Are You Sleepwalking through Your Life?

It may be hard to believe when our lives seem so frenetic at times, but many of us are sleepwalking through our lives—passively going through the motions of life while not feeling awake and alive.

This kind of “life sleepwalking” is different, of course, from physical sleepwalking (also known as somnambulism), in which we get up and walk around while in a state of actual sleep. But both forms of sleepwalking are similar in the sense that we’re engaging in everyday activities but not really conscious of what we’re doing.

“If we’re honest, sleepwalking describes many of our lives. You look like you’re awake while you’re not; you walk around talking to people while you’re out cold. We get up, we talk, we do our jobs, and we go back to bed never having been fully awake. You’ll know this is happening to you if you look back on your day and can’t remember the conversations you’ve had, the things you experienced, and the beauty you saw.”
-Bob Goff, Dream Big

 

How to Tell If We’re Sleepwalking: 10 Signs

Though we may forget it sometimes, our lives are precious, and it would be great to be present for them as much as possible. How can we tell if we’re in the trap of sleepwalking through our lives? We’re at risk of sleepwalking when we:

  1. have trouble getting out of bed in the morning or getting going
  2. go through the motions at work and just get through our days
  3. lack clarity—when we don’t know (or avoid thinking about) who we are and what we want
  4. berate ourselves with negative self-talk that dulls our spirit
  5. numb ourselves with binge-watching shows, doom-scrolling social media, or excessive work and busyness but without tying our actions to larger goals
  6. avoid hard truths or uncomfortable feelings instead of dealing with them
  7. defer our dreams and postpone our happiness
  8. aren’t living in alignment with our purpose and core values
  9. complain about things in our life instead of doing things about them
  10. feel overwhelmed often
“Trust me, your soul has been waiting for you to wake up to your own existence for years.”
-Elizabeth Gilbert, writer

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

 

How to Stop Sleepwalking through Our Lives

Fortunately, there are many things we can do to escape the trap of sleepwalking. For example, we can:

Be mindful of the trap of sleepwalking and look for examples of it in our lives so we can do something about it.

Recognize that many people struggle with sleepwalking. Note that there are shrewd social media companies with powerful technologies and algorithms whose business model involves getting us to become passive scrollers on their platforms—and in the process sleepwalkers in our lives.

Note that this trap of sleepwalking isn’t an identity. It’s something we can get trapped in but not something we need to let define us.

Ask ourselves if we want to change and improve our lives by escaping this trap.

Recognize that making changes in our lives is rarely easy and often requires focused effort and discipline to keep working at it over time—but that it does eventually get easier once we build momentum and that it’s well worth it.

Consider what it would feel like to be fully awake and alive, what it would be like to enjoy our lives and pursue our passions and hobbies.

Remember that we’re all going to die and that we don’t know when. Recognizing the preciousness of life can help us snap out of the sleepwalking trance. (See my article, “What Reflecting on Death Can Teach Us about Living.”)

Get clear on our purpose, values, and vison of the good life so we can be more deliberate in doing the things that will bring them into our lives.

Fill our lives with things that matter to us. This will vary by person and depend on what chapter of life we’re in. It could be spending meaningful time with our spouse, children, or friends. Working on that life dream. Building a new enterprise or product line. Getting that degree or certificate. Learning that language. Writing that book. Going to those dream places. We can’t sleepwalk our way there.

Limit our time on our devices, social media, and streaming sites, since they can be wildly addictive and time-consuming (and thus life-consuming). According to Zippia Research, the average American spends 5 hours and 24 minutes on their mobile device daily and checks their phone 96 times per day, on average (about once every ten minutes).

Be present in the moment we’re in without letting our mind race back to the past or ahead to the future. According to researchers, mindfulness can improve our mood and increase our positive emotions while decreasing our anxiety, emotional reactivity, and burnout. Also, it may have positive impacts on our brains, hearts, and immune systems.

Focus on taking more action in our life and work—and earlier—without as much deliberation and hesitation. This can help snap us out of the sleepwalking trance.

Form a small group of trusted friends or colleagues and meet periodically to provide each other support, a sounding board (e.g., people checking in with each other if there may be a problem with sleepwalking), and accountability for chosen commitments in a safe place of confidentiality, trust, and respect.

Build sanctuary and moments of silence into our lives to give us peaceful time alone to reflect on where we’re headed and how we’re feeling about things.

Journal about our life and work, including our thoughts, feelings, and challenges. This kind of journaling can help us see the patterns in our lives, including traps like sleepwalking.

Create and use an affirmation or mantra for avoiding the trap of sleepwalking (e.g., “I’m fully awake and alive, and I refuse to sleepwalk through my life”).

Take full responsibility for our lives and work and how we spend our time. We should be careful not to surrender our agency by playing the victim and blaming others.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

 

Are There Versions of Sleepwalking that Can Be Good?

We should be careful not to take a concern about the dangers of sleepwalking too far. Avoiding the trap of sleepwalking through our lives doesn’t mean that we must become hyper-productive automatons who are always doing something. (That’s a whole other problem.)

There’s most definitely an important place for renewal and rest in our lives, for enjoying entertainment, for rest and relaxation, and even for boredom sometimes. Our lives don’t always have to be productive and serious. There are also chapters of challenge in our lives in which we’re thrown off course. That’s both natural and common.

The key is intention and proportion. Are we consciously choosing those things and savoring them, or have we abdicated control of our lives and become zombies going through the motions?

 

Conclusion

When we’re sleepwalking through our lives, we’re doing a disservice to ourselves and the people and things we care about. We’re not being good stewards of our precious time, and we’re squandering the limited days we’re given to enjoy our lives, connect deeply with others, feel vital and alive, and make a positive difference in the lives of others. Much better to wake up and craft our life and work intentionally.

“This day will never come again and anyone who fails to eat and drink and taste and smell it will never have it offered to him again in all eternity. The sun will never shine as it does today…You must play your part and sing a song, one of your best.”
-Herman Hesse, German-Swiss poet

 

Reflection Questions

  1. To what extent are you falling into the trap of sleepwalking through your life, or certain parts of it?
  2. How is it affecting your quality of life and work performance?
  3. What will you do about it, starting today?

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

 

Related Articles

“Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake.”
-William James, American philosopher and psychologist

 

Tools for You

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Avoiding the Trap of Sleepwalking

  • “It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten-track for ourselves.” -Henry David Thoreau
  • “I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.” -William Shakespeare
  • “Never be passive about your life… ever, ever.” -Robert Egger, social entrepreneur
  • “Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.” -Henry David Thoreau
  • “There is…only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist…The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.” -Martha Graham
  • “I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow; than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.” -Jack London
“For man, the vast marvel is to be alive. For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive. Whatever the unborn and the dead may know, they cannot know the beauty, the marvel of being alive in the flesh. The dead may look after the afterwards. But the magnificent here and now of life in the flesh is ours, and ours alone, and ours only for a time. We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos.”
-D.H. Lawrence, English writer

 

Bonus: Your Soundtrack for Stopping Sleepwalking

If you’re looking for some musical inspiration to help you stop sleepwalking through your life, check out these songs:

“And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. And you may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here?  Same as it ever was, same as it ever was…. You may ask yourself, What is that beautiful house? You may ask yourself, Where does that highway go to? And you may ask yourself, Am I right, am I wrong? And you may say to yourself, My God, what have I done?”
-song lyrics excerpted from “Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Trap of Self-Doubt—And How to Overcome It

The Trap of Self-Doubt—And How to Overcome It by Gregg Vanourek

We’ve all experienced self-doubt. We’ve felt uncertain about ourselves and our place in the world. Or we’ve questioned our capabilities and potential.

Any time we make a major mistake, we risk losing confidence. We may stop trusting ourselves as we feel wounded.

Self-doubt shows up as a voice in our head:

What if I make a mistake?
Or look like a fool?
What will people think of me?

At the root of self-doubt is fear—fear of failure or judgment. Sometimes we lose faith in ourselves.

 

Signs of Self-Doubt in Action

How to know if we struggle with self-doubt? When we’re experiencing it, we’re probably doing one or more of the following:

  • feeling unsure about our capacity to address a challenge we’re facing
  • often believing we’re not good enough
  • being our own worst critic
  • holding back and playing it safe to avoid risking failure
  • frequently wondering what’s wrong with us
  • engaging in overachieving (which can be a sign we’re working extra hard to avoid mistakes or failures)
  • experiencing “imposter syndrome” (the fear of being viewed as a fraud or undeserving of our successes)
  • having a hard time accepting compliments or giving ourselves credit
  • people-pleasing to gain acceptance with others
  • seeking reassurance excessively
  • continually trying new self-improvement projects but never feeling adequate or satisfied

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

 

Where Self-Doubt Comes From

Self-doubt can come from many sources. For many of us, it begins in childhood. It can come from our parents, especially if we felt like we had to keep trying to prove ourselves and earn love through compliance or deeds—or if our parents criticized us excessively or were disapproving or distant. Self-doubt can also arise from frequent comparisons with siblings during childhood—or from overprotective parents, leaving us feeling like we’re not able to handle things ourselves.

There may also be others beyond parents—possibly teachers, coaches, mentors, or friends—who inadvertently contributed to our self-doubt. It can also originate from big failures or setbacks that we’ve experienced, or from abuse or trauma.

 

The Cost of Self-Doubt in Our Lives

Unfortunately, self-doubt exacts a steep price in our lives. It affects our happiness, relationships, work performance, and more. For example, self-doubt can:

  • lower our motivation
  • generate stress and anxiety
  • cause us pain and despair
  • sap our confidence
  • diminish our resilience
  • lead to procrastination
  • foster indecisiveness
  • lead to feeling overwhelmed
  • inhibit our creativity
  • make us unwilling or unable to take needed risks or pursue new opportunities
  • lower our growth potential
  • prevent us from serving others more effectively
  • cause us to reject good options or lose opportunities because we feel we’re unworthy or incapable/
  • prevent us from doing important things (such as going for a dream job or asking someone out)
  • keep us from being our best and achieving excellence and success
  • lead to a sense of malaise, unhappiness, or a life filled with regret

When we’re riddled with self-doubt, we don’t advocate on our behalf or ask tough questions. We don’t raise our hand, and we don’t negotiate as strongly about that pay raise. When we doubt ourselves, we don’t fight back or set boundaries. We hold back.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

 

How to Overcome Self-Doubt

Given the enormous price we can pay for carrying self-doubt around with us, it’s well worth addressing it systematically and immediately.

There are many things we can do to overcome self-doubt, including:

  • recall that having doubts is universal and that most people have a negativity bias and are their own harshest critic
  • identify the source of our doubts, if possible (e.g., comments from a parent, or a bad experience)
  • write down our positive qualities and accomplishments—and keep them in mind
  • avoid comparing ourselves with others
  • view ourselves through the perspective of someone who’s aware of our strengths—or ask them for feedback on our positive qualities and contributions
  • tune out negative feedback that isn’t accurate—and take accurate feedback as a challenge to improve
  • change our self-talk from negative to positive
  • know and build on our strengths (the things in which we excel)
  • develop ourselves systematically through intentional learning and personal development
  • challenge our doubts regularly (e.g., when we’re doubting our capacities, ask ourselves what if the opposite were true—that we were highly capable)
  • shift our focus from our doubts to our vision for what we’re trying to accomplish—and for whom, such as someone we’re motivated to fight for
  • surround ourselves with people who believe in us, support us, embolden us, and bring out our best—including family, friends, colleagues, coaches, mentors, and small groups (while avoiding people who tear us down)
  • work at building our courage and confidence
  • focus more on areas of our capability and less on areas of weakness
  • forgive ourselves for our mistakes and work on healing our wounds and letting go of old mental baggage that’s weighing us down
  • give ourselves permission to be imperfect, since we all have issues and faults
  • ask ourselves what we’d be doing now if we were committed and brave—and then start taking action in that direction
  • imagine ourselves being successful in taking effective action
  • build momentum by taking action* and making progress on meaningful work and goals (do this daily)
  • take stock of the things we’ll miss out on if we don’t go for them
  • gain clarity about our purpose and values to provide motivational fuel for achieving and honoring them
  • love, connect with, and serve others (that will demonstrate to ourselves and others that we care and contribute)
  • face our fears and in the process build a sense of capability and courage
  • speak up and advocate for ourselves more, in the process re-branding ourselves as champions of our needs and interests
  • imagine how much happier we’d be and how much more we could accomplish if we transformed our doubts into beliefs
  • understand that all results begin with beliefs, because our beliefs turn into thoughts that drive our actions
  • allow our progress and successes to inform our identity and be integrated into our heart (too often, we diminish our accomplishments)
  • engage in consistent self-care practices, especially including exercise, since movement improves our mood and brain function
  • cultivate gratitude for what we have instead of focusing on doubts and fears
  • use an “alter ego” that gives us a sense of agency and power, like Beyonce’s Sasha Fierce, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, or Eminem’s Slim Shady
  • use affirmations (or mantras) to reassert and repeat our positive qualities and aspirations (e.g., “I am enough,” “I am capable,” “I got this”)—ideally with a daily affirmation practice
  • keep a journal in which we allow ourselves to express our feelings openly, including not only doubts and concerns but also victories and celebrations

Though the list above is long, we only need to pick a few that resonate most and get started, then review and adjust. Action and progress will bring energy and motivation.

 

Overcoming Self-Doubt Isn’t about Arrogance and Conceit

Let’s be clear: overcoming self-doubt isn’t about becoming arrogant and conceited. Of course, it’s good to be aware of our weaknesses. Otherwise, we won’t be able to work on and hopefully overcome them. Humility is a virtue—and an important one.

Some degree of self-criticism can also serve as motivational fuel, inspiring us to work harder and improve. And some measure of self-doubt can be a virtue—helping us confront reality and earn wisdom the hard way.

But if we focus too much on our weaknesses, we lose sight of what we can actually do.

