Who can you trust?
Who’s the person you trust the most? Your partner, best friend, mum, dad, work colleague? Now think about why you trust them (we’ll be looking at this later)…
Trust is one of the most important building blocks of any relationship. When high levels of trust exist between you and another person, you will communicate better, negotiate better, even disagree better…
You may be someone who has a tendency to trust someone until they give you reason not to trust them anymore; conversely, you may be someone who needs someone to prove themselves before you can trust them. Either way, there are a number of ingredients that are fundamental to the building of trust.
Fundamental to building and maintaining trust is keeping your trust ‘emotional bank account’ in the black. What this means is, for you to keep trusting another person, they need to be making more deposits into the account than they’re making withdrawals.
Let’s say the person you trust the most in the world is your best friend, Matilda. Matilda would be making a deposit into your emotional bank account if she arrived on time to meet you for a drink, called you when she knows you’re fed up, tells you how great you look in your new outfit (if you do) and explains why she doesn’t agree with your point of view.
But Matilda would be withdrawing from your emotional bank account if she continually arrived late for a drink, forgot that you were fed up and didn’t call, didn’t notice you’d bought a new outfit but did point out that she doesn’t like your hairstyle.
These may seem like small deposits and small withdrawals, but they can create a healthy, flourishing emotional bank account or cause serious problems over time. Because they seem such small and everyday occurrences, many people can fail to realise or acknowledge the impact of them when they are having relationship problems – or even that such things are related to how much we trust someone.
As with any bank account, it tends to take a lot of deposits to build the emotional account but just one or two significant withdrawals to put it into the red. Sometimes a withdrawal can be so big that the bank account is irreparable, and bankruptcy is declared (ie the relationship breaks down).
Underlying trust, and its accompanying emotional bank account, are four key building blocks.
- Reliability
- Acceptance
- Congruence
- Openness
Reliability
Being reliable is doing what you’ll say you’ll do. Someone who is reliable keeps their word, fulfils their commitments, is someone you know you can count on.
Conversely, you’re not reliable if you often find yourself making excuses for not doing something you say you’ll do; say you’ll do it tomorrow when tomorrow never comes…
Reliability is a key component of trust.
Acceptance
Acceptance is when we accept someone for who they are; we suspend our judgments and don’t criticise them for not fitting into our own belief system.
We have all experienced not feeling valued or accepted at some point in our lives. Are you more or less likely to trust someone who doesn’t accept you for who you are, what you’re doing, what you’re wearing?
The reality is we’re all making judgments all of the time, but what’s important is we learn to put these judgments to one side as we relate to each other with more tolerance and respect.
Congruence
Another ingredient for building trust is congruence. Congruence means that what we think, say and do are in alignment. Being congruent means that what you are feeling on the inside can be translated into communicating that on the outside.
When you are congruent, you are being honest with yourself and with others. Congruence means you build trust in your relationships by being honest in your communications.
Openness
Unfortunately in our society, openness – particularly in regards to disclosing our feelings and admitting to our mistakes – is sometimes seen as a sign of weakness. However, without openness it’s impossible to have honest interactions with others and a vital trust building block is omitted.
Being open means you are open to telling the truth, to disclosing how you feel, to admitting when you make a mistake and to taking personal responsibility.
So, these are our four key ingredients: reliability, acceptance, congruence and openness. Each ingredient contributes to the emotional bank account, which help us build and maintain trust.
Take one ingredient away, and already we’ve lost a major contributor to the bank account.
You may be extremely reliable but never admit to your mistakes or share your feelings, and you’re missing out on being able to build really long-lasting, trusting relationships.
Now think back to the person who you trust the most. Chances are they will be reliable, accept you for who you are, be open in how they communicate and be congruent in what they say and do.
How trustworthy are you in your relationships?
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Filed under life skills | Comment (0)‘Specific Goals’ Suck
I think setting goals is overrated. Everywhere I turn nowadays I hear people talking about the necessity of setting goals – from life coaches to financial planners to car salesmen. What are our short term goals? What are our long term goals? And what about the goals in between?
