Why are we here? What does it all mean? Who is God?
Do you know the answer to these questions? I don’t. But I have ideas because I worked hard on developing a philosophy. You must have a framework to answer the big questions you encounter or your life will spiral downward into a meaningless mess. Many people find their philosophy through church or other religious affiliations, but I would say this should only be the beginning. Stretch yourself spiritually. Look into every religion. Read the thoughts of the great philosophers who have gone before us. Read the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Ghita. As Jesus said, “Seek, and ye shall find.”
I’ve had many patients come to me with the problem of meaninglessness. It comes in different forms and has somewhat different presentations, but this is the core problem. Their life has no meaning. And without a philosophy, they’re lost. They have no idea how to go right because they can’t even see where they’re going. Your philosophy is your light.
Your quest for a philosophy should be a lifelong pursuit. There aren’t many things sadder than the person who clings to a belief system that no longer works for them. You should never give up trying to learn new things about the mysteries that surround us, nor should you ever shut your mind to things you have discarded in the past. Many times people will come full circle to believe in what they were taught as kids, but in a much more profound way.
I know there are many out there who will balk at this notion. They’ll say you should believe what you’re taught and not question it. I have a great problem with this. I believe the truth will always come out, no matter what you call it or how you approach it. You can find answers to life’s questions anywhere. In fact, when a question arises, many believe if you pay attention hard enough God will give you the answers you need. The answer was always there, you just couldn’t see it until the need arose.
For those who say they don’t know how to develop a new philosophy or strengthen their old one, I say take a visit to any bookstore or library. Man has struggled to find his place in the universe since the beginning. In that struggle, many wise men and women have taken the time to put their thoughts on paper. If you can read, you can explore nearly every philosophy that man has devised through the ages.
I’ll close this section with a warning: Always be respectful of another person’s philosophy. In general, a person will cling to their philosophy like a lifeline. Only with the greatest respect should you go nosing around in someone else’s beliefs, and even then, only by invitation. Remember, it’s their responsibility to keep their light shining, not yours.
I am amazed at how often this little thorn pops up. Bias: it’s one word that basically means the prejudice of a person or entity toward a particular subject. I actually like the word “prejudice” better because the word itself explains what I’m talking about: pre-judgment. The point here is that everyone will have certain opinions, including corporations, government, etc., that are based on what they have seen as truth. These opinions arise directly from the experiences they’ve had.
Humans seem to gain knowledge in levels. The first kind of knowledge is academic—someone teaches it to you or you read it in a book. The second kind of knowledge is called experiential, meaning knowledge gained through experience. This is the most powerful knowledge human beings have. It’s like the difference between knowing it’s painful to be physically abused because you’ve read about it in books versus knowing its painful because you were thrown around the house like a rag doll.
The problem is everyone has different experiences. Everyone’s experiential knowledge is different, at least to some degree. So if, for example, you’re reading something by a former athlete turned physician turned psychiatrist turned writer, it might sound a lot like this blog. But if your reading a self help book written by someone who survived the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp, it will sound different (read the extraordinary Victor Frankl book, Man’s Search for Meaning, and you’ll see what I mean).
In psychiatry, we are encouraged to go into psychoanalysis for the primary purpose of being able to recognize our own bias and how we might interject that into therapy with others. The goal, of course, is to keep our own psychological garbage to ourselves and not pass it on to some unwitting patient. And though the analysis definitely helps in this process, it is still very difficult not to let your own bias creep in.
You will likely hear advice from many people over the course of a lifetime. Always remember that, though the words may be well intentioned, they are passing through the filter of another person’s bias. In other words, another person’s advice or opinion will always be colored by their experiences in life.
Am I saying to reject whatever anyone else says if you don’t like the sound of it? No. I’m saying always remember where the information is coming from. And if someone has massive amounts of experience in an area, and it’s experience that comes not only from them, but from many others, then you can be pretty sure they’re going to be pretty close to the truth.
This issue hits home particularly hard with anyone who is trying to sell something. When you invest a large amount of time and energy into learning about a specific product and why it is better than everything else, it becomes very hard to see that product objectively. When you need money based on the sale of that product, your ability to talk about it objectively is almost impossible.
