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Excuses... excuses...
ege02
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Sometimes it amazes me how much we are addicted to making excuses and seeking blame in other people or in our situation and condition. It always starts with "if only..."
If only my boss wasn't such a tool...
If only I weren't living in such a small city...
If only my kids weren't so rebellious...
If only I weren't born so poor...
If only I hadn't inherited such a temper from my dad...
If only my wife was more understanding...
If only I were making more money...
Stephen R. Covey, the author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, has the following to say about this:
I think that's what it ultimately comes down to: dodging responsibility; i.e. knowing the solution deep down inside, but not being brave or enthusiastic enough to strive for it. It is very disempowering to do it, and to most people this is very satisfying because it protects their ego from the possibility of failure.
At this point I have to state a disclaimer and say that I'm not suggesting that people are always to blame for their conditions. The poor certainly aren't to blame for their poverty, and you aren't to blame for being born in a small city. What I'm saying is that we almost always have a choice - especially in America - and we tend to choose the easy way out.
Covey follows this up with this paragraph:
FOCUS: What excuses have you made in the past, or do you regularly make, for your conditions or failures? Could you instead have assumed responsibility and realistically made your way through or around the obstacles on which you place the blame?
edit: added Covey's follow up
edit again because Aemilius is a grammar whore
If only my boss wasn't such a tool...
If only I weren't living in such a small city...
If only my kids weren't so rebellious...
If only I weren't born so poor...
If only I hadn't inherited such a temper from my dad...
If only my wife was more understanding...
If only I were making more money...
Stephen R. Covey, the author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, has the following to say about this:
Mr. Covey wrote:Blaming everyone and everything else for our problems and challenges may be the norm and may provide temporary relief from the pain, but it also chains us to these very problems. Show me someone who is humble enough to accept and take responsibility for his or her circumstances and courageous enough to take whatever initiative is necessary to creatively work his or her way through or around these challenges, and I'll show you the supreme power of choice.
I think that's what it ultimately comes down to: dodging responsibility; i.e. knowing the solution deep down inside, but not being brave or enthusiastic enough to strive for it. It is very disempowering to do it, and to most people this is very satisfying because it protects their ego from the possibility of failure.
At this point I have to state a disclaimer and say that I'm not suggesting that people are always to blame for their conditions. The poor certainly aren't to blame for their poverty, and you aren't to blame for being born in a small city. What I'm saying is that we almost always have a choice - especially in America - and we tend to choose the easy way out.
Covey follows this up with this paragraph:
Mr. Covey wrote:The children of blame are cynicism and hopelessness. When we succumb to believing that we are the victims of our circumstances and yield to the plight of determinism, we lose hope, we lose drive, and we settle into resignation and stagnation. "I am a pawn, a puppet, a cog in the wheel, and can do nothing about it. Just tell me what to do." So many bright, talented people feel this and suffer the broad range of discouragement and depression that follows. The survival response of popular culture is cynicism - "just lower your expectations of life to the point that you aren't disappointed by anyone or anything." The contrasting principle of growth and hope throughout history is the discovery that "I am the creative force of my life."
FOCUS: What excuses have you made in the past, or do you regularly make, for your conditions or failures? Could you instead have assumed responsibility and realistically made your way through or around the obstacles on which you place the blame?
edit: added Covey's follow up
edit again because Aemilius is a grammar whore
ege02 on
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"If you eat the ice cream, you're going to get fat. You don't want to be a loser, do you honey?"
I've got a very good repore with my bosses because of my frank honesty. If I've stuffed something up, I let them know about it and what I intend to do to fix it so it doesn't happen again etc. Builds up trust.
Also because I'm still fairly new to the metallurgy game, I'm allowed to make some mistakes and be flat-out told I'm "wrong" and for me to concede the point haha
I personally respect people A LOT more when they take responsiblity for their actions (both when they succeed and fail) and not blame/gossip about how so-and-so fucked up. Shows strength of character.
edit: this is to shinto
That said, I take complete responsibility for the poor choices that I've made in my life. Yes, my parents could have tried harder to make me into a better person, but ultimately, the work done in that area had to be done by me. And to be honest, I still turned out pretty damn well. Could I have turned out better? Possibly. Do I still have time to improve? Of course. I'm not dead yet.
