeling tense, etc. as I search for jobs. So I take a step back and ask, "what is my frustration communicating to me?" In this case, the answer is pretty simple: I want a job, and I want one now; and since I don't have one now, I want the rest of my search to be easy and quick. Expectations and Desires, meet Reality. It is helpful for me to recognize this, because it tells me 1) I should, for my own peace of mind, adjust my expectations, and 2) give myself props for knowing and pursuing what I want.

Persistence

Persistence is good, right? It's the term we give to that certain quality of doggedly moving ever forward, come what may, toward one's goal. Persistence is necessary to achieve goals, because obstacles, or seeming-disincentives to proceed, can and do arise. And we humans, animals that we are, tend to have to will ourselves to favor the long-term over the short-term. In other words, we're rolling in this game with loaded dice: we're wired for pleasure and gratification! Ask any behaviorist out there: we learn, by way of conditioning and reinforcement, how to respond and what to do in given situations. And if we're doing something that brings us periodic, sometimes unpredictable disappointment, discomfort, or pain, our initial impulse may be to stop doing that something.

And so, to get what is not immediately within our grasp, we need persistence.

Now, remember my jag in the previous post about continua? Here, too, I am hesitant to label persistence as, simply, "good." I think it's definitely much farther along toward the "good" side than the "bad," granted, but it's important for us to remember, when endeavoring to achieve, that we must always of necessity make room in our lives for the things we want to get -- and the process and practice of making room for things can be difficult at times. After all, it requires that we disrupt the status quo and seek a new balance. Sometimes this requires others' cooperation, which is where things can get especially tricky, and require even more persistence (i.e., we don't always share an agenda with the key stakeholders of our lives: our partners, friends, family, etc.).

You get the gist.

When pursuing your goal, be willing to make room for it, be willing to grow, and be willing to tolerate some possible discomfort along the way. But know that discomfort, in and of itself, isn't necessarily "bad." Depending on the context, discomfort can be in service of cultivating a deeper contentedness. Think of someone who wants to get in shape, for example. Maybe they go to the gym, or maybe they take up jogging or mountain biking. Whatever they choose will involve some temporary discomfort. Ultimately, however, the satisfaction derived from getting in shape -- i.e., the achievement and manifestation of one's goals -- far outweighs any discomfort which occurred along the way.

So: Be persistent. It's worth it.

Beliefs, and Pessimism<----->Optimism

I think that our beliefs about ourselves and our external reality (i.e., the world), whether based in fact or fiction, or rational or irrational processes, go a long way toward determining the course of our lives. These beliefs, if not at the very core of our mind-oriented processes, are embedded deep enough within us as to usually be implicit; that is, these beliefs occupy a domain which usually lies outside our conscious processes, thereby influencing our conscious processes from some deeper, somewhat murky position. (Apologies to Freud and his disciples.)

In general, I'm very interested in the nature of people's beliefs as a point of interest. But beliefs become, to my way of thinking, a potentially very important focal point for consideration if a person is having difficulty in their life. Now, it's important, perhaps, for you to know that I tend to view many aspects of existence and behavior as being on a continuum. (For example, I think "sexual orientation" occupies a continuum: any given person at a given point in their life falls somewhere on it, to my way of thinking.) Let's leave that, in and of itself, alone for the time being. Rather, for now, it should suffice to know that one of the continuum lenses through which I tend to view people's beliefs is that of optimism-pessimism.

Straight up: I'm biased against pervasive pessimism (cynicism). Granted, I do think pessimism makes sense, and has a very logical utility. Plainly, I think that pessimism is essentially a hedge against disappointment: it's a way of guarding oneself from the pain of an unfavorable outcome or development. It's a lot easier to move on from a failure, or from a negative development, if one assumes an attitude of expecting failures or negative developments from the get-go. And if something "good" does happen, it's a pleasant surprise; and even then, of course, the prevailing pessimism will prevent the person from letting their guard down in celebration *too* much.

I get it. I also get that people have very good reasons for developing such pessimism. But I think that, ultimately, pessimism is akin to the local crime syndicate offering a storekeeper "protection" for a price. The price, in this case, is multifaceted, and could probably warrant a separate essay unto itself. In sum, though, the price is an eroded ability to envision and entertain life's possibilities and, therefore, an eroded ability to honor and manifest one's unique gifts. It's really the latter thing there that bothers me. Why? Because I think we're here to learn, grow, and share our gifts with the world as best we can; and it bothers me when people unnecessarily (to my way of thinking) limit themselves.

There's another point I'd like to make about pessimism as a pervasive perspective: I think it's simply easier for people to identify reasons why they (or another) *can't* pursue a goal/dream/desire than it is to seek reasons why they (or another) *can.* Practiced with enough doggedness, such habits of thinking engender the routine use of words like "should" and "ought" with respect to hopes, dreams, wants, needs, and reasonable courses of action. And people often get into trouble when they set up unreasonably restrictive shoulds and oughts to govern their contemplative and action-taking processes.

It is my position that a tendency toward seeking reasons why one *can* pursue what they want or need -- i.e., an opportunity-focused perspective -- better-facilitates one's ability to access the motivation to pursue one's wants and needs. Furthermore, an opportunity-focused perspective does not deny the existence of obstacles, disappointments, and setbacks; rather, it allows for them, it reasonably accommodates them, and it ultimately enables a person to truly move on and reach higher.

Now, none of this is black-and-white, of course, and it is not intended to apply to all things. Taken too far, the perspective I am touting could lead to very destructive and harmful behavior. There are some things people should not do -- and I use the word "should" very intentionally here. I think the principle "do no harm" ought to rule the day, or at least be on one's personal Board of Directors. None of us are islands unto ourselves, and our actions do not exist in a vacuum. No, our actions affect others, and we have a responsibility to others by virtue of living in a society. On another note, I acknowledge that my perspective is biased: I am a White American Man, plain and simple. In theory anyway, I love the ideas of independence, individualism, and self-actualization. I've enjoyed the trappings and benefits of my circumstances, a fact which I happily own; and I acknowledge that my perspective may not be compatible with others'. But you know what? I think that much of what I'm saying is good and true, and my intentions are in service of well-being.

Thanks for reading.