I used to set work goals for both myself and for people in my team. They were perfectly defined SMART goals (specific –measurable – achievable – realistic – timed) and I had a real good-factor when I’d set, and worked on, goals for myself and my team. Being a compliant employee, I would always aim to achieve my goals and I certainly got satisfaction in that respect. But nowadays, when I have given myself the choice of how I work and what I want to focus on, I never set goals.
Why?
Setting goals is way too easy. But they often have little foundation behind them. Goals often come from a knee-jerk reaction to something we don’t like or don’t want in our life anymore – a goal to lose 5kgs, to go to the gym 3 times a week, to stop drinking for a month, to earn more money. These types of goals can be very temporary and are built on shaky ground.
Goals can be yet another ‘should’ in our lives. “I should go to the gym to achieve my goal even though I have a cold/am exhausted”; “I should go for that new job because it’s a pay-rise even though I’m not even in the career I want to be in.” Do we really need any more shoulds?
But most importantly, goals shut down our creativity. Having specific, measured, realistic and timed goals limit our potential to see all the opportunities that exist to achieve what we want to achieve.
Rather than goals, I think we should expand their scope into a vision that we want for our lives. I think our vision would be better associated to how we want to feel.
For example, rather than having a goal of going to the gym 3 times a week, I would instead have a vision of health, because I want to feel healthy and vital. This becomes a lifestyle choice that places less importance on just getting my 3 gym workouts done.
If I was still setting my SMART goals as I used to, I would have missed out on many opportunities to choose creative pathways towards my broad vision for myself.
What do you think about goals?
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Filed under life skills | Comments (2)Five Ways to an Instant Perfect Life
(Warning: this article is written with tongue firmly in cheek).
The other day I was thinking about the plethora of advice and information available out there to help improve our lives.
And I don’t mean just on the uncensored internet; published books, qualified practitioners and many organisations all offer us everything we need to make our lives better.
In fact, there are so many mentors who can help us nowadays that really there’s no reason that we can’t have everything we want …and even better, we can often get them INSTANTLY.
To get our instant perfect life, I’ve chosen the five things that tend to hit the top of the list when we think about what we want to improve on.
1. Happiness
2. Wealth
3. Relationships
4. Diet
5. Fitness
I have used a variety of sources for this article, with the deliberate aim of finding the most instant ways to achieve success in each of these five areas. However, I have de-identified all sources (this is, after all, a little bit of fun and I don’t want to get into trouble).
Happiness
A very well-established company offers special 2-hour ‘happiness’ coaching sessions. During the session you will quickly work out your happiness goals, and by the end of the two hours you’ll already be happier and well on the way to achieving happiness FAST.
My take
I believe that if we find meaning and purpose in our lives, happiness is a positive side-effect. Too often we can chase happiness via instant gratification routes and merely experience a short, sweet but unsubstantial happiness.
Wealth
There are so many ‘instant ways’ to make your fortune out there that it’s hard to choose just one. However, I did like the one that promises that you’re just 15 minutes from being a millionaire, all in just one simple step via a special secret that you won’t know until you purchase the offer.
My take
Making millions fast has become popular and more accessible due to a certain self-development video. And yet most of the western world is currently in serious economic down-turn – recession even – and I don’t remember hearing that there’s been a significant increase in self-made millionaires. So what happened?
Relationships
This is my favourite, only because I’m so incredulous. A Dating and Relationship Coach/Guru guarantees a set of proven techniques to find your boyfriend or girlfriend QUICKLY. The coach has such extraordinary abilities that in less than 60 seconds the person the coach approaches feels like he/she is falling in love with the coach. By buying the programme, we are all guaranteed this sort of 60-second success to finding a partner.
My take
I really hope nobody is sold on this one. Making and maintaining connections with people and building relationships is an ongoing, mutual process that is entirely belittled by this 60-second promise.
