Barry Swartz on practical wisdom. How we lose our ability to think and adapt wisely to new situations as we create more rules. You can not regulate your self or others into right action and moral behavior with rules. Rather it is done with instilling an understanding of responsibility, a practice of respect, and character.
Heroes
A few years back I was at my bank withdrawing some money. My intention was to invest in the market. I was referred to one of their investment advisers who told me, “That’s dangerous.” The implied message is not just to be fearful, but that you will get hurt because are ignorant or incapable of making your own financial decisions. The implied role assigned to me is the victim and to let them play the hero by helping me. It’s interesting how much can be communicated with just two words, “That’s dangerous.”
In one comment, she was offering me a completely packaged story. It was a role I was conditioned to accept since childhood. I was the innocent bystander that needed help. I didn’t know what I was doing and I was in over my head. It cast the stock market as a dangerous dragon that could hurt me. She assumed the role of helpful adviser recommending I avoid a complicated danger. She would protect me. She assigned her self to the role of hero and offered me a feeling of hope and security if I followed her suggestions. All for a price of course.
I was aware of the fear she was offering me to carry by believing those two words. I was also aware of the powerlessness and insecurity I would feel if I accepted her assigned victim role. From that victim point of view, her hero role would look comforting, and therefore tempting. The problem with this nifty package is that I knew the price. For the comfort of her being my hero, I first had to accept the fear.
Learning Your Role In Life
In childhood we learn through interactions and stories to adopt roles for our selves and to assign roles to others. Comic books, movies, and fairy tales of a dashing prince have us imagining the hero (rescuer). As our imagination is filled with this story figure, we usually assign our self various points of view. Sometimes we comfort our self importance and imagine being that heroic figure and defeating villains and evil forces. At other times we put them on a pedestal and enjoy the awe and reverence we bestow on them. The effect of the latter is that we assume our selves to be less powerful, incapable, and needing help in challenging situations. We can call this playing a victim role.
One of the consequences of habitually applying these roles to our selves, and others, is that we need some kind of villain in order to keep our hero myths alive. Military war heroes need evil doers. Police officers need criminals. Trial attorneys need bad guys to punish. Politicians need victims in order to justify their actions as good, right, and heroic.
By the time we are adults we apply the opinion, “good person” or “bad person” to a human being. The simplest part of our mind craves a simple answer to complex human situations. Our self-hero image tells us we are right about our assessment, and we feel good about our judgment of others.
Out of habit we assign the role or title of “bad person” to someone very quickly. In that assumption we miss the opportunity to see them as a human being with life history of experiences and challenges that led them to the situation they are in. Implied in the assessment is that we assign our self the hero role, the “good character” in the story.
Learning the Victim Role
We are trained since a young age to assign the role of hero to others. We make others responsible and thereby make our self dependent on them. Take your parents hand and have them lead you across the street or you will get hurt or killed. Follow your parents direction or you will get punished. We learned to live out these roles as a means of survival. Putting your life in the hands of others is the best thing to do as a small person learning to make your way in a big and chaotic world. However, according to this early mindset, there is always someone that knows what is better for you than your self. Some people eventually wake up from their role playing and decide to live their own life instead of the one others assign to them. Some people don’t wake up to the automated roles of their life.
For the victim, when someone comes along offering to play that caretaker, rescuer, hero, role, we feel infused with hope and are thankful that they are answering our prayers. It is a prayer that we have learned to pray to a more powerful being out side of our self. Again looking for help and power outside instead of within our self, not really discovering what we are capable of.
The Business of Your Role In Life
The victim role of powerlessness, overwhelm, and insecurity is continually projected at us. We learn to follow the rules and behaviors of others in order to feel safe. How many commercials tell you that investing is complicated hard work and that you should leave it to trained professionals? Pay them the commission and have them save you from hurting your self with financial mistakes. The message,,, you are not smart enough or good enough to do this your self.
Insurance companies make their income from you being scared of possible outcomes and relying on them for comfort. Banks protect your money. Men are advised what to buy their loved one at the jewelry store so not to screw up a holiday. Marketers assign us the role that we don’t know what to do in our lives or even in our relationship. They come with answers to alleviate us from the fear they have offered us.
The Politics of Your Role In Life
Politicians count on you to project on to them your hero stories learned early in life. We study the American Presidents and their great and challenging deeds. Our teachers have us put them on pedestals and project awe and reverence at them. We don’t see that they are human beings just like us. In our minds we associate current presidents with past presidents and the attitude of someone saving us is comforting. In that imagined story of comfort we don’t notice the powerless role we assign for our self. Our projected image of them blinds us from seeing the actual character and qualities of our leaders.
