Have you ever really thought about why we need personal development in the first place? I’m having an incredible time working with a group of 12 people, bringing them into personal development in a way that is new to me, more organic. I’m like a kid at Christmas. I worked with them last week in San Antonio, and as I flew home on Friday two things emerged so clearly in my mind. I said to myself, “Here is what I know. Two things…”
Funny, I knew that would be the title of this week’s blog post, “Here Is What I Know.” I can’t wait to share these two things with you because I think understanding both might help you along your personal development journey. Here goes. Here is the first thing I know.
Fundamentally, we all want the same thing, don’t we? We all share one desire…
Our common desire is we want to experience happiness and avoid suffering. This is what we all desire, really, even if our outward behavior seems to indicate otherwise. The behavior is just misguided. We all want to experience more happiness and avoid suffering.
We all desire to experience happiness and to avoid suffering.
This desire, however, is not what gives rise to the need for personal development. Here is what does…
Fundamentally, we all have the same problem. The problem is that we do not see straightforwardly, yet we believe we do. I’m going to say that again, and emphasize it a bit…
We share the same problem… we do not see straightforwardly, yet we believe we do.
Not seeing straightforwardly is a way of saying our perception is distorted. Distorted perception gives rise to distorted action, and distorted action creates suffering. Again, let’s emphasize that…
Distorted perception gives rise to distorted action; distorted action creates suffering.
This is a problem.
Let’s recap…
- We all have the same desire, which is to experience happiness and avoid suffering.
- We all have the same problem, which is we do not see straightforwardly.
- We act based on distortions, and these distorted actions cause unhappiness and suffering.
- And we persist in this, again and again. It’s like the Groundhog Day movie.
We need personal development to strip away the distortions. True personal development systematically strips away the distortions. We see more and more straightforwardly. We become increasingly capable of right action. We do more good and less harm. Our desire to experience more happiness and avoid suffering is met. We flourish.
When we strip away our distortions, we are all the same. Strip away all the distortions, and we return to the essence of who we are. And we are all the same in our essence: boundless compassion, unconditional love, true wisdom, unshakable equanimity, presence. It’s like we are all flawless diamonds, underneath. Or maybe more like flawless facets of one flawless diamond. Or you could say, in our essence, we are spirit.
These Are the Two Things I Know
1. Fundamentally we are all the same — we share a common humanity.
A. We all desire the same thing: to be happy and free from suffering.
B. We all have the same problem: we don’t see straightforwardly yet believe we do.
C. We all do the same thing: we act from our distortions and cause unhappiness and suffering.
D. In our essence, we are all exactly the same: flawless. But hidden by our distortions.
This is our common humanity. All the same. But, confused about this, we quarrel.
2. We need personal development because true personal development strips way the distortions and enables us to live our common humanity in a most profound way. There is a practical way to do this, to strip away the distortions. I’m going to tell you how. I will get you started, at least.
So, these two things are the things I know. I’ll now tease them out a bit. First, I want you to understand the benefits of adopting a worldview of common humanity. Second, I want to tell you an immensely practical way to strip away your distortions. When you do the second, you can live the first. When you adopt the first, you can more easily do the second. Ponder on that, partner.
Common Humanity
Understanding the fundamental nature of our common humanity is important because we think other people are causing our suffering. This is a huge problem. It is a huge problem because this deeply and broadly held belief makes us think this thought…
I am suffering because you are not doing what I think you should be doing.
See a little problem there? I can’t be happy (I will suffer) until you change. Where is the power in that? Now, all my efforts are focused on making the people around me act in a way that I think will bring me happiness. Oh, and I want you to love me for that. What are the chances THAT will ever work? Yet we persist in this mightily, do we not?
For so long as our happiness depends on other people acting in a way that pleases us, everyone will suffer. We will suffer. And we will make THEM suffer. When I reflect on this, a 50% divorce rate seems like an epic positive achievement, doesn’t it? And the fact that only 33% of people are engaged at work seems understandable (Gallup). And the fact that the “left” and the “right” factions of our country are hijacking our government and creating utter dysfunction while the people in the “middle” stand idly by seems totally understandable.
We all think everyone else is the problem.
We are the problem.
The problem is we don’t know we are the problem. But, when we see that we are, everything becomes possible. Even turning the other cheek. Even loving our enemies. We might even have happy marriages, enjoy our work, and occasionally pass some bi-partisan legislation. Like in the old days.
We are also the solution.
The first advantage to embracing the fundamental truth of our common humanity is it gives us common ground to work from and an understanding that it all starts with us. We all want the same thing. We all have the same problem. We all are the same, in our essence. Try working from that point, and see what happens. And try ironing out our own distortions first.