For many of us, feelings of deficiency are right around the corner. It doesn’t take much—
just hearing of someone else’s accomplishments, being criticized, getting into an argument,
making a mistake at work—to make us feel that we are not okay….
When we experience our lives through this lens of personal insufficiency,
we are imprisoned in what I call the trance of unworthiness.”
-Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance

 

Conclusion: The Benefits of Addressing Self-Doubt

The benefits of overcoming self-doubt are remarkable. When we feel confident, we act differently. And these new actions can lead to wildly different outcomes. When we overcome self-doubt, we can become more decisive, easygoing, successful, and joyful. We can start shedding each doubt like it’s a crusty old snakeskin.

As we progress, we should watch out for falling back into well-worn patterns of self-doubt. We should be mindful and vigilant, checking to see if we’re able to maintain our newfound self-trust and confidence even when we make mistakes or experienced setbacks—or when we’re treated poorly by others.

In the end, self-trust—faith in our ability to cope with challenges—is what we want and need. When we take action in the face of our doubts, especially bold and decisive action, we dilute their potency and replace them with agency. If we can build on that cycle, it takes on a life of its own and changes everything.

The truth is that we’re highly capable and resilient—and that we always have been.

You always had the power, my dear.
You just had to learn it for yourself.
You’ve had it all along.
-Glinda the Good Witch to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz
Image source: Adobe Stock

Reflection Questions

  1. To what extent are you wrestling with self-doubt?
  2. How is it affecting your wellbeing, enjoyment of life, and performance?
  3. What will you do about it, starting today?
And when you get lost,
in the stormy moonless night,
may you trust, deeply trust,
as sage, ageless guide,
the true beautiful you.
-Shirzad Chamine, Positive Intelligence

 

Tools for You

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

 

Related Articles

 

Recommended Videos

“…it was regaining my belief in myself that gave me power to change the direction in my life….
I’m living proof that a person’s past does not have to define their future.
-Dr. B.J. Davis in his TEDx talk, “How to Eliminate Self-Doubt”

Postscript: Inspirations on Overcoming Self-Doubt

  • “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.” -William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”
  • “It’s not who you are that holds you back—it’s who you think you are not.” -Eric Thomas (a.k.a., ET, the Hip Hop Preacher)
  • “Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your handbrake on.” -Maxwell Maltz
  • “Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” -Louise L. Hay
  • “I don’t have to get rid of the fear, I just have to dance with it.” -Tony Robbins
  • “All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors.” -Nisargadatta Maharaj
  • “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • “Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.” -Samuel Johnson
  • “Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours.” -Richard Bach
  • “If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.” -Cicero
  • “The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief.” -David J. Schwartz
  • “In order to change ourselves, we must first believe we can.” -Marie Forleo
  • “The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.” -Abraham Maslow
  • “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” -Les Brown
  • “Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” -Mahatma Gandhi
  • “Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.” -Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

* According to Dr. Margie Warrell, Senior Partner at Korn Ferry, “As research has found and experience has taught me, every time you take action in the presence of your doubts you dilute their power and amplify your own. Only when you dare to do the very thing you doubt you can do, will you realize how little you ever needed to doubt yourself to begin with.” Tony Robbins mapped out what he called the “success cycle,” in which we begin with potential, then take action, which gets results, which builds our belief in ourselves.

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our community. Sign up now and get Gregg Vanourek’s monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

Self-Deception: Why We Do It and How to Stop It

Self-Deception: Why We Do It and How to Stop It by Gregg Vanourek

Article Summary:

What self-deception is, including examples and signs of it, where it comes from, its high costs (as well as some benefits), how it degrades our leadership, and what to do about it.

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We all do it. We engage in self-deception—hiding the truth from ourselves about our true feelings, motives, or circumstances. When we’re deceiving ourselves, we’re denying evidence, logic, or reality and rationalizing choices or behaviors to serve a false narrative. We’re not seeing or viewing things accurately. Our self-deception can be conscious or unconscious, controlled or automatic, acute or chronic.

You can fool yourself, you know. You’d think it’s impossible, but it turns out it’s the easiest thing of all.”
-Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

Self-deception is often a defense mechanism used for self-protection, and it can be used for self-enhancement. But it often becomes a form of self-sabotage and betrayal because it denies reality. When we deceive ourselves, we become our own enemy posing as a friend. Self-deception can involve denial of hard truths, minimization of painful matters, or projection of fault onto others.

We do not deal much in fact when we are contemplating ourselves.
-Mark Twain

 

Examples of Self-Deception in Action

Self-deception is tricky because we’re often not aware of it when we’re doing it. (That’s how good we are at it.)

But if we took the time to look for it earnestly, we’d likely find many examples of it in our lives. For example, we may be pretending we still like a job or career when we don’t anymore or concealing our disappointment in ourselves for giving up on our dreams and goals.

Other examples of self-deception in action:

  • a dreamer who keeps postponing big plans with excuses about not having enough time or it not being the right time to start
  • a young single who keeps reading way too much into casual acts by a romantic interest
  • a spouse who keeps focusing on his partner’s faults and ignoring his own issues
  • a worker who spins self-serving tales about why others are getting raises and promotions
  • a person whose wishful thinking about credit-card debt or college loans starts to cause big problems
  • a spouse who looks the other way when there’s clear evidence of infidelity or violence, or a spouse who rationalizes his or her own deception
  • an addict who believes her addictions are under control*

What are we hiding from ourselves?
What truths are we running from?

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

 

Five Signs of Self-Deception

Though it can be hard to detect, there are signs of self-deception in action. For example, we’re probably deceiving ourselves when we:

  1. keep making excuses for ourselves or others
  2. can’t accept responsibility for things
  3. keep blaming others
  4. keep avoiding unpleasant realities
  5. feel defensive or threatened when people challenge us

Our self-deception usually comes with a fair amount of discomfort and anxiety, in part because of the cognitive dissonance we experience when we do it. (Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort we feel when we hold conflict believes, values, or attitudes or when there’s a disconnect between what we believe and how we behave.)

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
-Richard Feynman, theoretical physicist

 

Where Our Self-Deception Comes From

Where does our self-deception come from? It has many potential origins. For example, it can come from:

  • our upbringing or culture programming (seeing instances of self-deception from our parents or others)
  • lacking confidence (lying to ourselves to compensate for insecurity)
  • fear of judgment from others (deceiving ourselves with stories and rationalizations that prevent us from facing that harsh music)
  • wanting to please others (rationalizing the downplaying of our own needs so we can stay in their good graces)
  • wanting to impress others (kidding ourselves into believing we’re better than we are while downplaying our flaws)
  • wanting to avoid painful thoughts or experiences (e.g., after we’ve endured hardship or trauma)
  • preferring the convenience of an easy delusion over a hard truth

We may engage in self-deception out of anxiety, neediness, desire, or other powerful emotions. As humans, we have emotional attachments to many beliefs, some of which may be irrational. Our self-deception can serve as a coping mechanism for strong feelings of shame about our actions, feelings, or habits.

On the plus side, self-deception can make us feel better about ourselves and help us maintain our confidence in the face of challenges and setbacks. But it can also help us avoid taking responsibility for our actions.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

 

The High Costs of Self-Deception

Self-deception isn’t only a matter of mental games we play. Unfortunately, its consequences are all too real. For example, self-deception can:

  • make it harder to grow and develop because we’re not seeing our flaws clearly
  • detract from our mental and emotional clarity
  • cause us to lose sight of who we really are and what’s real because we’ve been deceiving ourselves so long
  • aggravate our worry and anxiety because it leads to letting things deteriorate further
  • lead to numbing behaviors like binge-watching, overwork, drinking, overeating, and more
  • make us feel like a fraud
  • make us feel exhausted from all the mental gymnastics of lying to ourselves and trying to cover it up
  • lead to inaccurate judgments and poor decisions, since we’re going off of faulty data
  • make us feel shame and guilt
  • lead us to deceiving others often, not just ourselves
  • weaken our relationships
  • diminish our power and agency in directing our lives effectively
  • keep us trapped in bad or even dangerous habits, situations, or relationships
  • become a vicious circle and way of life, a bad habit pattern that keeps harming us in many areas
Reality denied comes back to haunt.”
-Philip K. Dick, writer

In short, it can become a downward spiral leading to further self-deception and a host of other problems in our lives, many of which are quite serious. And the longer we do it, the more we believe the lies.

When we deceive ourselves, we start losing trust in ourselves. We no longer accept and trust ourselves or feel that we have a sense of control in our life.

Some people spend their entire life in self-deception or denial,
but the situations or circumstances that we are denying will usually get worse with time.”
-Terri Cole, Licensed Clinical Social Worker

According to researchers, when we’re not authentic, it makes us feel immoral and impure. According to Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino and her colleagues in their paper, “The Moral Value of Authenticity”:

“When participants recalled a time that they behaved inauthentically, rather than authentically, they felt more impure and less moral…. When people behave in ways that are inconsistent with their own sense of self, they feel morally tainted and engage in behaviors to compensate for these feelings.”

 

Are There Benefits of Self-Deception?

With all these costs associated with self-deception, it begs the question of why it exists at all. It turns out that there are some benefits of self-deception—in the right circumstances and amount. For example, according to some researchers, self-deception may:

  • help protect us as a coping mechanism or even survival tactic against painful or even intolerable emotions (e.g., after we’ve experienced trauma)
  • help us with our motivation when facing challenging situations
  • reduce cognitive load (the amount of information we can hold at one time in our brain’s working memory) in some circumstances, thus helping to conserve cognitive resources**

In addition, in a 1979 study, researchers noted that depressed people tend to assess their strong and weak points and recall negative criticisms more realistically (with less self-deception), while nondepressed people typically view themselves favorably and underestimate how often others judge them unfavorably. It makes sense that, if self-deception leads to more favorable self-assessments, that can lead to positive feelings that contribute to wellbeing.

In the end, though, many acts of self-deception will end up harming us in the long run if we let them continue.

“Everyone self-deceives, but that doesn’t make it harmless. At high levels, it is associated with poor mental health. At moderate levels, it can temporarily protect the self-deceiver from bad feelings but still presents a barrier to the deep well-being that comes from living with integrity. To be really happy, we must learn to be completely honest with ourselves.” -Arthur Brooks, “Quit Lying to Yourself,” The Atlantic

 

How Self-Deception Affects Our Leadership

In the workplace, self-deception can inhibit our effectiveness and degrade our leadership. For example, it can:

  • limit our growth and potential since we’re not facing up to our weaknesses
  • prevent us from seeing beyond our own opinions and priorities
  • lead to unethical decisions and behaviors, including justifying poor behavior, such as intimidation, harassment, or bullying
  • inhibit our leadership effectiveness and thus organizational productivity
  • lead to crises because we’re in denial about problems and our own role in them
If you want to be successful, you must respect one rule: Never lie to yourself!
Paolo Coelho, Brazilian novelist

Evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers has developed a theory of “self-deception in the service of deception”—a dangerous loop in which people like deceptive and toxic leaders can be so good at deceiving themselves about things that it makes them more effective in deceiving others, because they don’t show the telltale signs of lying. They’re so good at lying to themselves that it makes them adept at lying to others and remaining somehow credible to them.

“…if a liar can deceive himself into believing he is telling the truth, he will be far more effective in convincing others.
-Daniel Kriegman, Robert Trivers, and Malcom Slavin

Trivers calls this “hiding the truth from yourself to hide it more deeply from others,” and he notes that it can lead to “predatory deception” and exploitation. (It’s noteworthy that self-deception plays a major role in medical conditions such as narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder.)

It doesn’t stop there. In the Arbinger Institute’s book, Leadership and Self-Deception, the authors write, “Whether at work or at home, self-deception obscures the truth about ourselves, corrupts our view of others and our circumstances, and inhibits our ability to make wise and helpful decisions…. Of all the problems in organizations, self-deception is the most common, and the most damaging.”

The authors point out that that self-deception can lead to treating people like objects because we view their needs as less important than our own, inflating our own virtues and other people’s faults, and a vicious cycle of mutual blame and mistreatment.

They also point out that it’s contagious. The more self-deception occurs, the more it will spread to others.

So what can leaders do to mitigate the negative effects of self-deception? A few things: First, be wary of praise, noting that most people are suckers for praise and that it can distort our perceptions and inflate our ego. Second, be open to tough feedback, especially when we find ourselves resisting it. Third, solicit feedback proactively and regularly, including structured and confidential 360-degree feedback.

We’re all liars…Entrepreneurs are particularly good at lying to themselves.
Entrepreneurs are the most delusional of all.
-Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz, Lean Analytics

 

What to Do About It

Though self-deception is a common and vexing problem, there are many things we can do to address it:

  • be on the lookout for examples of it in our own life so we can begin to address it
  • commit to being fully honest with ourselves and “fierce with reality,” as educator Parker Palmer advises
  • engage in regular self-reflection and build self-awareness so that we have a clear sense of who we are, what motivates us, and what trips us up
  • work to understand the root causes that led us to start deceiving ourselves
  • reflect on our fears and where they come from and how they show up in our lives
  • work on our self-acceptance, especially on accepting our flaws
  • develop our confidence so that we truly believe that we’re enough (and thus don’t need to lie to ourselves)
  • remain open to changing our mind about things as we obtain new information or perspectives
  • seek help with being honest with ourselves from trusted friends and colleagues or a coach or mentor
  • when we find ourselves blaming others, shift our focus from the faults of others to ideas about how we can help them
  • journal openly and freely, with stream-of-consciousness observations and reflections (the privacy of our journaling may help us be more fully honest with ourselves)

 

Conclusion: The Benefits of Being Totally Honest with Ourselves

The work of moving from self-deception to fierce acceptance of truth and reality may not be easy, but it’s well worth it. In the process, we’ll start trusting ourselves again and develop our self-acceptance as well as our authenticity.

Meanwhile, we can develop our emotional intelligence, connect more genuinely with others, set a good example by being honest and self-aware, and get better results in our chosen endeavors.

 

Reflection Questions

  1. To what extent are you engaging in self-deception—and in which areas?
  2. How is it holding you back?
  3. What will you do about it, starting today?

