Just One Little Spark

Posted on February 17, 2009 by mysteryshrink

We make psychology sound way too hard and try to accomplish too much. At least that’s what I think after all these years in practice. Of course, there’s always the chance I’m just not very good at my profession.

If we could figure out a way to do teach people how to manage this one little change that goes on inside our heads . . . We would accomplish something worthwhile. We can do long division in our head, it makes no sense that this one little thing is so hard without random help from outside ourselves.

. . . It’s a dreary day, it seems like there’s too much to do and as if time is dragging at the same time. . . You have no energy and you’re pretty sure there’s something wrong with your foot. There’s that cold virus going around, too. That’s it. You’re probably getting sick, which is why you have the pain behind your forehead. Not severe enough to lie down, but some caffiene stoked Excedrin is definitely in order. ”Maybe I’m depressed . . .” you’re thinking. You reach in the fridge, pick up a lite yougart and check the calories. “Yes! This new kind has 80 calories instead of 100 calories in your old brand just like they said in the ad!” And you think this realization is A REAL THING. A difference worth chasing. You have lost the will for a quality life.

Then the phone rings. Good news! A friend’s coming to visit, you won a fifty-dollar gift certificate, or, who knows . . . a piece of the lottery.

And now, you’re queen of the energy universe! You have your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM working for you. You know it’s the same dreary day . . . but wait a minute . . . No it’s not the same old day. Plans, plans, plans. Can’t take Excedrin or I’ll shoot through the roof. Who cares about all those smarmy chores? You’ll do them later. Better yet, you’ll do them now!

If managing this little perk up was easy–this country wouldn’t have a drug problem and I’m sure fewer people would end up ordering commemorative coins in the middle of the night.

My advice? MUSIC. At least that’s what I’m saying up front. The truth? I’ll have to get to know you better.

Why no comments? Because I have met the devil and his name is SPAM.

Confidence, Ssmonfidence

Posted on February 6, 2009 by mysteryshrink

Yep. Nail another of the reliable psychobabble topics to the wall. Just rip it out of your head and ram a spike through it.

We’re supposed to have this SELF-CONFIDENCE BEFORE we accomplish tasks, projects, and relationships. Fine. So Just where are we supposed to get S-C?

We can’t buy it, obviously, since people with lots of stuff are missing S-C as often as the rest of us bargain hunters. Okay, so your parents, right? Your parents, if they loved you, were SUPPOSED to GIVE you Self-Confidence. So that worked, right?

Well, no. So, phooey there. Every parent I’ve ever worked with loved their children and most desperately wanted to GIVE their children S-C. Their love didn’t do it, and given that little confession, I guess you get it that a psychololgist can’t GIVE it to you, either.

Things are looking pretty desperate. But wait! We can marry someone who loves us enough to GIVE us Self-Confidence. Right. Talk about a way to wear out a relationship. And your kids? Even if they do everything right and the family is doing great. . . Nope, they can’t GIVE it to you. Even when they try very hard.

So what now? Oh, yeah. We already nailed that S-C business to the psychobabble-I’m-not-going-to-look-for-Stuff-That-Doesn’t-Really-Exist-WALL.

This Self Confidence business has held us back long enough. Part of the effort toward a life based more on facts, and less on wild emotions, toward a life with more solid successes that come from steady progress (no eat-cookies and lose weight, send in your old gold and go to Tahiti, or borrow more money to save yourself money funny business) . . .

Means facing the REALITY that to accomplish anything, we have to take the first step, SELF-CONFIDENCE or NO SELF-CONFIDENCE. The only thing that matters is that first step. Then the one after and the one after. Knowing we will fail sometimes. That if we aren’t knocked around a bit, our goals are way to low.

As for where having 14 babies while unemployed and single comes from? . . . Now there’s a woman taking LIFE RULED by the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM TO A NEW LEVEL.

Optimism, Belief, Energy to Win

Posted on February 5, 2009 by mysteryshrink

”Which is more important? The world you can touch, or the one you are responding to?”

While in training and learning to recognize the role of FACTS over FEELINGS, I saw a movie of Shakespeare’s Henry IV (could have been Henry V) in which the King has sent out a scout to check out the strength of the opposing army his troops are to face the next day. The scout returns to report (Okay, you British lit experts, cut me some slack here on the facts) that Henry’s men are out-numbered four-to-one, that their enemies will charge on horseback while Henry’s men are on foot, that the enemy has many cannons and armaments while Henry’s men have only small bows. The situation is without hope. Henry sends the scout away, thinks through the possibilities for the next day, then calls his men together, I’m thinking, to give them the bad news. Henry proceeds to give the most Emotional Guidance System-sucking speech I’ve ever heard.

