Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy (45 page)

Let’s review several steps you might take to liberate yourself from the trap of feeling you must perform in an outstanding manner in order to earn your right to feel worthwhile and happy.

Remember to Talk Back
. The first useful method is to keep practicing the habit of talking back to those negative, distorted thoughts which cause you to feel inadequate. This will help you realize that the problem is not your actual performance, but the critical way in which you put yourself down. As you learn to evaluate what you do realistically, you will experience increased satisfaction and self-acceptance.

Here’s how it worked for Len, a young man pursuing a career playing the guitar in rock bands. He sought treatment because he felt like a “second-rate” musician. From the time he was young, he was convinced he had to be a “genius” in order to be appreciated. He was easily hurt by criticism, and often made himself miserable by comparing himself with better-known musicians. He would feel deflated when he told himself, “I’m a nobody in comparison with X.” He was certain that his friends and fans also viewed him as a mediocre person, and he concluded that he could never receive his fair share of the good things in life: praise, admiration, love, etc.

Len utilized the double-column technique to expose the nonsense and illogic in what he was saying to himself (Figure 13–1). This helped him to see that it was
not
a lack of musical talent that was the cause of his problems, but his unrealistic thinking patterns. As he began to correct this distorted thinking, his self-confidence improved. He described the effect of this: “Writing down my thoughts and answering them helped me to see how hard I was being on myself, and it gave me a sense there was something I could do to change. Instead of sitting there getting bombed by what I was telling myself, I suddenly had some antiaircraft artillery to fight back with.”

Figure 13–1.
Len’s homework form for recording and answering his upsetting thoughts about being “the greatest.”

Tune In to What Turns You On
. One assumption which might be driving you to constant preoccupation with achievement is the idea that true happiness comes only through success in your career. This is unrealistic because the majority of life’s satisfactions do not require great achievement at all. It takes no special talent to enjoy an average walk through the woods on an autumn day. You don’t have to be “outstanding” to relish the affectionate hug of your young son. You can enjoy a good game of volley ball tremendously even though you’re just an average player. What are some of life’s pleasures that have turned you on? Music? Hiking? Swimming? Food? Travel? Conversation? Reading? Learning? Sports? Sex? You don’t have to be famous or a top performer to enjoy these to the hilt. Here’s how you can turn up the volume so that this kind of music comes in loud and clear.

Josh is a fifty-eight-year-old man with a history of destructive, manic mood swings as well as incapacitating depressions. When he was a child, Josh’s parents emphasized over and over that his career was destined to be extraordinary, so he always felt he had to be number one. He eventually did make an exceptional contribution in his chosen field, electrical engineering. He won numerous awards, was appointed to presidential commissions, and was credited with many patents. However, as his cyclic mood disorder became increasingly severe, Josh began to have “high” episodes. During these periods, his judgment became grossly impaired and his behavior was so bizarre and disruptive that he had to be hospitalized on several occasions. Sadly, he came down off one high to learn he had lost his family as well as his prestigious career. His wife had filed for divorce, and he had been forced into an early retirement by the company he worked for. Twenty years of achievement went down the drain.

In the years that followed, Josh was treated with lithium and developed a modest consulting business. Eventually he was referred to me for treatment because he still experienced
uncomfortable mood swings, especially depression, in spite of the lithium.

The crux of his depression was clear-cut. He was discouraged about his life because his career no longer measured up in terms of the money and prestige he had experienced in the past. While he had enjoyed the role of charismatic “charger” as a young man, he was now approaching sixty and felt alone and “over the hill.” Because he still believed the only way to true happiness and personal worth was through superlative, creative achievements, he felt certain that his constricted career and modest life-style made him second-rate.

Since he was still a good scientist at heart, Josh decided to test his hypothesis that his life was destined to be mediocre by using the Pleasure-Predicting Sheet (described in previous chapters). Each day he agreed to schedule various activities that might give him a sense of pleasure, satisfaction, or personal growth. These activities could be related to his consulting business as well as hobbies and recreational pursuits. Before each activity he was to write down his prediction of how enjoyable it would be and mark it between 0 percent (no satisfaction at all) and 99 percent (the maximum enjoyment a human being can experience).

After filling out these forms for several days. Josh was surprised to find that life had just as much potential for joy and satisfaction as it ever had (see Figure 13–2). His discovery that work was at times quite rewarding and that numerous other activities could be just as enjoyable, if not more so, was a revelation to him. He was amazed one Saturday night when he went roller-skating with his girl friend. As they moved to the music, Josh found he began to tune into the beat and the melody, and as he became absorbed in the rhythm, he experienced a great sense of exhilaration. The data he collected on the Pleasure-Predicting Sheet indicated he didn’t need a trip to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize to experience the ultimate in satisfaction—he didn’t have to go any farther than the skating rink! His experiment proved that life was still filled with abundant opportunities for pleasure and fulfillment if he would enlarge his mental focus from a microscopic fixation on work and open himself up to the broad range of rich experiences that living can offer.

Figure 13–2.
The Pleasure-Predicting Sheet.

