Everything Else

The Thesis community has been great to me, so I thought it was time to pay it forward a little by collecting a few MindTweaks posts that might be of special interest to Thesis users and bloggers in general.

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In the previous parts of this series, I put a lot of work into looking at what’s the self-blame habit — but the solutions are what I wanted to focus on.

I’ve had a tough time finding the right presentation.. so I’m just going to spit out a few approaches, solutions, and thought-tweaks that seem to help. Here goes:

Surrender.

If the underlying purpose for taking all of the blame onto yourself is to try and stay in control — Surrender. Let go.

Consciously, intentionally, willfully recognize that some things are just not within your sphere of influence. Let go of the desire and effort to control everything. Don’t laugh, it’s a lot harder than it sounds — and you probably attempt a lot more control over the universe than you are aware of attempting.

By surrendering, you’ll let go of the need for control that feeds so much of the excessive self-blame habit.

Take Back Your Power:

If your habit of self blame rises from an abusive parent/authority figure… recognize that they are no longer in charge. They can’t/wont punish you now, you’re a grown up. Accepting the fault and blame worked as a good defense when you were a child, but you don’t need it anymore. It isn’t your fault, it wasn’t your fault, and it’s safe for you to say that now.

Know The Reach and the Limits of Your Influence.

Look deeply at just what you can, and cannot influence in the world around you. Recognize how much you *can* impact things around you.. and how much you have no control over.

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This morning, my Web-Sensei/friend (Check him out: TheProductionDojo.com ) called me up for one of our periodic rambling phone calls. We covered a range of topics, including Tim Ferris’s 4 Hour Work Week, the pursuit of happiness vs symbols of happiness, and why some CEO’s make more in a week than we’ll make in our entire lives.

A lot of it is blog worthy, but it was a much simpler exchange that motivated me to actually sit down and write.

The convo went something like this…

MindTweaks: “Hey, did you see my posts on “never a word? I cracked myself up. ”

WebSensei: “Er… No. I actually didn’t subscribe to your RSS ’til yesterday.”

MT: “It’s ok. I took like 4 years to subscribe to your main blog, you know.”

WS: “Yeah, but I’m a better friend than you are… which, oddly, is why I didn’t subscribe.”

MT: “Huh?”

WS: “See, you’re a lot about design and presentation. So as your friend, the design of your page should matter to me - since it matters to you. And just reading the RSS Feed would be like .. cheating. In order to really appreciate what matters to you, I should to go to your actual blog, witness and admire your presentation “

MT: “But you never, in fact, actually visit my blog?”

WS: “Erm.. No. Not really. I’ve gone when you ask me for help with something. Once I accidentally wound up there while searching for a Live Writer bug fix, and thanks again for that!”

MT: “You’re welcome, I’m a good little pseudo-geek girl. But… how does all this make YOU a better friend?”

WS: “It doesn’t… that’s my point. The thought process was flawed. In trying to be a better friend, and read your blog the way it SHOULD be read, I wasn’t reading it at all… because I rarely go to blogs. I read RSS Feeds. So in the end, I decided to be a mediocre friend and just subscribe. Besides, you write cool stuff”

Ok, he didn’t actually say I write cool stuff. But he would have, you know. Especially if I tossed in a gratuitous photo of Jessica Alba for him. And for the record, his mediocre friendship beat’s most people’s best-of-show version.

But the point to all this rambling is he got caught up in <cue ominous music> *The Shoulds*.

I know a lot about The Shoulds; we spend quality time together. They attend my holiday dinners and birthday bashes, as well as happily tending to my art, writing, and social projects. They’re fond of making helpful comments like When faced with a task, The Shoulds pelt me with cliche’s like “If you aren’t going to do it right, why bother doing it at all?” and “That’s nice dear, but wouldn’t it be better if…. ?”

I listen, and I get caught up in how it should be done, the perfect way, the right way, the one true way to bring out the full potential of each act.

But here’s the catch: The Shoulds have no relationship to how I can and will actually do things. When I focus on them, I don’t *do* anything; I’m busy waiting until I can do it the way it *should* be done.

I don’t answer my email, because I really should say something clever when I respond. I don’t comment on a blog entry because I should make my comment meaningful. I don’t put the dishes in the dishwasher because I should clean out the fridge while I’m at it.