 

Tools for You

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

 

Related Articles and Traps

 

Appendix: Self-Deception and Cognitive Biases

Research from psychologists Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and many others has shown that we have many cognitive biases—systematic errors in thinking that influence how we make decisions—which can lead to distorted perceptions and faulty judgments. Cognitive biases manifest automatically and unconsciously over a wide range of our reasoning. Researchers have identified at least 58 cognitive biases and heuristics (the process by which we use mental shortcuts to arrive at decisions).

Examples of cognitive biases related to self-deception include:

  • Confirmation bias: our tendency to favor information that confirms our beliefs or hypotheses.
  • Overconfidence bias: our tendency to overestimate our abilities.
  • Illusion of control: overestimating our ability to control events.
  • Optimism bias: our tendency to overestimate favorable outcomes.
  • Planning fallacy: our tendency to underestimate the time, costs, and risks of future actions and to overestimate their benefits.
  • Positive illusion: our unrealistically favorable attitudes towards ourselves or those close to us.
  • Competition neglect: ignoring the likelihood of other entrepreneurs or competitors undertaking the same venture.
  • Dunning–Kruger effect”: when people with low ability at a certain task overestimate their ability.

According to researchers, we tend to overestimate our positive attributes (e.g., intelligence, competence, attractiveness) and underestimate our negative ones (e.g., character flaws, mistakes). Some telling examples of self-deception and biases in action:

  • The vast majority of us consider ourselves above average.
  • Only 2% of high school seniors believe their leadership skills are below average; 70% report they’re above average.
  • 25% of people believe they’re in the top 1% in their ability to get along with others.
  • 94% of college professors say they’re doing above-average work.
  • For certain types of questions, answers that people rate as “99% certain” turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.

Sources: Chip and Dan Heath, Switch (Crown Business, 2010) and Adam Grant, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (Penguin, 2016). Peter Borkenau and Anette Liebler, “Convergence of Stranger Ratings of Personality and Intelligence with Self-Ratings, Partner Ratings, and Measured Intelligence,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65 (1993), 546-553. David Dunning et al., “Flawed Self-Assessment,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5 (2004).

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Avoiding Self-Deception

  • “All humans have self-deceptions.” -Harry C. Triandis, professor emeritus, University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana
  • “To thine own self be true…. Thou canst not then be false to any man.” -Polonius to his son Laertes in “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare
  • “The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible.” -Hannah More
  • “No one wants to be seen as a liar. Liars are considered untrustworthy at best and immoral at worst. And yet, we are perfectly content to lie to ourselves all the time.” -Arthur Brooks, “Quit Lying to Yourself,” The Atlantic
  • “Dishonesty is a trait that most of us have no problem pointing out in others. We feel a sense of anger, disgust, and mistrust towards those who try to deceive us…. Secretly, it feels good to point the finger at others because it makes us feel morally righteous. But here’s the truth: at the end of the day, most of us fail to see that we also lie—to ourselves—frequently…. Deception is such a despicable quality that we would rather disown it than face it honestly.” -Aletheia
  • “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.” -Sigmund Freud
  • “If I was lying on my deathbed and I had kept this secret and never ever did anything about it, I would be lying there saying, ‘You just blew your entire life. You never dealt with yourself,’ and I don’t want that to happen.” -Caitlyn Jenner
  • “…the ultimate self-help strategy, the one practice that could end all your suffering and get you all the way to happiness. Stop lying.” -Martha Beck in The Way of Integrity
  • “Our lives only improve when we are willing to take chances and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.” -Walter Anderson
  • “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
  • “The lies we tell other people are nothing to the lies we tell ourselves.” -Derek Landy, Death Bringer
  • “We all practice self-deception to a degree; no man can handle complete honesty without being cut at each turn. There’s not enough room in a man’s head for sanity alongside each grief, each worry, each terror that he owns. I’m well used to burying such things in a dark cellar and moving on.” -Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools
  • “Life out here is hard. We all try to get through the best way we can. But trust me, there’s not a single person here who isn’t lying to themselves about something.” -Jane Harper, The Lost Man
  • “Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • “You can never be true to others, if you keep on lying to yourself.” -Gift Gugu Mona
  • “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” -Thomas Jefferson

* Researchers have observed that drug and alcohol addicts exhibit higher scores of self-deception. Martínez-González JM, Vilar López R, Becoña Iglesias E, Verdejo-García A. Self-deception as a mechanism for the maintenance of drug addiction. Psicothema. 2016; 28(1): 13-9.

** “Cognitive and emotional dissonance are difficult to hold. Self-deception allows us to hold onto this sense of coherence, even though it means we leave out some parts of the truth of who we are and live under some form of illusion.” -Ling Lam, PhD, licensed marriage and family therapist

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Trap of Living Someone Else’s Life

The Trap of Living Someone Else’s Life

As if life weren’t hard enough sometimes, we all have to navigate the challenge of reconciling our own preferences for living with the influences and expectations of those around us. We have a powerful desire to be free and unencumbered but also a deep-seated desire to be connected and appreciated.

When these desires conflict, we can end up living someone else’s life—chasing the goals and dreams of others instead of our own.

Many people are deeply influenced by the expectations of their parents—or of teachers, coaches, mentors, or peers:

Be a lawyer.
Or consultant.
Run the family business.
Choose the career that pays the most.
Climb the ladder.
(Regardless of who we are and what we want.)

There’s nothing wrong with any of those things IF it’s a good fit for us. That’s the catch. What if they’re not a good fit?

Too often, we don’t run the numbers. Will it be worth it to go along with what someone else wants for our life when we’re the one who has to put in the 90,000 hours or so of lifetime work in that field?

There are many factors we can consider in our work choices: role, title, salary, bonus, team, location, commute, culture, reputation, values fit, growth and promotion opportunities, and more. Early in life, we tend to overweight the extrinsic factors of approval and status and underweight the intrinsic ones. Meanwhile, the intrinsic factors tend to grow in importance over time for most people. If we’re not careful, this complex set of factors can make us feel trapped in a life not of our liking.

 

Signs of Living Someone Else’s Life

How to know if we’re living someone else’s life? It’s hard because, if we’re doing it, we’ve probably gotten good at lying to ourselves. And that’s one of the hardest habits to break.

But the signs are revealing. If we’re living someone else’s life, we may be:

  1. Living the success script of others.
  2. Marrying someone to please or accommodate our parents.
  3. Lacking enthusiasm and motivation for our current path.
  4. Feeling like our life is passing us by.
  5. Envying people who have summoned the courage and conviction to travel their own authentic path in life (what we call “life entrepreneurs”).
  6. Judging others harshly about their situation or choices when deep down we know we’re numbing our own pain and regret.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

 

Where It Comes From

While some people have no problem with the pressure of living someone else’s life because they naturally revel in their individuality, others struggle mightily with it because of the way they’re wired or the way they were raised. Or both.

Feeling obliged to chase the goals and dreams of others can come from many sources. Here are some of the most common and powerful ones:

Parents and childhood programming. There’s no question that some parents lead us into this trap, albeit with good intentions (or at least ignorance of the pain and suffering they may be causing). Some parents deal with their own disappointment and regret by trying to live vicariously through their children. They view their children’s behavior and choices as a reflection of their own success, worth, and parenting. Some are competitive about their parenting and focus on outdoing their friends and neighbors. Others use their children’s accomplishments as validation of their own success. Usually, there’s a mixed bag of motivations, ranging from genuine desire for their kids’ happiness to willful ignoring of toxic pressure and manipulation. Too often, parents forget (or don’t fully realize or won’t admit) that their children are different from them.

Some parents see their children as extensions of themselves,
rather than as separate people with their own hopes and dreams.”
-Dr. Brad Bushman, professor, Ohio State University

Insecurity. Maybe we’re not confident about our own ability to choose a good career, or to take a harder path and pull it off. Maybe we feel unworthy. Or maybe we feel lacking in comparison to others—or compared to where we’d like to be or where we think others expect us to be.

People-pleasing. Maybe we’re accustomed to putting others’ needs ahead of our own. This “disease to please” is common, and it can induce us to live for others to avoid risking the disapproval of others or the discomfort of fighting for what we want. We may have a strong sense that our parents will be disappointed if we don’t do what they want us to do. (Note that our parents may have felt similar pressures from their parents, and so on.) This is a sticky wicket because we love our parents and don’t want to disappoint them, but we also want to make our own choices and be happy.

Panic choices. Due to all the pressure we face, it’s easy to panic and choose quickly or even flippantly. Sometimes we default to the path of least resistance while downplaying our deepest desires.

The lack of a compelling alternative. Think of the college student who has always earned good grades. She gets lots of praise and encouragement about climbing the corporate ladder and becoming an executive, with its great compensation and prestige. She wonders if it’s a good fit for her, and yet she’s not sure how else she can make a living. She’s not yet clear on who she is, what she loves to do, and what she wants. When we place that uncertainty up against the clear and direct expectations of loved ones, which side is likely to concede defeat?

 

Why It’s Hard to Avoid This Trap

Most of us grew up seeking the approval of our parents and striving to demonstrate our worth. And we were rewarded when we met their expectations. That can set up some longstanding habits that are hard to break.

Feeling like we’re disappointing people we care about or love can be one of the most difficult feelings we have. It takes courage to resist pressure from those we love and to be who we are. Meanwhile, the fear and doubt that come with breaking free are daunting.

Meanwhile, we see carefully curated versions of our friends’ lives on their social media feeds, not to mention countless ads, all with subtle and not-so-subtle hints about how we should live.

Discovering vocation doesn’t mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond your reach,
but rather accepting the treasure that you have been given. But make no mistake about it,
well-meaning people around you—friends, family, work associates, and others—will push you to run someone else’s race.
-Dr. Nicholas Pearce, professor, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management

Since the switching costs of changing our career or degree can be high, it can make us reluctant to abandon our current path even when it’s sub-optimal. So, we grind it out.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

 

The Problem with Living Someone Else’s Life

Decisions about work and marriage are among the most consequential in our lifetime, so the dangers of outsourcing these decisions to others are grave. We can lose big parts of ourselves when we go along with what others want for us, the ones that are precious and fragile. It can be our creative side, our idealistic side, the part of us that comes through in our passions, values, and convictions.

Sometimes when we’re chasing others’ goals and dreams, we’re basing our decisions not on actual pressure to do something but on our assumptions about what people want for us. And it’s possible that we’ve been misreading the situation, sometimes badly, yet never summoned the courage to have the conversation directly.

When we get older, we’re often surprised to discover how little it matters what other people thought way back when. Influences that can seem huge or even overwhelming at one point later turn out to be blips in the larger scheme of things.

Sometimes the expectations of others are a terrible guide for deciding what’s right for us. In many cases, parents or others are projecting their own values and preferences onto us and not seeing the full picture of how different we are and how distinct our context is.

The biggest problem of chasing others’ goals and dreams is that we’re very likely to regret it. After years of work as a palliative nurse caring for people in the final weeks and days of their lives, Bronnie Ware identified the “top regrets of the dying.” The biggest regret she discovered was this:

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

 

What to Do About It

If we’ve fallen into the trap of living someone else’s life or at risk of it, what can we do? Fortunately, there are many things we can do to address it:

Consider the bigger picture of our lives and the limited time we have to live them. Bear in mind that we may value our parents’ (or peers’) opinions now more than we will later in life—and that we’ll likely be more satisfied with our choices if we follow our own guiding lights instead of those of others. As we remember that we all die, we can imagine our final days of life and how we’ll feel about chasing others’ goals and dreams instead of our own. (See my article, “What Reflecting on Death Can Teach Us about Living.”)

Question any beliefs about what we should do with our lives because of what others think. We may have been flying on autopilot with those beliefs for a long time. What would happen if we took the controls back? Where would we fly?

Notice when we’re deferring to others and their views about what to do. Catch ourselves in the act of following instead of leading our lives. Reflect on why we’re doing it and whether those reasons will stand up to scrutiny in our distant future—or even now.

Know ourselves. Sometimes the problem is that we don’t know well enough who we are and what we want. These aren’t always easy to discern, especially when someone has been pushing an identity onto us. We can begin by working to clarify the following:

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

 

It’s important to write these down. The act of writing them down not only helps with clarity but can also provide a form of accountability if we have the foresight to revisit it periodically (and to share it with trusted friends and colleagues). (Consider also taking a Traps Test and Quality of Life Assessment.)

Spend time alone and cultivate an inner life in which we tap into our deeper wisdom. Spending time alone and reflecting on the arc of our lives opens space for self-discovery and pattern-mapping, as well as distance from others.

Cultivate self-acceptance: Appreciate what we have and do well while shutting down our inner critic. Replace the negative self-talk with positive self-talk, focusing on our capabilities and accomplishments.

Embrace our uniqueness as part of our identity. Revel in our idiosyncrasies. Be bolder in expressing our true nature and feel the joy and relief of returning home to ourselves.

Learn about and experiment with different career paths and figure out what suits us well. Too often, we get caught up in “climbing mode”—striving to move up the ladder of success, focusing on achievement and advancement—when what we really need is to go deep into “discover mode”—learning about who we are and what we can do in the world (e.g., our values, strengths, passions, aspirations). (See my TEDx talk for more on this.) Start with small steps and be open and curious. There are many ways to run such low-cost probes, including internships, job rotations or shadowing, consulting projects, crowdfunding campaigns, board service, life design interviews, volunteering, and more.

Build up our courage—the courage we’ll need to resist the expectations and pressures from others. Recall that our fears (of disappointing people or of failing at our chosen endeavors) are probably overblown and that many of the best things in life are on the other side of those fears. (See my article, “Getting Good at Overcoming Fear.”) When we make big choices like marriage and career choices, ask ourselves who it’s for and whether we’re being unduly influenced by others.

Spend less time with people who are trying to control or direct us according to their whims and preferences. Terminate the toxic in our life and reduce exposure to unhelpful influences, at least for a period of time that allows us to change our trajectory. In the larger scheme of things, the costs associated with that are well worth it. As we do this, it will be easier to separate our decision about what we’ll do with our lives from our relationship with important people in our lives. Those are two different things, and that decision is ours and ours alone. Realize that it’s impossible to please everyone—and that pleasing others isn’t the point. Far from it.

