Self-Programming

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2009-06-02T12:49:00.000-05:00

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Can self-help be a personality disorder?

2009-05-24T22:34:00.001-05:00

A friend of mine told me how he went on an all-fruit diet for 3 days. This made me really curious and I asked him all sorts of details. I added, "I think I want to try that. I think I'm up for something like that for some reason. I feel the need to go on a fast, or try an all-fruit diet, or maybe Epsom salts or something." My friend responded back, "Oh yeah? You itching for some life-hacking?" I think there's a certain kind of personality for this. Maybe it will eventually be put in the DSM-V. They could call it, "Self-Help Personality Disorder," wherein the patient constantly seeks to modify themselves, by going through various rituals, such as consuming self-help books, or engaging in fanciful diets or programs. There's always this thought lingering in the back of my mind whenever I get sucked into a self-help book. There's always the question, "Is this impulse itself a problem?" I've been aware of this possibility for years, and based on my understanding, it can be. I've certainly been overly zealous about a self-help book that has caused damage to myself, and even to those around me. But I've also been fantastically liberated by self-help books.

What's really happening with mid-life crises, quarterlife crises, empty-nest syndrome, and teenage ennui

2009-05-21T13:05:00.001-05:00

My belief is that the crux of all of those neuroses is the transition to a state where everything's optional. When your kids are all grown up and off to college, there's no need anymore for that 4-bedroom house. When you graduate from college, there's no one who's going to slap you with an F if you don't show up for Finals Week. There's no one forcing you to not live for $200/mo. by sleeping on your friend's couch. When you become a young adult, you are all of a sudden confronted with choice. It starts to hit you that you have the power to disobey your parents, your teachers, and society in general. Handling that transition from need-based motivations to want-based motivations is probably a second rite-of-passage that many of us struggle to pass through. The first rite-of-passage is simply achieving sexual and physical maturity. The second rite-of-passage, as created by modern society, is leading a life based on self-created motivations, independent of external motivators.

Do people become experts in areas of deficiency?

2009-05-18T23:09:00.000-05:00

Jason Kottke is spot on with this observation. In the past few days, he's read of two men in science who are experts in areas where they're personally deficient. George Vaillant's area of expertise is relationships, yet he himself has intimacy issues. And then V.S. Ramachandran has done some very fascinating research in areas related to strange brain behaviors, and yet he himself has a pathologically incapable memory (he can never remember his wife's birthday—or even birthmonth—for the life of him!). At the end, Kottke ponders:

Beethoven was deaf. Monet had vision problems when he painted some of his most well-known work. I wonder if there's something to this beyond coincidence.

I think there definitely is. I've noticed that many self-help gurus are working out their own issues on a public platform. For example, Dr. Laura (the stern advice queen on the radio) has had a love life that would be considered a failure given her message. Also politicians seem very genuine when they expound about virtue, but I wonder if they are able to get passionate about what they're saying because they're really just talking to themselves on the stump.

How changing the way you socialize can change your life

2009-05-17T22:04:00.002-05:00

One of the most prominent things that echoes in my mind from reading What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage is in the introduction where the author, Amy Sutherland, talks about her change:

I'm an altogether different person than I was three years ago. My friends and family may not have noticed but I am almost unrecognizable to myself at times. My outlook is more optimistic. I'm less judgmental. I have vastly more patience and self-control. I'm a better observer. I get along better with people, especially my husband. I have a peace of mind that comes from the world making so much more sense to me.

First, I have to point out that it's paragraphs like these that are the primary carrot-on-the-stick with regards to self-help books. On the other hand, I believe her. I believe that unlike other skills (like learning how to program or practice medicine), getting better at social skills will directly make you happier. There's so many different explanations for how we're social animals. For example, there's that one article on solitary confinement that talks about the cognitive decay that ensues when you're isolated from human contact. Or there's this other paper a psychologist handed to me that explains how our identities are constructed in our social relations, and therefore we have an outer-body identity that's more prominent than any inner-body identity.

