AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: A Unifying Theory of Self-Help DATE: 10:06 PM ----- BODY: I wrote an article about self-help:

Here's a unifying theory for self-help from an avid fan of the genre. What is it that you actually get when you purchase a self-help book? Most likely it will deliver on four value categories: Empowerment, Kinship, Tactics, and Creativity. Whether or not self-help delivers on its promise for personal change, there is a reason people keep coming back (to the tune of $11 billion spent on self-help in 2008).

Labels: meta-self-help

----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage DATE: 11:09 AM ----- BODY: This is a fascinating book: What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage, which was spawned by Amy Sutherland's NYTimes article, "What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage."

This passage, and a particular line near the end, struck me while reading today:

Humans are so sloppy, I think, because we can later explain ourselves, put it another way, or apologize to our fellow higher primates. There's no explaining anything to an animal. If a trainer's timing is off and he unintentionally teaches a dolphin to jump when he meant it to flip, there's no explaining to the marine mammal, "Oh, jeez, sorry, what I meant was . . ." If a trainer unnerves an animal by getting too close too fast, he doesn't get to explain that he just wants to be friends. When a trainer falls down in front of a big cat, he doesn't get to explain it was an accident, that he's not a prey animal.

That animals take the world literally, connect the behavioral dots on the spot, and respond so clearly, drives home this fact: What you do is communication. If it wasn't so, we couldn't train animals. But we can, and without one word.

Labels: communication

----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: We CAN be good at happiness DATE: 2:22 AM ----- BODY: Dan Gilbert's Stumbling Upon Happiness is one of the most important books on happiness. It basically shows all the ways in which we sabotage ourselves in our quests for happiness.

He has an excellent TED talk where he rifles through some of his ideas. (thanks Stephan Stegeman!)

He says that we have terrible happiness simulators. For example, given a choice between winning the lottery and being paraplegic, we'd pick winning the lottery. The following graphic represents how most people therefore simulate their happiness about the situation:

The actual results are the following:

Lottery winners are no more happier than paraplegics. Who would've thought?

Does that mean we're stupid? No.

Does that mean we have terrible happiness simulators? Maybe.

Does that mean we shouldn't seek happiness? Absolutely not.

Here is my problem with what he's saying. What happens if you seek to make yourself a paraplegic? You will be unhappy. Here's how it would go down.

Let's say I decided right now, "okay, tomorrow, I'm going to make a plan to make myself a paraplegic." What would happen is that I would have a really restless sleep tonight. Tomorrow, when I start making the plan, my body will slow down and I'll feel incredible anxiety about my plans. As I'm about to paralyze myself, I will have incredible doubt, so much so that I probably won't have the discipline to execute on it. If I do finally execute it, then first it would be really painful. Second, the initial 2-3 months will be physically and financially grueling—not to mention emotionally—as I readjust to the world. And thirdly, even if the guilt wears off (as I'm sure people who became paraplegics because of their negligence do eventually shake the regret), I'd still be depressed because I'd have the knowledge that I'm the type of person that seeks to sabotage myself. And I wouldn't feel happy until I figured out how to make myself someone that is protective toward himself. People who treat their bodies well are the kinds of people who are happy.

THAT's my happiness simulator.

Happiness lives in the good choices you make about the future, not in the things that have happened to you in the past. Evolution wouldn't have it any other way.

Labels: happiness, happiness as doing

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR:

ZeroK DATE:4/28/09 7:55 AM Nice to see it posted :-D ----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: The more eloquent the words, the more careful you should be to match those words to actions. DATE: 4:28 PM ----- BODY: From Dr. Hurd:

You can best predict a person's behavior by behavior displayed in the past. Keep the focus on behavior -- not words. This is because very few people have strong integrity. By "strong integrity" I mean when a person's words and actions almost always match. The more eloquent the words, and the more those words animate your values and beliefs, the more careful you should be to match the words to actions. People who tend to act one way in one kind of situation will, over time, tend to act the same way in future situations regardless of words or claimed ideas.

This is in line with my post, "Don't Build Your Happiness On a Tower of Babble." I always need to be watchful about this since I spend a lot of energy being a self-help writer.