It is crucial to understand that loving people and following their scripts prepared for you are not the same thing….
If you make yourself unhappy because you are not living your life,
that has nothing to do with expressing love.
If someone requires this from you—unfortunately, this person does not care about you.”
-Alexandra Ruzycka, filmmaker and writer

Don’t play the victim and blame others. Would we rather be happy with our own life or have someone to blame for making us feel miserable? The choice is ours. And it’s our life, not theirs.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s selfish to do what we want with our life. It’s our life, and we must accept full responsibility for it. Doing so isn’t selfish. Far from it. It’s simply accepting the mantle of adulthood and its accompanying responsibility—a natural progression.

Find someone who’s done a good job of living their own life despite pressures to do otherwise and ask them to share how they went about it. Sometimes it’s helpful to learn from others who have been on a similar journey with comparable influences and pressures.

 

Conclusion

In the end, the reckoning we’ll face for our choices will be ours to bear on our own. Our parents and peers have their own choices to make. We’re more likely to find happiness when we blaze our own path in life by our own guiding lights. And we’re more likely to feel good about betting on ourselves. Our life is ours. Our time is now. What are we doing with it?

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Are you living someone else’s life—chasing the goals and dreams of others?
  2. How is it affecting your happiness and quality of life?
  3. What will you do about it, starting now?

 

Tools for You

 

Related Articles

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Avoiding Living Someone Else’s Life

  • “…surely we can do better than having to look back on our lives and regret that we lived by someone else’s priorities.” -Greg McKeown, writer
  • “It’s better to fail trying to do what you really care about than to succeed at something else.” -Mark Albion
  • “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” -Steve Jobs, entrepreneur
  • “…to let another man define your own goals is to give up one of the most meaningful aspects of life—the definitive act of will which makes a man an individual.” -Hunter S. Thompson, writer
  • “But there is something that’s a great deal more important than parental approval: learning to do without it. That’s what it means to become an adult…. You won’t be able to recognize the things you really care about until you have released your grip on all the things that you’ve been taught to care about.” -William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep
  • “Our deepest calling is to grow into our authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be.” -Parker Palmer, author and educator
  • “One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.” -Shannon L. Alder
  • “Most people are controlled by fear of what other people think. And fear of what, usually, their parents or their relatives are going to say about what they’re doing. A lot of people go through life like this, and they’re miserable. You want to be able to do what you want to do in life.” -Janet Wojcicki, professor, University of California at San Francisco
  • “The most freeing experience of my life thus far has been to… be unapologetically myself, and to stand in my own light.” -Hannah Rose, therapist and writer
  • “If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.” -Greg McKeown
  • “You can never find happiness living someone else’s life.” -Marshall Goldsmith
  • “The first step toward change is to refuse to be deployed by others and to choose to deploy yourself.” -Warren Bennis
  • “I was driven by the expectation that I needed some type of profession. [I was also] driven by parental expectations and by looking at my peers.” -Warren Brown, entrepreneur
  • “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” -Joseph Campbell
  • “…too many of us cling fiercely to imaginary limits we have set for ourselves or accepted from others….” -Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek in LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives
  • “…there is an anointing on your life not to be someone else. You are anointed to be you.” -Joel Osteen, preacher

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our community. Sign up now and get Gregg Vanourek’s monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

People-Pleasing: Why We Do It and How to Stop It

People-Pleasing: Why We Do It and How to Stop It

We all do it sometimes. We put others’ needs ahead of our own. It’s called people-pleasing: having an excessive focus on making others happy at the expense of our own wants and needs. It’s been called “the disease to please.”

We use it to avoid risking the disapproval of others or the discomfort of standing up for what we want. It’s a form of self-neglect as we seek validation from others.

People-pleasing is related to what social psychologists call “sociotropy,” the tendency to place an inordinate value on relationships over personal independence. It often comes with a strong need for social acceptance.

People-pleasing is common. According to a 2022 YouGov poll of a thousand U.S. adult citizens, 49% self-identified as people-pleasers, with 56% of women and 42% of men describing themselves this way.

And it isn’t all bad. Far from it. If we take pleasure in doing things for others, that’s great, and there are real benefits to it. By valuing people, we foster connections. People see that we care and understand their needs. We’re good at getting along with others. We work hard. We’re a nice person who’s empathetic and intuitive.

There are evolutionary reasons behind people-pleasing. We all want to be appreciated and loved. We all adapt our behavior somewhat to make things go more smoothly when we’re with others.

The problem is when we take it too far—when we do it so much that we lose ourselves in others and neglect our own wants and needs.

One danger is that our brains are good at rationalizing it. Since it often involves helping others, we justify our people-pleasing and refuse to account for its many costs.

Of course, we don’t want to move too far in the other direction. Do we want to be people-displeasers? People-antagonizers? People-annoyers? (Yes, some are down for that.) If everything is all about us and what we want, and we never do anything to help others, that can be even worse.

 

Signs of People-Pleasing

There are many signs of people-pleasing. When we’re people-pleasing, we tend to:

  1. find it hard to say no
  2. agree to something we don’t want to do
  3. accept projects with unrealistic deadlines
  4. take on more than we can handle because we don’t want to disappoint someone
  5. shift our own plans and schedules to accommodate others’ needs
  6. have trouble setting boundaries between our work and personal time
  7. take responsibility for making people feel better if they’re upset
  8. try to help people even when they’re not asking for it
  9. apologize for things that aren’t our fault
  10. have a hard time asking for help
  11. show people warmth even when it’s not warranted
  12. flatter people even when we don’t like them
  13. want to appear perfect
  14. go out of our way to avoid conflict
  15. feel miserable when we’ve upset or disappointed someone
  16. disregard our own feelings because we don’t want to jeopardize our relationship
  17. hold our opinion back to maintain harmony
  18. seek frequent reassurance
  19. have a hard time directing people (e.g., children or employees) to do things
  20. get overscheduled and overburdened often

In short, we’d rather have our own needs go unmet than disappoint someone. When we’re a people-pleaser, we’re often the overworked one in our workplace (more so than others). It’s not a fun place to be.

The corporate world loves people who are pleasers,
because we’re the ones who are always willing to take on any assignment.”
-Susan Schmitt Winchester, corporate HR executive and author

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

 

Where People-Pleasing Comes From

Where does it come from? If we’re going to be able to do something about it, first we need to understand it.

Beneath our people-pleasing lies a strong desire or need to be liked. We may have learned from childhood that the needs of others come first. Psychologists note that some children use people-pleasing as a coping mechanism to connect with parents who only give love under certain conditions or with parents who are strict disciplinarians or unpredictable. It’s also baked into some cultures and some people’s mistaken views about what it means to be a good woman, wife, mother, caregiver, worker, or friend, among other things.

A common source of people-pleasing is insecurity. If we struggle with validating our own needs and desires, we may seek external validation. We may feel that our own needs are unimportant—or unworthy of respect and love.

Often, it’s the manifestation of a deeper issue such as insecurity or a history of maltreatment that we haven’t yet processed fully. When we’re pleasing, we’re trying to gain acceptance and affiliation by helping, flattering, or saving others. We may worry that fighting for our own needs will drive others away.

People-pleasing often comes with perfectionism, including a strong desire for control over how others perceive us. Finally, people-pleasing tendencies can come from childhood trauma or abuse. We may naturally use pleasing others to help us feel safe and secure.

Common themes underlying all these sources are fear and anxiety.

People-pleasing is an anxiety response…. (when we’re doing it) what we’re really saying is
‘I’m anxious about something. I’m anxious about not being liked. I’m anxious about being rejected.
Or I’m anxious that I’m not going to get what I want.’
People-pleasing is a manifestation of anxiety.”
-Natalie Lue, author

 

The Problem with People-Pleasing

Though it can have some benefits, as noted above, it also comes with many costs. For example, people-pleasing can lead to:

  • stress
  • anxiety
  • overwhelm
  • exhaustion
  • burnout
  • taking on tasks that others should do
  • downplaying our own ideas and inner wisdom
  • having people take us for granted
  • becoming dependent on external validation
  • having dysfunctional relationships in which people end up liking us for the wrong reasons
  • diminished authenticity, connection, and intimacy in our relationships
  • reduced visibility by others into how overstretched we are because we hide it so well
  • others becoming dependent on us
  • feeling inauthentic because we’re not living life on our own terms
  • losing our own sense of identity
  • lower motivation and confidence
  • feelings of frustration, anger, resentment, and bitterness
  • pain and regret (in some cases because we’ve used people-pleasing as an excuse not to pursue our dreams)

People-pleasing sometimes relies on assumptions about what others want, but often those assumptions are wrong. We can spend a lot of time and effort people-pleasing only to miss the mark.

In the end, people-pleasing inhibits our happiness, connection, and freedom. It can even lead to financial loss, physical jeopardy, or eating disorders (e.g., matching the group’s eating habits to make others feel comfortable).

Left unaddressed, people-pleasing can become a way of life as the whims of others determine our choices and trajectory.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

 

How People-Pleasing Can Degrade Our Leadership

People-pleasing also has big implications in the workplace. Many leaders struggle with people-pleasing. For example, in two different surveys, 79-91% of pastors admitted to people-pleasing tendencies.

It can make us overloaded with work, pull us away from our most important work as we place others’ needs ahead of our own, and prevent us from learning to delegate and developing the capacities of our team.

People-pleasing can harm our credibility and integrity, our two most important leadership assets. People can sense it when we’re sugarcoating things, and they get frustrated when we’re not clear about what’s going wrong or what needs to change. They will also suffer if they only receive positive feedback, without actual things they can improve going forward.

People-pleasing can inhibit our leadership effectiveness when we get so invested in maintaining a positive rapport with our team that we fail to instill accountability and uphold the results imperative. Workers can take advantage of people-pleasing leaders by playing to their need to be liked and getting them to change their minds after meetings. This only causes frustration among other workers who are fighting hard to get good results the right way.

With people-pleasing, we can portray a false image of friendliness that may come back to haunt us when we need to take tougher action. It can make us avoid taking charge and lead us to tolerate poor performance or bad behavior. Part of the job of leadership is conveying difficult messages clearly and firmly, such as when performance isn’t up to snuff. But people-pleasing leaders tend to send mixed signals. Sometimes leaders need to bring the hard edge of leadership, the “steel.”

In short, people-pleasing can cause big problems for leaders, including indecisiveness, lack of direction and accountability, poor results, and attrition.

Leadership Derailers Assessment

Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. A critical and often overlooked tool for your leadership development.

 

What to Do About It

Fortunately, there are many things we can do to escape the trap of people-pleasing. The first set of things has to do with our mindset, and the second with our behavior.

Starting with mindset, we can begin by recognizing that it’s healthy and normal to set boundaries and say no—and that we’re not responsible for how others feel. Self-worth and confidence come from within, not from others. People-pleasing isn’t heroic or noble. It’s not the same thing as kindness.

And we should understand that people-pleasing actually harms relationships because it degrades authenticity and integrity. Recognize that we can’t please everyone and that people-pleasers are often taken advantage of.

We should work at noticing when we’re engaging in people-pleasing (and tempted to)—as well as all its downsides. Meanwhile, we shouldn’t judge ourselves harshly for people-pleasing. We all have work to do in some areas. It’s also important to reflect on how we developed people-pleasing tendencies.

Where does it come from and is it serving us well or harming us?

The second set of things concerns our behavior. Here there are several actions we can take:

1. Buy time. When asked to do something, don’t answer right away. Take a pause. Check in with our emotions. Is the request bringing up overwhelm, resentment, or guilt if we say no? Our immediate urge to agree to all requests is the thing that’s been getting us into trouble. Ask for time to consider it. Let them know we’ll get back to them within a few days. That will give us time to process it, consider it in the context of our other obligations, and craft an appropriate response.

2. Scrutinize the request and the person it’s coming from. Consider whether the person may be taking advantage of us. Recall that healthy relationships are reciprocal, with both people giving and taking. Pay attention to whether we want to help or not. Think before committing.

3. Get clarity on our own purpose, core values, aspirations, and goals. Be clear about the things we want to say yes to—and which things fall out of that zone. Think of all the great things we’re missing out on when we’re neglecting our own wants and needs and doing all the things others want instead.

You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—
pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically—to say ’no’ to other things.
And the way to do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside.
-Stephen R. Covey, author

4. Time-block. Block out times in our calendar that are off-limits to outside requests because they’re preserved for our own priorities. Those become an automatic no except in extraordinary circumstances.

5. Practice saying no. Don’t assume that people will be hurt if we don’t agree to a request. It’s possible that they didn’t expect us to agree and that they respect us for guarding our time. Most people get that we all have to say no sometimes. The key is in how we go about it and whether we say no with firmness and grace. (Tip: keep track of our “yes: no ratio” so we can gauge how we’re doing on this front.)

6. Build our confidence and assertiveness. Contrary to popular option, these aren’t set in stone. We can develop them. (See my article, “How to Build Confidence in Yourself and Your Leadership.”)

7. Seek help from a mentor, coach, or therapist. Note that it’s not easy to shift out of longstanding habits like this, and it’s likely to take time. Sometimes our people-pleasing is unconscious, and for some it has become like second nature. Start small.

8. Repeat our approaches for overcoming people-pleasing again and again. Develop new habits and repeat them often, thus rewiring our brain and re-setting others’ expectations.

 

Conclusion

In the end, we have a choice about whether to live out of a fear of not being liked or out of a conviction that our own wants and needs are important and worth pursuing. Will we find a healthy balance between honoring our own needs and serving others, or will we subsume our needs to those of others?

If we don’t get this right, we’re likely to regret it. But if we summon the courage to be who we are and to fight for what we want and need, we’ll end up with more authenticity, joy, and fulfillment.

Wishing you well with it.
Gregg

 

 

 

 

Reflection Questions

  1. To what extent are you people-pleasing?
  2. How is it affecting your well-being, quality of life, and leadership?
  3. What will you do, starting today, to address it?