I am not arguing that success and achievement are undesirable. That would be unrealistic. Being productive and doing well can be enormously satisfying and enjoyable. However, it is neither
necessary
nor
sufficient
to be a great achiever in order to be maximally happy. You don’t have to earn love or respect on the treadmill, and you don’t have to be number one before you can feel fulfilled and know the meaning of inner peace and self-esteem. Now doesn’t that make good sense?

I dare you to try to be “average.” Does the prospect seem blah and boring? Very well—I dare you to try it for just one day. Will you accept the challenge? If you agree, I predict two things will happen. First, you won’t be particularly successful at being “average.” Second, in spite of this you will receive substantial satisfaction from what you do. More than usual. And if you try to keep this “averageness” up, I suspect your satisfaction will magnify and turn to joy. That’s what this chapter is all about—learning to defeat perfectionism and enjoy the spoils of pure joy.

Think of it this way—there are two doors to enlightenment. One is marked “Perfection,” and the other is marked “Average.” The “Perfection” door is ornate, fancy, and seductive. It tempts you. You want very much to go through. The “Average” door seems drab and plain. Ugh! Who wants it?

So you try to go through the “Perfection” door and always discover a brick wall on the other side. As you insist on trying to break through, you only end up with a sore nose and a headache. On the other side of the “Average” door, in contrast, there’s a magic garden. But it may never have occurred to you to open this door to take a look!

You don’t believe me? I didn’t think so, and you don’t have to. I want you to maintain your skepticism! It’s healthy—but at the same time I dare you to check me out. Prove me wrong! Put my claim to the test. Walk through that “Average” door just
one day
in your life. You may end up amazed!

Let me explain why: “Perfection” is man’s ultimate illusion. It simply doesn’t exist in the universe. There is no perfection. It’s really the world’s greatest con game; it promises riches and delivers misery. The harder you strive for perfection, the worse your disappointment will become because it’s only an abstraction, a concept that doesn’t fit reality. Everything can be improved if you look at it closely and critically enough—every person, every idea, every work of art, every experience, everything. So if you are a perfectionist, you are guaranteed to be a loser in whatever you do.

“Averageness” is another kind of illusion, but it’s a benign deception, a useful construct. It’s like a slot machine that pays a dollar fifty for every dollar you pyt in. It makes you rich—on all levels.

If you’re willing to explore this bizarre-sounding hypothesis, let’s begin. But beware—don’t let yourself become
too
average because you may not be used to so much euphoria. After all, a lion can eat only so much meat after the kill!

Do you remember Jennifer, the perfectionistic writer-student mentioned in Chapter 4? She complained that friends and psychotherapists kept telling her to stop being such a perfectionist, but no one ever bothered to tell her how to go about doing this. This chapter is dedicated to Jennifer. She’s not the only one who feels in a quandry about this. At my lectures and workshops, psychotherapists have often asked me to prepare a how-to-do-it manual that illustrates the fifteen techniques I have developed for overcoming perfectionism. Well—here’s the manual. These methods work. You have nothing to fear or lose because the effects are not irreversible.

1
. The best place to begin your fight against perfectionism is with your motivation for maintaining this approach. Make a list of the advantages and disadvantages of being perfectionistic. You may be surprised to learn that it is not actually to your advantage. Once you understand that it does
not
in fact help you in any way, you’ll be much more likely to give it up.

Jennifer’s list is shown in Figure 14–1. She concluded that her perfectionism was clearly not to her advantage. Now make
your
list. After you have completed it, read on.

2
. Using your list of the advantages and disadvantages of perfectionism, you might want to do some experiments to test some of your assumptions about the advantages. Like many people, you may believe “Without my perfectionism I’d be nothing. I couldn’t perform effectively.” I’ll bet you never put this hypothesis to the test because your belief in your inadequacy is such an automatic habit it has never even occurred to you to question it. Did you ever think that maybe you’ve been as successful as you are
in spite of
your perfectionism and not because of it! Here’s an experiment that will allow you to come to the truth of the matter. Try altering your standards in various activities so you can see how your performance responds to high standards, middle standards, and low standards. The results may surprise you. I’ve done this with my writing, my psychotherapy with patients, and my jogging. And in all cases I have been pleasantly shocked to discover that by
lowering
my standards not only do I feel better about what I do but I tend to do it more effectively.

For example, I began jogging in January 1979 for the first time in my life. I live in a very hilly region, and initially I couldn’t run more than two or three hundred yards without having to stop and walk because there are hills in all directions from my driveway. Each day I made it my aim to run a little less far than the day before. The effect of this was that I could always accomplish my goal easily. Then I would feel so good it would spur me on farther—and every step was gravy, more than I had aimed for. Over a period of months I built up to the point at which I could run seven miles over a steep terrain at a fairly rapid pace. I have never abandoned my basic principles—to try to accomplish less than the day before. Because of this rule I never feel frustrated or disappointed in my running. There have been many days when due to sickness or fatigue, I actually
didn’t
run far or fast. Today, for example, I could only run a quarter mile because I had a cold and my lungs said NO FARTHER! So I told myself, “This is as far as I was
supposed
to go.” I felt good because I achieved my goal.