Henry’s side won. Against impossible odds. So, whoa. Now that shot a hole in my new “fact-based” living plans. I’ve never been able to get that speech out of my mind. Henry changed the outcome by his sheer will and capacity to capture the collective emotional systems of his men. That means something about what’s possible.

Studies show that girls are more often than boys allowed to back away from difficult tasks. That women are not as much looked down on for wiggling out of unmet goals– if they turn their energies to cleaning up after others. (Breaking news! A sweet happy housewife with blond hair and medium pumps in the last commercial let me in on the news that I don’t have to clean my toilets everyday anymore! The relief… Then another lass let me in on the news that I no longer have to dust every week. Where have these knowing women been all my life?)

Where is your King Henry when you give up too easily?

I know you think the world with it’s venues where you are out-numbered, where you don’t have the talent, exists, but it doesn’t. It does not exist.

The people around you? You’ve made them up, too. You’ve made up how they think about you.

That world you are responding to, the one that limits where you can go, YOU MADE IT UP. …along with a little help from parents, siblings, the girl next door, and that P.E. teacher who made you dress out in the seventh grade. ….But, phfffffft. on them. I’m so full of Henry’s speech that I’m going to do this! Oooooooooooh. Ouuuch. There’s clearly a limit to the creative thinking process.

Tomorrow . . . what happens when you think the best of people? And assume they are crazy about you?

OPTIMISM can be POISON

Posted on February 4, 2009 by mysteryshrink

“OPTIMISM” and “CONFIDENCE” are good things, right?

Not always.

Sometimes, optimism and confidence are ACTION STOPPERS. Often we do NOT ACT because we believe that to accomplish our goal, we MUST HAVE CONFIDENCE. Before we start, we must be OPTIMISTIC.

The myth of Self Esteem falls in here, but that’s for another day.

First let’s tackle “optimism.” Optimism is not enough. Two examples–

The Case of the Optimistic Husband: A wife left her husband after being disappointed with her husband’s involvement in, and his lack of enthusiasm for supporting, the family. As the weeks went by, I’d ask him how it was going as he very much wanted to keep the marriage. His response was invariably, “I’m optimistic. I think being optimistic is important.” The problem– he wasn’t DOING ANYTHING to save the relationship. He was just “being” optimistic. Optimism didn’t change his functioning and thus, worked against his goal.

The Case of the Aspiring Novelist: Now I write, (TOO RICH comes out in June.) and I’m the World’s Biggest Weinnie when it comes to showing my work. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was so afraid of criticism that at my first writer’s conference, I didn’t even go into a meeting. Yep, just drove by the hotel, ducking down like someone would be standing on the sidewalk, pointing and saying, “Look at her. Who does she thinks she is, thinking someone wants to read her manuscript?”

But, a problem I see at writing conferences (Yes, I finally came in. I used an alias, but hey, baby steps, okay?)– is that many writers think that what’s needed for them to be published is to visualize future success and stay optimistic. And I see that attitude holding them back. Yes, optimism is needed to send out those queries. But optimism is a problem if the writer doesn’t improve their product because he or she is OPTIMISTIC that some agent will eventually like their early draft just the way it is. Or accept a topic which she can’t sell.

I see this problem in couples therapy where one partner believes that if someone loves you, he’s supposed to put up with you just the way you are–when some of the ways you are –are annoying. And if he loves you he won’t ever complain. I’m not talking about doing the pretzel change thing. I’m talking about the kind of work on yourself that makes your life better.

Yep. We’re back to MANAGING YOUR OWN ANXIETY. Again.

This is too important to not do more. And CONFIDENCE deserves it’s own post. So later.

And tomorrow, The “I DON’T DO MORNINGS” Incident. Postponed to a later date.

The String Bikini Incident

Posted on December 30, 2008 by mysteryshrink

Motto for 2009: “You know, I’ve been thinking. I’ve decided I would look GREAT in a string bikini!”

Yep. The very thought is beyond ridiculous if I’m talking about what someone else would think. I’m not sure I could talk a salesperson into letting me try on, much less purchase a string bikini. I chose the string bikini statement because someone who loves me very much just the way I am said that once spying a string bikini on a store manikin. He couldn’t have been more wrong. And I’m not being coy. I would look ridiculous in a string bikini, then and even more now. But not according to him.