 

Tools for You

 

Related Articles, Books, and Videos

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Overcoming People-Pleasing

  • “Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” -Lao Tzu
  • “People-pleasing comes from an underlying emotion of fear.” -Salma Hindy, Canadian engineer and comedian
  • “…anytime we’re doing something that is more about influencing what others think of us than it is about authentically expressing ourselves… we end up out of integrity with ourselves.” -Christine Carter
  • “Keep this question in mind: If I was no longer people-pleasing and abandoning myself and my needs, what would I be doing, thinking, and feeling?” -Maria Sosa
  • “The first step toward change is to refuse to be deployed by others and to choose to deploy yourself.” -Warren Bennis, leadership author
  • “When you are saying no authentically, you can also say yes authentically. You are doing things that are really in integrity with who you are, your values, and how you want to feel instead of doing them out of obligation or for some hidden agenda.” -Natalie Lue, author
  • “We owe it to ourselves to stop (people-pleasing), because we are meant for more.” -Salma Hindy, Canadian engineer and comedian
  • “A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.” -Mahatma Gandhi

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

What to Do About Overthinking, Rumination, and Worrying

What to Do About Overthinking, Rumination, and Worrying

One of the common traps of living affecting so many of us these days is overthinking—excessively analyzing something or dwelling on possibilities and second-guessing ourselves. We think about some things—mostly bad things—too much and for too long.

It can be mentally replaying awkward conversations or embarrassing moments repeatedly. That time we got dumped by our childhood crush. Or worrying about an upcoming presentation or interview. Putting off asking for a promotion or raise because we’re overthinking. Our thoughts spiral out of control when our boss mentions out of the blue that we need to talk.

I’ve fallen into this trap many times. I remember cringing repeatedly at my lame attempts to woo a girl in school that ended in flames of humiliation and self-flagellation. I recall jogging around a lake over and over again for months wondering if I should leave a job before finally stopping in my tracks and realizing that the prevalence of that question was a clear answer. Yet I struggled for months.

Overthinking is common. According to researcher Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, 73 percent of people aged 25 to 35 admitted to overthinking at some point in their lives. She also found that overthinking is more common among women than men, but common among both.

When author Jon Acuff and Dr. Michael C. Peasley of Middle Tennessee State University studied overthinking, they asked 10,000 people if they struggle with overthinking. The result? 99.5% of respondents said “yes.” What’s more 73% reported that it made them feel inadequate, and 52% noted that it left them feeling drained.

There are two prevalent forms of overthinking: ruminating and worrying.

 

Type 1: Rumination

One common form of overthinking is rumination, in which we engage in involuntary, compulsive thinking. We get stuck in negative thought loops and uncomfortable emotions.

Rumination tends to involve repetitive thinking about negative past events, problems, or concerns. With rumination, our thoughts can become so overwhelming and excessive that we can’t stop them.

It’s a dominant symptom of anxiety and depression, and it’s also habit-forming since we’re laying down neural pathways in our brains when we do it.

This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction.
What characterizes an addiction?
Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop.
It seems stronger than you.
-Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

 

Type 2: Worrying

Another common form of overthinking is worrying. When we’re worrying, we’re experiencing discomfort with uncertainty, leading to anxiety and stress. We’re constantly wondering, “What if…?”

Worrying involves fear and anxiety from anticipating that we may experience something negative or harmful. When we worry, sometimes we fixate on small details and lose sight of the big picture (such as a low probability of a bad event and a high probability that we’ll be able to deal with it just fine if it occurs).

Sometimes worrying can take over, making us lose control of our thoughts. It can lead to procrastination, numbing ourselves via distractions, or excessively seeking constant reassurances from others.

“To think too much is a disease.”
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky

 

Signs of Overthinking

Beyond the examples of rumination and worrying noted above, overthinking can include the following:

  • having trouble shutting off our thoughts at night (or other times)
  • criticizing ourselves excessively for something we did in the recent past
  • having so many thoughts and not knowing where to start
  • cycling through possible scenarios in our minds
  • fearing that we’re not enough and that others will judge us harshly or reject us
  • frequently wondering what others are thinking of us
  • assuming the worst and imagining terrible outcomes (i.e., catastrophizing)
  • telling ourselves we can’t do things and bombarding ourselves with negative self-talk
  • getting caught up in “analysis paralysis” and not moving forward on things
  • fearing that we’ll never get better or that our situation won’t improve

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

 

Where It Comes From

Overthinking in all its forms, including rumination and worrying, comes from many sources. It can come from trying to control a situation, trying to get more clarity about what to do next, or trying to predict what will happen to reduce our anxiety. A common underlying theme is discomfort with uncertainty.

Those who are motivated by achievement, prestige, or perfectionism can be more prone to overthinking. According to neuroscientist Sanam Hafeez, “Perfectionists and overachievers have tendencies to overthink because the fear of failing and the need to be perfect take over, which leads to replaying or criticizing decisions and mistakes.”

Overthinking can also be a habit picked up from our childhood—something we learned from having to deal with tough situations such as over-controlling parents. It can come from trying to reduce feelings of helplessness or grasping for comfort. We convince ourselves that there may be a solution to the problem if only we keep thinking it through.

In addition, overthinking can come from urges to procrastinate or avoid decisions. In essence, we’re convincing ourselves that we can’t make a decision because we haven’t analyzed it enough yet, and that allows us to avoid blame for being wrong.

Finally, it can come from stresses or trauma, which causes our brains to get stuck in a state of hyper-vigilance as a defense mechanism.

 

Overthinking and Leaders

Overthinking can be a big problem for leaders. Many leaders must make hundreds of decisions a day, a stressful burden. Some leaders can get lost in deliberation so much that it inhibits decision-making and necessary action.

In her book, Trust Yourself, Melody Wilding talks about “sensitive strivers,” high achievers who think and feel more deeply. Studies show, she notes, that they have more active brain circuitry and chemicals in neural areas related to mental processing, and that they comprise about 15-20% of the population.

How do followers respond to leaders who overthink? Summarizing research from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Professor Zakary Tormala noted that “people seem to be less drawn to and less open to being influenced by individuals who overthink small decisions or ‘underthink’ big ones.” What people want, according to the researchers, is an appropriate level of “thought calibration” that adjusts the level of thinking to the significance of the decision at hand.

Leadership Derailers Assessment

Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. A critical and often overlooked tool for your leadership development.

 

The Problem with Overthinking

Unfortunately, overthinking and its manifestations can get us into trouble in many areas. For example, it can:

  1. lead to mental fatigue and burnout and make us feel drained
  2. elevate our stress levels
  3. disturb our sleep
  4. harm our health, potentially including suppressed immune functioning and increased incidence of coronary problems, according to medical professionals
  5. increase our risk of mental health problems, substance abuse, or suicide
  6. lead to avoidance
  7. impede our ability to make decisions
  8. lead to inaction
  9. cloud our judgment
  10. waste our time
  11. reduce our productivity
  12. interfere with our problem-solving, since we end up dwelling on problems instead of solving them
If there is no solution to the problem then don’t waste time worrying about it.
If there is a solution to the problem then don’t waste time worrying about it.
-Dalai Lama
  1. crowd out our heart, intuition, and inner wisdom, as we overindulge in cerebral thinking and analysis
  2. inhibit our creativity
  3. harm our relationships by driving people away, causing new problems like loneliness or isolation
  4. sap our sense of agency and control in our lives
  5. prevent us from achieving our dreams

In the end, our overthinking gets us nowhere, because our mind keeps coming up with new questions and concerns. Often, we’re overthinking about things that we have no control over, a true waste of time and energy. And we’re imagining worst-case scenarios that rarely come to fruition.

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
-Seneca, ancient Roman philosopher

We tend to engage in negative thoughts when we’re overthinking, not positive ones. Researchers have found that we have a negativity bias, a tendency to register negative stimuli more readily and to dwell on them. As humans, we weight negative events more heavily than positive ones.

We ruminate on suffering, regret, and sorrow. We chew on them, swallow them, bring them back up,
and eat them again and again. If we’re feeding our suffering while we’re walking, working, eating, or talking,
we are making ourselves victims of the ghosts of the past,
of the future, or our worries in the present. We’re not living our lives.”
-Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk, peace activist, author, and teacher

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

 

What to Do About Overthinking

Fortunately, there are many things we can do to address our overthinking. Below are dozens of simple practices from which we can choose.

Catch ourselves in the act of overthinking. If we can bring this mischievous habit into our awareness, then we can begin reprogramming our brains with more enjoyable and productive ways of thinking. Author Melody Wilding recommends using a pattern interruption technique such as silently saying “stop” when we start overthinking, visualizing our worries floating away, or flicking a rubber band on our wrist when we catch ourselves overthinking.

Recognize that a key to success in life is taking more action more often. One of the biggest mistakes we make in our lives is having a thought-to-action ratio that’s way off kilter and top-heavy toward thought, weighing us down in anxiety and inaction. Change our focus from problems and worries to solutions and actions.

“The antidote to overthinking isn’t more thinking—the antidote is action.
You don’t think your way out of overthinking. You act your way out.”
Jon Acuff, Soundtracks

Decide to become a person of action instead of an overthinker. Enjoy getting lost in doing things. Try it for a while and note the differences across domains of our lives, from energy and momentum to confidence and results.

Recognize that our thoughts are like a dial, not a switch. This insight from David Thomas, author and Director of Family Counseling at Daystar in Nashville, teaches us that we can’t switch off our thoughts, but we can turn the volume down on rumination and negative thoughts—especially via actions.

Practice making quick decisions. Start with small things and count down from three: “three, two, one… choose.” Then go with it. Get used to a faster decision cycle and note the results. Develop decision processes and criteria, such as prioritizing our core values when making important decisions.

Determine what’s creating fear in us. Get better at recognizing how many of our fears are false phantoms, much like the childhood monsters we feared lurking under our beds. And get better at overcoming our fears.

Focus intensely on something. Listen to music and focus intently on something in it, like the lyrics or the guitar line. Or study a drawing or painting and examine the shapes, lines, colors, and proportions.

Learn what our overthinking triggers are and avoid them. They could be certain social media accounts, news sites, or sticky situations with certain people.

Give ourselves a time budget for how long we’re allowed to think about something. Then choose to move on after that. Our overactive minds may be satisfied with a fixed allotment of thinking time. (Some people call this “worry time” and report that it’s comforting to them.)

Develop our confidence and learn to trust ourselves more. Learn to trust that things will probably be okay and work to overcome any instances of “impostor syndrome.”

Determine the things that we do have control over and focus on them. If we’re worried about an important upcoming meeting, we can do a great job preparing for the meeting and then make sure we get a good night’s rest and arrive early to set up. Then we can be satisfied that we’ve done our job.

Get better at letting things go. Recognize that we’re probably placing way more weight on things than the situation warrants. While we may be beating ourselves up over a situation, it’s likely that others hardly noticed our part in it or just moved on. People think way less of us than we imagine.

Change our thoughts into questions. For example, we can shift a thought from “I can’t believe I said that” to “What could I say differently next time?” We can change a thought from “I don’t have close friends” to “What should I do to be a better friend?”

Get some exercise. This leads to the removal of stress hormones and comes with so many benefits, including better brain health, greater muscle and bone strength, reduction in the incidence of disease, better mood, greater energy levels, and more.

Get out into nature. Our brains become calmer and sharper after we spend time in nature, according to researchers. We can hike in the woods or do some gardening, giving our minds a chance to enjoy the break and focus on pleasant sights and activities.

Try relaxation techniques. Examples include taking deep breaths or doing yoga. The research is clear that such simple acts can dial down the mental noise in our heads.

Do things that interest us and that occupy our attention. Engage in fun activities and hobbies. These can bring relaxation, contentment, and satisfaction into our lives and reduce our stress—and even better if we do them with others.

Connect to our senses. Try the “54321 grounding method,” in which we take deep breaths and become aware of our surroundings and then look for five things we can see, four things we can touch, three things we can hear, two things we can smell, and one thing we can taste. Simple exercises like this can help stop the drumbeat of our thoughts.

Journal. It’s cathartic to write our thoughts down. Writing our thoughts down can stop us from ruminating. It can restore a sense of control as we gain insights and discern patterns. Journaling doesn’t have to be formal or structured. We can do a simple brain dump and just write down our thoughts as they arise.

Help others with small acts of service or simple acts of kindness. This is a great way to add more meaning and connection in our lives while also getting us out of our own heads.

Lean into positive relationships. By being with others, we can engage and connect, have fun, support each other, and silence our mental gremlins.

Replay happy memories. Instead of feeding into worries or concerns, relive good times and happy memories. Talk with an old friend or flip through a cherished photo album.

Find sanctuary. These are places or practices of peace that reconnect us with our heart. (See our article, “Renewing Yourself Amidst the Chaos.”)

Go out on adventures. Adventure makes us feel more fully awake, alive, and free. It fuels us with the energy and excitement of exploration. And it takes our minds off the mundane. It’s hard to ruminate when we’re climbing a mountain or trekking in new areas. (See my article, “Why We Want Adventure in Our Lives—And How to Get It.”)

Bring awe back into our lives. Awe is a powerful emotion and a marker for life at its grandest. It gives us an experience of vastness and mystery. How much can we worry when we’re gazing at the cosmos, studying the intricacies of a spider web, or experiencing a great performance? (See my article, “The Power of Awe in Our Lives.”)

Engage in prayer, worship, or spiritual contemplation. By doing so, we can rise above the immediate concerns of our overactive mind and tap into something larger than ourselves with reverence, gratitude, and wonder.

Meditate. According to researchers, meditation can calm our sympathetic nervous system and decrease our anxiety, stress, and emotional reactivity. Meanwhile, it can help with our focus and overall well-being.

If you want to conquer overthinking, bring your mind to the
present moment and reconnect it with the immediate world
.”
-Amit Ray, Meditation: Insights and Inspirations

Talk to a friend—or a professional therapist or counselor. Part of the value here is getting things off our chest, which can reduce our propensity to keep thinking about them, not to mention learning new coping skills.

Clearly, there are many things we can do to address our overthinking. The point isn’t that we must do all of them. We should experiment with the ones that are instinctively most appealing and determine which ones work the best for us.

Let’s also note here what doesn’t work in trying to overcome overthinking. We know from research that we can’t just tell ourselves not to have certain thoughts. That can lead to more thoughts on the subject at hand. For example, if we’re told not to think of a pink elephant, our brains will do the opposite and think about it. Instead, we need to replace negative thoughts with different and better ones.

