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The Trap of Being Unrealistic

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Many of us have fallen into the trap of being unrealistic—of being overly optimistic and downplaying the difficulties we’re likely to encounter.

This is not a new problem. In fact, it’s been documented across the ages. In the 5th century B.C., Thucydides, a Greek historian and Athenian general, wrote, “it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for.” Julius Caesar, a Roman general and emperor in the 1st century B.C., added, “Men willingly believe what they wish to be true.”

The idea of unrealistic optimism also famously goes back to German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He wrote that we live in “the best of all possible worlds.” Voltaire famously mocked Leibniz’s theory in his satirical novella, Candide. In that story, Professor Pangloss is teaching a young man named Candide that “all that is is for the best” in this, the “best of all possible worlds,” and “everything is right.” After witnessing and experiencing much suffering and misfortune, though, Candide eventually comes to his own conclusion that “we must cultivate our garden” and not rely on idealistic thinking.

 

Examples of Being Unrealistic

Examples of being unrealistic abound in our lives:

We may expect to be able to stick to a diet or exercise plan without having any setbacks.

In school, perhaps we expect to get good grades in all subjects—or to have everyone like us.

When it comes to relationships, we may think they should be easy or effortless, just like in the movies. Our partner should be willing to change to suit our needs.

At work, perhaps we presume we’ll have a great job with an excellent, caring boss and fun, supportive colleagues. Opportunities will appear, and we’ll get that raise or promotion.

When we start a new venture, we assume it will succeed despite the obstacles and long odds.

And when we retire, everything will be easy.

Of course, it’s possible to be realistic in one setting and unrealistic in another.

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The Problem with Being Unrealistic

When we’re being unrealistic, we get in our own way and set ourselves up for failure, frustration, and self-criticism. We diminish our happiness and strain our relationships, building resentment.

With unrealistic notions, we make poor decisions and cause ourselves more stress. We feel stupid or incompetent if we don’t achieve our goals.

Sometimes, the stakes are even higher. Indulging in unrealistic hopes can sometimes crush our spirit.

 

The Stockdale Paradox

In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins told the harrowing story of James Stockdale, a U.S. Navy vice admiral and aviator officer held captive for more than seven years during the Vietnam War.

Admiral Stockdale was the highest-ranking U.S. military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner-of-war camp in Vietnam. He was tortured more than twenty times and had no rights, no release date, and no reason to believe he would survive or see his family again.

When Collins asked him how he survived such horrendous conditions, Admiral Stockdale replied, “I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

Collins then asked Stockdale which of his fellow prisoners didn’t make it out.

“The optimists,” Stockdale replied, “…they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”

“This is a very important lesson,” Stockdale continued after pausing. “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” Collins famously called this the “Stockdale paradox.”

The key, it appears, is not blind faith and optimism or dreary resignation, but rather disciplined acknowledgement of reality accompanied by ultimate conviction and faith over the long haul with a commitment to overcome and endure. Without disciplined realism about the current state of affairs, we’re lost to false hope.

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Cognitive Biases that Impede Our Thinking

Unfortunately, striking this tricky balance is complicated by the way our brains are wired. Research from eminent psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, among many others, has shown that we humans have many cognitive biases—systematic errors in thinking that influence how we make decisions—which lead to distorted perceptions and faulty judgments. They occur automatically and unconsciously over a wide range of our thinking. Researchers have identified at least 58 cognitive biases and heuristics (mental shortcuts we use to make decisions).

Examples of cognitive biases related to being unrealistic include:

  • Optimism bias: our tendency to overestimate the likelihood of experiencing favorable events and to underestimate the likelihood of unfavorable ones.
  • Overconfidence bias: our tendency to overestimate our abilities.
  • Illusion of control: overestimating our ability to control events.
  • 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 competitors undertaking the same venture we’re planning.
  • Confirmation bias: our tendency to favor information that confirms our beliefs or hypotheses.
  • “Dunning–Kruger effect”: when people with low ability at a certain task overestimate their ability at it.
“What we like to think of ourselves and what we really are rarely have much in common….”
-Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three

According to cognitive neuroscientist Tali Sharot, a whopping 80% of us have an optimism bias. Importantly, we’re oblivious to it. This can lead to problems in many areas, from planning, budgeting, saving, and insurance to our propensity to get medical checkups.

According to researchers, we tend to overestimate our positive attributes (e.g., competence, intelligence, attractiveness) and underestimate our negative ones (e.g., character flaws, mistakes). Some telling examples*:

  • The vast majority of us consider ourselves above average.
  • 70% of high school seniors believe their leadership skills are 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.

Researchers have found that there are many benefits of optimism, from better health, longevity, and moods to improved motivation, coping, and perseverance. But researcher and author Shawn Achor notes that “optimism become maladaptive when it causes us to grossly overestimate our current abilities.”

So, optimism is better than pessimism in most situations, but optimistic realism is better than blind optimism. We need to learn to be reasonably optimistic without drifting into the land of fantasy and naivete—without becoming unrealistic. How?

 

How to Escape the Trap of Being Unrealistic

Here are seven things we can do to avoid being unrealistic in our thinking:

  1. Clarify what our expectations are (best to write them down) and where they came from.
  2. Evaluate whether our expectations are appropriate.
  3. Take an inventory of the time, resources, energy, and motivation we have available. Assess our limits, noting that we don’t have unlimited resources.
  4. Recall that there are always external factors outside our control. Keep the focus on things we can control and bear in mind that things can change.
  5. Balance our high expectations with acknowledgment of risks and potential setbacks. Outline not just the best-case scenario but also the base-case and worst-case scenarios to ensure we have a fuller picture of the range of possible outcomes.
  6. Adjust expectations as we go, if needed, based on new information.
  7. Document how things turn out after the fact and compare them to our initial expectations to see if we’re being unrealistic regularly. This can help us calibrate our expectations going forward.

