Charles Wrote: “I’m an idiot, you’re an idiot. So let’s get over it, let’s work together and let’s do something great.”"

What a great quote.  I think I'm going to add this to my business cards.    Great post as always.

Among other modalities and mind-body-spirit studies and traditions, spiritual psychology is one of the foundations of my professional and personal coaching work. In this context I'd like to share another perspective on the notion of the "I'm OK, You'reOK", "think happy", " positive psychology" approach to life and living.

In much of the recent literature and blogs devoted to positivity and happiness, there seems to be a tendency that when one is experiencing a negative or unpleasant emotional or feeling state of some kind, there is supposed to be a conscious effort to move away from that negative or unpleasant state, to create a shift, to create a state of happiness, or pleasure, or positivity by thinking and/or by doing something to take one away from the negativity or unpleasantness...to "force" one's self to be "OK" .

I am not judging those who write of their experiences and efforts. I honor that as their truth and what is right for them.

In my own process and spiritual studies, work and practice, and that with my coaching clients and colleagues, we view this effort of "movement away" as counter to personal and spiritual growth and counter to overall emotional and spiritual development. Why?

Our Soul is continually presenting us with circumstances, events, people, places, experiences, etc., that our "mind" interprets as negative, uncomfortable, unpleasant, etc. As a result we experience states of depression, sadness, guilt, shame, anger, frustration, envy, resentment, illness, dis-ease, etc. 

In my perspective, our Soul is offering us these opportunities for it's own growth and development, i.e., our emotional and spiritual maturation and evolution; these experiences are tests of a sort to see if we are learning our spiritual lessons.

To turn away from, to resist, these unpleasant and "not OK" experiences, in order to  move to a state of "often "fau&xquot;) happiness, or pleasure, that is, to force a "shift" of some kind is counter productive to our Soul's growth and development.

Our Soul did not design the "positive psychology", "positive thinking" "fake it 'til you make it" strategies  or tactics that promise us happiness, positivity, wealth and success if we just keep positive, perhaps repeating simplistic affirmations, or engage in some other seemingly "positive" experience that creates the appearance or feeling of happiness, or a new "shift" into another realm of positivity. For me, this is manipulative; it's ego...the egoic mind working, not our deeper self, and true personal change and transformation does not result from a "mental, egoic" action or thought. It results from deeper, inner work on one's self.

The purpose of the discomfort, of the uncomfortable state or feeling, is an opportunity to grow our soul to grow by going "through" it, not around it. The only way we can grow our soul, and experience true and real emotional and spiritual maturation, is by going into and through the "hole" of fear, sadness, lack, deficiency, anger, etc., and see what clarity we get by exploring it, going into it with curiosity, as an adventure, not by judging ourselves as bad or wrong for having the feeling state or emotion, and certainly not by "fixing" it, denying it, resisting it or by changing our immediate experience.

Our emotional journey is critical to our growth and development. Our emotions are an essential part of the communication system of and with our soul. Our emotions, our dark side, our shadow side, are doorways leading to insights and awareness of root causes of our "not being OK".

It's important from a growth perspective to be able to sense, feel and stay present to our emotions in our body without moving into our mind to "figure it out", or move to another mental or emotional state and "try to be OK".

It's important to trust the "inquiry" process (moving into the emotions, the feeling state) knowing and trusting that our soul has a medium within which it can transmit information, insight, and clarity, known as "right knowing," "right action" and "right understanding."

We cannot access this all-important clarity when we bypass the doorway through which we must enter to "know" what's underneath the emotional or feeling state. Mentally, "figuring it out", rationalizing it to explain it away, moving into another "activity" (e.g., doing "good") to escape our experience does no good in the long term. Whatever it was that caused us to want to move away, will return again and again until we go into it, digest it, metabolize it and see it for what it is.

Being physically embodied, sensing into our bodies, and being attuned to our soul makes it possible to be accurately guided (read: guided by our Soul, not our "logical mind") by our feelings.

When we are connected to our instincts in our emotional body, they align us with what is natural and flowing. Without this instinctual connection to listen to and heal ourselves, we will not arrive at true and real inner peace and well be-ing. Integrated body/mind/emotional consciousness brings us peace of mind, calms our nervous system, aligns us with optimal circumstances and relationships, and attunes us to our own soul.