 

Conclusion

These days, we ask a lot of our minds. We shock them with breaking news alerts and crises around the world. We feed them with email, social media, digital entertainment, and all manner of stimuli.

If the quality of our lives is influenced deeply by the quality of our thoughts, isn’t it worth addressing our negative thinking patterns like overthinking, rumination, and worrying? How much more peace, joy, and impact might we have if we were to restore a healthier balance between our head and our heart?

 

Reflection Questions

  1. To what extent are you struggling with overthinking, rumination, or worrying?
  2. How is it affecting your mental health, well-being, performance, and happiness?
  3. What will you do to tame your overthinking dragons?

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

 

Related Articles

 

Related Books

  • Jon Acuff, Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking
  • Eckart Tolle, The Power of Now
  • Melody Wilding, Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work
  • Jennie Allen, Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts
  • Nick Trenton, Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress, Stop Negative Spirals, Declutter Your Mind, and Focus on the Present
  • Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Women Who Think Too Much

 

Tools for You

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Avoiding Overthinking

  • “While you were overthinking, you missed everything worth feeling.” -Nitya Prakash
  • “Overthinking steals time, creativity, and productivity by making you listen to broken soundtracks. Do you know what happens when you listen to new ones? You give your dreams more time, creativity, and productivity.” -Jon Acuff, Soundtracks
  • “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” -Dale Carnegie
  • “Good days start with good thoughts.” -Jon Acuff, Soundtracks
A crowded mind
Leaves no space
For a peaceful heart.
-Christine Evangelou, writer

 

Appendix: Support Resources

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our community. Sign up now and get Gregg Vanourek’s monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

 

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

Are We Numbing Our Lives Away?

Are We Numbing Our Lives Away? by Gregg Vanourek

One of the most insidious traps that we can fall into these days is numbing—escaping from our thoughts and feelings by doing other things. When we do this, we’re taking the edge off feelings that cause us pain or discomfort. We’re anesthetizing difficult emotions. The problem is compounded by the fact that many families and cultures teach people, either explicitly or implicitly, to suppress their feelings.

We can numb not only with things like alcohol, drugs, or smoking but also with binge-watching shows or doom-scrolling social media. Our numbing might be excessive work and busyness or constant emailing and texting.

“…one of the most universal numbing strategies is what I call crazy-busy….
We are a culture of people who’ve bought into the idea that
if we stay busy enough, the truth of our lives won’t catch up with us.”
-Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

Our numbing can entail shopping, gambling, eating, or sex—or even excessive exercising or cleaning. Some of these, like exercise, can be healthy in moderation but become problematic when done excessively.

Increasingly, we’re seeing what I call “power-numbing”—engaging in several numbing behaviors at the same time, such as drinking, texting, and scrolling while binge-watching. (My friend Renae Jacob calls it “multi-vicing.”)

The point isn’t that we have to stop doing all these things. Some can be done in moderation or even often. The key is choosing which behaviors serve us and not letting ourselves unconsciously numb swaths of our life away. The point isn’t to deprive ourselves of pleasures but rather to stop escaping from our lives.

A key consideration is the severity of the behavior in question. Our numbing behaviors can range from mild or moderate to severe, and at the further end of that spectrum lies addiction.

 

Addiction and Numbing

In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, researcher Brene Brown describes addiction as “chronically and compulsively numbing and taking the edge off of feelings.”

According to researchers, having an addiction disorder entails losing our ability to choose freely whether to stop or continue a behavior. An addiction leads to adverse consequences when we engage in it, such as problems with our life or work roles, financial loss, emotional trauma, dangerous situations, or bodily injury or impairment. Meanwhile, when we stop the behavior abruptly, it often leads to irritability, anxiety, feelings of helplessness or hopelessness, or depression.

In essence, addiction is an attempt to use shortcuts to feeling good, but it doesn’t work. Many factors can fuel addictions, including trauma, addictive medications, genetic disposition, sexual and gender stresses, and related disorders that coincide with the addiction.

Unfortunately, addictions are common, and they can lead to other addictions as well. According to the Addiction Center, nearly 21 million Americans have at least one addiction, yet only 10% of them receive treatment.

The National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics reports the following about addiction in the U.S.:

  • Of the nearly 140 million people 12 and older who drink alcohol, more than 20% of them suffer from alcohol abuse or addiction
  • 25.4% of all users of illicit drugs suffer from drug dependency or addiction
  • Drug abuse and addiction cost more than $700 billion annually in healthcare expenses, crime-related costs, and lost workplace productivity
  • About half of individuals with a diagnosed mental illness will also struggle with substance abuse at some point in their lives, and vice versa
“…statistics dictate that there are very few people who haven’t been affected by addiction.
I believe we all numb our feelings. We may not do it compulsively or chronically,
which is addiction, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t numb our sense of vulnerability.
-Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

The problem isn’t confined to substance abuse. Many people are addicted to work. Technology is also a big culprit these days, with giant tech companies creating addictive products and big-data algorithms adept at capturing our attention and rewiring our brains. Think of how quickly we’ve handed over huge chunks of our days—and thus our lives—to devices and screens.

When it comes to smartphones, according to Zippia Research in 2022:

  • The average American spends 5 hours and 24 minutes on their mobile device daily
  • Americans check their phones 96 times per day, on average (once every ten minutes)
  • 47% of people believe they’re addicted to their phones
  • 71% of people admit to checking their phone within the first ten minutes of waking up
“Imagine walking into a control room with a bunch of people hunched over a desk with little dials, and that that control room will shape the thoughts and feelings of a billion people. This might sound like science fiction, but this actually exists right now, today…. Right now it’s as if all of our technology is basically only asking our lizard brain what’s the best way to impulsively get you to do the next tiniest thing with your time, instead of asking: in your life, what would be time well spent for you?”
-Tristan Harris, Executive Director, Center for Humane Technology

According to recent research on binge-watching:

  • 73% of Americans admit to binge-watching video content
  • The average binge lasts three hours and eight minutes
  • 90% of millennials and members of Generation Z binge-watch
  • 70% of Americans aged between 30 and 44 often binge-watch TV shows or films
  • 26% of those aged 18 to 29 binge-watch TV every day

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

 

Why We Numb

Numbing behaviors are essentially avoidance mechanisms. There are many factors behind our numbing impulses. Here are 12 common factors:

  1. pain
  2. anxiety
  3. disconnection from others—and its related feelings of loneliness and isolation
  4. feelings of unworthiness
  5. discomfort with uncertainty
  6. stress caused by competing demands on our time
  7. feelings of emptiness
  8. the hurt from feeling unseen
  9. disappointment at ourselves for not being able to handle everything perfectly
  10. the sense that we’re living a life in which we’re not true to ourselves
  11. trauma
  12. abuse

Beneath the discomfort that we’re escaping are fears—fears of failing or struggling or looking bad or feeling unworthy.

We can also have urges to numb if we have a deadening job that’s boring, monotonous, and lacking opportunities for autonomy and initiative—or if our work lacks purpose, connection, or opportunities for development and recognition.

 

The Problem with Numbing

Numbing is a short-term defense mechanism that can end up making things worse for us. It can lead to financial and health problems as well as fights with loved ones or broken relationships (sometimes because we lash out at others when our pain finally surfaces after being repressed).

When we numb, we may feel flat, both physically and emotionally, and become distant or detached from others, perhaps preferring isolation, which can lead to loneliness and despair. We may lose interest in activities we used to enjoy and stop being present in our own lives. Numbing can also diminish our motivation and creativity.

An unintended side effect of our numbing is that it works in both directions. Numbing difficult emotions such as pain and sorrow also numbs our experiences of happiness and joy.

We can’t selectively numb emotion. Numb the dark and you numb the light.”
-Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

Also, we may need more and more of the numbing behavior to feel good, setting us up for trouble down the road.

We may not notice that there are also indirect “opportunity costs” of our numbing behaviors—the value of what we could have been doing if we weren’t numbing. Instead of working excessively or binge-watching, what if we were connecting more with loved ones, reading a great book, learning a new language or musical instrument, getting our hands dirty with gardening, visiting new places, gazing at the stars, or reveling in the richness of being alive?

When we numb, we walk away from ourselves.
-Andrea Owen, How to Stop Feeling Like Sh*t

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

 

What to Do About It

Fortunately, there are many things we can do to reduce our numbing behaviors and mitigate their impacts. Here are many useful approaches:

Recognize that our bodies are trying to speak to us through our emotions. Our emotions can serve an important role as signals or warnings, but only if we pay attention to them. But numbing deprives us of the chance to do so.

Realize that we started numbing for a reason—and reflect to discover what that reason was. Are we feeling overwhelmed at work, or conflicted between our home and work roles, or powerless to help someone we care about?

Notice our numbing behaviors. Be curious about what thoughts and feelings lead to an urge to numb:

Why? Where is it coming from? What are we trying to avoid? What lesson or insight might it hold for us?

In The Gifts of Imperfection, Brene Brown recommends asking if the numbing behavior (e.g., drinking, overworking, etc.) stops us from being emotionally honest, feeling like we’re enough, setting boundaries, and connecting with others. Consider whether we’re using it to escape from our lives.

Name the feelings that cause us to want to numb (e.g., overwhelm, shame, loneliness, despair). Sometimes getting clarity and understanding can open the door not only to relief but also to important insights and hope for improvement.

Take time to feel what we’re feeling—what author Andrea Owen calls “controlled emoting”—and accept our feelings as worthy. Learn how to feel our feelings instead of numbing or dismissing them. Accept ourselves fully without judging ourselves and thinking we’re bad when we have certain thoughts.

Sit with our pain, leaning into it. Connect with it and acknowledge it instead of fleeing it. Though many of us were taught to avoid or suppress emotional pain, that only makes things worse. Our pain is there for a reason, and we can handle it better when we allow ourselves to feel and process it and then, eventually, to let it go as it moves through us.

Talk about our feelings with a trusted friend or trained counselor or therapist. Choose one who can listen attentively and empathetically without trying to fix us. (See the end of this article for a list of support resources.)

Trust that we’ll be okay. Recall all we’ve experienced and overcome in the past.

Take a break from our go-to numbing behaviors, such as social media or streaming shows.

Leo Babauta, founder of Zen Habits, recommends setting a “practice container” to address numbing with the following steps:

Choose to do something productive instead of numbing. Go for a walk to clear our head or try journaling. Choose something we enjoy and that adds value to our lives.

Recognize that the addiction wants us to isolate from others. That’s the worst thing we can do. Numbing behaviors tend to thrive in secrecy, so we must bring them to light.

Pray for help in facing and healing our pain, particularly with chronic numbing behaviors or addictions that feel overwhelming. (For those struggling with addiction, consider support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous—and see more below—and their guiding principles such as the 12 Steps.)

Serve others, even in small ways. Contributing to others can take us out of a wallowing self-focus and give us a chance to feel good about helping people, even via small acts of support or kindness.

 

Conclusion

As humans, we all feel pain and discomfort, so it’s understandable that we’re tempted to escape it via numbing. We need to learn, though, that too much numbing makes things worse, not better.

Avoiding gets us nowhere.
Anesthetizing is a temporary salve.
Escaping doesn’t help at all.

Better instead to turn and face the discomfort, listen to what it’s telling us, and do something about it—ideally, with help from others. Going it alone isn’t wise, so we need to get better at asking for help and letting people experience the satisfaction of helping us.

The alternative to numbing is experiencing life more fully and addressing the inevitable challenges we face head-on.

 

Reflection Questions

  1. To what extent are you numbing with screens, work, substances, or other escapes from your thoughts and feelings?
  2. What’s driving those behaviors?
  3. How will you start to break the cycle?

 

Tools for You

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

 

Related Articles

 

Related Resources

Brene Brown Gifts of Imperfection

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Overcoming Numbing

  • “A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.” -Brene Brown
  • “I know from my own clinical work that when people are beaten and hurt, they numb out so that they can’t feel anymore.” -John Bradshaw
  • “We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable.” -Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go There You Are
  • “When you’re in survival mode, you numb yourself.” -Clemantine Wamariya
  • “I learned to be with myself rather than avoiding myself with limiting habits; I started to be aware of my feelings more, rather than numb them.” -Judith Wright
  • “I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.” -Audre Lorde
  • “She goes from one addiction to another. All are ways for her to not feel her feelings.” -Ellen Burstyn, American actress
  • “The priority of any addict is to anaesthetize the pain of living to ease the passage of day with some purchased relief.” -Russell Brand
  • “Addiction is an adaptation. It’s not you—it’s the cage you live in.” -Johann Hari
  • “If you can quit for a day, you can quit for a lifetime.” -Benjamin Alire Sáenz
  • “What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.” -Alice Miller
  • “At first, addiction is maintained by pleasure, but the intensity of the pleasure gradually diminishes and the addiction is then maintained by the avoidance of pain.” -Frank Tallis
  • “Drugs take you to hell, disguised as heaven.” -Donald Lyn Frost
  • “Addiction, at its worst, is akin to having Stockholm Syndrome. You’re like a hostage who has developed an irrational affection for your captor. They can abuse you, torture you, even threaten to kill you, and you’ll remain inexplicably and disturbingly loyal.” -Anne Clendening
  • “Addiction is the only prison where the locks are on the inside.” -unknown
  • “Remember just because you hit bottom doesn’t mean you have to stay there.” -Robert Downey, Jr.
  • “Never underestimate a recovering addict. We fight for our lives every day in ways most people will never understand.” -unknown
  • “…almost everything we think we know about addiction is wrong…. A core part of addiction… is about not being able to bear to be present in your life…. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.” -Johann Hari in his 2015 TED talk
  • “Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to—alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person—you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain. That is why, after the initial euphoria has passed, there is so much unhappiness, so much pain in intimate relationships. They do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you.” -Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
  • “Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip toe if you must, but take the step.” -Naeem Callaway

 

Appendix: Support Resources

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our community. Sign up now and get Gregg Vanourek’s monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

Are You Focusing Too Much on Others’ Needs?

