Читать книгу Stop Doing That Sh*t - Gary John Bishop - Страница 8

That’s what we call a life. Wanting new; addicted to the familiar.

The idea for this book began with my asking myself a simple question.

Why?

Why is my life the way it is?

When I looked at my life I could see it was, in certain areas, headed in a direction that I wasn’t particularly happy with. It seemed that regardless of the approach, there was always an inevitability about some areas of my life. My pillowy stomach. My finances. Certain relationships. I mean, damn, I’ve done TONS of growth work over the years and STILL my bank account gets overdrawn? Where’s my Tony Robbins private helicopter/jet/submarine, for the love of God?

How come I’ve never really made a difference with these areas of my life? It’s not as if I can’t earn money, but how the hell have I seemingly always struggled so much to build it? It’s not as if I don’t know how to get my body in shape, but why is it always so temporary? No matter how much I tried, I would continually go in these cycles of winning, losing, winning, losing, and at the end of it all, wind up right back where I started. There have even been times when I was actually further behind after that real-life yo-yo!

It made no difference that I knew I kept getting into the same cycle and making the same mistakes. Like you, I’m not a freaking idiot! I can see what’s wrong! However, no matter how hard I tried, it was as if I would eventually be compelled to keep doing the same stuff I had always done, and I was apparently powerless to stop it! What the . . . ? I knew what I wanted to do, but I kept getting snagged by the hook of doing things the same way, going back to old and bankrupt and destructive behaviors.

You might want to take a breath here and ponder a couple of questions for yourself. Why do you do what you do? Again, go beyond the usual answer you give yourself. Think. If you keep living this way, where is it all headed? I mean really headed? Not some wispy concept of your future but rather a down-in-the-dirt look at where your current actions are leading you. Well? You might find those questions tough to answer, but this is the kind of digging that will release you from your trap of sabotage.

Earlier, I pointed out that self-sabotage isn’t always the big, extreme things we do to screw up our lives. It’s important to understand that there are millions of tiny ways we are sabotaging our lives every day. You have to see there’s a problem before you can do anything about it. But it’s important to understand that self-sabotage can also lead to very destructive behaviors. It shatters marriages, fractures families, turns people to hard drugs, alcohol, gambling and sex addictions, infidelity, and all kinds of toxic behaviors that trash an otherwise decent life.

When it comes down to it, no one can seriously fuck up your life quite as magnificently as you can. And you do.

In my career as a personal development guy, it’s my job to help people have insights that empower them to make significant change in their lives. I’ve seen how very common it is for people to get stuck in cycles of behavior that, in the cold light of day, seem to be in complete opposition to what they say they want. Men and women the world over are trapped in a myopic stream of self-talk and patterns of behavior that keep them spinning in an all-too-predictable life.

Regardless of the number of times it seems life is on track, it always eventually seems to go off.

We are all building things only to burn them right back down. And we’re tired of it.

YOU’RE NOT A CATEGORY

In looking for a way to get our lives back on track, I read somewhere that what we need is “willpower” or “discipline” or some other generic term (don’t even get me started on “mental strength” . . . ugh) that serves only to help us explain to ourselves the lack of real change in our lives.

These terms are absolutely useless. They make zero difference!

What is “willpower,” anyway? A feeling? An emotion? A mood?

What about “discipline”? Is it thoughts or actions, or is that a feeling too? Don’t give me your bumper sticker answer either, the one that immediately comes to mind. Give it some thinking. Define it. We all use these kinds of words without really questioning them.

Here’s what I’ve found. When it comes time to make real change in your life, explaining yourself with that kind of shallow thinking makes not one blind bit of difference. I hear it trundled out by new clients all the time—“I just need a bit of self-discipline” or “I don’t have any willpower.” It’s all voodoo! You wouldn’t know willpower if it ran over you with a moped! If you are focusing on that kind of answer, you are doing the equivalent of implying that your car runs on stinky bathwater that costs you about four bucks a gallon and that you get your money from the kind lady at the bank, who sits in the back room making twenty-dollar bills out of recycled Target receipts and unicorn snot. Nonsense.