Diet
There are 100s of instant diets out there, all promising to help us lose excess pounds in a few painless days or weeks. Here are just a few:
Seven Day Diet – includes 5 bananas and 5 glasses of milk on one day, and 4 beef steaks on another day.
Cookie Diet – 6 special cookies a day with 8 glasses of liquid, and a dinner
Personality Type Diet – eat and exercise according to your personality (need to calculate this out via their programme)
My take
There is so much advice from so many quarters about diets and food that I wouldn’t be surprised if everybody was overwhelmed and confused about what and how to eat. Two simple facts are that diets RARELY WORK and there is no quick-fix to a healthier eating plan. If a diet isn’t sustainable in the long-term, it’s not going to work. Much better to accept a medium to long-term approach to your diet, making changes that are realistic and achievable.
Fitness
There’s a special CD set out there that promises you rock hard abs, a ripped back and huge pecs in just a few short weeks, working out 3 x 20 minute sessions a week. The guy on the front cover has obviously done the programme as he’s looking really buff.
My take
If you watched the Olympics you may have noticed that many world-class athletes don’t look as ‘buff’ as many people who work out at the gym regularly. Athletes aren’t that bothered about looking good, they’re far more interested in ensuring their bodies function optimally for their sport. I can pretty much guarantee that the above programme will not give you rock hard abs in just a few short weeks (there’s far more to it than that) and fitness isn’t just about having the perfect body.
Fitness is a continuous journey, not a destination.
An Instant Perfect Life?
If we were to take up all the advice in each of these five areas, I calculate that in little over a month we’ll be strutting our buffed up stuff with our new partner along our own private beach, grinning like Chesire cats.
What do you think?
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Filed under health and wellbeing, life skills | Comments (4)Anxiety and Fear
‘Anxiety’ is something I will write a lot about in my posts, but it will be from an existential perspective.
From an existential perspective, anxiety is our response to the givens of existence which, as I’ve mentioned before, (…) are death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness.
These four ‘ultimate concerns’ are part of our existence; concerns that we cannot get away from no matter how hard we try. And this causes existential anxiety.
Death is an obvious ultimate concern. We experience anxiety because we are aware of the certainty of death, yet we want to continue to live.
Freedom leads to being entirely responsible for our own life, which means that on one hand we are faced with the total absence of a well-structured world order (because from an existential perspective we create our own world order) and on the other hand the desire for some sort of order and structure. Our response to this is existential anxiety.
Isolation, in an existential sense, means a core, fundamental isolation. We are never able to completely connect with other living things and the world; there is always some sort of a gap between us and the other. This leads to a conflict, an existential anxiety, because we want to be in contact and connected, yet we know that we can never fully experience that.
Meaninglessness is often thought of as the main existential concern. What meaning does life have? How shall we live? Why do we live? If we are responsible for our own lives, then that assumes we must make our own meanings. But we are conflicted between creating our own meaning whilst also wanting there to be a bigger, all-encompassing meaning. This brings yet more existential anxiety.
This may all sound a bit philosophical and irrelevant to your own life. But the interesting thing about existential anxiety is that it ‘seeks to become fear’ (Rollo May). We can probably all list things that we are fearful of, far more so than trying to relate to these ultimate concerns in ‘naked form’.
We fear things that are tangible, that have a specific location in life. I’ve noticed myself that as I’ve got older I’ve become a lot more fearful of driving. In my 20s I didn’t think it was worth getting in the car unless I was trying to break the speed limit. Nowadays, I drive far more carefully, am cautious in wet conditions, I rarely go beyond the speed limit. And as for ‘adventure activities’- bungee jumping, abseiling etc - well you can forget those nowadays! I don’t immediately associate this increased fear with death anxiety, but I am separately far more aware of the impermanence of life now than I was in my 20s…so I can easily see that this is maybe why I’ve become more fearful.
Existential anxiety always aims to be transformed into something that is both more tangible and more manageable. I can handle my driving fears far more than I can my fear of death.
Can you see a link between your fears and anxiety of the ‘ultimate concerns’?