Our daily demands can be intense. We may have pressures and obligations at work. Household chores. Bills, taxes, mortgage payments.

On top of that, we want to help others: our spouse and children, our colleagues on a tough project, our friends and neighbors. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming—especially if we fall into the trap of focusing too much on others’ needs, draining our own reserves. Such excessive other-focus can get us into real trouble.

It’s a common challenge among people who work in the caring professions, including doctors, nurses, teachers, counselors, social workers, and veterinarians. Anyone who frequently cares for others or witnesses trauma is at risk of it, according to the American Psychological Association.

Also, many women struggle with this trap, perhaps because of all the societal expectations they encounter around caring, nurturing, and supporting households and families. Many women are raised to believe that being empathetic and compassionate is always appropriate—that it’s their duty.

Though this trap may be more common among women and those in the caring professions, it can affect anybody, and certain people are wired to be givers.

 

Empathy Overload and Compassion Fatigue

That brings us to the related problems of empathy overload and compassion fatigue. Empathy and compassion are related but there are also important differences between them.

Empathy is our ability to understand and share the feelings of another, while compassion is a feeling of sympathy and sorrow for someone facing misfortune, along with a desire to help.

Empathy overload, according to writer Dena Standley, feels like “your innermost personal world is continuously being invaded by the emotions and feelings of those around you.”

By contrast, compassion fatigue is emotional, psychological, and physical exhaustion from internalizing the suffering of others, leading to a reduced capacity to feel compassion for them. According to Dr. Charles R. Figley at Tulane University, “It’s like a dark cloud that hangs over your head, goes wherever you go and invades your thoughts.”

Both of these can be signs of what researcher Barbara Oakley calls “pathological altruism,” which she defines as “an unhealthy focus on others to the detriment of one’s own needs.” An important finding from the research on giver burnout is that it comes not from devoting too much time and energy to giving but rather from not being able to help people effectively despite all our efforts.

 

Signs of Being Too Focused on Others’ Needs

How to know if we’ve fallen into this trap? When we’re too focused on the needs of others and not enough on our own, we tend to:

  • find it difficult to set healthy boundaries
  • have a hard time saying “no” to people
  • over-give to the point of exhaustion
  • get so caught up in the feelings of others that we internalize them
  • spend more time thinking about others’ feelings and needs than our own
  • feel responsible for relieving the pain or suffering of others—or for fixing their problems and saving them
  • lose ourselves in our relationships, becoming a passenger on their ship
  • allow people to keep talking and talking, enabling their self-absorption or victim mentality

Part of what’s hard about this is that these behaviors of over-helping can become habitual, with our neural pathways wired to keep repeating those behaviors. Also, we all want to belong and be liked, but we get into trouble when this urge to belong and be loved overwhelms our urge to take care of ourselves.

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

 

The Problem with Being Too Focused on Others

When we’re too focused on others, we can:

  1. become blind to our own needs
  2. give so much to others that it harms our own health, relationships, or finances
  3. feel diminished energy
  4. lose our ability to concentrate
  5. have trouble making good decisions
  6. miss work
  7. become physically and emotionally exhausted, potentially leading to burnout
  8. experience emotional irritability, numbness, or emptiness
  9. withdraw from friends, family, and colleagues
  10. experience reduced empathic ability
  11. get pulled away from the things we need to do to pursue our purpose, vision, and goals
  12. end up resenting the people we’re helping
Many of us find that we have squandered our own creative energies
by investing disproportionately in the lives, hopes, dreams, and plans of others.
Their lives have obscured and detoured our own
.”
-Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

Sometimes focusing on other people’s problems is an escape from addressing our own problems. In some cases, over-helping is a way of covering up our own sense of unworthiness with an underlying belief that the person will reject or leave us if we don’t keep helping them.

According to behavioral experts, we can also become addicted to helping others. Our bodies activate serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin when we help others, creating a chemical cocktail that generates a “helper’s high.” With all these feel-good chemicals firing when we help people, it makes us want to repeat this behavior. This has obvious benefits as it encourages prosocial behaviors, but it can come with a cost for people whose actions become compulsive. It can also set a bad precedent in a relationship in which we unknowingly teach people to treat us as ones who are always there at their beck and call.

Too much sacrifice by one person can also harm a relationship by depriving it of appropriate levels of mutuality and reciprocity. Healthy relationships involve giving and receiving help from each other, and they’re not one-sided.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

 

How to Avoid the Trap of Focusing Too Much on Others

So, what to do about it? Fortunately, there are many things we can do to address the trap of focusing too much on others’ needs. Here’s a punch list:

Recognize that sacrificing ourselves to help others is not sustainable. It will only lead to problems down the road.

Create separation and distance between ourselves and others when needed. If we struggle with over-helping, removing ourselves from these situations can be helpful.

Designate times for ourselves to enjoy life on our own terms without the press of outside needs and obligations. Go see a film, go for a walk, read a book. Choose things we enjoy and that restore us.

Get better at setting boundaries and saying no. State clearly that we can’t help right now. We’re all human, and we all have limits.

It’s OK to do what is YOURS to do. Say what’s yours to say.
Care about what’s yours to care about.
-Nadia Bolz-Weber, Lutheran minister

Develop a smart shield. Dr. Heidi Allespach, a psychologist at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, urges medical residents to develop what she calls a “semi-permeable membrane” around their hearts. This advice is also good for anyone facing compassion fatigue. “Without enough of a shield, everything just comes in,” she explains. “And being overwhelmed with the feelings of others can feel like drowning.”

Reduce the magnitude of our helping. Recall that caring for someone doesn’t mean rescuing him or her. Recognize that even showing up in small ways can make a big difference. People can feel supported and nurtured even with small acts of kindness and connection. They may not want or need the full array of help. Sometimes just a visit, call, text, or meal can go a long way.

Recruit others in helping the person in need so we’re not alone. Having a community of helpers will probably lift the person’s spirits while also making our own burden more manageable.

Be clear about what we need from others and willing to ask for it even as we give to others. We must learn to advocate for ourselves as well as others we care about.

Employ “cognitive reappraisal”—reframing how we see a situation involving someone in need. For example, instead of believing the thought that the person will suffer without our help, think instead of plausible alternative scenarios, such as how the person can develop new coping skills that will serve them well going forward.

Imagine a friend of ours going through an episode of compassion fatigue like we’re experiencing (and its associated guilt for not being able to help more), and how we’d advise them to show themselves compassion and be sure to take care of themselves first.

Our first and foremost task is faithfully to care for the inward fire
so that when it is really needed it can offer warmth and light to lost travelers.”
-Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart

Engage in self-care practices, including good nutrition, exercise, and sleep, relaxation, time in nature, breaks from our smartphones and newsfeeds, meditation, and/or journaling. Note that journaling can help us get out of our daily hustle and bustle and reconnect with our needs, emotions, and inner voice without the pressure of outside influences.

Work on guarding our hearts and keeping our emotional state from reaching extreme states such as empathy overload or compassion fatigue. Observe the emotions we feel when encountering the pain of others, letting the feelings flow through us and then leave, allowing us to be present and return to a state of ease.

Connect with family and friends. The research is clear on the powerful benefits of healthy relationships and how they contribute to our happiness and sense of fulfillment.

Recall that we have others who also depend on us and preserve our time and energy for them. If we’re too invested in helping one person in need, it can prevent us from supporting others such as our family or our team at work, or from doing other important work.

 

Conclusion

In sum, the answer isn’t forgetting about others and catering only to our own needs. Of course, we want to help people. Serving others is a key element of a good life. The key is striking a healthy balance and paying attention to others’ needs without sacrificing our own.

In his book, Give and Take, organizational psychologist Adam Grant plots different types of givers in a simple table, noting that the most successful givers are “otherish,” with high concern for self-interest as well as high concern for others’ interest, instead of being too focused on others or too focused on themselves. See the image below.

Source: Adam Grant, Give and Take

 

In the end, we need to take care of ourselves if we want to have the energy, stamina, and heart to keep helping others.

Whatever we do to care for true self is, in the long run, a gift to the world.
-Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

 

Related Articles and Books

 

Tools for You

 

Postscript: Quotations

  • “Don’t lose yourself trying to be everything to everyone.” -Tony Gaskins
  • “Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.” -Ovid, ancient Roman poet

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our community. Sign up now and get Gregg Vanourek’s monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

The Hidden Trap Catching Many High-Achievers

The Hidden Trap Catching Many High-Achievers

We all have wants and needs, but most of us don’t think of ourselves as needy. That may be true, but in many cases we’re more needy than we think.

For many people these days, and especially high-achievers, neediness shows up as excessive attachment to recognition, praise, or success–or to saving others–for self-acceptance. It comes with an excessive desire for reassurance or affirmation from others. This is easy to miss because we’re probably reluctant to admit it when we feel it.

Such achievement-based approval is baked into Western culture and our society’s views about what’s expected in life—and what comprises a good life. At work here is the mistaken assumption that success and prestige in the eyes of others will bring us happiness and fulfillment. (They won’t.)

Neediness can hit us hard when we encounter hard times in our career, such as a layoff, and when we go through big transitions in life, such as graduation, career change, or retirement.

It has pros and cons. On the one hand, neediness can motivate us to work hard, achieve at high levels, and contribute to others. On the other hand, it can detract from our quality of life and harm our relationships.

In his book, Positive Intelligence, Shirzad Chamine describes the profile of what we calls a “hyper-achiever:” someone who is “dependent on constant performance and achievement for self-respect and self-validation.” (This is one of ten “saboteurs”—automatic and habitual mind patterns—he’s identified that work against us and our work teams.)

Some people become insecure overachievers. They seek to win by accomplishing the love,
admiration, and attachment they can’t get any other way,
but of course no amount of achievement ever gives them the love they crave.”
-David Brooks, The Second Mountain

 

White Knight Syndrome

One version of neediness comes in the form of what psychologists call “white knight syndrome” (or “hero syndrome”). It’s a need to rescue or save people via helping, such as with advising or coaching them or sharing ideas with them, as a way to boost our sense of self-importance.

Often, it leads us to give unsolicited advice often, in all sorts of settings, with the justification that we’re just trying to help. It can also come with feelings of anxiety or aimlessness when we’re not helping others and annoyance or hurt when people don’t come to us for advice or follow the advice we gave—and sometimes with fishing for praise after we give advice to get acknowledgement about how much we helped.

Drs. Mary Lamia and Marilyn Krieger, clinical psychologists and authors of The White Knight Syndrome: Rescuing Yourself from Your Need to Rescue Others, defines it as “a compulsive need to be the rescuer” and notes several signs that we may have it:

  • We base our self-worth on our ability to “fix” people, and it’s a core part of our identity in relationships or work as we’re overly keen on offering help and advice
  • We have a strong need to be viewed as important
  • We have a tendency to engage in controlling behavior under the guise of helping people
  • We’re quite self-critical
  • We gravitate toward those who are needy
  • We fear emotional distance and seek to entangle people back into a position of needing our help when that fear arises

According to Dr. Lamia and other psychologists, it can come from many sources, including: a lack of healthy and affectionate bonds during childhood, authoritarian parents, being deeply affected by the suffering of a caregiver, a history of neglect or unhealed abandonment wounds, or having to take on a parent role due to a parent with addiction or health issues.

Though there’s a desire to help that’s part of this, there are also selfish and controlling dynamics at work. People can sense that, so they may begin to resent the help and pull away. Many people can feel put down when others step in with unsolicited advice or unrequested help.

They may also sense that the advice that comes from another, while valid in its original context, often misses the mark in the new context with different people, personalities, and dynamics at work. It can take a high toll on both parties and lead to misunderstanding and mutual resentment, as well as codependency and the undermining of the recipient’s ability to address their own issues.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

 

Signs of Neediness

There are degrees of neediness. We’re probably all needy to some degree in certain areas, while some people are very needy in several areas of their life and work.

With neediness, we tend to do at least a few of the following fairly often:

  • have a frequent urge to be noticed
  • go out of our way to impress others
  • feel attacked when receiving criticism—or obsess over it
  • be hyper-competitive
  • have a strong desire to be the one who comes up with the answer or solves the problem
  • play status or power games or want to control the people or things around us
  • be prone to adapting our personality to impress others
  • pay people excessive compliments as a way to earn their favor
  • experience discomfort with self-disclosure, emotional vulnerability, or intimacy
  • pull away when close relationships are beginning to form
  • be skilled at hiding insecurities
  • only feel good when we’re successful and held in high esteem
  • have a hard time feeling lasting peace and contentment due to a recurring itch for the next win
  • be image- and status-conscious and spend a lot of time on social media (e.g., tracking follower counts and likes)

(Note, also, that many of these can be blind spots for us. We can go long periods without being aware that we’re doing some of these things, then get surprised with forthright feedback from a trusted friend or mentor.)

When everybody loves me, I’m gonna be just about as happy as I can be.”
-The Counting Crows in their song, “Mr. Jones”

 

Where Neediness Comes From

Psychologists note that neediness often comes from not having our needs adequately met as children (e.g., feeling neglected, dismissed, invalidated, or rejected). When we’re children, even minor incidents involving these feelings tend to get blown up.

Many children learn early on that they can gain acceptance, praise, affection, or love by proving themselves with obedience or achievement, setting up a conditional view of self-regard that can become problematic later on if not balanced with a healthy sense of self-worth.

Even with well-intentioned, caring parents, we can get the sense that we’re only worthy and loved when we do things as our parents expect—i.e., that we’re only worthy of conditional love.

Neediness can also come from mistaken beliefs about ourselves (e.g., we’re not worthy or good enough) that we’ve never examined critically, as well as from insecurity, trauma, or abuse.

Part of the challenge here is that we’re battling our own neural wiring. Our brains and bodies seek the chemical rewards, via neuro-transmitting hormones, of achievement leading to praise (and the avoidance of mistakes leading to disapproval). It’s a stimulus-response feedback loop that begins early in life and becomes etched deep into the neural pathways of our brains.

Leadership Derailers Assessment

Take this assessment to identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness. A critical and often overlooked tool for your leadership development.