The self-help principles behind diaries

2009-05-12T01:32:00.005-05:00

(1) Self-expression necessarily creates a feedback loop and echo chamber. and (2) Writing is commitment. __ (1) Whenever you engage in self-expression, the output of your expression then becomes input for new expressions. For example, in the process of creating an expressionistic painting, what you see yourself doing then feeds back into your perception, affects your emotions, and then comes back out into new expressions. What happens is that your feelings are amplified and your thoughts intensified. This is one benefit of having a diary; by writing out your thoughts, you can see them, process them, and then re-output them with further distillation or modification, and so on and so forth until you have hopefully created a pearl of an understanding about yourself. (2) You know how they say, "commit it to writing." Well that's why writing is commitment. When you write, you have to make a choice from the cloud of thoughts in your head as to what should be recorded. The act is empowering because it helps you actively define yourself. Every word is more of you staking your claim on your identity.

What I think about self-actualization

2009-05-12T00:15:00.003-05:00

I once was obsessed with the concept of self-actualization. This is a state of being that figures at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: Around Fall of 2006, I delved into self-actualization theory, and became convinced that it would be my path to work-life fulfillment. I kept making inventories of my skills and potentials and would then try to push myself into careers that would satisfy that. At the time, I had what could have been considered a dream job as a video game designer, a job I felt actualized my skills in design, programming, and the arts. And yet I still wasn't happy. Somehow I was applying the model too narrowly. Only with further introspection did I realize that I really just wanted to be independent. But I still have always clung to the self-actualization ideal, even before I read about Maslow. I keep thinking, "man, if I could just figure out the proper switch and somehow turn all this inward potential outward, I'd find work-life bliss." But then I had a thought a few days ago that sort of threw a curve into this thinking: Your meta-potential is part of your potential By "meta-potential" I'm referring to the skills you have to actualize your skills. For example, let's say you were born of a really good physical stock, and in middle school, everybody kept saying you could an Olympic athlete. According to Maslow's theory, then, your highest goal should be to fully manifest that potential. However, let's say you don't have the discipline to do all the work-outs. Or let's say your resources are limited because you have to work extra jobs to pay your bills. Or let's say you seem to have trouble working with authority, and therefore always have bad relationships with coaches. So while on some level you do have the potential to be an Olympic athlete, you don't necessarily have the potential to turn that potential into a reality. I've struggled for so long to turn what I perceive as being my intellectual potential into a reality, and I just can't seem to figure out the best way to do so. And that's always frustrated me, and I think I'm very unhappy because I mythologize self-actualization. For example, some people have what it takes to turn their music talent into pop hits, other people just don't have that sense. Who can blame them. Should one be unhappy and the other happy?

Self-Help Reality Show

2009-05-09T15:04:00.002-05:00

I really want to see a show that accomplishes this:

Listen to Your Dreams

2009-05-09T07:48:00.003-05:00

Here's a Creative Whack Pack card for you: Listen to Your Dreams. I woke up with a strange image in my mind, wherein Wired Magazine had a cover article titled "What if the Segway was upside down?" I don't know what that actually accomplishes, but it did lead me to the idea of having easy-to-push shopping carts built on the segway. So much of creativity is just letting yourself ask a series of "what-if" questions.

Instant-contentment perspectives

2009-05-07T09:33:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking about instant-contentment perspectives lately. I was first introduced to these by my dad. He's 67 years old, and he tells me this kind of story:

If you were 87 years old, and an angel offered to return you back to 67 in exchange for 90% of your wealth, wouldn't you do it? I try to imagine that I've made that deal, that I'm 87 returning back to 67, and appreciating life anew.

I came up with my own, sci-fi/philosophy style version of this. It goes like this:

Imagine you've been dead for 1,000 years and an angel returned you back to this life right at this moment. And this angel stitched in your old memories together to this present moment such that you feel like you've lived continuously up to this point. There's no way to know the difference between that series of events vs. the one we usually believe is happening now.

More on "The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference."

2009-05-06T23:57:00.003-05:00

I've been going through What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage and one of the lasting ideas I got from it is to ignore the behaviors you don't want. For example, if your husband leaves smelly socks around, don't throw a storm or nag. Instead ignore the behavior, and then use positive reinforcement to praise him when he's considerate or tidy at other times. This is really powerful I think, and it relates to what I remember Marianne Williamson said: "The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference." The reason why ignoring a behavior works is because what humans want more than anything is a connection. Being connected is the reward. Being disconnected is the punishment.