Let everyone sweep in front of their own door, and the whole world will be clean. Goethe
The second advantage of embracing the fundamental truth of our common humanity is that it occurs to us that the behavior other people do that drives us nuts is because they are crazy. Just like us. Then, we don’t have to take it personally. Let me put it squarely to you. The person most driving you nuts right now is probably not waking up in the morning praying a prayer of coming up with ever more clever ways of making you want to throw yourself off a cliff.
The chances are, that just like you, they desire to be happy and not suffer. They think they are seeing straightforwardly how to be happy, and they are not. They are acting out of those distortions, just like you act of your own. And in a distorted way you and I may never understand, their internal operating system believes the very behaviors that are driving you nuts are going to bring them happiness. And, to boot, that you are standing in the way of that.
They aren’t trying to drive you crazy, they are just trying to be happy. That’s the honest truth. Ninety-nine percent of the time anyway. And while I’m being square with you: even if they stopped doing that s&#t, you’d still be unhappy. You’d just be unhappy about something else, or later, or whatever. Because the root of your unhappiness is your own distortion and your own distorted action, perception, and meaning-making… not their behaviors.
Embracing this notion of common humanity is tantamount to saying, “Can we all just settle down? You look really angry, could you use a hug?” Can set ourselves to the task of sweeping in front of our own doors? Can we do it not because we want to lead others in the same direction but simply because it brings us true joy, leads to right action, opens our hearts, connects us to spirit, and moves us in the direction of exposing our true essence — compassion, unconditional love, wisdom, equanimity, presence?
Shine on, you crazy diamond.” Pink Floyd
This first thing I know is that we are all the same. Are you with me? Would you at least be willing to look around you, and look past the objective-superficial and into the subjective-inner quality of others and entertain the possibility that…
- We all want the same thing: to be happy, and free from suffering.
- We all have the same problem: we think we see straightforwardly, and we do not.
- We all do the same thing: we act on those distortions in our perception.
- The impact is the same: we all cause suffering for ourselves and the people around us.
- In our essence, we are the same: strip away the distortions, and we are flawless. Nothing to be fixed and nothing to be added.
- Our work is all the same: strip away the distortions and let our essence shine and guide us.
- And our work is to do our work: to sweep in front of our own door and to have compassion for others who haven’t figured out yet what their work is. And to stop bonking them on the head with our work.
Now I’d like to tell you the second thing I know.
Our Work is to Strip Away Our Distortions
I teach a personal development process, and I’ve noticed something very important. People can get themselves totally wrapped around the axle when they try to follow a process without understanding the intent of that process. Secondly, people have a much harder time understanding the intent than the process. So, I’m not going to tell you about the full process. I’m going to tell you the intent of the process.
The distortions you need to strip away are primarily in your thoughts and in your emotions. There are aspects to the distortions that are also in your physical body, but that is not my realm of expertise and even just getting to the distortions in the thoughts and emotions is pretty darn powerful.
You can’t see these distortions directly. I’m going to steer clear of the technicalities of this because this is an article and not a training session, but suffice it to say that this opening statement is not absolutely true but it is relatively true. And relatively true is practical for our purposes here.
To see the distortions, disrupt the behavior the distortions drive. When you deny the distortions the behaviors they drive, they come out of hiding. They reveal themselves. And when they reveal themselves, you can see them.
Let me tell you, this is not altogether comfortable. Those distortions are embedded in a “system” that runs on your “neural wetware” (brain and nervous system). And your ego, which fancies itself the conductor of that system, does not want you messing with it. So if you choose to go this direction, fasten your chin strap. It’s gonna be a ride.
When you disrupt your default behaviors you leave your comfort zone. At a minimum, you will feel awkward or the new behavior will feel unnatural and perhaps a bit scary. When you disrupt your more problematic, deeply seated default behaviors, you will provoke worry, anxiety, and even fear.
Let’s recap.
- Personal development is the process of removing distortions
- To remove distortions you must see them
- Since you cannot see them directly, trick them into exposing themselves
- You trick them by freaking them out
- You freak them out — and they expose themselves — when you disrupt the behavior they expect
- This is not altogether comfortable
- But it works.
How to Strip Away Your Distortions
1. Identify something important you need to do now that will be hard for you to do. By hard, I mean that it will awkward, cause worry, trigger some anxiety, and maybe even arouse fear. By important, I mean that by not doing this it is blocking you from something that is important to you.
2. Identify what you typically do that doesn’t work so well. Based on what you know about yourself, what do you expect you typically do that doesn’t work very well and/or that later causes regret, guilt, or shame? That’s your default behavior: something you keep doing and can’t seem to stop doing even though you know better. There is a system driving that behavior. You aren’t choosing it.