For example, if you’re one of life’s great procrastinators (and you might be still pondering whether you are or not), it’s not as if somebody says, “Yep, you’re a procrastinator, take two doses of willpower a day,” and BAM! The whole world opens up to you and off you go, motivated as hell and sucking up life goals like sugar-free bonbons on a Sunday afternoon sofa-fest, is it? The fact that you now understand you will need some sort of self-discipline to overcome your procrastinating tendencies doesn’t actually solve anything. In fact, it leaves you just as stuck as you’ve always been!

“Aha, Mr. Scottish man, but I bought that self-discipline book, and I’m going to read it . . . next week.”

*Sigh.*

That’s right, you’ve now got something else to procrastinate with. And the cycle continues. As I’ve said, knowing a descriptive term for how you live your life just isn’t enough. And if what you know isn’t making the difference for you, perhaps what you think you know isn’t what’s really going on after all!

Self-discipline is nothing more than doing what you say you will do, when you least feel like doing it.

In other words, acting in a positive way when you most likely feel negative. When I say “acting” I don’t mean “pretending”; I mean TAKE THE FREAKING ACTIONS! So, if you’re waiting for the energy or positivity or enthusiasm or for your chakra to glow a bold yellow, enjoy the wait. It’ll be a long one.

What if you are, in fact, not a procrastinator anyway? What if it’s something else entirely? (No, I’m not referring to some medical condition either.)

I’ll give you a clue. No, I take that back, fuck clues, this isn’t Scooby-Doo. Here’s the deal. There’s no such thing as a procrastinator; it doesn’t exist. It’s a descriptive term. A category. There is only someone who procrastinates from time to time and with certain things. We all poop from time to time too, but you don’t refer to yourself as a pooper, do you?

“Hello, everyone, my name’s Sharon, and I’m a pooper.”

Therefore, it’s not a case of “I am a procrastinator,” something you are, but rather “I procrastinate,” which is something you do. And if it’s just something you do, then you should do another thing instead. This isn’t some personal condition or affliction or something that you “have.” It’s not a fucking disease.

Sometimes it’s a case of just answering the email instead of watching TV. That’s hardly a great mystery of life, is it? There may be “experts” out there who offer sympathy and approval to make you feel better, but I want to give you the option of an actual better life. And sometimes that fucking hurts. Most of the great things you have done with your life included some level of discomfort, pain, or pressure. That’s just how it is. Whatever you are out to accomplish in this life, you’ll have to get more than a little okay with the experience of struggle or, hell, even overwhelm. In many ways, your all-out insistence that real-life change should be comfortable is what’s holding you down. Growth—real, seismic growth—hurts. Sometimes a lot.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

—Viktor Frankl

WRESTLING WITH EELS

When it comes down to it, it’s as if you are struggling to make your life go in a certain way while at times it seems magnetically drawn in another direction entirely. But you’re trying (or at least you’ve tried), right? It feels like you’re constantly wrestling with the things you want and feeling them slither and wriggle out of your grasp. Every now and again you come back to the fight, whether it’s with your body or your credit cards or your love life or your career, you see a glimmer of light, and then the whole thing falls apart. Again. In many ways it’s like being trapped in the cycle of being yourself. Not the great, awesome, idealistic, free-as-a-bird-with-Instagram-pictures-to-die-for self but rather the familiar, cyclical, WTF, own-worst-enemy, here-we-go-again version. That self.

You know exactly what I’m talking about here. Those times when it seems like everything is going relatively well and then . . . BOOM, you throw a hand grenade in the whole fucking thing. And you can’t stop yourself.

Y’know, those times when it seemed like you were “getting along” with your significant other and then, six, seven, or eighty-eight words later, all hell breaks loose and you’re suddenly scrambling to find someone with a pickup truck to help you move your shit outta there! Then you calm down. And they calm down. And you mumble some BS apology at each other and then you order a pizza and it fixes things, and then you both kinda forget, but you don’t, so you wait for the next incident. And then that one happens. Then the next one. And so on.

So now you’re spending $120 a month on make-up pizza while your ass is ballooning faster than a ten-dollar blow-up bed from Walmart. And you argue about that too.