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Filed under existential, life skills | Comment (0)Freedom for Being
I went to hear Deepak Chopra speak this week at the State Theatre in Sydney. The theatre was full to the brim with people eager to hear from who Time magazine calls one of the top 100 ‘heroes and icons of the century’. (I tried not to think about what would happen if we all needed to evacuate as I’m pretty sure the minimal exit points go against all health and safety rules).
I must admit that a lot of what he said went over or around my head - particularly as my brain tends to have switched off by 10pm - but there were two little things he said in passing which particularly struck a chord.
The first one was that to get what we want in life we must think of it like breathing. To breathe, we let our breath go and it comes back to us. It’s impossible for it not to: let our breath out and it automatically comes back.
To get what we want in life, we must also let it go…and then it will come back to us.
That’s easier said than done, of course, as we get impatient and lose faith in this actually happening. But I have experienced this myself: once I just stop the struggle and ‘let it go’, things start to change in the way I wanted them to.
The second thing was really a reminder about how we humans operate.
We begin life as human BEINGS.
As we get older we become human THINKINGS.
Then by the time we’re adults we’ve become human DOINGS. By this stage we’ve usually forgotten how to BE.
Meditation, yoga and mindfulness are all ways to try to return to BEING again.
Even before this point, though, is learning how to REST. Most of us are in some sort of ‘doing’ frenzy and are unable to truly REST until we have to because of exhaustion or illness.
In Leunig’s ‘The Curly Pyjamas Letters’ Mr Curly tells Vasco all about REST. It is well worth a read. (click on it below to make it bigger on your screen).
How much resting are you doing this weekend?
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Filed under freedom, life skills, mindfulness | Comments (3)Existential Concern #2: Freedom Again
The last post on freedom was about the link between freedom and responsibility.
There’s another aspect to freedom which causes us concern and problems, and that’s this: we tend to focus all of our energy on freeing ourselves from something that’s not working for us, be it a job, friend, partner, car, habit…
We fantasise about how much better we’ll feel when we resign from the job, see less of a friend, leave a partner, sell the car, quit smoking…
Our focus is often on the negative aspect of freedom. We want to free ourselves from the pain, discomfort, mundaneness of something. But we don’t put the same amount of energy into understanding what this freedom is actually for…
What’s the outcome? We free ourselves from something but because we haven’t thought of what we’ve just freed ourselves for, we either:
1. Go back to the thing/person/habit we were trying to free ourselves from
2. Find a ‘new thing’ as quickly as possible that’s not necessarily any better than the old thing we’ve just left behind
‘Freedom from’ is past-oriented. ‘Freedom for’ is future-oriented. For freedom to be beneficial, it can’t just be an escape from something we don’t want. It has to be more than that.
It’s not an easy task to find our ‘freedom for’. The first step in embracing ‘freedom for’- ie to move into the unknown territory of the future - is to create a vision for our life. We need to dig deep and find what it is that we believe will really be fulfilling, and to have the courage to make the necessary changes to life the live we truly want.
What do you want freedom for?
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Filed under existential, freedom | Comments (4)Existential Concern #2: Freedom
Death as an ultimate existential concern makes sense to most of us. Who isn’t afraid of death in some shape or form? But why is freedom an ultimate concern? Surely having freedom to live your life how you want to live it can only be a positive experience?
Let me first pose a few questions. How would it impact you if, from this moment onwards, you:
- were to make decisions without asking the opinion of others?
- entirely removed ‘I can’t’ and ‘I should’ from your vocabulary?
- no longer blamed anyone else for your current situation?
- chose to do something in your best interests, but which you know won’t meet the approval of your mum/dad/partner/friends?
If you really have pondered those questions, the chances are you’ll feel anxious at the thought of at least one of them.
And just why is that?
1. Freedom and Responsibility
To truly embrace freedom, you have to take responsibility for your own life. It’s not possible to be free to create a fulfilling life for yourself without also assuming responsibility. Freedom, then, goes hand in hand with responsibility.
And there’s the sticking point (or, the ‘concern’).