For me, the positive psychology, and ssimilar movements, are mostly about moving away, not moving toward. "Moving away", rejecting, resisting our immediate experience,  is often, for some, an easy, quick and simple way to experience the appearance of shift to happiness. However, for me and my clients, such simple ways for becoming "positive", "happy" etc., are really more about not wanting to experience sadness, unhappiness, depression, upset, etc., the result of which is that wer now geing to "effot" to be happy...not a natural state of the soul. Happiness should not require effort and doing...happiness is an an organic state that arises when we are OK with what is, in the moment, good, bad or indifferent.  

We must experience our downside, our shadow side, our dark side,  in order to experience the true and real upside.  When we don't explore the downside, the negative emotional and feeling states,  life is more often than not, for many, a manic, high-low experience...driven by the mind, the ego and not by the soul. Thus, why the mind and the ego are never really ever satisfied, really ever "OK" and like anay progresisve drug, need more and more to satiate the ego's need for so-called happiness. 

"Know thyself" is a paramount principle for emotional and spiritual growth and maturation, folr true and real happiness. We cannot "know thyself" when we avoid, evade, deny, and resist our immediate experience and "try" to move into a state of positivity. For me, this is, again, the appearance of positivity but not the soul's quality of positivity, inner peace, groundedness, settledness.

Our Soul encourages us to face and accept our limitations, our downside, our unpleasant experiences as well as our gifts. It's important that we embrace and live our life according to who we are, in the moment, as unpleasant as that might be. When we learn to see the unpleasant, the discomfort, the pain and the suffering in terms of this broader Soul's perspective, we can also experience a sense of relief, strength, courage self love and compassion, as opposed to, "I don't like this; I need to do something get away from it." And, note the "I" here is the ego, the little "i"; not our True and Real Self.

Our Soul's development teaches us that we are continually challenged by life. The question is not how to avoid our tests (cheat on our tests), avoid our pain and suffering. The question is how we consciously choose deal with them. Our attitude here is critical for self-healing, for personal evolution and manifestation. Resignation, resentment, resistance  and the need to move away from the uncomfortable and unpleasant conquer us and keep us emotionally and spiritually small, afraid, feeling deficient and resistant.  Our intentionality and commitment to "do the work", to inquire into our immediate experience, with curiosity and a sense of adventure to see what we discover, combined with inner strength, courage, self-discipline, stick-to-it-ive-ness and compassion can work wonders..leading to our Soul's emotional and spiritual growth and development and to true and real shift. That is, if we choose to. Life is choices.

Life continually presents us with choices. Our choice is to either learn from our immediate experiences, by delving into it, or remain a victim, and avoid, and move away, onle to have the "not OK" experiences come back over and over, again and again.

We can be defeated by our immediate experience, pain, suffering, discomfort, etc., by the negativity in our own psyche or, we can become so strong that we are capable of dealing with the immediate. We can access our inner courage and strength and internalize our power. By choosing to move into our experience, we can become wise and find contentment in the power of our soul's authority.

Life is choices. We can choose to move into and through our deepest, unpleasant challenging feeling states and "not OK" emotional experiences and transform toward a more consistently emotionally and spiritually mature individual, or move around them...leading to having the appearance of happiness...an appearance that demands continuous and constant efforting, i.e., continually "trying" to do something, to experience happiness....as opposed to organically experiencing happiness as it arises just by nature of who we are without any need to consciously, and from a ego perspective, trying to "make it happen." Efforting never really, really results in true and real "OK-ness". Usually results justin more efforting....not unlike Sisyphus.

Charlie:

First of all, your new website is fabulous—very elegant.  I'm jealous!

What does I"M NOT OK / YOU'RE NOT OK mean for the relationship between a speaker and her audience?  Does it help or hinder the relationship?

If the speaker sees the audience as NOT OK (i.e., uninformed, wrong on the issues, etc) there is a danger that the audience will reciprocate, and experience the speaker as a NOT OK arrogant twit.

If the speaker considers herself  NOT  OK, (uninformed, unqualified, etc) but doesn't say it, she will most likely suffer anxiety because she feels inadequate.  The audience will probably read that and conclude politely that she is not the authority they were hoping for.

If she does disclose to the audience that she is NOT OK (i.e., not really certain of her information) she also undermines her credibility and the audience's trust in her.

I think audience's like confidence in a speaker.  They don't like mealy-mouthed presenters.  They want to be inspired, entertained, and informed.  They are content- driven, time-pressed, and results-oriented.  The purpose of presenting is to induce belief and raise belief to the level of action.  We want our speakers to be more than OK.  We want them to be FABULOUS!