What Role Will You Choose for Your Self?
How much do you live in a state of powerlessness, and insecurity because of the beliefs and roles you have adopted? How often do you comfort your self emotionally by placing others on pedestals? What price do you pay by assigning other people to be your heroes? How often do you see people as ignorant or incapable just so you can attempt to save them and prop up your own imaged hero image? What roles do you play in your life and who assigns them to you?
The process to unraveling these mysteries and what we are actually capable of is a matter of self discovery. The Self Mastery course in Awareness can help you discover the roles you play in your life. The Self Mastery program is a means to inventory and change your beliefs, emotions, and the roles you have been playing in your life.
No one will assign you the role of waking up from your habitual patterns. You have to assign that role to your self.
I cover how to use awareness to break free of fearful resistance to taking action. Jut for fun I also get into understanding origins of the financial crisis. Credit default swaps, lobbying by banks to lower their equity reserve requirements, and speculation is not what caused the financial bubble and subsequent meltdown. These changes in the direction of the economy were actually the results of something else, a system of beliefs based in illusion, and propped up by faith. The problem with bubbles, financial, romantic, or otherwise, is that they originate in the mind as illusions. With enough faith in those illusions we create irrational exuberance, and people who lose their commons sense to the hype of emotions from being overly optimistic.
Preventing future bubbles will not depend on good laws and government oversight, although that should help. What is really needed is a dose of awareness and skillful skepticism at what is going on in the realm of the imagination in terms of assumptions and beliefs. Skip becoming aware of how your mind creates illusions and we follow self destructive behaviors at your own peril.
Fear and Origins of the Financial Crisis Podcast #25 (30min) mp3
Where do your emotions come from?
Some people are under the assumption that your emotions come from your thoughts. That would be wrong. It is a bit more involved than that. It’s not just what we think about, or put our attention on that determines our emotions. Contrary to some current self-help philosophy, your emotions don’t come just from your thoughts.
Ever listen to a comedian tell a tragic story in a funny way? Comedians can talk about their relationship breakups, economic collapse, and war, in a way that makes us laugh about it. They get us to think about tragedies and laugh with joyful emotions about them. There is obviously something more than thoughts or subject matter to creating emotions. Something in their point of view affects the emotions we create.
In other moments, we can think about a relationship break up, economic challenges, and that same war, and it is not funny at all. We quickly feel sadness, anger, injustice, and despair. If we believe that it is just our thoughts or what we put our attention on that create emotions, then we’ve accepted a simple answer and given up on the truth.
Understanding Emotions
Let’s begin with the obvious that people often overlook. You create your emotions. I say this is overlooked because people often say or think things like, “He makes me angry,” “That is sad,” or “She makes me happy.” Listen to this type of talk, and it sounds like other people and circumstances are creating your emotions. There is no mention of you being responsible for any part of the process. Believing these kinds of thoughts or comments causes us to overlook our role in creating emotions.
If someone is angry and scolds us we might feel fear or guilt. Fear and guilt are our reactions to them and their expression of anger. If they were making us feel emotions, we’d feel their anger. We don’t. We feel the emotions we create as a reaction to them.
For the most part we generate our emotions, and then we feel them. There are emotions that we can feel that are not created by us, but this is a small percentage and best dealt with later. How we create the emotions we feel requires a bit more introspection to understand.
Point of View has affects our Emotions
Having a thought in the mind is not enough to create an emotion. We also have to consider the point of view used to observe the thought. A comedian has a perspective of humor about tragic events that can makes us laugh when we see it from their perspective. A politician will talk about the same situation of war or conflict with a point of view that invokes a feeling of patriotism or righteousness. A person in a victim point of view can view the same material and fill him or her self with sadness. The point of view that you perceive events or your thoughts from affects the emotions you create.
It’s not just what you are thinking about, it is the point of view you think about it from that has an impact. Depending on your point of view you will make different interpretations and believe different assumptions. Believing these interpretations and assumptions form beliefs, or activate existing beliefs. These related beliefs also have an impact on which emotions you create and how strong they are.
Where do emotions get their power?
Emotions can be a powerful form of energy, or power. That energy, or power, has to come from somewhere. The force that powers your emotions is faith. Faith is a type of personal power that turns a thought into a belief. A thought has no power, but a belief has the power of your faith. Everyone has faith and exercises their power of faith in some way or another. Some people put their faith in a religious or spiritual understanding of God. Atheists put their faith in the belief that there isn’t a God. Some people put a lot of faith in scientific evidence. The power to believe in something is a power that everyone has.