All just because you couldn’t stop yourself from saying THAT THING, the one thing you always say. The thing that fucks everything up even though you KNOW you shouldn’t say it. And you say it anyway.

So, you take yourself on, bring back those twin devils of “willpower” and “self-discipline,” try a bit harder, eat a bit better, and knock out two fields’ worth of kale in a week. Then you pull the shit-pin again, and before you know it that slice of pizza that you PROMISED you wouldn’t eat somehow magically intertwines itself in your fingers and slithers unnoticed into your mouth like the sneaky little pepperoni bastard cheese-snake that it is, right? Now the problem is pizza and the battle moves to a new front. Damn, maybe the enemy really is gluten, huh?

Maybe for you it’s that dream job that you worked so hard to get. Six months in and your feet are already getting itchy. Again. Or that time you were so proud of yourself for paying down your credit cards only to blow them wide open with a mini you’re-only-young-once-I-work-so-hard-I-deserve-it spending spree . . . again! Apparently the “only young once” mantra extends well into your forties these days. And beyond.

If you’re in your teens, twenties, or thirties, yep, you have a lifetime of this madness ahead of you too. Stick that in your LOL for a minute or so.

Ponder this: What if the point of your life (not anyone else’s, remember? YOURS) is to continually and subconsciously set up “the game” of your life, a relentless cycle of sabotage and recovery?

What if very little of how this life of yours has turned out is actually because you haven’t met the right person, haven’t found the right career/passion, haven’t had the courage/confidence/smarts/breaks, or any other reason to which you have turned to explain yourself? What if your life really is a quite intentional and eerily familiar setup for the same results over and over? A conversational trap that you get yourself into but are unable to see, so you spend your life looking in all the wrong places, seeking some kind of answers, but it’s all subconscious and you invariably stay stuck?

“When the imagination and willpower are in conflict, are antagonistic, it is always the imagination which wins, without any exception.”

—Émile Coué

When Coué, a nineteenth-century psychologist, spoke of the imagination, he was referring to our subconscious. By “willpower,” he meant our conscious, cognitive thoughts. Where these two conflict, the subconscious wins. Always.

So, if the subconscious always wins, and we are wired to constantly play the same game of sabotage and recovery over and over again, are we just terminally fucked? I know this initially sounds pretty grim, but you need to understand what makes human beings so successful. Survival.

SURVIVAL OF THE OBVIOUS

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the strongest nor the fittest nor the smartest who survive.

Dinosaurs alone showed us how wrong that theory is. Some of them were strong, some were smart, but none of them saw extinction coming!

Who, then, is it that survives?

The predictors. Those who can most accurately predict change can adapt to change and therefore survive. The good news is, you are a prediction and survival machine. It’s the single reason why we as a species have stayed around as long as we have. Our ability to see things before they happen allows us to adjust and stay safe. We do that by remembering, by keeping score of what’s good, what’s bad, what’s right, what’s wrong, what works, what doesn’t work, and all via a massive trench of memories stored in the banks of our subconscious for reference and guidance. You have spent your entire life keeping track, looking for familiar keys to where things are headed, and following a life of the familiar.

Every Monday morning looks the same because you are already predicting how it will go before it even starts. This prediction-ism is absolutely everywhere.

That first date who showed up late and didn’t dress well enough?

Prediction? “Ugh, clearly they don’t care. Imagine a life with THAT! Nope . . . bye-bye.”

That’s it? They walked in fifteen minutes late wearing sneakers and you’re done? Yep!

Your ability to predict gives you a greater shot at survival. In this case, you’re out to quickly weed out the ones who are a complete waste of your time or sanity before marriage or a long-term relationship. And your tip-top record in pairing yourself with the perfect mate is testimony to your rapier-like accuracy in this field.

Suuuuuuure it is . . .

You predict your relationships, your finances, the weather, politics, your health, your career, you name it. You have an opinion about how all of that (and more) is going to go.

It’s all automatic, spun out by your subconscious in an instant. Hell, there are even things in life you won’t take on because you’ve already determined they’re a waste of time for you. Predictably.