Most of us don’t want to have to accept that we are responsible for our selves, our life situation, our thoughts, feelings, behaviour…which means that with freedom comes at the least discomfort, and at the most a lot of anxiety.
Here’s an example:
Jack (who believes he is responsible for his own life): “I chose to drink too much last night and I behaved like an idiot. I don’t like that I did it, but I did, and I accept that Kevin’s now annoyed with me”.
John (who doesn’t take responsibility for his own life): “Bill coerced me into drinking a load of beers last night. Beer always makes me behave like an idiot. But there was no need for Kevin to take my banter so personally”.
Jack accepts responsibility for drinking too much, how he behaved as a result and the impact it had on Kevin. In contrast, John blames Bill for his excessive drinking, the beer for how it made him behave and Kevin for his reaction to John’s behaviour.
If Jack and John decided to give up drinking for a month, who do you think would have the most freedom to make that decision?
My next post will look at another concern we have with freedom.
But for now, let me ask you a question.
Think of a situation you’re in right now which you’d prefer not to be in. It could be anything, big or small. Now think about it again. How have you created this situation?
Comments below…
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Filed under existential | Comment (1)Optimism and Persistence
As stated in last month’s article ‘on success’ www.freedomfortherapy.com.au/blog/?p=19 , now I’m going to delve down a little further into a vital ingredient of success: optimism.
According to Seligman – who started the positive psychology movement - the way we look at the causes of our successes and failures (ie how we explain both good and bad events) are what form our explanatory style.
Our explanatory style is made up of three crucial dimensions: permanence, pervasiveness and personalisation.
If you want to do the actual test that allows you to analyse your explanatory style in each dimension, go to http://www.stanford.edu/class/msande271/onlinetools/LearnedOpt.html where the test is provided and scored for you online.
And you’ll probably understand the rest of this article better if you work out your own scores first.
In honour of the 2008 Olympics, I’ll use sporting examples to demonstrate the difference between each of these dimensions with the help of Olympic swimmers Pessimistic Pete and Optimistic Ollie.
PERMANENCE
Permanence (Bad)
If you have a belief system that means you think about bad events or situations in terms of absolutes – ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘everything’ – then it’s likely you have a permanent, pessimistic style. Someone with a permanent, pessimistic style believes bad events will persist, that they’re not just a one-off event. Conversely, someone with a temporary, optimistic style will see bad events as only transient and specific.
Eg
Permanent, Pessimistic Pete says “Michael Phelps always beats me every time I race”.
Temporary, Optimistic Ollie says “Last time I raced, Michael Phelps beat me”.
Who do you think is more psychologically ready to beat Phelps?
Pete scored 7 in the permanent dimension (as per test above) which means he feels flattened by every loss to Phelps and has to put a lot of energy into psychologically preparing himself each time he races, particularly for big events. Conversely, Oliver scored 1 in this dimension, meaning he’s very optimistic and bounces back from every loss in the pool almost instantly. Pessimistic Pete finds it so difficult to recover from defeat that he’s considering retiring from swimming this year.
If you scored highly in the permanent (bad) dimension, you currently have a permanent, pessimistic style. You probably find you get knocked around quite severely by failures, bad events and setbacks.
Permanence (Good)
When people believe that good events have permanent causes, they are more optimistic. This is exactly the opposite of people who believe bad events have permanent causes. Optimistic people believe there are permanent reasons for good events, and use this to fuel themselves to try harder.
Eg
Pessimistic Pete says “I did a good swim so I got in the Olympic team” (Pete saw his swim as a temporary, one-off event).
Optimistic Ollie says “I’m talented so I got a place in the Olympic team” (Ollie believes his talent – which is a permanent state – led to his place on the team).
If you scored highly in permanence (good), you are optimistic in this dimension. If you scored low (0-3) you are pessimistic and tend to see good things as only temporary or one-off events.
PERVASIVENESS
Pervasiveness (Bad)
If you have a bad day at work, can you still come home and be loving towards your partner? If you have an argument with your partner in the morning, do you eat comfort food at work and cancel your plans to see your friend?