The only way we’re going to get our lives back is by producing our own feedback channels run by that part of ourselves that’s like that guy who said I’d look great in a string bikini.. You can go to FOX News for the conservative take, NBC for a more liberal take. And to your own channel for the best take for you. This is the channel run by that director who is absolutely CRAZY about you. We are not tuning into the channel manned by others. Alert!! CRAZY and unwise are not the same. Remember best thinking over emotionally based decisions is what we’re going for. The reason no comments have been shown on this site is that I haven’t sorted through the thousands and thousands of spams. I’m trying to catch up now and must say—Buying more exercise machines, male organ size enhancements, and God forbid, those all-in-one girdles–is not the kind of CRAZY that goes into having a better life. It’s the kind of crazy that keeps everything the same except you have less money.

The crazy we’re going for is the kind that gets you to submit that short story, write that novel, paint that picture, run that race, because if you’re not crazy confident you’ll talk yourself out of it. Crazy confidence is not about buying easy-sounding solutions. It’s about DOING something that changes your life. I know, kind of confusing. Manana.

WHY IS SOMEONE ELSE’S WAY OF SEEING YOU MORE REAL THAN THE WAY YOU CHOOSE TO SEE YOURSELF?

It’s not like their opinion is right. It’s JUST THEIR OPINION.

This year we are going to LAUGH, LAUGH, LAUGH. And anytime anyone doubts us, most particularly ourselves, we are going to have this sentence pop out of our mouths: “You know, I’ve been thinking about it and I just realized I would look great in a string bikini.”

And when others scoff, pass out or threaten to have us picked up by the men in the white jackets, we’ll ask, “Which is more important? The world I can touch? Or the world to which I AM RESPONDING?” To which others will say, “You’re crazy.” And you’ll say, “Great. It’s working.”

**The unbelievable optimism from the federal highway department: On the endless nothingness of IH 8 between Yuma, Arizona and El Centro, California, along the shoulder are signs saying, “No parking except in case of emergency.” Now there’s optimism. Someone’s going to park there for a picnic?

Inner Torturer

Posted on April 28, 2008 by mysteryshrink

Hey, in case you do not have a well-developed INNER TORTURER, or a spouse, relative, or friend willing to teach you to DOUBT YOURSELF, there’s always Dr. L. Perfect on the radio.

You can call in and she’ll give you the words to beat yourself up with. Regularly.

How to Be Fabulous

Posted on April 27, 2008 by mysteryshrink

“The most important, most life-determining, conversation you have, is the conversation you have with yourself.”

What have you told yourself about you so far today? Okay, now that we KNOW: People who SEE THEMSELVES as BETTER LIKED than they actually are . . .

As more SUCCESSFUL than they are . . .

As more ATTRACTIVE than they are . . .

As more INTELLIGENT than they are . . .

Those people have MORE FUN in life.

Hey, I’m for more fun. But I’m tired and envious just from making the above list. Reading it doesn’t MAKE ME feel refreshed and ready to hit Broadway. What I’m thinking is, “Sheesh, what’s wrong with me that I’m not kicking up my heels every hour of everyday?”

Oh, noooooo. Now I remember. It’s hard to change.

If getting a grip on the on your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM were easy, EVERYONE WOULD DO IT.

Since it isn’t easy, we usually attempt an EXTERNAL solution– that is, we try to change other people’s response to us– by doing the list of things, and buying the endless image changers, offered every single month in every single magazine–

To an INTERNAL problem– the habitual conversation with have with ourselves. Since we’re strategists, we: 1) expect situations to repeat; 2) study what we did in the past; 3) rehearse new material; and, 4) practice, practice, practice.

First, there is an ACTION. Example: Someone says to you, “It’s all your fault. As usual, you are not listening.”

Second, you PERCEIVE. You hear and absorb, “It’s all your fault. As usual, you are not listening.” I know, perceiving seems so obvious, but it’s not. How much of what you see and hear depends on the spounginess of your Emotional Guidance System, how “ready” to hear and see you are.

Third, you INTERPRET. You decide what– “It’s all your fault. As usual, you are not listening,” –MEANS.

Forth, you MAKE UP A STORY. You take your INTERPRETATION of what you think– “It’s all your fault. As usual, you are not listening” –means, and develop a DRAMA. “Your saying that shows you do not love me, respect me, want to please me.”

Then, you RESPOND. (And, of course, if you’re me, the first words out are: “Now look how YOU MADE ME feel.”)

So, what can you do? How can you take charge?

What does perception, interpretation, and making up stories have to do with the “conversation you have with yourself”?

Later . . . manana.

MysteryShrink

A Psychologist on the Loose

Tag Archives: success