Charlie,

Your blog postings are so intriguing that they are distracting me from my work.

I love this deconstruction of American Idol, but I have to say that in my line of work (helping people acquire both the cognitive and affective skills of effective communication) belief is an important component of persisting in the face of difficulty. 

In a way, belief is related to optimism, and Seligman et al. have proved over and over that optimists don't quit, whereas pessimists suffer from "learned helplessness" and therefore give up more easily.

Belief in oneself can't help the incompetent, no doubt.  But it can help the average guy keep trying, and that can make all the difference.

     Thanks, Charlie!    

     A commercially and socially valuable career along with a happy life can be found in the same person under certain circumstances. If you could determine objectively where your talents lie and accept those findings as valid, you could then pursue your life’s work with passion and reward. In this case, you’d be competent and enthusiastic. Aptitude testing findings argue that we enjoy doing what we do well and, in large part, that makes for a happy life.

     How you pull this off in a single person who has grown up in America–a land that promotes self-delusion–is a mystery. How you get an organization to see the true talents of its management and other personnel and to then nurture their development for productivity is an impossibility.

Ambitions and ideals are a two-edge sword. On the one hand, ambitions and ideals that are realistic and purposeful , driven by an "inner knowing" of the truth of who we are (requiring a fair amount of conscious "inner" work and self-reflection) can serve us handily in our move toward self-actualization, and purposeful living.

On the other hand, ambitions and ideals that are veils that cover our deficiencies and lead us to self-images characterized of hubris, grandiosty and lying to ourselves about who we really are can lead to disaster. We can see this readaily on the Idol show...those who come from a place of inner confidence and groundedness and settlednes and those who come from a mental, hyperkenetic, ego-based ideal of who they "think" they are.

It's really all about the truth. Grounded reality is the truth for some; illusions and delusions are the truth for others.

Until and unless folks take the time to seriously reflect on what their truth is, the reality is that often folks wander aimlessly and blindly through work, through relationships, through life, either fearfully feeling their lack and deficiency or with grandiosity, or with a false bravado, in-you-face attitude that "I can do it all" which also is an attempt to deny their sense of lack and deficiency.

Having one's eyes wide open and seeing the truth of life and circumstances vs. having one's eyes wide shut and living in delusion, and not knowing the difference, is a hard lesson for many folks to get. Most never do.

The more we are self-realized, the less we get caught up in self-defeating amibitions and ideals.

The psychological area of narcissim speaks to this very issue...being self-destructive by living to meet some ideal or ambition that is inherently covering some deficiency of which we are unaware.

Once we  do the inner work and beceome clear on why we are trying to cover up our feelings of lack and deficiency, then we can work on ambitions and ideals that are self-supporting rather than self-sabotaging.

On another note re: the Idol show, my take is there's never a reason (albeit lots of excuses) to be disrespectful. The disrespect of Simon and his cohorts is really no different than the more subtle forms of sarcasm, bullying, gossiping, poking ("for the fun of it) that we witness in our workplaces every day. How many of us are Simon-like in our own reality shows called life, at work, at home and at play? 

Enough self confidence to keep you practicing - you have to believe enough in yourself to believe that practice will pay off - that you can and will get better.  A lot of people have a sort of learned helplessness, where they don't think they can get better, or good enough, so there's no point in practicing.

  But not so much self-confidence that you believe you don't need to practice.  And realism helps - we aren't all going to become the best at what we do, but almost everyone can become good or excellent at more things than they think they can.

This is a very interesting conundrum.  I have found that belief coupled with a lot of HARD WORK make you successful.  People want to pull the work out of this equation all the time.  These people who try out on "Idol" and only have belief are proof of this.  Many of them have never even been to a singing coach.  This is the same as believing that you can play hockey like Wayne Gretzky, but have never been ice skating a day in your life.  I believe that I am destined for great things.  But I must be willing to sacrifice, work hard, and compromise to make that happen.  Without the belief that I can be better, I wouldn't do the work.  In other words, I think that both belief and work are important.  The girl who is a back-up singer is different from a person in the working world in that so much of success in the music industry is about timing.  In business, success usually follows work.  In music, there are many who work hard and never make it; not because they didn't have enough talent or drive, but because they never got a break.  In business and in life, you make your breaks!   