Pervasiveness relates to how much your problems in a particular area of your life pervade the rest of it. People who have universal explanations for things going wrong tend to give up on everything else in their life at the same time. Conversely, those people who have specific explanations for things going wrong can struggle in that area whilst still continuing with the rest of their live in a positive way.
Eg
Pessimistic Pete lost to Michael Phelps in the heats, and felt so bad that afterwards he isolated himself from his teammates, skipped dinner, missed the after-party and argued with his girlfriend on the phone.
Optimistic Ollie also lost to Michael Phelps, and felt bad but still congratulated him afterwards, enjoyed a good meal, had a few beers at the after-party and called his girlfriend to let her know about the race.
Whilst Pete catastrophises about his loss – which means it seeps into every other area of his life – Ollie is able to keep his loss separate from affecting the rest of his life.
If you scored high in pervasiveness (bad), you have a pessimistic style in this dimension and tend to catastrophise. If you scored low (0-3) you have an optimistic style and can keep specific bad things boxed off from other areas of your life.
Pervasiveness (Good)
As in the permanence dimension described previously, the optimistic explanatory style for good events within this dimension is exactly opposite to that for bad events.
That means that an optimist will see bad events as having specific causes and good events as having universal causes. The pessimist will see things the other way around.
Eg
Pessimistic Pete beat his teammate, who usually beats him, and thought he must have been on good form that evening (specific good event).
Optimistic Ollie also beat his teammate and thought his swimming had improved (universal good event), which gave him added impetus in his training.
If you scored high in pervasiveness (good), you have an optimistic style in this dimension and use good events to help you persist in your endeavours. If you scored low (0-3) you have a pessimistic style and find it difficult to use good events to your advantage.
PERSONALISATION
Personalisation (Bad)
We probably all know what it means to take things personally. If you tend to blame yourself for bad things that happen, you’re an internaliser. If you see other people or events as being the cause, you’re an externaliser. Sometimes it’s beneficial to internalise as it means we take responsibility for things, BUT often someone who internalises blames themselves too much for too many things and is far more likely to have low self-esteem and feel worthless than someone who can see the role of external circumstances and/or people.
Eg
Pessimistic Pete thinks it’s because he doesn’t have talent that he keeps losing to Michael Phelps (internalises the bad event; low self-esteem).
Optimistic Ollie thinks he needs to change his coach because he keeps losing (externalises the bad event; high self-esteem).
If you scored high (6-8) in personalisation (bad), it’s likely that your self-esteem is low or a little shaky.
Personalisation (Good)
You’ll probably have realised by now that for good events, the opposite rule applies. Optimistic people tend to believe that they cause good things ie they internalise the positive. Conversely, pessimistic people in this dimension tend to think it must have been others who caused good events to occur.
Eg
Pessimistic Pete believes his coach and his family’s support were what got him to the Olympics (externalises the good).
Optimistic Ollie believes it’s his skill and his talent that got him his spot on the team (internalises the good).
Your total score on the test gives you your overall optimism or pessimism rating. A high score (6+) means you’re optimistic; a low score (<1) means your pessimistic.
Optimism and Persistence
I hope it’s become apparent why optimism is inextricably linked to persistence, which forms a vital part of being successful (whatever success means to you). Optimists tend to bounce back from adversity, see bad events as isolated and specific and believe that their input is the foundation for good outcomes. This is bound to lead to persisting even in the face of failure.
Conversely, a pessimistic outlook on life leads to blaming oneself for bad events, not acknowledging one’s own role in successes and seeing all setbacks as permanent. This is bound to make it far harder to keep forging ahead when things don’t go to plan.
It’s not surprising, then, that an optimistic outlook leads to a healthier, happier, more fulfilled life.
There are tools that can be learned to help you become more optimistic (more on these next month).
However, I believe that understanding your own explanatory style can often lead you to make changes to your outlook simply by seeing the areas in which your style is working for you or against you.
