The journey to Goodenoughia - Part 2
Part 2: Two of the scary things on the way.
I will try to cover two fears in this text, the first one is one of the deepest fears we all have. This fear being the fear of not fitting it, of not being liked or loved; this is something that frightens me, a lot! Being afraid of this is very reasonable to some extent of course, and I for one think it can be useful, at least every now and then.
The other fear is a fear that I believe to be even more important, but much less talked about.
Tim Urban at Waitbutwhy has written this excellent post that mainly focuses on the first of these fears. To save you some time I will summarise the gist of his thoughts in this paragraph below, but I would still highly recommend that you take the time reading the whole thing.
The post is centered around the fact that we are all running outdated software in our brain, a software illustrated as a mammoth. The mammoth is continually telling us that we ought to be aware of what everyone thinks of us and that we should try our best to please others and make sure not to stand out. This mammoth was great to have when we lived in tribes where not being liked or not fitting in meant a colossal risk to one’s life. Today, however, that once important mammoth is now constantly warning us as soon as we are the least original or trying to express our real selves. The conclusion is that we must learn how to find our authentic voice amid all the warning cries of the mammoth and to follow this instead of the mammoth.
I remember reading this post a few years back and how it was huge eye-opener for me, because fitting in as best as I could was my default setting and something I had therefore never even questioned. However, reading the post didn’t make me change much in terms of my actions, it just made me think more about it, at least to start out with.
That is all nice and well you might be thinking now, but what does this fear have to do with getting ideas and works in to Goodenoughia?
My answer is a lot, maybe more so in terms of putting out ideas and creations in private than with work-related things tho, and I suppose that is mainly what I am writing about here. But I do think it is applicable to work as well.
For example:
Would holding a presentation scare us if we knew that no one would be attending? I hope not, and if that is the case, you should really work on that.
Would I be afraid of writing this text if I knew that I was the only one going to read it? No.
Often why we see our work as not being good enough is because we are afraid of what others will think of it, and in extension what they will think of us.
It wasn’t until I came across this quote by Elbert Hubbard that I started to think more about the second fear, the fear that I now see as being even more important than the first one.
“To escape criticism: Do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”
This quote had up until the point of reading it almost been the mantra of my life without me knowing about it. Old Elbert definitely had a point in saying this because it works, it even works well!
But what he forgot to put in and what I have come to see, is that it doesn’t work forever.
Even if you go about your whole life this way, as I did, you will still come to have to face criticism. Because while this tactic works wonders to escape the criticism of others, it does so by continuously harassing something else, something that is gaining more and more power during this same time.
You see, following this advice requires that nothing gets in to Goodenoughia, ever. This is the case since getting stuff there would entail the seemingly deadly risk facing the criticism of others. But never getting anything in to Goodenoughia comes at the price of your own self starting to despise you, and this is something that is truly worth being afraid of.
I would, to make this more clear, ask you to compare the time that you, for the rest of your life will spend with others with the time you must spend with your self.
With whom do you think you will spend the most time?
This is somewhat of a trick question because at first, you might think of time with your self as constituting only of the time alone. And if this was the case, you could be tempted to say that you will spend more time with others. However, I would like to point out that the time you spend with others, you also spend with your self, since you will likely bring your self wherever you go, even if you did not plan to do so.
Others will, as previously mentioned, like or dislike you, no matter how careful you are of what you do, who you are or what you say. So given that you can never change this, you should start to care more about what your self is saying and thinking in order to at least escape the worst of its criticism.
I believe Ram Dass said it well when answering a question about self-love:
“I have gotten to the point now where I am what I am much more, and some people like it and some people don’t like it, and if they like it, that’s their problem, and if they don’t like it, that’s their problem.”
Following this advice requires the acceptance of your own self, and deeming it and its ideas as being worthy of their own place in Goodenoughia.
Lately, I have done my best to follow this advice and, by doing so I have come to see that focusing on what my self thinks and wants, and letting that be the ground on which others can make their decisions, instead of having it the other way around is a much better choice!
In conclusion: The most important thing to get to Goodenoughia is your own self. Getting your self there is something that you will have work long and hard for, but I promise you that it is effort well spent. Also, as a bonus, once you do manage to get your self there, getting other things there will be much easier as well!
Extra thought:
Before closing this, I feel like I have to note that the whole notion of the “self” is something that I find to be very complex. The self I am talking about here is what I suppose should be called the most common version of the word, the one most people talk about.
So if I ever happen to go deeper into these different versions of the self in future posts, I will make sure to address why I kept your inner Grammar Nazi in such pain while reading this one. My persistent use of the two words “your self” and not the single word “yourself” is something I was very aware of and did deliberately. I kept doing this for what I believe to be a good reason and also to at least try to reduce the confusion that is about to come if/whenever I decide to try to write about that whole mess.