W.B. Yeats said, "I don't think anyone ever convinces us by force of reasoning, but rather because he is visibly enjoying the beliefs he wants us to accept."

What audience will follow a weak trumpet?  We're sitting there as audience members hoping to be taken out of ourselves.  We want to know the speaker—I think audiences crave intimacy with speakers—but we don't want to know that they're NOT OK.

In other words, there is a strong need for surface in presenting, just as there is a need for substance and structure.

Yes, you win hearts with self-disclosure, but only if you disclose entertaining tidbits.  You can poke fun at yourself (always an endearing tactic) but if you're out from under the cover of humor, speaker NOT OK-NESS is a real turn-off for the audience.

Wow.  Interesting takes on the thought. 

Over at  Brett Rogers' BeatCanvas blog, which tracked back to this posting, he put it this way:

What really happens if we lower our expectations of each other and forgive each other now and in advance and often and set about accomplishing the remarkable? It's the goal, not the process, that counts, and it will be wonderfully messy along the way - and we'll have a great time and maybe achieve the fantastic.

There's freedom in being able to be an idiot. There's freedom in others who allow us to be idiots - and love us anyway. There's freedom in accepting the idiocy of others.

Conformists never change the world. Those "stupid" enough to try something different do change the world. Yes, it might look like idiocy in the process, but the results can be breathtaking.

That's the sense of things I had in mind.  I love Eric's enthusiasm, but I doubt he will actually put it on his business card, and if you're tempted to do so Eric, let me talk you out of it!  

Sims, along with Eric, is suggesting the limits of my "idiocy proclamation," that it falls down in the arena of public speech.  I think his point is well taken; we aren't generally encouraged by managers who exhibit severe self-doubt when we expect them to behave as leaders.

Although, just to push the debate, isn't that what standup comics do?  Or really good speakers?  When Seinfeld's first line is "What is with cabdrivers and BO?" we laugh because it's a shared intimacy.  

Nonetheless, to be clear, I think I'm describing an attitude, a mindset, a moving away from the view that, as Peter put it, the negative is to be shunned.

The mechanics of how you deliver the message are up to each of us situationally, and it's probably a whole lot better one on one in a bilateral conversation than it is one-to-many in a unilateral speech.  

What a great title! What a great article. I wish I could link to this article from my blog, but nobody visits my blog (about mergers & acquisitions) to learn wisdom. They only want folly. As a purveyor of complex intangible services, I am happy to have discovered your site. Keep writing! TED

Talk about great titles!  Check out TED whose blog title is an oxymoron, and whose topics include "the ghost in the machine" and "ad hominem." 

-a fan

Great post! This is an excellent analysis of how I eventually come to feel every time I'm in a customer service role. The contempt I find myself feeling for the very people who are the lifeblood of my job truly bothers me, because in general, I am not a jaded or unhappy person. Most of the tiume in my life, I really *am* "OK," and yet the repeat examples of clinical stupidity leave me speechless and angry. Thus we have a strange paradox, a logical breakdown:
  I like helping people.
  My job is to help stupid people.
  When I have to help stupid people, I don't like it.
The buy-in you talk about, where you acknowledge the stupidity on both sides, has served me well in my customer service roles as well as my writing roles. It is the core concept I work from when I write documentation. I have to assume that my readers are not actually *stupid*, but rather that this knowledge is foreign to them, and they've become frustrated by it before they even seek my help (it helps right now to remember that my customers are doctors and medical students).
Knowing how hard it is for me to hear anything coherent when I'm frustrated helps me when I have to help them, and more importantly: it keeps the contempt out of my relationship with them.

My first time at this great blog, sorry for the comment spam—

My wife knows my mindset: that I'm the POE*, and as such, I accept all that I encounter as the way of things.  Cosomology teaches that every human effort means less than nothing and can never mean anything more, while metaphysics teaches that every human interaction and every thought lives always and everywhere. 

So the approach boils down to "I'm OK or I'm not, and your OK or your not- all that matters is how you and I feel about it at this moment". 

*POE= pinnacle of evolution

    

Welcome Stephanie and Martin. 

Stephanie, I love the paradox, and how you  "keep the contempt out of my relationship with them."

Martin, I'm a P.O.E. too, a legend in my own mind.  I love the subjectivist cosmology, and no way you're a comment-spammer.

Again, welcome both.