That’s a nice acronym.   It’s catchy.   It’s also not true.

Calling it False Evidence is saying that fear is an illusion or a lie.  Lies are made of words.  Fear is an emotion.

We can create fear as a reaction to believing illusions, lies, or false evidence.  But fear is not the illusion or false evidence.  There is the illusion we imagine in our mind, and then there is the emotion we create as a reaction.  Of course we only react with emotion when we believe it to be real.  It’s that believing part that makes the illusion APPEAR real.   You could say that we make the illusion appear real.   In any case, there is the appearance of things, and then there is how we create emotion as a reaction.

We can also create fear as a reaction to something that is a very real.  If you are flying in an airplane and it has an emergency where it is losing altitude you are likely to feel fear.  You don’t have to panic, but fear is probably going to be there.  The evidence isn’t false.  It’s real and the fear is too.   Evidence is not the same as emotion.  Not all fear is from false evidence, and so our catchy phrase about what fear is false at times.

A person can also come to complete acceptance of their mortality and the letting go of their body when they come face to face with death.  In this case there is evidence of something real like the passing of their body, and yet no fear.  Perhaps that is because in that moment there exists no presence of any illusions about death.  There is a only a complete presence and acceptance of a coming experience for their body.  Without making up any beliefs about death there is no fear.

Fear is not False Evidence.  Nor is Fear Evidence Appearing Real.   We can create fear as  a reaction to false evidence or real experience.  Fear is an emotion we create.  It is often created as a reaction to things, but with enough awareness it doesn’t have to be.

They definition of fear is kind of catchy.  The problem with catchy is there’s usually too much distortion in those catchy phrases.  The phrase about Fear being False Evidence Appearing Real is at least pointing our attention to the fact that we may be reacting to an illusion.  On the other hand,,, the catchy phrase itself is also false and misleading testimony about fear.  The result is that, at best, we are dispelling one illusion in our mind while we are creating another.

For other insights, listen to the Free Audio

For a step by step program in identifying and changing core beliefs, listen to the audio in the Self Mastery Course. The first few sessions are free.

As you learn to live a happier life one of the things that will change is the quality of communication.  Probably one of the most fearfully corrupt areas of communication is sales and marketing.  I know this because I used to work in sales.  Once you learn to overcome this fear filled area of dealing with sales people you will be much wiser about making decisions with your money.

Sales and marketing is typically use fear and emotional abuse.  Often it is so subtle we don’t notice the specifics of it.  Because we are not aware of the specifics of it, we can be taken advantage of.  We may not know the details of how we are being maneuvered, but we know we don’t like it when it is happening.

Marketers and sales people are not really motivated to change their end of the communication.  The way they manipulate and maneuver people’s emotions puts food on their table. That means that changing the quality of communication is our responsibility.  And this we can do by being aware of the subtle ways that sales people operate and how we react to them.  As we become wise to their emotional hooks, dealing with sales people can be fun, and even entertaining.  We’ll also have to let go of our judgments of what they are doing, but that just benefits us.  But maybe what you will notice as the greatest practical importance is that you will be able to keep a lot more of your own money.

Fear of Losing Money

Spending money is a behavior, and most behaviors are emotionally driven.  Then it comes as no surprise that sales people use emotions to get you to spend money. Specifically, they use your emotional reactions to sell you their products and services.  If you become more aware of your emotions, and the beliefs that trigger your emotional reactions then you will make better decisions with your money.

There are two principle mechanisms that sales people use to transfer your money into their pocket.  They are the emotions of fear and excitement or hope.

The most common hook used by sales people is fear.  It’s most often used because it is most effective.  An obvious example is for home alarm security systems with slogans, “Don’t let this happen to you.”  Which,,, when you consider the question, causes your mind to imagine it happening to you and experience fear in the process.  It’s then followed up by a mention of their product as a means of safety from the fear that they have just proposed to you.