It never hurts to listen to pitches or opinions, but always consider bias. You can always do further research on a matter to find out the truth, but when in question, you can always fall back to the old proverb: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
Don’t believe anyone can read your mind.
Communication–such a simple word, such an extraordinarily difficult concept. It so happens that if you fail in this rule, you’ll be in company with every other person who exists or has ever existed. So why bother if perfect communication is unattainable? Because poor communication leads to a vast array of problems, the most common of which will be your own unhappiness. I’m not talking about miscommunication secondary to language or accent differences, I’m talking about two people who understand each other perfectly, but can’t convey what they feel and what they need.
So where does it all start? Why do human beings in general have problems with communication? I think the main reason is because it’s just plain hard. As a writer, I am trying to communicate with you, but you are in a different place and a different time than I am. As I sit here, it’s a nice, sunny day in the Southeast, school has just let out and I hear the occasional groan of busses passing by the house. This scene in my head is perfectly clear for me right now. But for you, wherever and whenever you are, it will be different. You may not see the day as brightly as I do, you may imagine a different kind of school bus.
Another confounding variable is that science tells us that no two people really see the world exactly the same way. If you are depressed, the world actually seems more gray and, well, more depressing. If you are extraordinarily happy, the world seems bright and colorful and wonderful. When you add in the differences in each of us caused by the differing conditions of our sensory modalities (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell), you see that the relay of information is always going to be a challenge–but not impossible.
There are two areas we especially need to learn good communication if we are to stand a chance at happiness: our needs and our wants. Our needs obviously take priority here, and most of us are pretty good about communicating our basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. What I’d like to talk about are our more subtle needs. These are the psychological needs that each of us have. These needs might be odd or eccentric, but we should be able to talk about them nonetheless. They are “needs” after all. For example, let’s say you require a good deal of solitude. You know this about yourself. It’s true now; it always has been true. If you find yourself in a situation where you are around people all day long every day of the week, guess what? You’ll start to get grumpy. The grumpiness will graduate to irritability, maybe even hostility. All because you never spoke up and said, “Hey, I need an hour to myself every day.”
You’re probably thinking, sure, I could ask for that, but what I’ll get in return is: “Yeah, well we all wish we could get an hour to ourselves. Life is tough.” Okay, truth be told, this might happen, but the point is, you have to ask or it will never happen. You have to respect your own psychological needs, and you have to convey those needs in a way that others can understand. Make your communication specific to your audience. If you live with a psychologist, you might say you need your personal time because you were raised as a latchkey kid and without that time, you tend towards depression and irritability. But you wouldn’t tell your kids that. You’d tell them that you needed time to rest, and that would be sufficient.
The second part of communication is to be able to talk about your desires. You would probably be amazed at how many people I’ve counseled who come in and say, “My wife just doesn’t understand me.” Or, “My husband has no clue who I am.”
Why not? The problem most often is that people decide a good partner should be able to read minds. I’m not kidding. They think the partner should be able to know, from a glance or a tone of voice, nearly everything that has happened to that person and what they will need to get better. I sometimes wonder if this is a direct result of the “one true love” myth I talked about earlier. Wherever it came from, I can tell you this: There is no person that can read your mind and automatically know all your desires or needs. I don’t even think a psychic would make this claim.
If you want something in life, you have to ask for it. You have to decide what that thing is, and you have to put energy into making it happen. This step, putting energy into making it happen, is a major downfall for all sorts of plans, but I’m telling you it’s as basic a principle to well-being as there is. You have to expend energy to be happy. In this case it means asking for what you want.
Remember this, true communication is difficult, but if you know yourself well enough to know your wants and your needs, and you put energy into conveying that information to those you want to know about it, you will find that most of your needs will be met, and many of your desires.
Avoid being critical.
This is a disease of adults, generally. It’s rare that you find a kid that can pick things apart and tell you what is wrong about everything. Why? They simply haven’t learned to do this yet, and I think this is why kids are generally happier.
The need to be critical seems to come to us in a few ways. We either learn it through work or through our parents. Sometimes we learn it from our peers as a way to separate ourselves from other people. The latter is a kind of ego building program we use to help us feel superior by comparison.