Labels: say-it-make-it-so, self-help skepticism

----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: What is Reality Therapy? DATE: 3:37 PM ----- BODY: This clip I posted on YouTube has inadvertently exposed me to new ideas:

Someone on YouTube responded saying that their professor played this same clip in a Cultural Psychology class as an example of "Reality Therapy." I've since did some research, and I'm going to check out William Glasser's Choice Therapy: A New Psychology for Personal Freedom.

This looks promising, and it may be the antidote to the problems of Victimization and Empowerment suggested in SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.

At the same time, though, it kind of sounds like a glorified version of Dr. Phil's "Get Real" mantra.

Labels: reality therapy

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR:

Kim DATE:5/11/09 8:40 PM FYI- Glasser wrote Reality Therapy in 1965, a bit before Dr. Phil became a "hit." I've thought Dr. Phil has been using Reality Therapy quite badly for years. I use RT in my practice and am an instructor of Glasser's ideas through his institute. It's great stuff. Check out my website at http://www.realitytherapycentral.com. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR:

Philosophistry DATE:5/11/09 8:42 PM Yeah, that probably should have read the other way around. Like, "Dr. Phil is a twisted abstraction of Reality Therapy." ----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: The One Question that makes you happy DATE: 10:26 AM ----- BODY: Here's an idea. Find a question about happiness that if it's true, you're always happy.

For me, this question is, "Do I like where am I going?" If the answer is yes, I should be happy. If I'm unhappy and I still answer yes, that doesn't make sense, and I would doubt whether I'm truly unhappy.

I woke up in a really terrible mood today. They're doing renovations around my place, and it's like sitting in the dentist's office (I work from home). I had a thought, "I'm depressed, I'm depressed!" And then I said, "okay, maybe you are. But do you like where you're going?" I replied, "Yes." And then my shoulders relaxed, my back untensed, and I thought to myself, "Hmm, that's odd. Nah, you're not depressed."

That question is my "One Question." I made it based on this principle:

Happiness has more to do with where you're going than where you're at.

So, barring things like being in abusive relationship, or being deep into poverty, or being in prison, I should be able to be happy simply by facing the right direction.

And even in the exceptions I mentioned above, you can find happiness with the right orientation. For example, those in poverty who resolve to pick up Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and are determined to get the discipline necessary to lift themselves out, are going to be happy about that part of their life from that day going forward.

That may sound un-PC, but put me in the Empowerment camp of self-help. Or maybe the Empowerment-with-conditions camp. Almost anybody can be happy today. But there's no free lunch.

I sometimes like to call my philosophy on-the-way-ism:

Happiness is about being perpetually on-the-way to where you want to be.

Labels: happiness as doing, principle

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR:

Stephan Stegeman DATE:4/27/09 5:40 AM Hi Philip.

I just saw a nice video on being happy. I think you'll know the video, but if you don't, I think you'll find it interesting :-)

http://video.ted.com/talks/podcast/DanGilbert_2004_480.mp4

Regards! ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR:

Philosophistry DATE:4/28/09 2:51 AM Thanks for the link Stephan! Dan Gilbert's a great writer. The video inspired this post: http://www.self-programming.com/2009/04/we-can-be-good-at-happiness.html ----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: Life isn't about the elimination of fear or the eradication of sadness . . . DATE: 1:15 AM ----- BODY: Dr. Hurd, author of Effective Therapy, says it really well:

Life isn't about the elimination of fear or the eradication of sadness. It's about the creation of value and purpose -- about material and emotional fulfillment. If you eliminate fear without creating value -- if that were even possible -- you wouldn't have created anything.

Read rest of his post.

Labels: happiness as doing

----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: Why I don't judge people who do self-help, tarot, therapy, or religion DATE: 10:08 PM ----- BODY: Anybody who's into self-help should read at least a couple books of skepticism toward the field. Right now, for example, I'm in the midst of reading Stumbling Upon Happiness and SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.

Rather than being discouraged by the attack, I feel safer knowing what the skeptics are liable to say. Here's what Steve Salerno, in SHAM, says about Marianne Williamson:

Even for some industry insiders, the unswerving fidelity of Williamson's sizable base constituency can be puzzling, since her books are so repetitive, and she spends so much time blithely stating the obvious: "A sense of separateness dissolves in the presence of real intimacy," Williamson tells audiences. Or, "The reason we feel powerless is simply because we're not expressing our power." Or, "The challenge is to create on Earth as it is in Heaven." ... Such lines, like so much of SHAM, have that whiff of contrived profundity that obscure poets often employ to mask the odor of dubious sense.