By your using that same drive to predict and therefore survive, there goes that book you’ve always wanted to write (prediction: don’t know what I’m doing, therefore sure to fail), that new business you wanted to start (prediction: too risky and I’ll lose everything I have), the dream to move to Bali (prediction: now isn’t the right time, it won’t work unless I get more money), the new career (prediction: one day I might be ready for the responsibility, but it would be too hard right now for someone like me), that perfect relationship (prediction: I won’t make the same mistakes again, so not until I meet “the one”). There’s no end to the possibilities you’ve written off with nothing more than a series of auto-response triggers in the confines of your head.

“It’s too hard.”

“It won’t work.”

“I can’t do it.”

“I don’t know enough.”

“There’s no point. It won’t make any difference.”

In terms of survival, what better way to live a long and relatively safe life than to continually barf up the same kinds of issues and problems and then apply the same tired and useless solutions? Your own personal Matrix of old emotions, old complaints, old experiences. Your “no reality” reality.

Every day is a new day, right? No, every day is the freaking same day.

I mean, at least you always know what’s coming. You also know that you’ll survive it too, even if it sucks! No unknowns, no uncertainty, nothing out of left field, no threat to you, just a single, predictable line of engagement. You apply the same eyes and ears to every situation life throws at you and spin in your own mini tempest of the same old dramas and upsets. Circumstances may change, but what stays the same is you and how you see them, as well as how you deal with them and ultimately how you participate in life. The problem here is that it’s often hard to see those automatic predictions we’re making every day in an effort to survive. It’s hard to uncover the themes and story lines that underlie our life events.

But humans are funny creatures, and we’re often not content to live a safe, predictable life. We want excitement! Adventure! Passion! And that’s the crossroads where human beings exist. Pulled to predict life and stay safe, yet at the same time thirsty for the new and its tempting allure of a better existence. Wanting and lusting after change while gripped by the anxiety of keeping life safe, certain, and survivable. Minimize the judgment, minimize the failure, crush the pain and the uncertainty and the chaos of real change. Safety eventually wins. Survival is the victor.

That’s what we call a life. Wanting new; addicted to the familiar. Even when the familiar is as dull as dishwater. When it comes down to it, you’ll willingly trade in what you want for what you know. You’re doing it right now in your life!

Often when people are stuck in unhappy relationships or unwanted careers, this is what they are really dealing with. It’s the trade-off. Underneath it all, it’s not about the kids or the family or the money or the risk or the judgment of others. It’s all survival. Safety over aliveness. Predictability over joy or love or freedom or the life of your dreams.

What makes it so hard to see is that you never fully witness the trap you are stuck in. You only get to live with the consequences of that trap. Your entire life to this point has been a series of actions subconsciously driven to trap you in the same bubble of life.

Take a minute to allow yourself to take stock here. What has been the underlying experience of this life of yours? When it’s all said and done, when you look at the struggle and determination, the victories, the defeats, the sorrow, the drive to be happy and content, the seemingly never-ending hunger for something better—better job, better body, better partner, better family, better house, better society, better clothes, better social life, more passion, more purpose, more followers, more whatever, on and on and on—what are you left with?

Pause here for a moment and honestly answer that question for yourself.

Well?

When I ask my clients this question, they mostly have the same answer. “I’m exhausted.” Sometimes it’s worse.

Sometimes they say, “It’s okay.”

Fuck!!

Reminder—this works only if you pause and populate this conversation with your own circumstances, your real-life situations and cycles of self-sabotage, to start to draw some sense from what I am saying and how it applies to your life. Do the work here. Start to see the issues of your life through the lens of what I’m saying—your repetitive and destructive behaviors are supposed to be that way! Your life was set up to repeat them. They’re also what keeps you being that familiar you, living with the same constraints, weighed down by the past, always in the same, tired struggle for a better day but occasionally sedated by a glimmer of hope or optimism.

Keep in mind, if you really are after some kind of new life, some new and unprecedented result, that will require risk on your part. That will require you to push through your predictable self-talk, your all-too-familiar emotional freeze-frame, and reach for the unknown.

You can’t do new without risk. Period.