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How to Address Lack of Realism in the Workplace

Of course, being unrealistic isn’t just a problem for individuals. It’s also a problem for teams and organizations.

“For every one of our failures, we had spreadsheets that looked awesome.”
-Scott Cook, co-founder, Intuit

Here are nine steps we can take to make teams and organizations more realistic:

  1. Balance the team with diversity and different viewpoints.
  2. Create a team culture that welcomes and even rewards tough questions, rigorous debate, and conscientious exploration of options, including “psychological safety.”
  3. Recruit and activate a diverse external network of advisers while noting the limits of the expertise of others and the risks of deferring too much to authority figures.
  4. Look at problems from many angles.
  5. Test ideas systematically—and proactively look for their potential weaknesses while remaining curious about information that doesn’t fit current assumptions.
  6. Beware of simple ideas and overly simplistic solutions.
  7. Be humble about the extent of our expertise.
  8. Seek information from other fields.
  9. Engage with people who disagree and be open and curious about their viewpoints.

Note: For an excellent resource, see Hans Rosling’s book, Factfulness.

Hans Rosling
“Everyone seems to get the world devastatingly wrong. Not only devastatingly wrong, but systematically wrong.”
-Hans Rosling, Swedish physician, academic, and author

Kahneman notes that debiasing ourselves is very difficult: it’s much easier to train people to detect bias in others. So, it’s a big mistake to attempt this on our own. (See the Appendix for three techniques we can use to avoid the trap of being unrealistic.)

 

Conclusion

For decades, we’ve been hearing about the power of positive thinking. Optimists are lionized in many cultures, while pessimists are dismissed. These notions, it turns out, are only half right.

We do want optimism and positive thinking. They are, in fact, helpful. And setting high standards can be useful, as it can help motivate and inspire us.

But optimism and positive thinking are also dangerous in many cases. They do better when supplemented with a healthy dose of realism that acknowledges the actual facts on the ground and avoids the many tricks our brains play on us when we’re enamored with hope and possibility.

“Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground.”
-Theodore Roosevelt

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Are you being unrealistic about some things in your life and work?
  2. To what extent have you fallen into the trap of being unrealistic?
  3. What will you do about it, starting today?

 

Related Articles

 

Tools for You

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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.

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Appendix: Three Ways to Inject More Realism into Our Teams

Managers can use the following techniques to help ensure their teams aren’t going off the deep end with excessive optimism:

I. “Pre-Mortem” session: instead of doing a “post-mortem” review after the fact, in a “pre-mortem” a team imagines that a project or new venture has failed, and then works backward to determine what could lead to the failure. The pre-mortem is effective because it rewards people for creatively finding flaws in the current plan before it’s too late. (Check out this video of Kahneman explaining the pre-mortem.)

 

II. “Kill-Thrill” session: This approach has two stages:

  • “Kill”: Brainstorm all the challenges with the idea or proposal and the reasons why the venture may not work. In other words, “kill” it with criticism.
  • “Thrill”: Next, brainstorm ideas for how to make the venture idea work, addressing the problems or risks noted earlier. Bring it back from the dead.

A version of this Kill-Thrill exercise has been used for a long time at Merck. Source: Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, Business Model Generation (John Wiley and Sons, 2009).

 

III. “Creative Abrasion”: In this approach, teams question each other and try to destroy each other’s ideas but are then asked to articulate the other side of the argument. Such friendly duels can sharpen thinking and lead to innovation. Bob Taylor used this technique successfully at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center in the development of the ARPAnet, the network that became the basis for the Internet. Source: Walter Isaacson, The Innovators (Simon & Schuster, 2014).

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Being Appropriately Realistic

  • “Set realistic goals, keep re-evaluating, and be consistent.” -Venus Williams, tennis champion
  • “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” -William Arthur Ward, writer

* 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).

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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 Not Being Grateful for What We Have

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The Trap of Not Being Grateful for What We Have

With the way our brains work, it’s easy to take things for granted and not be grateful for what we have. We may appreciate things for a while but then start discounting them. The result is that we can go through long periods of our lives without noticing and acknowledging the good things.

When we fail to appreciate what we have, it can lead not only to less happiness but also potentially to self-absorption and a sense of entitlement. Meanwhile, we’re missing out on the incredible benefits of gratitude.

 

What Is Gratitude, Exactly?

Dr. Robert Emmons, Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Davis, and one of the world’s top experts on gratitude, defines it as follows:

“a felt sense of wonder, thankfulness, and appreciation for life.”

Jeremy Adam Smith, editor of Greater Good magazine, calls gratitude “the mental tool we use to remind ourselves of the good stuff.”

Gratitude is multifaceted and can include appreciation, being thankful for what we have, thanking people, counting our blessings, savoring things, and even contemplating abundance.

Its power is evident not only in hordes of modern scientific studies but also in centuries of shared wisdom. All the major religions—including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism—celebrate and encourage gratitude. Many of the great spiritual teachers have been powerful exemplars of walking through life with a grateful heart attuned to the wonders of the universe.

“If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is ‘Thank you,’ that would suffice.”
-Meister Eckhart, German theologian and mystic

Gratitude isn’t about mindless optimism. Feeling grateful doesn’t make us naïve or willfully blind to the challenges we face or the traumas we’ve experienced. Dr. Emmons noted that even our national symbol of gratitude, Thanksgiving, occurred after nearly half the pilgrims died after a tough year with a harsh winter and scarce food.

Finally, being grateful doesn’t mean passively accepting everything as it is now. We can be grateful for what we have even while we’re working on overcoming obstacles and pursuing exciting opportunities.