Well said Jennifer.  I will say that in something like the music world, and many other creative industries, the more you work the more likely you are to get luckly.  You have to refine your talent, and put it out there, and do it and do it and do it and then maybe you'll get lucky.

Maybe you won't - but the more you work, the more likely it is that lightning will strike.

Charlie, this is my favourite post here yet (which is saying something).

I have several thoughts to add (later), but for now, I'll just point you at this fascinating and relevant article on the psychology of magic thinking.

Great thoughts all, I found myself nodding at each new entry.  And check out Shaula's link.

Now, given that most of us spend time working on trying to optimize this tradeoff for organizations—can anyone succinctly tell Brooks why he should be more sanguine?  There are certainly days on which I agree with him!

I worked for quite a long while for an underfunded software company that had, if nothing else, the uncanny ability to survive against a tall stack of odds. The company president and I would have a lot conversations in which I would lay out the issues I felt we needed to face up to, and which I also felt the Drew was deluding himself about, as he would always downplay or outright ignore them, and keep pretending that every thing was just fine.  One time he said to me, "In my moments of weakness, I think what you say is true." I replied, "Moments of weakness? Those are you moments of strength."

We were both right. As president, Drew had to put on a positive face with customers, employees, analysts, et al. As VP, and advisor-to-the-chief, I had to make sure we paid attention to the very serious problems on our plate so that we could continue to run the business. (Eventually, we were sold and the acquiring company pretty much put us out of our misery.)

As for American Idol, I won't let the fact that I don't watch the show stop me from commenting that they are being deliberately cruel and statistic to put people with limited talent (matched only by their lack of self-awareness) on the show for the sole purpose of humiliating them in front of a wide audience. Certainly, with all the people who audtion, there must be plenty enough to use only those who legitimately have a shot at stardom.

Make that "deliberately cruel and sadistic"  - not statistic. (That's what you get for empowering my incompetence as a commenter!)

That's a sadistic statistic...

But Maureen, don't you think that, first of all, if they screened out all the deluded ones, the show would lose more than half its pizzazz?  After all, people love to hate Simon.  I should think the ratings would drop through the floor if they just kept it to really good singers.

And, just personally, for me, I think Simon's great.  He tells the straight up truth in a world enamored of spin control and linguistic double-talk.  98% of shower stall singers really are awfully bad.

And he does have boundaries; he apologized for being gratuitously statistic (sorry, couldn't help it, sadistic) the other night.   He may be sadistic, but he does try to draw the line at being  gratuitously so.

Charlie - I'm completely talking through my hat here, as I don't watch Am. Idol, but from what I've seen of the clilps, the no- talents don't appear to be arrogant jerks, but just unfortunate schnooks (who must be completey surrounded by incompetent schnooks who do nothing to stop them).

On the other hand, I think I've heard Simon make the point that, by now everyone knows what they're in for, which is true. And he did apologize for gratuitous cruelty....

Yikes! You're making me want to actually watch the show.

I am suprised the author and commentators have not seen the link to faith based decisions made by our current president.  Or for that matter those that trust in God

Reality is reality, faith is faith, now I'll go buy a lotto ticket.  Knowing in reality I won't win but trusting in my faith being restored that there is an outside chance slim though it may be.

How do you tell whether your are deluded or whether people around you are just negative?  The American Idol contestants are lucky to get a chance to find out.  Even if you don't believe the judges, the camera doesn't lie.  Once you see yourself on TV, I'll bet you can see through the fog of self-delusion.  Thanks for the though-provoking article!