On another note, I didn't know anyone was still listening to that 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. After being forced to attend seminars on it, Raving Fans, and dozens of other programs, I've become a bit of a cynic with regards to programs like that.
Well, if you're going to make the whole "pulling yourself up by one's bootstraps" argument, at least put more substance into it. I'm not a fan of witty comments that don't contribute to the discussion.
Weren't.
Not wasn't.
If I weren't...
No excuses!
It was suggested to me by one of my dad's friends, who is a very successful person. And I don't mean that in a sense that he makes a lot of money.
Not that some people aren't inspired by this sort of thing, and don't go on to do great things. It happens.
edit: I'm sure they guy who suggested it is a very successful not in terms of money person, but I still think it's bullshit.
I'm really unconvinced they do. It was my favorite high school question "do you have any examples of people who have turned their lives around by applying the steps in this program" "uh. Well you see I wanted to..." "So you applied the program of a motivational speaker to becoming a motivational speaker. Breathtaking."
It was fun torpedoing audience cooperation.
There is a focus for a reason you fuckers.
...I didn't read it... I mean, I was a huge procrastinator. But yeah, a lot of the things in that book are pretty common sense but the thing is a lot of people simply don't do them.
Re: "no excuses". That is pretty much correct. You have to own your own life and the circumstances in it. You can't control everything, but you do have influence and at least some levels of control over every aspect.
Personally I find that often this means having patience. I will think of something I want (not necessarily a physical thing.. more like greater responsibility, or better financial discipline, or going after that cute girl, etc), or a mentality I want to have I will always lament that I can't have it right now. So I just try to be patient and be responsible for the actions that will lead to what I want. And if I am not successful the first time, I try to learn from that and continue forward. Its all about patience.
What? An unbiased opinion? What are you doing in D&D lol.
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Yeah, all of it is common sense.
That's why it's hilarious when people speak against it.
edit: No one is speaking out against common sense. They are speaking out against paying someone else to explain it to you, like it's some god damned mystery of the universe.
The thing is some people need a bump in the right direction. Not all people are positive enough, motivated enough or intelligent enough (this reminds me of that Al Franken SNL skit from back in the day) to sit down and say "this is what is wrong with my life, my perspective is completely wrong, this is what I need to do". Some people need guidance.
No, there are a lot of things you wouldn't be able to come up with. Or at the very least it would take you a significantly longer amount of time and experience to figure it out on your own. That is what you people don't get. Nobody is arguing that one book will change your life magically overnight. That's basically a giant strawman that you're setting up.
And apparently it is somehow worthy of pity or even contempt to look for it in self-help books.
No, just by osmosis.
I've constantly made the excuse that the catch-22 of getting your first job and thus building work experience that can get you a job is the reason for my being unemployed. I guess I could lie on my resume?
I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with self-help per se. But you know, grain of salt and all that.
It's not a giant strawman, it's exactly the truth. There's a reason it takes a long time to come up with the idea on your own, because if you do you end up having to implement it - you change your character, you introspect, that sort of thing.
These messages are dismissible because they're generic - they don't answer anything, they don't encourage people to look at their character flaws and they're marketed so make sure you buy the book because that is the end goal - selling people the satisfaction that they've decided to change their life, not the means to do it and not necessarily the outcome either.
Some people have very little ability to influence their own lives, others are naturally able to get past ANYTHING.
Thing is, whichever you are is determined by your genetics and your reality.
Your force of will is, ultimately, beyond your control, including your will to find ways to bolster your will.
Of course, self-blame CAN motivate some people, so the notion has use. One just has to realize that it can also just lead to self-loathing and make things worse.
The OP captures most of it; most of the other lessons in 7 Habits and every other self-help book can be collapsed into 'take responsibility for changing your life.'
Once you've heard enough people say that, it starts to sound like more and more of a dumb cliche, but it doesn't make it bad advice.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
People are just calling it what it is; common sense sold a revolutionary concept (most likely with a side of bullshit). A regular self-help book if you will.
EDIT: To be fair Elks while googling this topic I stumbled across a serious psychology book's abstract which concluded that for many specific psychological issues self-help books could be very good, if only because they got people started thinking about how and why the react to things.