“Learn to be thankful for what you already have, while you pursue all that you want.”
-Jim Rohn, entrepreneur and author

There’s also a difference between an automatic feeling of gratitude that we may experience from time to time and a proactive choice to be grateful for what we have as much as possible. In the latter case, it’s a choice, a mindset, and a perspective on life, not just something that occasionally washes over us and fades away. Dr. Emmons, for example, distinguishes between feeling grateful and being grateful.

 

Why We Struggle with Gratitude

Many of us have a lot to be grateful for, potentially including family, friends, health, freedom, safety, and more. Even just being alive.

Why do we take so many things for granted? Enter “hedonic adaptation,” our natural human tendency to become rapidly accustomed to changes in our circumstances and then settle into that new baseline as if nothing had occurred.

We start to take nice things—like a gentle breeze, spring flowers, the change of seasons, the smell of pine trees, a good job, a close friend—for granted. Our positive emotions can fade after a while, and we can start to feel entitled to things. Not good.

Meanwhile, with the way our brains are wired, we tend to focus on what we’re missing instead of appreciating what we have. Our evolutionary biology has given us a “negativity bias,” with positive things having less weight in our thoughts than negative ones.

The trap of ingratitude can also be aggravated by materialism, with an excessive focus on money and possessions, and entitlement. Other contributing factors include our tendency to be self-absorbed or even narcissistic sometimes, as well as our desire to be independent and self-reliant.

Part of the problem is failing to see how interconnected and mutually dependent we are. It’s easy to miss how unworkable our lives would be without schools, teachers, hospitals, doctors, nurses, police officers, firefighters, custodians, roads, bridges, soldiers, engineers, and more.

Cynicism and envy also inhibit gratitude, as does complaining.

“Entitlement and self-absorption are massive impediments to gratitude.”
-Dr. Robert Emmons, Professor of Psychology, University of California, Davis

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The Benefits of Gratitude in Our Lives

Feeling gratitude has an astonishing number of benefits. According to researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky in her book, The How of Happiness, “The expression of gratitude is a kind of mega-strategy for achieving happiness.”

She and other researchers have found that gratitude can:

1. Magnify good feelings and improve our wellbeing, including greater happiness and life satisfaction. (In fact, it’s one of the most important contributors to our wellbeing.)

“If you want to find happiness, find gratitude.”
-Steve Maraboli, author

2. Lead to better mental and physical health (including better sleep, lower blood pressure, and a stronger immune system).

3. Bring us vitality and energy.

4. Expand our capacity for optimism.

5. Reduce anger, bitterness, self-centeredness, materialism, envy, and greed (all of which inhibit happiness). Gratitude tends to reduce our tendency to compare ourselves to others.

6. Lead to greater generosity, kindness, and helpfulness (what the researchers call “prosocial” behaviors), in part due to a desire to reciprocate, in the process reinforcing prosocial and moral behavior.

7. Help us form closer and better relationships with family and friends—and maintain those relationships over time. (It’s been described both as a “booster shot” for long-term relationships and as an “upward spiral,” since when we’re more tuned in to the value of our family and friends, we treat them better, in the process fortifying those bonds.)

8. Give us access to a wider social network, more friends, and greater social support—and make it less likely that we’re disconnected and lonely.

9. Have lasting positive effects on our brains, including an orientation toward enjoying it when other people thrive (a prosocial outlook).

10. Shift our attention away from negative emotions (like fault, lack, criticism, regret) and toward positive ones (like benefit, abundance, joy), making it harder for us to ruminate and dwell in negativity. This works because our minds can only focus on so many things at once: if we’re thinking about good things, we’re also crowding out the bad things.

11. Help us cope with and build resilience in the face of stress and traumatic events (including, according to the research, cancer diagnoses, campus shootings, natural disasters, and wars). Those who feel grateful regularly tend to experience fewer and less intense traumatic memories.

“In fact, it is precisely under crisis conditions when we have the most to gain by a grateful perspective on life.
In the face of demoralization, gratitude has the power to energize.
In the face of brokenness, gratitude has the power to heal.
In the face of despair, gratitude has the power to bring hope.
In other words, gratitude can help us cope with hard times.”
-Dr. Robert Emmons, Professor of Psychology, University of California, Davis

12. Help us be more forgiving.

13. Boost our self-worth and self-esteem. (We feel more confident and capable when we realize how much others have done for us or how much we’ve accomplished.)

14. Be a great antidote to complaining and feeling like a victim since it focuses our attention on what we value and appreciate.

15. Help us maintain perspective, as we place our trials and tribulations in the larger context of abundance and privilege.

16. Thwart the problem of hedonic adaptation, in which we grow rapidly accustomed to the things we previously wanted. With gratitude, we stop taking as many good things for granted.

17. Help our children and youth. More grateful adolescents and college students show greater interest in school, do better academically, have better relationships, and enjoy their school experience more.

18. Help people with drug and alcohol addiction recovery.

19. Provide some protection against depression and suicidal ideation.

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How to Bring More Gratitude into Our Lives: 19 Practices

With all these benefits of gratitude, the question now arises: how to summon it? How to bring more of it into our lives? Here are several research-based techniques to choose from:

1. Enjoying experiences. Several studies have found that people felt more grateful after having an experience (e.g., concert, restaurant outing) than they did after purchasing a material good (e.g., clothing, jewelry). We often enjoy not only the experiences themselves but also the build-up of anticipation before them and the relishing of their memories afterward.

2. Savoring. According to psychologist Fred Bryant from Loyala University, when we savor things (e.g., a brilliantly prepared meal in a cozy setting with friends), it increases their effect on our mood and helps them last longer in our memories—especially when we express our gratitude for the experiences. Even better when we mark the experience with a ritual (e.g., a short prayer before we eat or a cozy bedtime routine with the kids).