The thing is, even in the circular-sounding phraseology of Williamson, I find value. I feel moved by what she is saying. The one-line zinger format is precisely my methodology for self-help. My way is essentially principle-centered thinking, and it sounds similar to those quotes from Williamson.

For example, I have a principle that has been Re-Tweeted a handful of times on Twitter:

Happiness isn't about getting to a place where "everything's fine."

To someone like Salerno, that kind of sentence is meaningless. But to me, and apparently others, it means a whole lot.

People are moved by different things. Some people are moved by a priest invoking ancient texts. Others are moved by Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Whatever you're deal is, I won't judge you for it, as long as it tends to do more good than harm.

I kind of like Gretchen Rubin's use of the term "Happiness Project." Everybody must make it their own personal project to find happiness. Everybody who wants to grow needs to discover what medium moves them, and then receive as much material through that medium as possible. Regardless of what the doubters say.

Here is Marianne Williamson:

Honestly, this video doesn't work or even really make sense to me. But I know it will for a lot of people. And that's fine with me.

Labels: meta-self-help, self-help skepticism, what.moves.you philosophy

----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: "There is no such thing as balance." DATE: 2:18 PM ----- BODY: At an Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar at Stanford, an Executive Vice President at Microsoft was giving a talk about her lessons for success.

In the middle of her talk, she said, "Oh, and there's no such thing as balance."

I could sense a quiet gasp among the young college-audience.

She continued, "If you need to see your children, go home. If you need to make more money, work harder. If you're stressed, take a break. It's that simple."

Looking at the reaction in the audience, I sensed that her words were somewhat provocative. And this makes sense given the way college students think. As Jon Stewart said in his Commencement Address:

College is something you complete. Life is something you experience.

This "no such thing as balance" concept also plays into my other principle:

Happiness isn't about getting to a place where "everything's fine."

Labels: happiness as doing, principle, uneven terrain

----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: Add this to the warning labels on anti-depressants DATE: 1:47 PM ----- BODY: They should add this to the warning labels on anti-depressants:

Taking anti-depressants may cause you to accept problems in your life that you wouldn't have otherwise tolerated.

Labels: anti-depressants, happiness as doing

----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: "Too many people take drugs when they really need to be making changes in their lives." DATE: 1:41 PM ----- BODY: I'm not against anti-depressants. But I believe that most who walk into that doctor's office, vulnerable with depression, don't do their homework on their prescriptions. It's based on this principle:

When you're depressed and anxious, you don't care if you hurt yourself.

I saw this interesting story:

Dr. Ronald Dworkin tells the story of a woman who didn't like the way her husband was handling the family finances. She wanted to start keeping the books herself but didn't want to insult her husband.

The doctor suggested she try an antidepressant to make herself feel better.

She got the antidepressant, and she did feel better, said Dr. Dworkin, a Maryland anesthesiologist and senior fellow at Washington's Hudson Institute, who told the story in his book "Artificial Unhappiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class." But in the meantime, Dworkin says, the woman's husband led the family into financial ruin.

"Doctors are now medicating unhappiness," said Dworkin. "Too many people take drugs when they really need to be making changes in their lives." (CNN Link)

I visited a psychiatrist once. When I went up to the secretary's counter to fill out the sign-in sheet, I noticed that the clipboard was plastered with the logo of a pharmaceutical company. This had a chilling effect on me, and I ultimately didn't take what the psychiatrist prescribed.

Labels: anti-depressants, happiness as doing, principle

----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: The whisper of liberation from depression DATE: 10:39 AM ----- BODY: Most cases of depression have to do with actual events going on in that person's life and not in the person's attitude toward them. If someone is married to the wrong person, or has the wrong career, or is in the wrong town, they don't need therapy. They need to get out.

And this shouldn't be controversial.

If you're married to someone insensitive, you won't be happy. If your boss is an abusive jerk, you should quit, even in this economy.

But how do we know what defines "should"?

Before you let this quibble write off everything, let's lay a principle foundation.

My theory of happiness is that when we're doing what's appropriate, we are most happy. It's based on this principle:

How can you be happy if you don't proceed in the direction of your most important wants/needs/values?