Don’t fall into this trap. If you learn to be critical all the time in every situation, you’ll find that it’s very difficult to ever be happy. You will create a psychological prison. The bars of this prison will be your standards for what is “good”. The only key will be your ability to let go.
When you are critical of everything, a couple of things will happen. First and foremost, you’ll have problems making and keeping friends. Even if you aren’t critical of your friends, you are still spouting out negativity, and most people can get all the negativity they need just by watching the local headline news. Besides, if you’re critical enough, your friends will think you’ll turn that critical focus on them as soon as they are out of your company.
The worst thing that happens when you are critical is you set yourself apart from what is “good”. You’ll start to say things like this: “I would have had a great time if they hadn’t overcooked the burgers.” You actually create a buffer between you and being happy. Here’s the thing: Happiness is ephemeral. No one can really tell you where or when it will strike. It can pop up at the oddest times and the most bizarre places. It may not happen when you think it should, and it will rarely happen because a certain set of conditions that exist in your mind have been satisfied. Happiness is not like a chemistry project where you add in a bunch of ingredients (good service, good food, well behaved kids, etc.) and get a great big smiley face.
I like to remind people who are hypercritical that they can use that same critical function to get in a better frame of mind. All they have to do is change their focus to figure out what is good about something. Imagine this, if you will. A person spends his whole day focusing on what is good. Like a detective, you learn to search out the good in everything. Why? Because if all you ever focus on is the negative, the world isn’t going to seem like a very good place (Hey, I never said this was rocket science). But if you can focus on what is good, you’ll find that, more and more, the elusive entity known as happiness will start to visit more often, as will your friends.
The arena where this rule is most important is how it applies to other people. There is rarely a good reason to be critical of another human being for one reason: You can never know everything about another person, so you are in no position to judge them. You’re probably wondering how a psychiatrist can say you can’t know everything about another person. Well, I mean just that. I’ve seen people in therapy for years and still learned new things about them regularly. The only way that you can truly know another person is to know all their hopes and dreams, all their traumas and losses, and all their pains, physical and emotional. Do you see what I’m getting at here? The only way you can ever truly know another person is to be that person, and we can never criticize that which we don’t truly understand.
The ability to be critical is not evil. It definitely serves a purpose. But in the world today, it seems that being critical has become like a social sport. Unfortunately, it’s a sport that always hurts at least one party, and frequently hurts everyone involved.
Don’t look outside yourself for happiness.
This is perhaps the most important rule of all, and if you really get this rule, all the rest of them will fall into place. What I’m talking about here is called an internal locus of control in psychiatry. I don’t know why psychiatrists can’t just call things what they are, so I’ll translate “internal locus of control”. It basically means you take responsibility for the things you do and the things you don’t do.
Each of us has a certain way of responding to life and what life does to us. We either think, “Oh man! I can’t believe that happened to me.” Or, “What can I do differently to keep that from happening again”.
The person who can’t believe what happened to them is a victim. They live life waiting to see what will happen next. When something bad happens, it was supposed to happen that way. When something good happens, it was just luck.
The person who wonders what he could have done differently is a person who works from an internal locus of control. He doesn’t see life as something that happens to him, he sees life as something he creates. When something bad happens, he sees it as a learning tool, a way not to do something the next time. When something good happens, he sees it as the inevitable result of hard work.
This applies to emotions as well. So many people out there are looking for happiness to happen to them while a select few are out there making their own happiness. If you require the perfect meal, the perfect house, the perfect job, or the perfect mate to make you happy, then you are a victim. You are subject to things outside of your control to make you happy; therefore, happiness will be capricious at best. But if you truly believe that happiness comes from personal choice, something you decide and defend against the onslaught of life, then you can be truly happy. I’m talking about the kind of happiness that won’t fall apart easily because it’s not dependent on things you can’t control.
To be honest, there will always be things out of your control that will affect your life and the lives of those you love. But here’s the thing: You can’t do anything about that stuff, so why let it control you? I think Stephen King said it best in his short story “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”. Mr. King wrote: “It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living or get busy dying.” The victim is dying; he can only react to his circumstances and try to survive. The person who operates with an internal locus of control is living. He does everything he can to create the life he wants, and lets the rest go.
The choice is, and will always be, yours.
Godspeed.