When you invest faith in a thought it becomes empowered and can generate emotions. The more faith you put into an idea or thought, the more emotions you create. If you have only a little faith in a thought or interpretation, then your emotions, or emotional reactions will be mild. When you retract your investment of faith from a belief it returns to being just a thought and you no longer have an emotional reaction to it.
As I said earlier, not all emotions we feel require that we have a certain point of view, or faith in an idea,,, just most of them. There are emotions that we can feel that come from our natural response to experience. A real physical threat can cause us to feel genuine fight or flight fear. Perceiving something beautiful like a symphony, nature, or a sunset, can cause us to respond with genuine love and gratitude. Natural emotional responses to experiences are some of the other sources of emotions we feel.
Where do Emotions Come From?
Thoughts aren’t enough to create emotions. We can have some thoughts pass through our mind and find them funny at times. Later, when we are looking at things from a different point of view, we feel differently about the same thing. The most embarrassing moment in high school is the worst nightmare of our lives that week. From the larger perspective of time, twenty years later, it becomes a source of joyful laughter. The history of the event is the same after 20 years. However, our perspective has changed over that time, and therefore so does our emotions.
The quality of the emotion in terms of pleasure, or pain, that you create depends greatly on your point of view. The intensity of the emotions you create in that moment will depend on how much faith you have invested in the beliefs and assumptions supporting that thought. Faith in certain beliefs is the source of power behind your emotions. Recover your faith from the beliefs you have around a thought, and you can change the emotions you feel.
Emotions stemming from our thoughts are a product of our point of view, underlying beliefs, and the power of our faith. If you are attempting to change your emotional state by changing only your thoughts, you are not going to have much success. Attempting to change emotions without changing your point of view, underlying assumptions, or investment of faith is likely to fail. That would be like building a chair with one leg and expecting it to support you.
If you intend to change your emotional state, emotional reactions, and develop more happiness in your life, you will have to develop skills in changing point of view and recovering your faith from your false beliefs. Exercises for learning both of these skills are included in the Self Mastery audio program.
Why we feel insecure
In our mind we develop images of who we are. Our imagination develops a story of our self and we imagine our self in different roles. Those images and story roles in our imagination can be of a success, or of failure and rejection. It is through imagining our self in various stories that we create emotions of insecurity.
Some of images and stories can be created when we are young, but we can create them as adults as well. One of the most powerful elements in creating emotions through our mind this way has to do with point of view. Imagination gives us the ability to shift our point of view to the character, or image in our mind. When this happens we view our self, and other people through the interpretation of the image we have imagined. Adopting the point of view, or perspective, of this distorted image in our imagination is the cause of many emotions, including insecurity.
If we are imagining that we are a success, a winner, or that people love us, we view our self from this perspective. Not only do we believe our self to be that image of a success, but we look at our self from that point of view. We could call this having positive self esteem. The perspective that we adopt has as much, or more to do with feeling confident than the image we have of our self. However, both are part of creating the feeling and emotions of confidence.
If we have an image in our mind of being a failure, loser, or that nobody loves us, and believe that this negative image us is, then we will feel the corresponding emotions. Belief in that negative self image will cause us to shift our viewpoint to the perspective of a loser, or failure. The result is that our beliefs, perspective, and emotions become congruent and we really appear to our self as a failure that nobody loves. We can call this having negative self esteem.
Feeling insecure is not just based on a mental image in the mind. Creating the feelings of insecurity, or confidence, is a combination of self image, belief in that image, and your point of view. Just changing your self image will do little to overcome your insecurity if you do not change your beliefs, and your point of view as well.
Why it is difficult to get rid of feelings of insecurity
First there is an image in our mind of who we are. When we believe that the image is actually us, we meld our point of view to that perspective in our imagination. When our perspective is shifted to this negative self image it is difficult to see, or believe, anything positive about our self.
When people attempt to get rid of their feelings of insecurity, they try building in their mind a positive a self image. This approach will likely fail or be difficult at best for two reasons. First, it will be difficult to believe in that positive self image while you are in a negative self image point of view.
Second, as long as you still have belief that the negative self image is you, that belief will continue to pull you towards that perspective of your self. The belief (faith) you have in the negative self image acts as an anchor weighing you down until you dissolve this belief. Changing this false belief about your self is critical to dissolving feelings of insecurity. Recovering your faith from this false belief about your self will keep you from creating feelings of insecurity. It is also a key to shifting your point of view about your self.
Building a positive self image does not do anything to dissolve the existing negative self image that is creating the feelings of insecurity. Creating, and believing in a positive self image can help you feel better, but it will be limited. Without dissolving the belief in the negative image feeling confident will be limited. It can also create a conflict in your mind.
Confusion about Self Esteem
What is self esteem? “Esteem” means high regard or opinion.