3. Silent mental thanks. Just marking our grateful feelings with a silent thought of appreciation can go a long way. We can also try loving-kindness meditation, an ancient Buddhist practice in which we cultivate goodwill and universal friendliness toward ourselves and others.

4. Visual reminders of what we’re thankful for. The idea here is to keep them in front of us, so we don’t lose sight of them. We can use Post-It notes, photos, pictures on the wall, or other simple ways to keep them front and center.

5. Gratitude journaling. Writing down things that make us feel grateful. It doesn’t have to be in a journal. We can simply write down the good things in our life (e.g., what we like about our home, family, friends, pets, work, community, or world; what we’re good at; what we’ve achieved; what opportunities and privileges we have; etc.) A fun way to do this is to write them on scrap paper and place them into a gratitude jar. The things we write down don’t have to be profound. We can be grateful for a cup of coffee on the deck, or the funny little things our pets do. Researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky recommends doing this once a week, not daily, for most people, so it doesn’t become rote. But the key is to do it in a cadence that works best for us. (See my article, “Journaling: Benefits and Best Practices.”)

6. Gratitude letters. Write a letter to a person who has helped us, noting what we’re thankful for. It could be a family member, friend, colleague, mentor, teacher, or coach.

7. Gratitude visits. In this case, we not only write a gratitude letter but also take it and share it with the person, even someone we haven’t seen in a long time. These meetings can be very meaningful and powerful for both people.

8. “Three good things.” Write down three things that went well for us and note their causes. Here are some tips on how to do it from the Greater Good Science Center:

“Each day for at least one week, write down three things that went well for you today, and provide an explanation for why they went well. It is important to create a physical record of your items by writing them down; this can be more helpful than simply doing this exercise in your head. The items can be small, everyday events or more important milestones (e.g., ‘my partner made the coffee today,’ ‘My grandparents were happy when I brought them groceries,’
or ‘I earned a big promotion’). To make this exercise part of your daily routine, some find that writing before bed is helpful.”
-Source: “Three Good Things,” Greater Good in Action

9. “Benefit appraisal.” When we receive a gift, consider its benefits and note the intentions of the gift-giver—as well as the costs they’ve incurred in giving it to us (e.g., money, time, effort). This will help provide a fuller appreciation of the gifts we get.

10. Digging in the dirt for gratitude nuggets. Find reasons to be grateful even under tough circumstances. Sometimes that boss who fired us did us a huge favor. Or that person who broke up with us ended up helping us in ways we couldn’t see at the time.

11. “Mental subtraction.” Imagine what our lives would be like if something positive hadn’t occurred. (Researchers call this the “George Bailey effect,” after the classic film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” in which George’s guardian angel shows him all the lives he’s impacted and what life would have been like in his town without him.

12. Loss or death reflection. We can imagine we never got that raise or promotion, or that new apartment or home. In one study, researchers asked people to imagine the sudden disappearance of their partners from their lives. Those who did so became more grateful for their partners. In another study, researchers discovered that undergraduate students asked to imagine dying experienced more gratitude than students asked to reflect on a typical day.

“Because our very existence is a constant benefit that we adapt to easily,
this a benefit that is easily taken for granted.
Reflecting on one’s own death might help individuals take stock
of this benefit and consequently increase their appreciation for life.”
-Araceli Frias et al., 2011*

13. Situational contrast. Compare where we are now with the tough times we’ve experienced. By seeing the contrast, we can more fully glimpse and appreciate the magnitude of the changes. Think of what we’ve learned or gained in the meantime, even if it’s lessons about mistakes to avoid or wisdom earned the hard way—or just the fact that we were able to survive and move forward. Consider how things could be worse—sometimes much worse.

14. Recasting. This means reframing a loss into a potential gain, flipping negativity into positive channels for gratitude. According to researchers, subjects who engaged in grateful recasting had more closure, healing, and redemption as well as less unpleasant emotional impact from upsetting experiences. They also demonstrated fewer intrusive memories (e.g., wondering why the bad event happened, whether it could have been prevented, and whether they caused it to happen).

“Processing a life experience through a grateful lens does not mean denying negativity. It is not a form of superficial happiology. Instead, it means realizing the power you have to transform an obstacle into an opportunity.”
-Dr. Robert Emmons

15. Thought swapping. Observe ungrateful thoughts we have and swap in grateful thoughts instead. (Example: Switch from “I can’t believe she said that” to “I’m thankful for how she works so hard at planning those outings.”)

16. Asking gratitude-inducing questions. For example:

  • What lessons did I take away from that experience?
  • Are there benefits that I can see now even though the experience was hard at the time?
  • Has the experience helped me become the person I want to be?

17. Sharing gratitude. Here are three simple ways to do so:

  • Find a “gratitude buddy” who we can share our cherished moments with—and who can help us stay on track and stick with our gratitude practices.
  • Build the sharing of gratitude into our routines, such as a family dinner. Go around the table and have each person say at least one thing they’re grateful for that day. In his book, The Happiness Advantage, author Shawn Achor tells the story of African CEOs he works with who did this with their kids. They discovered not only that it made them think of more things they’re grateful for but also that their kids held them accountable for it, refusing to eat dinner until the exercise was complete.
  • When a visitor comes to town, share the people, places, and things we love and appreciate with them.

18. Build some variety into our gratitude practices. If we do the same gratitude practice repeatedly, it may become stale. We can counter this by varying our approach.

“Keep the strategy fresh…. Write in a journal some weeks, talk to a friend other weeks,
and express gratitude through art (photography, collage, watercolor) during other weeks.”
-Sonja Lyubomirsky, Professor of Psychology, University of California, Riverside

19. Calendarize our gratitude practices. Enter them into our schedule so it becomes something we do consistently.

Most of these gratitude practices are both easy and free. The point isn’t that we must do all the things above. Not at all. Just doing one can be powerful.