"The secrets of successful people" is in no such category.
By this logic, nobody should give advice to anyone, ever. Because hey, it's most likely shit you can figure out on your own - in fact, it is shit you should figure out on your own, right? By this very logic, marriage counseling, for example, is worthless because the counselor is selling common sense, and instead of paying him for it, you should sit through your troubles and wait until the solution dawns on you, right?
I disagree with both your promises here: that they don't encourage people to look at their character flaws, and the implied premise that because it is marketed in a way to make sure people buy it, the material itself is useless (which could easily pass as a fallacy).
Also, you were talking about strawmen, thanks for setting that one up. You know, ignoring that part in the quote tree you've got where I write "people would tell that stuff for free".
The reason these books are looked down on is because there are either people who don't need to hear what they're saying, or people who do. And since the people who do haven't been motivated to change their lives by the actual everyday suckiness of those lives, what chance does a book realistically have of changing their mind?
Like I said in the chat thread last week, my bookstore was full of these things, and more kept coming in all the time, being sold by people who did not seem very successful or happy. There were ones from nearly every decade of the last century, and they all essentially said the same things. And those things are true! If you want to succeed, you need clear goals, a plan to meet those goals, a willingness to resist your own worst impulses, and the dedication to see that plan through. That is all one hundred per cent true and nobody here would gainsay it.
But whether you think so or not, lots of people do know this stuff. It's just harder to do than it sounds. Most fat people aren't fat because they don't know that a twinky is bad for them - they know it perfectly well, they just aren't willing to not eat it. So even though I know you mean well, people are going to bristle when someone waves a book like this at them because they're going to perceive an insult - "what, do you think I'm an idiot?"
Most of what I've seen of therapy is about letting someone work their way through things on their own with the occasional gentle nudge of support.
Yes, and I'm saying that how the book is marketed doesn't say anything about its content. To say that is sort of an "ad bookinem", if you will.
Oh, ELM, it's not a strawman, it's exactly the truth!
On a serious note, people would tell you that stuff for free, but for that, you have to know what question to ask. At the age of 22, I certainly don't.
I can sit down and ask myself, "how can I make my life better?" and I can come up with some basic answers like, "stop procrastinating" or "stop wasting so much time in D&D". But not much more than that. Furthermore, I wouldn't know how to go about actually following through with those somewhat broad solutions, or how to break them into more manageable chunks, or stuff like that. So yeah, I have a general idea about how to improve my life, but for inspiration and motivation I talk to successful people that I know, and I read self-help books that have helped successful people.
Not that they (therapists) don't serve other functions for other people a lot of the time.
That aside it seems to me many people make excuses for what they feel they can't change as a way of reducing stress. We live in a very high stress society and every little bit people can write off as not their fault or something they can't change at least temporarily reduces how much they worry about it. Of course in the long run doing that fucks you over horribly as everything builds up, but people tend to think and plan in the short term.
Certainly there are other functions, and obviously they have gads more knowledge and experience.
But a huge amount of what they do is get paid to be a good friend instead of the lousy ones most people have.
You, my friend, haven't seen the right therapists. Look at Albert Ellis and all of his followers, the guy that did Rational Emotive Therapy. Those fuckers will tell you you're a stupid twat. Not quite as bad as Dr. Phil, but still.
A teenager snuck out of the house, met up with a bunch of friends, stole a car, and went joyriding in it. The kid driving took a blind corner and slammed it into a train that was sitting at an intersection waiting to pull into station. Half the kids died.
Parents response?
"That train should have been lighted up properly!! They wouldnt have slammed the stolen car they were joyriding in into it if it had been properly marked!!!"
Yeah.
I blame laywers and their compelling, lottery like promise of winning millions from punitive damages lawsuits.
Because making a discussion fun doesn't contribute to it. Every conversation has to be serious business or else it's stupid and pointless. Duh.
irt excuses;
There's a happy medium here. True, blaming everything on everyone else is pretty damned irresponsible and immature, but insisting that everything bad that happens is your fault is a symptom of a psychological disorder. I tend more toward the latter, but some things actually are other people's fault, like the death of my first car. If only that idiot knew how to drive at all and hadn't decided to go for a four-car combo...