Self esteem is having an opinion of high regard for your self.
You could also call it self respect.
The imagination is an extraordinary mechanism that allows for may possibilities. We can have negative and positive images of our self, and we can believe in both. We can also perceive our self and our beliefs from different viewpoints. This makes it possible to feel very confident in one moment, and feel very insecure in the next. A shift in our point of view can change depending on who we are talking with, or as fast as the topic we are discussing. We can feel confident in one area of discussion, and insecure about something else.
It is also possible to feel both positive and negative self esteem at the same time. This happens because we can simultaneously hold conflicting beliefs about our self. An example of this might be when you have to give a talk or presentation. Intellectually, you consciously know you are prepared and trust that it will go fine. However you might still have feelings of worry and nervousness. This is because elsewhere within your belief system remains some faith in a failed outcome stemming from a negative self image story.
If you don’t understand how your mind can run multiple stories, has beliefs based on different self images, and how different points of view affects your emotions, it can be very confusing as to why you feel different emotions about the same thing.
Attempting to shed feelings of nervousness by telling your self positive thoughts can help some, but probably isn’t going to do the full trick. Thoughts are not nearly as powerful as beliefs in the negative images or ideas of failure. Beliefs have a lot more power than thoughts because they contain the power of your faith that you invested in them.
Good Self Esteem vs. Bad Self Esteem
Odd feelings can happen when we attempt to make our self feel better by enhancing our positive self esteem, or self image. If we attempt boosting our confidence with tools like affirmations, we can create a conflict in the mind. We envision a positive image of our self and attempt to put faith in the idea that that image is us. The problem we run into is that we might be looking at that image from the point of view of a failure with the feelings of low self worth.
When doing this practice from a negative image point of view we can feel like a fraud. From the negative image point of view we don’t really believe that the positive image is us. If we have awareness we will also know that the image we are projecting is false. It is a good positive image, but still not what we really are. The voices in our head can engage in self judgment over this disparity and possibly push our self esteem lower. As a result we end up feeling worse about our self than before we started trying to improve it.
The Third Option to Overcoming Insecurity
The beliefs that we developed about our self essentially fall into two categories. They have to do with the negative self images we have created in our mind, and the positive self images we have created. When feeling insecure we are in the point of view of the negative self images. From this perspective it appears that the solution is to build positive self images for more positive self esteem and confidence. This is just an appearance from a limited point of view. This approach will help us feel better, but it has problems. The essential problem is that we are not the image we have in our mind. No matter how wonderful and terrific that image is… it is still just an image in our imagination.
The beliefs we have of our self are based on a mental construct we call a self image. They are not based on what we really are, therefore it is not a solid base of confidence. These images exist only as construct in our imagination. Supported by our belief (or faith) in them, they can seem real. However, our self images in the mind are not real. They are not who or what we are.
Basing our emotions, self love, behavior, actions, and self worth, on a mental image in our mind also causes us to be false. When we pretend to be that image in our mind, even a very positive one, we are not in our integrity. We are not genuine or authentic. Having a positive self image, one that you put a lot of faith in, will help you to feel more confident. However, those feelings will be built on a shaky foundation of an abstract mental picture of your self. Anytime your opinion of your self is altered, or your point of view wanders from that perspective, your emotions will follow.
Having a solid base of confidence in which to live your life involves having faith in your Self,,, not in an image of your self. To accomplish this you will have to take your faith out of the beliefs in both the negative and positive self images. This will not only free up your emotions from insecurity, but will allow you to put that faith in your authentic Self. This is a much stronger foundation for confidence than an image in your mind. It will require that you first gain some awareness and control over what is going on in your mind, including your point of view. However, once you do this you discover some pretty interesting things.
One of the things that you discover as you gain control over your beliefs and imagination is that you are not what, or who, you believe you were. You were not those images in the stories that ran around in your imagination. You discover that you can decide story you will create in your imagination and what you are going to believe about your self. With awareness you also learn what perspective you will adopt in any moment about any situation. This will allow you to decide how you will feel emotionally about your self, people, or events in your life.
When we don’t have awareness we developed stories and beliefs about our self and learned to live in emotional reaction to those beliefs. When you learn to change and control your beliefs, you aren’t subject to emotional reactions anymore. Learning to control your point of view gives you control over your beliefs, and control over what you believe gives you mastery over your emotions. This takes a little more work than just building a positive self image, but the benefits are bigger, and last you for your life.
Practical exercises in awareness for dissolving false self images, beliefs, and changing your point of view can be found in the Self Mastery audio course. The first 4 sessions are free for you to sample.
Related MateriaL
Overcoming Insecurity
Jealousy