These gratitude practices force our brain to scan for positives in our life, eventually training the brain to notice good things.

 

Conclusion

Feelings of gratitude can be intense as they wash over us and fill us with warmth and light. We shudder with appreciation and love. Our lives are uplifted.

We can choose gratitude regardless of our circumstances. We can redeem our bad experiences by focusing on the good that we still have or that came out of them.

The gold standard of gratitude isn’t just to feel it occasionally, or just to will it into our lives, but to make it a habit that ends up up-leveling our mental outlook in big ways.

“Every day, think as you wake up, ‘I am fortunate to be alive.
I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it.’”
-Dalai Lama XIV

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Have you fallen into the trap of taking things for granted?
  2. What are you grateful for?
  3. Which gratitude practices resonate most with you?
  4. What will you do to enhance your gratitude practice, 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.

Take the Exercise

 

Tools for You

 

Related Articles & Books

 

Videos on Gratitude

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Gratitude

  • “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” -Cicero
  • “Of all crimes that human creatures are capable of committing, the most horrid and unnatural is ingratitude.” -David Hume, Scottish Enlightenment philosopher
  • “The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.” -Dalai Lama XIV
  • “Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.” -Buddha
  • “Gratitude is one of the sweet shortcuts to finding peace of mind and happiness inside. No matter what is going on outside of us, there’s always something we could be grateful for.” -Barry Neil Kaufman
  • “What you focus on expands, and when you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it. Opportunities, relationships, even money flowed my way when I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life.” -Oprah Winfrey
  • “It is not happiness that makes us grateful. It is gratefulness that makes us happy. Every moment is a gift. There is no certainty that you will have another moment….” -Brother David Steindl-Rast, Catholic-Benedictine monk and scholar
  • “No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.” -Elie Wiesel, writer, activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor
  • “Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.” -Maya Angelou
  • “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” -Melody Beattie
  • “When you appreciate the good, the good appreciates.” -Tal Ben-Shahar
  • “The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.” -William Blake
  • “…it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.” -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
  • “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” -1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
  • “When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” -Gilbert K. Chesterton
  • “He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” -Epictetus
  • “When asked if my cup is half-full or half-empty my only response is that I am thankful I have a cup.” -Sam Lefkowitz
  • “When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance disappears.” -Tony Robbins
  • “…it’s when you feel least thankful that you are most in need of what gratitude can give you: perspective. Gratitude can transform any situation.” -Oprah Winfrey
  • “Living in a state of gratitude is the gateway to grace.” -Arianna Huffington
  • “The real gift of gratitude is that the more grateful you are, the more present you become.” -Robert Holden
  • “Gratitude opens the door to the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe. You open the door through gratitude.” -Deepak Chopra
  • “Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!” -Psalm 95:2
  • “What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.” -Brené Brown
  • “Be grateful for what you already have while you pursue your goals. If you aren’t grateful for what you already have, what makes you think you would be happy with more.” -Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
  • “Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.” -Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
  • “Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.” -A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

* Source: Frias, A., Watkins, P., Webber, A., & Froh, J. (2011). Death and gratitude: Death reflection enhances gratitude. The Journal of Positive Psychology. 6. 154-162.

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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 Thinking It’s Too Late for Big Things in Our Lives

by

Are we living a good life?
Have we been pursuing our dreams?
If we were to die tomorrow, would we be happy with our life, knowing we’ve lived well?
Or are we thinking it’s too late to live a good life and pursue the things we want in life—our goals, dreams, or adventures?

These questions may be uncomfortable, but they’re essential in informing our quality of life and whether we experience a sense of fulfillment.

 

The State of Our Dreams

Most of us have goals and dreams. Common examples include having a family, traveling around the world, building a dream home, running a marathon, writing a book, living abroad, learning a language, climbing a mountain, achieving financial security or independence, starting a new venture, and things like visiting every state (or continent) or every national park.

With 11.6% of the U.S. population (37.9 million people) living in poverty in 2021, about half the world population living on less than $6.85 (USD) per person per day, and about 9.2% of the world population (719 million people) living in extreme poverty, on less than $2.15 a day, even having these dreams is a privilege.

According to the 2016 Global Dreams Index Survey, polling 5,484 women aged 18 and older in 14 countries across six continents, about half the world’s female population isn’t satisfied with their current lives and has given up on their dreams. But of the women who did pursue their dreams, 82% were satisfied with life.

According to a 2021 Moneypenny survey, only 7% of Americans reported that they were working in their dream career, and 54% overall report that they’re happy in their job (with 19% unhappy and 27% neither happy nor unhappy).

According to a survey of more than 2,000 Americans, 22% reported that they pursued one of their childhood career aspirations, while 78% reported that they didn’t. Of those who ended up in a childhood dream job, 88% reported that they’re happy with their current job, versus 70% for those who didn’t (but 70% is still high).

Source: Trade-Schools.net, https://www.trade-schools.net/learn/childhood-aspirations

When it comes to our views of the good life, recent data shows that they’ve been changing recently. Today, more people focus on good health, a simple and balanced life, and meaningful connections with people. Meanwhile, insufficient income is the top obstacle to the good life, with 62% of respondents noting that as a top hindrance.

Quality of Life Assessment

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Changes in Life Expectancy and Retirement Patterns

As many people consider whether it’s too late to pursue goals and dreams, the context has changed significantly when it comes to life expectancy and retirement. For starters, people are now living longer on average. In 1960 (the first year the United Nations started tracking global data), average life expectancy was 52.5 years. Today, it’s up to 72 years. Average life expectancy for U.S. children born today is about 76 years.*

What’s more, the concept and practice of retirement are also changing rapidly. According to 2022 Gallup research, the average retirement age among U.S. workers is currently up to age 61 from age 57 in the 1990s. Today’s workers report that they expect to retire at age 66, on average. Meanwhile, the percentage of people aged 55 to 74 who are retired is declining, because people are working longer.