The ironic subtext of What Shamu Taught Me About Love, Life, and Marriage

2009-05-04T21:01:00.003-05:00

So I had an interesting thought about Amy Sutherland's What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage. Isn't the subtext that by the husband increasing his spousal deafness and leaving his smelly bike shorts all over the place, didn't he train Amy to be less nagging and find better ways of getting what she wants? In a strange way, her husband trained her to become a better trainer, right? That's, of course, a little tongue-in-cheek, because it's not guaranteed that Amy would've innovated. And it's not like her husband set out in his mind to incrementally reward her ability to train him. (Or did he?)

Prediction: 50 years from now, a secular self-help book will compete in popularity and influence with the Bible.

2009-05-04T02:04:00.002-05:00

This was inspired by this passage by Micki McGee's Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life.

The solution Dr. Covey [author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People] proposes—that women who are rearing children ought to cede (or at least postpone their ambitions for self-determination—is legitimized through a robust sort of nostalgia that appeals to scriptural wisdom, traditional metaphors, and American myths. Although he substitutes "under the sun" for "under the heavens"—perhaps a turn of phrase to appeal to his more secular readers—Covey's paraphrase of Ecclesiastes ("to every thing there is a season") aligns his advice with centuries of biblical wisdom. The reference might also remind the close reader that Covey writes in a tradition that goes back to the introduction of Johannes Gutenberg's Bible in 1456, when the development of mass printing techniques made possible, for the first time, not only widespread literacy but also the codification of manners and the emergence of the genres of advice manuals or self-improvement books. Some social observers have suggested that the Bible is perhaps the first and most significant of self-help books. Others have argued that the success of self-improvement literature, whether secular or religious, is contingent on its ability to function as inspirational literature.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People makes little mention of God. And the New Age hit The Secret speaks about the Universe conspiring to get you what you really want. These are all just preludes and prototypes for the killer self-help book that will take the people by storm in 50 or so years. Another prelude is that a religious self-help book, The Purpose-Driven Life, is already competing with the Bible as far as influence. You hear of Church groups organizing themselves around Purpose-Driven workbooks more so than the Bible itself.

The Empowerment Paradox

2009-05-03T23:24:00.004-05:00

I'm trying to figure out a principle or some understanding about the concept of "wanting to want." A large part of self-help is simply empowerment. Self-help fans seems to be into getting pumped up to do something they already intend to do. Why do we need that? When we "psych" ourselves up, what we're doing is essentially intensifying our desire, thereby allowing us to milk the benefits of being more motivated. But that seems to have an inherent contradiction that I haven't completely grasped yet. If you say, "Well, I want to win, so I'm going to want it more, to make it more likely to win," then... ? not sure actually, seems kind of weird. But I think unraveling the paradox may tell us something about the way humans effect change in themselves.

A Unifying Theory of Self-Help

2009-04-29T22:06:00.004-05:00

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).

What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage

2009-04-28T11:09:00.003-05:00

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.

We CAN be good at happiness

2009-04-28T02:22:00.004-05:00

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.

The more eloquent the words, the more careful you should be to match those words to actions.

2009-04-26T16:28:00.002-05:00

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.

What is Reality Therapy?

2009-04-26T15:37:00.003-05:00

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.

The One Question that makes you happy

2009-04-24T10:26:00.003-05:00

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.

Life isn't about the elimination of fear or the eradication of sadness . . .

2009-04-24T01:15:00.002-05:00

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.

Why I don't judge people who do self-help, tarot, therapy, or religion

2009-04-23T22:08:00.009-05:00

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.

"There is no such thing as balance."

2009-04-16T14:18:00.000-05:00

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."

Add this to the warning labels on anti-depressants

2009-04-16T13:47:00.003-05:00

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.

"Too many people take drugs when they really need to be making changes in their lives."

2009-04-16T13:41:00.002-05:00

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.