 

The Problem with Neediness

Though neediness can come with certain benefits, such as intense effort that can lead to achievement, it also has many drawbacks. For example, neediness can:

  1. make us overly intense, controlling, or demanding
  2. make us dependent on or excessively vulnerable to other’s judgments and opinions
  3. make us feel bad, ashamed, or distraught when others don’t like what we did
  4. make us feel as if we’re never enough
  5. lead to dysfunctional behaviors, such as people-pleasing
  6. bring anxiety, stress, burnout, disappointment, or loneliness into our lives
  7. be a heavy burden to bear—always carrying the pressure of living up to imagined and exaggerated demands and expectations
  8. lead to compulsive overwork or workaholism, creating an obsessive relationship with work in which we can’t switch it off and in which we feel guilty when not working
  9. lead to underinvestment in other priorities like our health and close relationships
  10. lock us into the wrong career path or a job that’s no longer a good fit for us because we’re so focused on what others think about us
  11. cause us to give our power away
  12. make us vulnerable to manipulation and control by others since we’re so focused on their approval
  13. cause us to compromise our integrity and make poor decisions as we downplay our personal values to continue a positive appearance among others whose moral fiber may be compromised
  14. make it hard for us to make decisions without input from the ones we seek approval from
  15. further the illusion that the quality of our lives depends on the quality of our circumstances (e.g., where we live, what we drive), as opposed to deeper and more lasting things (e.g., our character and contributions)
  16. further the mistaken belief that climbing the ladder of success is the point of life
  17. take us away from ourselves (from who we really are and what we value), as we seek to remain the good graces of others with different values and priorities
  18. induce us to play the comparison game as we obsess over our standing among others
  19. cause us to obsess over what we don’t have
  20. inhibit the level of authenticity, connection, vulnerability, and intimacy in our relationships
  21. push our partner, friends, or colleagues away because it’s not an attractive quality and can feel clingy and smothering
  22. make us waste a lot of time seeking feedback and assurances from others instead of doing what’s needed to get things done
  23. make us reluctant to accept help from others
  24. cause us to become addicted to approval and external validation
  25. lead to selfishness or being perceived as self-centered and overly image-conscious
  26. haunt us throughout our lives with fears of disapproval, rejection, or abandonment
  27. inhibit our spiritual life or development as our need for external validation crowds out ultimate matters

Personal Values Exercise

Complete this exercise to identify your personal values. It will help you develop self-awareness, including clarity about what’s most important to you in life and work, and serve as a safe harbor for you to return to when things are tough.

 

How to Overcome Neediness

It’s clear that neediness has many drawbacks. So, what to do about it?

There are many things we can do to address neediness, including:

Develop more awareness and understanding of this behavior pattern. Ask ourselves these questions: When does it show up? Where does it come from? How does it affect me?

Cultivate self-acceptance and self-compassion—and shut down our inner critic.

Celebrate our successes (even when others don’t).

Spend more time alone, in the process building our comfort level with solitude and working to overcome the cultural bias against it. As we do this, we see more and more that we can fulfill many of our own needs with the right disposition and mindset.

Change our focus from working for approval to working for some other higher aspiration. Examples: contributing to others, supporting our family, expressing our true nature, just doing the work for its own sake, or feeling satisfied when we’ve worked hard and done our best.

Focus on being an equal partner to those we’re with, not a savior, and on letting them figure out their own path, perhaps guided by gentle questions or things for them to think about instead of advice

Ensure we have clarity about what success means to us, instead of letting conventional views about money, status, or fame dictate our choices.

Stop equating ourselves with our results or our titles.

Reflect on whether our goals are mostly concerned with how others view us or with our deeper intrinsic motivations (such as earning a degree or certification because it interests us).

Avoid overthinking and ruminating—as well as jumping to conclusions about what others are thinking and why.

Connect with ourselves more, tuning into our inner life, purpose, and core values.

Recall that true self-worth comes from inside ourselves and not others.

Don’t assume that someone’s feeling or opinion about us makes it accurate. They may be missing important aspects of the story or have some other confounding influence or bias.

View criticism as information to consider and potentially helpful feedback, not as disapproval or a personal attack. Also, note that many people struggle with both giving and receiving feedback well.

Maintain perspective: even if someone disapproves of something we did, how much does it really matter? How much will it matter a few months from now?

Focus less on ourselves and more on others—and serving them. Oddly enough, the more we focus on ourselves, the more miserable we tend to be.

Focus on replacing ego and fear with acceptance and love.

Realize that relying on the opinion of others for happiness, love, or peace is bound to disappoint. Consider looking instead to something more transcendent and lasting such as fidelity to a community or worthy cause, creative inspiration, reverence for nature, religious worship, or spiritual liberation.

 

Conclusion

If we struggle with neediness, it’s worth addressing because on the other side of it lies real power, freedom, and contentment. Without such neediness, we can experience more ease, appreciation, and joy. We can let go of things that won’t hold up over time so we can dive into and savor the things that will.

 

Reflection Questions

  1. To what extent are you attached to recognition, praise, success, or saving others for self-acceptance?
  2. How is it impacting your quality and your relationships with others and with work?
  3. What will you do about it, starting today?

 

Related Articles and Books

Take the Traps Test

We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.

 

Tools for You

 

Appendix: Notes on Neediness and Fame

One facet of neediness for some can be a strong desire for fame. According to social psychologist Orville G. Brim, about 30 percent of survey participants in Beijing and Germany and over half in the U.S. report daydreaming about fame. Recent studies have shown that the biggest goal in life for U.S. children aged 10 to 12 is fame. A survey of British children found that the most coveted career choice was “YouTuber.”

Mathematician Samuel Arbesman devised a crude but clever method for estimating the percent of the population that is famous, taking Wikipedia’s “Living People” category and dividing it by the world’s population. The result? About .0086% of the world’s population is famous, using that method. A tiny number indeed.

Meanwhile, how many of those people are pleased with the baggage that comes with fame and how it changes their experience of life? With all its appeal, fame can be one of the trickiest human experiences to manage. A problem of privilege, no doubt, but still a tough problem for many.

I think everybody should get rich and famous and everything
they ever dreamed of so they can see that that’s not the answer.
-Jim Carrey

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Neediness

  • “Being dependent on approval—so dependent that we barter away all our time, energy, and personal preferences to get it—ruins lives.” -Martha Beck, writer
  • “Too much self-centered thinking is the source of suffering. A compassionate concern for others’ well-being is the source of happiness.” -Dalai Lama
  • “As long as the egoic mind is running your life, you cannot truly be at ease; you cannot be at peace or fulfilled except for brief intervals when you obtained what you wanted, when a craving has just been fulfilled.” -Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
  • “The unhappiest people in this world are those who care the most about what people think.” -C. Joybell C., writer
  • “I was dying inside. I was so possessed by trying to make you love me for my achievements that I was actually creating this identity that was disconnected from myself. I wanted people to love me for the hologram I created of myself.” -Chip Conley, entrepreneur and author
  • “Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy.” -Alex Dias Ribeiro, former Formula One race-car driver
  • “Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important… They do not mean to do harm…. They are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” -T.S. Eliot, “The Cocktail Party”
  • “We are not devastated by failing to obtain a goal. We’re only devastated when our sense of self-esteem and self-worth are dependent upon achievement of that goal.” -William James
  • “The ultimate goal in life is not to be successful or loved, but to become the truest expression of ourselves, to live into authentic selfhood, to honor our birthright gifts and callings, and be of service to humanity and our world….” -Frederic Laloux
  • We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.” -Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
  • “The only way to escape the corruptible effect of praise is to go on working.” -Albert Einstein
  • “The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.” -Norman Vincent Peale

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our community. Sign up now and get Gregg Vanourek’s monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!

Taking Stock of Your Quality of Life

Taking Stock of Your Quality of Life

When it comes to our health, we don’t think twice about going to the doctor for a check-up or for an annual physical.

In school, we take exams. At work, we have performance reviews.

In business, we have audits. In stores, we take inventory.

In sports, we do a post-game review. In the military, an after-action review. In medicine, a post-mortem.

So what do we do when it comes to the quality of our lives?

For most of us, nothing at all.

Huh?

What could matter more than the quality of our lives?
And yet we leave it unaddressed and unassessed.

Strange.

Thousands of years ago, Socrates wrote that “An unexamined life is not worth living.” And in the 19th century, Henry David Thoreau urged:

Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

Intuitively, we get this.

And yet.

Most of us spend way more time evaluating our projects and games than we do our lives.

Too busy for this? Think again.

How can we know whether we’re on track? How can we expect to make needed changes if we don’t first take the time to identify our pain points?

The busier you are, the more intentional you must be.”
-Michael Hyatt

Enter the quality of life assessment.

 

Quality of Life Assessment

My Quality of Life Assessment is short and simple, and it focuses on ten important areas of our lives:

  1. Personal Core
  2. Health
  3. Spouse or Partner* (if applicable)
  4. Family
  5. Friends
  6. Education
  7. Work* (if applicable)
  8. Service
  9. Activities
  10. Financial

* Note that work can include parenting, household management, family caregiving, and/or volunteering.

Every day we have decisions to make about how we want to live….
We must take charge of how we spend our days….
Otherwise, we may one day wake up to find ourselves brilliantly situated for a life we do not want.
-Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek in LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

 

Four Keys to the Quality of Life Assessment

There are four keys to taking the Quality of Life Assessment:

 

1. Be honest with yourself.

With ten areas of life assessed, there will always be tradeoffs. The point is not to expect high scores in all areas at all times. Our lives have natural ups and downs. If we don’t like some scores, it’s not a time to beat ourselves up. (We do enough of that already.) The good news is that, with clarity about pain points, we’ve now brought them into our awareness (versus ignoring them or pretending they’ll magically go away). We should give ourselves grace even while committing to taking action.

If you want to be successful, you must respect one rule: never lie to yourself.”
-Paulo Coelho, Brazilian novelist

2. Place it in perspective.

With our full schedules, we may be tempted to crank out the assessment and then focus only on the lowest scores and attack those areas. That’s a fine start, but it risks losing sight of the larger story. First, there may be things to celebrate in the results—either because the scores are high or because they’ve improved. Even some middling scores are worthy of celebration if they’re hard-earned or if the circumstances are challenging. We should remember to be grateful for what we do have and proud of what we have accomplished even as we look to improve. With our negativity bias and propensity for negative self-talk and rumination, we shouldn’t turn this into an exercise in cruel self-judgment. (Self-compassion works much better.)

As we look at both the scores and the overall picture, we should view it in the context of the current chapter of our lives, what we want, and what’s required of us—and then choose one or two areas to work on at a time so we don’t get overwhelmed. (Too often, we take on too much, only adding to our anxiety and setting us up for problems.)

 

3. Share and discuss our assessment with others.

The assessment and its attendant reflection process can be a solo activity but it’s so much richer when shared with others. We may feel a bit vulnerable about revealing our scores to others, but there’s an opportunity for real connection in the sharing process—not to mention new ideas, inspiration, support, and/or accountability from our collaborators. Discussing the assessment can be a great thing to do with our spouse or partner, children, and/or friends or colleagues—or in a small group. (The online tool comes with email forwarding functionality, so you can send it to others directly.)

 

4. Revisit it periodically.

This process is most valuable when it’s done periodically. Different people will prefer a different frequency. For some, it can be monthly or quarterly; for others, semi-annually or annually. There’s of course no right answer, except that it comes down to personal preference—and that the key is doing it consistently. (The online tool comes with a reminder option: we can set it up to remind us to consider taking the assessment again in the future.)

For the review process, we can also go further and set goals for each area—or only for the one or two improvement areas that we want to work on. We can also calendarize activities in each area—or, again, only in the improvement areas that we want to work on—so that actions arising from the review show up in our schedule. That way, we’ll keep this process front-and-center in our lives.

The point, of course, is not to take the assessment and be done with it. Rather, it’s to take the assessment (on a regular cadence), discuss it with trusted friends and colleagues who have our best interests at heart, and then decide what changes we want to make and get on with making them happen. It’s not rocket science, but it does require insight, motivation, commitment, and action.

Quality of Life Assessment

Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.

 

Conclusion

We’ve seen the value of assessments in so many different areas—from health and work to sports and finances—so why not extend the practice to our lives? It’s possible that, with just a short amount of time and thought, we can identify the areas that are going well (and celebrate them) as well as note the areas that need work. Our future selves are likely to thank us for it.

Life goes by so very fast, my dears, and taking the time to reflect, even once a year, slows things down.
We zoom past so many seconds, minutes, hours, killing them with the frantic way we live
that it’s important we take at least this one collective sigh and stop,
take stock, and acknowledge our place in time before diving back into the melee.
-Hillary DePiano, New Year’s Thieve

 

Reflection Questions

  • Have you checked in about your quality of life recently?
  • What’s stopping you from taking a quick snapshot?

Wishing you well with this review process. Let me know if I can help.
Gregg

Gregg Vanourek and his dog

 

 

 

 

Tools for You

 

Related Articles

 

Postscript: Inspirations on the Importance of Taking Stock

  • “How will you measure your life?” -Clayton Christensen
  • “It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.” -Henry David Thoreau
  • “Being too busy, which can seem necessary and unavoidable, can become a habit so entrenched that it leads you to postpone or cut short what really matters to you, making you a slave to a lifestyle you don’t like but can’t escape. You can be so busy that you don’t even take the time to decide what actually does matter most to you, let alone make the time to do it.” -Dr. Edward Hallowell in Crazy Busy
  • “Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.” -Clayton Christensen
It is all too easy to speed through life with our eyes focused only on the road ahead.
The challenge is scanning the horizon from time to time to determine where we are headed.
To stay on track, we need to take regular stock of our decisions and actions.
Reflection keeps us focused on the right priorities and accountable to our vision and goals.
To hold ourselves accountable, we should adopt a regular routine of checking progress against our goals,
ensuring that our actions reflect our priorities…. It helps to set regular check-in times.”
-Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek, LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives

Note: For aggregate data on how people rate their lives, see Gallup’s Life Evaluation Index.

Gregg Vanourek’s Newsletter

Join our community. Sign up now and get Gregg Vanourek’s monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose, passion, and contribution) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!