 

Think It’s Too Late? Not So Fast

Given that context, let’s revisit the question of whether we think it’s too late to pursue our goals and dreams. My friend Karin has been a teacher, real estate broker, stockbroker, sales manager, and vice president at a global financial services company. At age 60, she chose to pursue some new endeavors that called to her heart and spoke to her core values.

Karin earned a degree in spiritual psychology and became active with writing, photography, hospice, counseling prisoners, camps for children with cancer, coaching, and travel. The depth and joy she’s added to her life since making those changes are incalculable.

She’s not alone. Consider these examples of people who have proven that we have incredible potential to do things—sometimes big things—later in life:

  • At 61, Mahatma Gandhi led the Salt March to protest the British salt tax imposed on the people of India, walking about 200 miles (320 kilometers).
  • Colonel Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was 65.
  • At age 65, Laura Ingalls Wilder published the first book in the Little House on the Prairie series.
  • Noah Webster published his first dictionary when he was 70.
  • Peter Roget published the very first thesaurus when he was 73.
  • At 75, Barbara Hillary, a cancer survivor, became one of the oldest people and the first black woman to reach the North Pole.
  • Grandma Moses, the American folk artist who was featured on the cover of TIME magazine, started painting when she was 78.
  • Japanese skier and alpinist Yuichiro Miura climbed to the top of Mount Everest at age 70 and then again at 80.
  • At age 85, German classical scholar Theodor Mommsen received a Nobel Prize in Literature.
  • At 92, Gladys Burril ran a marathon.
  • Australian country and western artist Smoky Dawson composed, recorded, and released a new album at age 92.
  • At 100, Teiichi Igarashi climbed Mt. Fuji in Japan.

And remember: even Scrooge made some big changes later in life.

Paolo Coelho quote

We should be careful here. These may be fun and inspiring examples, but the point of life isn’t achievements and world records.

For some, those kinds of adventures and accomplishments are motivating and meaningful. Others are interested in savoring life and spending time with their loved ones, books, or hobbies—or giving back in ways that are meaningful to them. The point isn’t adopting someone else’s dream or trying to impress people. Rather, it’s to live our own good life—and be sure we don’t play small and abandon the things we want to do for lame reasons that won’t stand the test of time.

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.

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7 Reasons Why We Fall into the Trap of Thinking It’s Too Late

There are many reasons we can fall into the trap of thinking it’s too late for important things we want to do. For example:

(1.) We’ve been so busy living and managing our daily responsibilities that we haven’t carved out enough time and energy to work bigger things.

(2.) We feel trapped by financial commitments or constraints. According to a 2023 CNBC / Momentive survey, 58% of Americans report living paycheck to paycheck. Sometimes lack of financial resources is a major impediment, but for some, it can be a rationalization.**

(3.) We feel like it’s not practical or even a bit crazy to pursue some big goals and dreams. They may appear out of reach. And we may not be in the habit of pursuing them.

(4.) We feel comfortable on our current path. It may feel like a heavy lift to resurrect some of those aspirations and get to work. We may be weighed down by inertia or complacency.

(5.) We may feel pressure from family, peers, or others to remain on our current path or to fit into a more traditional definition of success. It may be that we’re letting ourselves get boxed in by others and what they want for us (or what we think they want for us)—or by conventional views.

(6.) We fear going out of our comfort zone and failing in the attempt. Fear is indeed the great inhibitor, not just in this case but also with most hard things in life. But in many cases, our fears are phantoms conjured by the ancient part of our brain stem and no longer relevant for the modern world and our current circumstances.

(7.) We may lack confidence. It’s likely that doubts will creep in when we think about big things we’d like to do. So we may abdicate and retreat. Needlessly.

“Most people don’t do what they love. It’s true….
And the older you get, and the more you look around,
the easier it becomes to believe that you’ll end up the same. Don’t fall for the trap.”
-Nicolas Cole, writer and gamer

 

The Problem with Thinking It’s Too Late

These beliefs and rationalizations have real consequences. Feeling that it’s too late to pursue our deeper ambitions or live the life we want has big downsides.

According to researchers, as we contemplate our lives, we typically regret the things we didn’t try or do the most (more than the things we tried that didn’t work out) in the long run. According to Dan Pink’s American Regret Project survey, “inaction regrets outnumbered action regrets by nearly two to one.”

“I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing
I might regret is not ever having tried.”
-Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO, Amazon

In their book, Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old? The Path of Purposeful Aging, Richard Leider and David Shapiro note that it’s not uncommon as we age to look back on our lives and regret things we haven’t done. Many people are living what they call the “default life,” which can prompt some tough questions:

“Where did all the time go?
How did my life pass so quickly?
Why did I squander my one precious opportunity for living?”

When Richard asks older people about their biggest challenges, one of the common themes is “the fear of having missed out on life’s opportunities with no time left to catch up.” Enter the “late-life crisis.” In the book, Leider and Shapiro note that the “late-life crisis… really is a thing”—and that it affects both men and women. They cite recent research that about a third of people over age sixty experience it and that it’s “characterized by dissatisfaction; a loss of identity; an expectations gap and the feeling that life has peaked.”

Personal Values Exercise

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How to Stop Thinking It’s Too Late: 12 Steps

How to interrupt these unhelpful thought patterns and the sense of futility that accompanies them? There are several things we can do to escape this wasteful trap:

(1.) Pay attention to whether we have limiting beliefs that are holding us back. Examples of such common beliefs: we’re not smart or talented enough; we lack the confidence or creative capacity to do what’s needed; we’re stuck; we’re not ready; we’re damaged goods.