To get a copy of ‘Learned Optimism’, just pick one up from your local bookshop or order it online at http://www.amazon.com/Learned-Optimism-Change-Your-Mind/dp/1400078393/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218432707&sr=8-1
A final word
As this article now forms part of my new and regular blog, I’d really appreciate your comments and/or questions on this article. You can use the form below. If I don’t get any comments, I can either think it’s because you don’t have time (optimistic) or that my article is boring (pessimistic).
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Filed under life skills | Comments (2)Existential Concerns #1: Death
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you…
but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
(Time, Pink Floyd)
This is the first of four short articles on four existential concerns (death, freedom, isolation and meaningless)As the lyrics say, as we get older we move one day closer to death. That may not be something most of us think about every day, but of all the existential concerns (death, freedom, isolation and meaningless) death is probably the most easy to comprehend as one that is anxiety-provoking.
What are the common fears we have about death?
It may sound a simple question. But if you take a moment to think about exactly what it is you/we fear about death then it becomes a complex answer. Is it the physical pain of death? That you won’t see your loved ones anymore? That you won’t have any more experiences? That you won’t get to do everything you want to do? That you haven’t fully lived yet? That you don’t know if there is anything after death; is it the end to everything … a nothingness?
Nothingness is probably one of the things we fear the most. Doing ‘nothing’ leads people to become depressed, apathetic, unmotivated. The fear of doing or being ‘nothing’ lies at the root of the drive to be a workaholic and high achiever. And so death – the ultimate nothing – is something that is feared by just about everyone.
What do we do about these fears?
We usually deal with our fears in two ways: avoid them or defend against them.
In our society, death tends to be a taboo subject in our conversations and regular lives. Start talking about matters pertaining to death and there’ll soon be someone flinching and telling you that’s morbid talk. Everyone knows it’s an eminently practical and sensible to prepare a will and yet most of us avoid it like the plague (excuse the pun).
And yet we are fascinated by death too. The news is filled with stories of death. We love to watch cop dramas and hospital reality TV shows, with people either dying or managing to return from the brink of death. We want to know all about it, as long as it’s ‘out there’ somewhere – comfortably out of our sphere of daily existence.
We can also deal with our fear by beating it at its own game. Adventurists, explorers and adrenalin-seekers constantly find ways to push the limits of their existence. From an existential perspective, this is another way to defend against the anxiety of death.
Living live by accepting death
Seneca (ancient philosopher) said “No man enjoys the taste of life but he who is willing and ready to quit it”.
It’s a normal human response to be anxious about death; and yet it’s often when we’re confronted with death in some way that we experience our most profound changes and insights. How many times have we heard of someone surviving a near-death experience to then make a radical change to how they live their life?
Death is inevitable and brings a sense of urgency to our existence, if we allow ourselves to acknowledge life and death are interdependent. Accepting that death is a part of our life can lead to a dramatic shift in our perspective.
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Filed under existential | Comment (0)What’s it all about? An Existential View
From an existential perspective, our problems and concerns stem from our confrontation with life itself ie our existence.
If you’re someone who is philosophical in thought, often questioning the purpose of life itself and struggles with finding meaning in our existence, you’re probably interested in what the philosopher Socrates called ‘the examined life’ (‘the unexamined life is not worth living’).
A very good example of the difference between the examined life and blissful ignorance is in the film, The Matrix. Neo, the main character, has to make a choice: taking a blue pill will mean he can carry on life as before (in blissful ignorance) but taking a red pill will mean he will be able to understand what the matrix actually is (ie an examined life). Morpheus, who gives Neo the choice between the two pills, only promises that the red pill will give him the truth and nothing more.
The film symbolises the search for truth and an authentic existence; this lies at the core of an existential approach to life.
Whereas Freud believed that we are governed by innate instinctual sexual forces, in existential therapy our deepest internal conflicts are believed to stem from four ultimate concerns:
Death, Freedom, Isolation and Meaninglessness
The next four blogs looks at each of these in turn.
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