Which is also based on this principle:

Happiness and depression have more to do with where we're going than where we're at.

Even if you think what I'm saying is akin to an amoralistic, "Do what thou wilt" thelema, it still holds true. Take even the most extreme case: if someone believes that it's important to be a homicidal maniac and doesn't act on it, he won't be happy, virtue-be-damned. Conversely, that doesn't mean the homicidal maniac will be happy if he does act on it.

People are often too scared to recognize what it will take to make a meaningful change in their life. Instead they turn to the idea that "it's all in my head." They think that if they can just "focus on setting their boundaries" or "reverse their ingrained beliefs" they won't have to do the unthinkable.

This image from Luis Borges's Inferno, I, 32 is the situation that most of the depressed find themselves in:

From the twilight of day till the twilight of evening, a leopard, in the last years of the thirteenth century, would see some wooden planks, some vertical iron bars, men and women who changed, a wall and perhaps a stone gutter filled with dry leaves. He did not know, could not know, that he longed for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing things to pieces and the wind carrying the scent of a deer, but something suffocated and rebelled within him.

My problem has been that I've often had little ideas and dreams that I was simply too scared or weak to embrace. I just left them shelved for the sake of an easier life. When I found myself depressed with work, I would yell at myself, "Come on, you spoiled brat, anybody would be happy to be doing what you're doing!" But then I started to look deep inside myself and began summoning up the courage to do what I truly wanted to do. After overcoming my initial hesitation anxiety, I developed the immense joy of finally feeling connected to what I've been doing. Looking back now, I can't believe that I let myself drift on the supposed "golden path" for so long. And now, the more time that I've put between me and that supposed golden path, the more I find myself with new foundations, such that the current way no longer seems especially exalted or fanciful. It simply feels more true.

If the final design for humans was to simply think our way to happiness, we would have never survived this long as a species. Nor can we imagine a higher being who would have that kind of plan for us.

Labels: depression, happiness, happiness as doing, happiology, principle

----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: How Tarot cards and vacations make us happy DATE: 6:05 PM ----- BODY: I remember a Friday in college, when I noticed one of my dormmates wandering around depressed. "What's going on?" I asked her. "I don't know," she replied and left it at that. I had a sneaking suspicion it had to do with her and her best friend competing for my roommate, something I was uniquely privy to. Before I could confirm that with her, she disappeared for two days.

On Sunday, she popped up out of nowhere. "Where the hell were you?" I asked. "I just went out to the beach," she replied. "Are you still depressed?" I asked. "Nope, I figured some stuff out, and now I'm good." She then turned around and left.

This cryptic exchange has always stood out in my head. I think because I was going through my own depressions at the time. I was confused how she could liberate herself in just two days, when I felt like I was doing the right thing by staring out the window dwelling on my problems for hours on end. I couldn't explain why she could be depressed on Friday, and not depressed on Sunday simply by "getting space" and "figuring it out." What did she figure out?

But now, I think I'm closer to understanding the mechanics of how this kind of liberation happens. And I think it has something to do with what I learned from Tarot.

I first got into Tarot a year ago, when my friend Rusty gave me a reading. My question for him was, "What do I have to do to achieve more work-life fulfillment." He laid out the cards, walked me through the meanings, asking me questions about this or that, and I found my mind breaking through barriers, and focusing in on certain things that were really powerful for me. Around that time, the iPhone App Store was about to launch, and I was wavering between trying to make my own stake as an independent developer, or continuing being an unhappy freelancer. The cards and the readings just kept whispering to me to pursue my dreams, to do something that scared me. For me, this meant creating my own ideas, rather than working on other people's. And this was even before the App Store opened.

While the conclusion of this story is that I decided to make an iPhone app for Tarot—which turned out to be a hit—the real story is that for two months after that reading, I felt charged with a renewed sense of purpose in work, something that had previously been a rare experience for me since 1998. And I knew I could credit Tarot for doing this, that somehow it had triggered life-change in me.

And here's how I explain that transformation. Our consciousness is like a fisherman on a lake. We spend most of the time gliding around the surface, looking for answers to our problems. But we often never really find them until we stop, make a guess that there's something deep down there, and cast our line to grab them.