3. Identify a behavior that might work better but that you really don’t want to do. In other words, at some level, you know this alternative behavior might produce a better outcome. Yet even thinking about doing this new behavior gives you the heebie-jeebies. Or worse, fear. This is your alternative behavior, the one your intellect (or someone with a more objective perspective) says might work better, but that your internal operating system is squarely against. In other words, even considering doing the alternative behavior feels “dangerous” in some way.
4. Name the fear(s). You are wired to avoid looking at that awkwardness, worry, anxiety, or fear. Turn into it and look squarely at it. Give it a label, or a name, or whatever. “Name it to tame it.” That awkwardness, anxiety, worry, or fear is very, very real. In fact, you may be feeling it now in your body. But here’s the deal. Is it true? You don’t know that yet, because you haven’t tested it. But because you have been obeying it, you are consistently acting as if it is true.
5. Name the thought(s). You have some thoughts — some beliefs — about what is going to happen if you don’t do the default behavior. You also have some thoughts — some beliefs — of the bad that is going to happen and why it will happen should you do the alternative behavior. “I assume if I were to do ___, then ___ would happen, because of course ___.” You don’t need to follow this format rigidly. It is just an example. Write these thoughts down.
6. Ponder on the power of these fears and thoughts. You may feel some agitation as you do. If you do, that means you are doing it right. When you start to observe the system and its distortions, it gets a little twitchy. There’s a part of you that wants to see it. The part of you that will know the truth, and knows the truth will set you free. But there’s the second part of you that’s been doing it’s best to keep you safe because, honestly, you’ve not really been around that much. It doesn’t trust this other part of you, and it isn’t interested in throwing caution to the wind. The second part has been winning, by the way. Because…
You have never tested these fears and thoughts to see if they are true. You are simply acting as if they are because they are real. They are real worries. And they are real thoughts. But you do not know if they are true. That’s the problem. And these are your potential distortions. Tracking?
You may think you are now seeing the system, but you are not. You are glimpsing it. This is valuable, for sure, because it gives you a place to start. But so far you are only working with this theoretically in your mind. And the problem is also in your mind. See the problem?
So how do you now test these fears and thoughts to see if they are true?
7. Observe the Fear and Thought In-the-Moment. I recommend that you first start with Observation.
Observation means observing them at play in-the-moment while the default behavior is occurring, but not actually trying to change the default behavior. This is a little tricky to explain.
Observation comes down to being in the moment and letting yourself imagine that you are about to do the alternative behavior whilst you are doing the old default behavior. This will trick the system to engage (somewhat), and you can observe what the worry feels like and notice what thoughts are triggered.
This sounds hard or impossible, but it is anything but. Anyone can learn to do it. Just takes intention and practice.
Over time, you can shift to actually doing the alternative behavior in spite of the fact that you will be experiencing some full-on discomfort. I call this Disruption. It is both more challenging and often more powerful
Observation will get you to a certain point, but it often will not strip out distortion. For this, you need Disruption.
This all gets really, really real when you disrupt the system by actually doing the alternative behavior instead. That’s playing for real, and you don’t really know the system until you play for real. Until you really tangle with it. And you tangle with it when the “thought” of changing the behavior becomes the “action” of actually doing so.
8. Reflect on What You Observed. Whether you have just completed an Observation, or whether you did the Disruption, this step is the same. You ask yourself questions like:
-
- What did I learn about the awkwardness, worry, anxiety, or fear in this situation?
- What did I learn about how I think, about the thoughts I think?
- What are the possible distortions here — what might not be true or only partially true?
- What other behaviors could I consider doing that I’ve not thought of before?
- What am I noticing in myself or others that I’ve not noticed before?
9. Keep Going. You will not strip out the distortions in one test. With divine intervention, I suppose that would be possible. It is more practical, however, to see this as something you will need to continue doing for the rest of your life.
10. Get and Give Support. You can make some initial progress by yourself, but you will inevitably get stuck. We have to do this ourselves, but we can’t do it alone. All you need is one or two or three other people who see through your B.S., love you enough to kick your backside or challenge you when you need it, and want the same from you in return. Speaking of which, there is no better way to see your own distortions than seeing them in the mirrors of the people around you.
The Two Things I Know
That’s what came up for me when flying home from hanging out with my colleagues last week.
Here is what I know.
1. We share a common humanity. And I hope I’ve conveyed there is incredible goodness and power in embracing it.
2. The heart of the matter is to remove our own distortions. And I’ve given you the essence of so doing. It isn’t comfortable, but it works. Ergo, be stoic, warrior.
Thanks for reading. I appreciate that you do, more than you can know.