(2.) Get clear on what we want in our next chapter. It helps to know our purpose, core values, and vision of the good life. Talk to friends and loved ones about our goals and dreams. Brainstorm and journal about our future possibilities. Revisit those childhood aspirations and revel in the enchantment of dreaming again.

(3.) Recognize that our capacities and potential in many areas increase as we age. Although we were stronger and faster when we were younger, we gather more knowledge, experience, wisdom, and insight as we age—as well as more connections. These are powerful assets when it comes to doing big things. When we’re older, we’ve shed some naive habits and beliefs from our wide-eyed youth, and we’re better at discerning patterns and understanding what it takes to navigate complexity and overcome challenges.

(4.) Let go of outside expectations—of caring too much about what others think. Focus instead on who we really are, what we really want, and where we want to go in the coming years.

(5.) Map how we spend our time. Too often, we waste large swaths of our days on things that are either questionable, trivial, or even counterproductive. If we stopped those things (or even some of them) and swapped in planning, preparation, and action on our aspirations, we could make good progress on things that matter. Also, identify what we must stop doing to free up margin for the new endeavors.

(6.) Calendarize the most important things we must do. Take the things we really want to do, break them into preparatory actions and steps, and then place those actions onto our calendar and integrate them into our daily and weekly routines.

(7.) Start small and build from there. Too often, we let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We talk ourselves out of even trying. We’re intimidated by the unknowns and what may seem like an insurmountable climb. The problem is that we’re discounting the compound effect of daily, disciplined action and the motivation it provides.

(8.) Form new habits that support our big ambitions. When we develop new habits and repeat them often, we not only re-wire our brain but also change our identity—our conception of ourselves. Create systems and routines that support our progress toward the things we want to do and keep making improvements.

(9.) Be mindful of who we spend time with. The people we hang out with influence us deeply. There’s a big difference between being around people who encourage and inspire us versus people who criticize and belittle us. Some lift us up while others hold us back. Too often, we’re complicit in remaining oddly loyal to people who are only using or abusing us.

(10.) Revel in the excitement of doing something big and bold. Something that touches our heart. A rousing adventure. Bold endeavors, uncertain initiatives, and daring ventures stir our souls and bring us back to life.

(11.) Recall that we’re all mortal—and with an uncertain expiration date on this planet. Nobody knows when their time is up, so we should take full advantage of the time we have now. (See my article, “What Reflecting on Death Can Teach Us about Living.”)

“Keep death daily before your eyes.”
-St. Benedict

(12.) Note that this business about pursuing goals and dreams doesn’t have to be a solitary or selfish endeavor. Far from it. We can team up with like-minded dreamers and seekers. And we can build service and impact into our plans and commitments. By pursuing our dreams, we may very well inspire others to do so as well.

“Ultimately, if you give up on your dreams, you teach your children to give up on theirs.”
-Kate Owen

 

Conclusion

It’s a cliché to say it’s never too late and, of course, that’s not entirely true. Sometimes it is too late. Like when we’re dead and gone. But that doesn’t mean that the sentiment behind it is wrong. It isn’t.

The key is distinguishing between when it is truly too late and when it isn’t. And the point is that way too many people think it’s too late when in reality they’re deluding themselves or hiding. Here’s to snapping out of that delusion and honoring the gifts we’re given. Right now.

Richard Bach quote

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Have you fallen into the trap of thinking it’s too late to pursue your goals and dreams?
  2. If so, which ones? What aspirations are lying dormant within you?
  3. How has that thought prevented you from bringing more excitement, meaning, and fulfillment into your life?
  4. What will you do about it, starting today?
“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest,
how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated.
And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough,
that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”
-Ted Hughes, Letters of Ted Hughes

 

Tools for You

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.

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Related Articles

 

Appendix: Tips on Purposeful Aging

In their book, Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old? The Path of Purposeful Aging, Richard Leider and David Shapiro offer helpful recommendations for things we can do to age purposefully, including:

  • Recall the finest chapter(s) in our lives so far, think about what made it so, and brainstorm ideas for how we can bring those qualities into the next chapter.
  • Think about someone who has aged gracefully in ways we admire—and what that might suggest about what’s possible for us.
  • Press the “reset button” in our lives and get clear our purpose—on why we get up in the morning.
  • Consider whether we’re honoring our core values (or not), and what changes we can make to do more of that.
  • Ask whether we’re living the good life (which they define as living in the place we love with the people we love doing the work we love that’s on purpose). If not, ask ourselves how we can move in that direction.
  • Get clear about what we want our legacy to be.

Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old? The Path of Purposeful Aging, Richard Leider and David Shapiro

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Avoiding the “Too Late” Trap

  • “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” -unknown (often attributed to George Eliot)
  • “The way to live our vision on a daily basis is to understand that right now is the only time we have.” -John Hanley
  • “Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.” -Sydney J. Harris
  • “It matters only that you manifest your genius; it doesn’t matter when. It’s never too late or too early.” -Mark Victor Hansen, author, trainer, and speaker
  • “It’s never too late to give up what you are doing, and start doing what you realize you love.” -Hans Rosling, Swedish physician and academic
  • “You are not too old and it is not too late to dive into your increasing depths where life calmly gives out its own secret.” -Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet
  • “Every time you suppress some part of yourself or allow others to play you small, you are in essence ignoring the owner’s manual your creator gave you and destroying your design.” -Oprah Winfrey
  • “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” -Chinese proverb
  • “You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.” -Richard Bach, Illusions
  • “Retire from your job but never from meaningful projects. If you want to live a long life, you need eustress, that is, a deep sense of meaning and of contribution to worthy projects and causes, particularly, your intergenerational family.” -Stephen R. Covey, author
  • “The old… should, it seems, have their physical labors reduced; their mental activities should be actually increased. They should endeavor, too, by means of their counsel and practical wisdom to be of as much service as possible to their friends and to the young, and above all to the state.” -Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman philosopher and statesman
  • “I believe that it is not dying that people are afraid of. It’s something else. Something more unsettling and more tragic than death frightens us. We’re afraid of never having lived. Of coming to the end of our days with the sense that we were never really alive. That we never figured out what life was for.” -Harold Kushner, American rabbi and author
  • “I think I don’t regret a single ‘excess’ of my responsive youth—I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace.” -Henry James
  • “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you have imagined.” -Henry David Thoreau
  • “Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age…. To my own surprise I burst out with hot conviction.” -Florida Scott-Maxwell, Jungian analyst

* Note, though, that the human life span hasn’t changed much, according to researchers. Average life expectancy has increased so much in large part because survival rates among children have increased dramatically due to economic, social, and technological advances and greater access to medical care and nutrition.