It amounts to a lot of good intentions, not much productivity, and occasional hurt feelings from friends who think I’m ignoring them. (I’m not, of course… I’m just waiting until I can spend the time with them that I “should”.)

Enough with The Shoulds. I’m kicking them off of my couch, taking back the remote control to my life. I resolve, right here, right now, to start *doing* more, and *should-ing* less.

So there.

I’ll start just as soon as I finish fixing up the formatting of this post.. oh, I should add a graphic or two, and check with the aforementioned Web-sensei to be sure it’s ok if I call him my Web-Sensei

Oh Bother….

MindTWEAK: “If you aren’t going to do it right, why bother doing it at all?”
“Because it needs doing… Duh!”

Recently, I’ve been working on a series of posts on the common-if-contrary human tendency to blame ourselves for “bad things”, especially “bad things” which we logically have little or no part in creating.

Some of us carry the process out so far that we punish ourselves for them… others assume the bad things are a punishment from God, the Universe, or Karmic Balance.

The final two entries are about correcting that thought process in ourselves, and offering help and comfort to others who are stuck in it. (Which brings it nicely full circle to Jackie’s original post).

What lies beneath: Understanding the roots of self-blame.

Just understanding the roots of the belief in self-fault and divine punishment scenarios can make the thoughts start to fall apart.

In part two, I talked about the basic desire to feel in control (or at least to feel that the world is not out of control) being underneath the self blaming/divine punishment scenario. So that’s one root - the need for control.

Another contributing factor is the very human tendency to search for patterns of cause and effect — our minds are so tuned into these patterns that we’ll see them where they don’t exist. If we don’t understand why something happened, our mind will connect otherwise unrelated dots - So that’s another root - the need to know what led to this point, the need to understand the causes.

We also have a need for pain and loss to have have meaning. Pain and difficulty is much easier to bear if it has a purpose - if we’re sparing someone else pain, if we can see it as part of a higher good, or the wages of our sins, or as a lesson we need to learn for the future, or we can believe we’re serving as an example. That’s a third root - the need for tragedy to mean something, to serve a purpose.

These are universal, basic human desires; they don’t even require a belief in an Authoritarian God. People see the laws of nature as the ruling force, for example, and the good of the planet as the “higher purpose”.

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Difficult times happen. Illness, death, economic losses, acts of terrorism, acts of nature. Yesterday, I wrote about the common assumption that we (as individuals or as a culture) are to blame for these bad things.

Somehow, someway, we decide that it must be our fault. We have no idea how we could be to blame, but we’re certain we must be… Maybe God is punishing us, maybe it’s karma.

What makes this such a pervasive thought pattern? Whether on a grand scale or on a personal level, disasters are largely beyond our comprehension, and out of our control. Logically, rationally, they can’t be our fault.

And that’s the problem.

Disasters and tragedies are out of our control.

By looking for our fault or blame in contributing to negative events (whether real or imagined) we regain a sense of control over our lives, and over the world around us.

If we can believe we caused the problem, we can try to fix it, or at the least understand how to keep it from happening in the future.

• If I somehow *caused* those 100 mph winds by bad thoughts, then at least I am in control, it wasn’t random… and maybe I can learn to control my thoughts, and keep random winds from striking again.
• If I believe that I developed some rare disease because I didn’t pray hard enough…. it is my own fault, and I am in control. Not God, not bacteria, not chance. Me. I’m in control. I can pray harder, and maybe gain God’s forgiveness, but if not.. at least I was in control.
• If I can believe that Hurricane Katrina was God’s Punishment for wild lifestyles — then I can regain a sense of control and power by fighting against wild lifestyles in the culture.
• If I can believe that I’ve displeased an authority figure (God, a parent, a boss, a partner) and brought on their wrath, then they did not control this outcome, I did. If I show regret or punish myself, or take steps to keep it from happening again, they may relent and forgive me. (you see this with abused spouses and children, as well as among the devoutly religious)

Our brains are wired to seek out patterns, to connect the dots, especially patterns of cause and effect — and we’re so tuned into patterns that our brain sees them even when they are not there.

If we don’t find such a pattern, our mind will *create* one, preferably one that makes sense to the most primitive levels of our brains, and most of all, one that restores a sense of control and order to our lives.

Later up this week? Part three… how to change thought patterns of self blame.
Part One: Why Am I Being Punished? What Did I Do Wrong?

MindTWEAK: Just because you see a pattern doesn’t make it real or meaningful.