In a Tarot reading, the cards branch out all over the place in your mind, triggering associations beneath the surface that you may have never considered for years. It then drops hints at you that here, right here, is where you might want to cast your line. Tarot is called a divination tool, which reminds me of those divining rods that people used to carry that would pull them to an obscure source of water.

I think that taking a vacation does the same thing. It removes you from the currents and eddies running through your life, and allows you to take a casual scan of your entire lake.

Or to put it in engineering terms, only when all the noise in your life is quiet, does the signal finally emerge.

All in all, I've summarized this idea into two principles that relate to each other:
How can you be happy if you don't proceed in the direction of your most important wants/needs/values?
And then this one:
Introspective devices, like soul-searching, give quiet, but important voices a platform.
I believe that it is absolutely essential to our happiness to find within ourselves the ignored and marginalized voices that are whispering to us every day about our dreams and aspirations. Those voices need to be recognized and given a megaphone. Whether you take a vacation, get a Tarot reading, or meditate, somehow you must clear everything standing in the way of what you genuinely want in life. The blockers could be anything, from fear, to distractions, to being set in your ways, or discouragement from others. Whatever it is, we must have the courage to plumb the depths of our souls to find what it is that we truly want.

Labels: happiness, relaxation, tarot, vacations

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR:

Ms Muddle-Headed DATE:4/8/09 12:57 PM Nice!I really liked that analogy with the fishermen..Strangely I had a tarot card session with a couple of friends on Saturday and it was kinda amazing.. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR:

lrp DATE:4/10/09 5:28 PM I really enjoyed this article! Nice analogies. The Tarot is my favorite tool of self-inquiry... ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR:

Cookiemouse DATE:4/13/09 9:55 AM The tarot opens the door to the universal mind that we all share, but many have forgotten. It is true that if we follow the heart then we cannot go wrong. It is when we kid ourselves that we can just live on the surface and deny our true nature that happiness eludes us. ----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: What Americans should have done 10 years ago DATE: 10:52 PM ----- BODY: They should have read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The lessons in that book are priceless.

While the following isn't a lesson, its a spooky excerpt given our current economic conditions:

If you are going to build the Empire State Building, the first thing you need to do is dig a deep hole and pour a strong foundation. If you are going to build a home in the suburbs, all you need to do is pour a 6-inch slab of concrete. Most people, in their drive to get rich, are trying to build an Empire State Building on a 6-inch slab. ... One day, sleepless and deep in debt in suburbia, living the American Dream, they decided that the answer to their financial problems is to find a way to get rich quick. Construction on the skyscraper begins. It goes up quickly, and soon, instead of the Empire State Building, we have the Leaning Tower of Suburbia. The sleepless nights return.

(Page 57 of Rich Dad, which was written in 1997)

Labels: finances

----- -------- AUTHOR: Philosophistry TITLE: One of the most compelling documents about humans and socializing (from an unlikely source) DATE: 12:59 AM ----- BODY: Who would have thought, that an article in the New Yorker that argues how solitary confinement is akin to torture, could, in a roundabout way, make a singular contribution to the argument that humans are social animals:

He was stiff from lying in bed day and night, yet tired all the time. He dozed off and on constantly, sleeping twelve hours a day. He craved activity of almost any kind. He would watch the daylight wax and wane on the ceiling, or roaches creep slowly up the wall. He had a Bible and tried to read, but he often found that he lacked the concentration to do so. He observed himself becoming neurotically possessive about his little space, at times putting his life in jeopardy by flying into a rage if a guard happened to step on his bed. He brooded incessantly, thinking back on all the mistakes he’d made in life, his regrets, his offenses against God and family.

His captors moved him every few months. For unpredictable stretches of time, he was granted the salvation of a companion—sometimes he shared a cell with as many as four other hostages—and he noticed that his thinking recovered rapidly when this occurred. He could read and concentrate longer, avoid hallucinations, and better control his emotions. “I would rather have had the worst companion than no companion at all,” he noted.

Labels: loneliness, socializing

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR:

Ben Godfrey DATE:4/3/09 3:04 AM Reading Solzhenitsyn's A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Shirky's Here Comes Everybody brought this phenomena to my attention. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR:

Philosophistry DATE:4/3/09 11:37 AM Cool, I'll have to check those out. ----- --------