** Researchers have noted that older people aged 75 to 90 with better economic, social, and health resources were more likely to report goals related to social and physical activities and leisure—and less likely to report goals related to recovery of their health. And older people who lacked social resources were at greater risk of having no personal goals. Source: Saajanaho M., Rantakokko M., Portegijs E., Törmäkangas T., Eronen J., Tsai L.T., Jylhä M., Rantanen T. Life resources and personal goals in old age. European Journal of Aging. 2016 Jun 1;13(3):195-208.

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!

Are You Sleepwalking through Your Life?

by

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.

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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.

Take the Assessment

 

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.

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Tools for You

 

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

 

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

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and 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 living with purpose and passion) 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

by
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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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

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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?

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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.

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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.

Take the Exercise

 

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

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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

by
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.

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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

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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.

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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

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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, TEDx speaker, and coach on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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

by
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.

Take the 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.

Take the Assessment

 

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.

Take the Assessment

 

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.

Take the Exercise

 

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 personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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 Keeps Us from Moving On?

by
What Keeps Us from Moving On? by Gregg Vanourek

We can get set in our ways in our life and work, falling into the trap of not moving on from something when we should. It may be a job or career that’s no longer a good fit. Or a relationship that’s not working anymore. It could be a chapter in our life that needs to make way for a new one. Or a social group that we’ve outgrown.

It’s common to fall into the trap of not moving on—of holding on too long to a bad or suboptimal situation, relationship, job, or path and not advancing forward.

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.

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What Keeps Us from Moving On?

There are many reasons we don’t move on. For example, we can be:

  1. afraid of the unknown
  2. waiting for the right time (which never seems to arrive)
  3. unwilling to take reasonable risks
  4. unclear about what we want instead
  5. accustomed to the current situation, even if it’s not great
  6. hoping the current situation will get better, despite signs to the contrary
  7. dreading the change process, with its hassles, stress, and emotional toll
  8. afraid the new situation will be worse
  9. good at rationalizing our current situation
  10. not confident enough in our ability to create a better situation
  11. worried about what other people might think if we make changes
  12. wanting to avoid hurting or inconveniencing others with our changes
  13. overestimating the problems caused by making changes
  14. skeptical that there’s a better future out there for us, causing us to settle for what we have
  15. feeling hopeless or helpless
  16. limited by low standards and expectations for ourselves
  17. not seeing high-quality alternatives out there
  18. inhibited by the natural human tendency toward “loss aversion” when thinking about making some changes
  19. overthinking things
  20. struggling to muster the energy needed for change
  21. feeling like we’re so far along our current path that it would be foolish to make a change now (i.e., “sunk cost fallacy”)
  22. having a hard time deciding what to move on to, sometimes aggravated by “choice overload”
  23. trying to do too many things at once, preventing us from gaining traction in any one thing
  24. feeling as though it’s too late to make the needed changes
  25. conflicted about moving on, with different signals from our head and heart
  26. preferring a poor relationship to the anticipated pain of being alone
  27. subject to manipulation by people who are taking advantage of us, keeping us resigned to our current situation
  28. lacking clarity about some essential things that could help us decide what’s next (clarity about things like our purpose, core values, and vision of the good life

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.

Take the Exercise

 

The Problem with Not Moving On

Clearly, many things can prevent us from making changes and moving on. Most of them are phantoms in our head. Unfortunately, this can lead to painful consequences, including:

“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful
as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”
-Mandy Hale

 

Reflection Questions

  1. Are you in the trap of not moving on from a bad or suboptimal situation, relationship, or job?
  2. Have you thought about the cost of not making changes and what that will leave you with?
  3. What will you do about it, starting today?
“Some of us think that holding on makes us strong;
but sometimes it is letting go.”
-Hermann Hesse

 

Tools for You

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.

Take the Test

 

Related Articles

 

Postscript: Inspirations on Moving On

  • “The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.” -Abraham Maslow
  • “In a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.” -Warren Buffett
  • “There is a time of departure even when there’s no clear place to go.” -Tennessee Williams
  • “Humans are creatures of least resistance. We take the road most traveled, or the road best paved. So much of our behavior runs on autopilot.” -Aline Holzwarth, applied behavioral scientist
  • “Every year it gets harder to change.” -Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
  • “Every worker needs to escape the wrong job.” -Peter Drucker
  • “The recipe for staying stuck is to try to do too many things at one time.” -Todd Herman
  • “You don’t have to be one of those people that accepts things as they are. Every day, take responsibility for changing them right where you are.” -Cory Booker
  • “The most reliable predictor of what you’ll be doing five minutes from now is what you’re doing now…. The most reliable predictor of who you’ll be five years from now is who you are now.” -Marshall Goldsmith in The Earned Life

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

by
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.

Take the 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.

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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.

Take the Assessment

 

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.

Take the Exercise

 

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 rapidly growing community. Sign up now and get monthly inspirations (new articles, opportunities, and resources). Welcome!

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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, & TEDx speaker on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) 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!

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