The planting and activation of seeds of fear in your mind get much more subtle than that.  Another common phrase,,, “Don’t miss out.”  This of course plays on our fear of missing out, and at a more subtle level, the fear of being left out.  In these scenarios it is our imagination doing the work by creating the scenario and having an emotional reaction to the scenario we imagine.

Our imagination can be an extraordinary amplifier.  It takes only a few words of suggestion and our imagination can build a scenario that is a whole virtual reality of the experience.  It comes complete with images of people, animated stories, dialog, back story, and within seconds can rapidly project months into the future.  We then perceive the scenario our mind imagines and have an emotional reaction to the virtual reality that we just experienced.  And all of this can happen with just a few words of suggestion as a trigger.

What is important to note that sometimes those trigger words for that fear based virtual reality scenario don’t come from anybody else.  Sometimes those trigger words are from our own thoughts.

One of the words that I use to describe the scenario of our imagination is “dream.”  I often use the word dream to describe what goes on in our imagination because it includes emotion as well as the other elements of audio, visual, and tactile experiences that our imagination can create.

Today’s Current Example:  Being Sold On Health Care Fears

A current day practical example of a fearful sales pitch is going on in the health care debate.  One phrase being used is “Don’t let government come between you and your doctor.”  The implied message there is that change is bad.  Also implied in the message is that government is bad and can’t be trusted.  What it fails to mention is that a large profit driven corporation, (ie. an insurance company) is already in between you and your doctor.  Personally I find it a conflict of my health interest when their profits increase as they restrict, or deny me health care.   But I digress.

The point is that when we hear that phrase about “government coming between you and your doctor”,  our mind is tempted to run with the scenario.  However, the more awareness we have, the more scrutiny and skepticism we apply, and the more points of view we consider, the less likely we are to fall into that dream of fear.

Sales Pitch of Fear

We could cover all the hidden messages of fear for a while, but that would get boring. It’s more important for you to become aware of the way your mind generates scenarios and creates unpleasant emotions when trigger phrases are used.  More importantly, what does your mind do once it starts to create fear?

Once you begin to generate unpleasant emotions, your mind then reacts a second time to try to make you feel better.  This is a natural emotional and mental instinct to be happy, but the way we have been conditioned is to comfort our selves with a “feel better” behavior.  When we were little the “better behavior” was usually being suggested by our parents.  Later it was suggested by people pushing our buttons.  People have an emotional reaction of anger to us, and then tell us what we should do so they can stop blaming us.  As we became consumers it became a “feel better” product offered by marketers as a solution to the fearful seeds they planted.

In all these patterned behaviors we learn the habit of doing what other people want in order to make our selves feel better.  After years of this of looking for other people to tell us what we should do, we hardly ask the question anymore, “What do I want?”

The point is that these emotionally comforting behaviors and products that others suggest haven’t solved the problem of feeling uncomfortable.  They’ve only shifted our attention briefly from the proposed fear we imagined.  Our fears remain because the beliefs that created our fears go unaddressed.  Our imagination still operates in essentially the same way of producing fearful dreams and scenarios that we believe.  They get triggered again when we hear or think similar thoughts.  This leads to more of the same emotions and behavior patterns in the future.

The problem isn’t just with what others say.  That’s only half.  The other half of the problem with fear is the way that our mind dreams.  Changing the way other people communicate with you is not going to be very effective.  You’ll have much better success making changes in your own mind than you will have in their behavior.

Changing the Fearful Pattern of Being Sold

The important point is that you learn to be aware of the subtle changes in your emotions.  With that awareness of your emotions you can begin to dismantle the beliefs that cause you to react.  In this way you detach your self from the power sales people or others appear to have over you.

I say “appear” because the power of control is really yours.  The real power is behind your own emotional beliefs.  The trigger phrases of sales people and your own thoughts are just that, triggers.  It’s only when we have these fear based beliefs that we have triggers available that others can push.

When you no longer respond in a fearful way to the seeds of marketers and sales people, then they will have to change the way they communicate with you.

If we change the way we listen and interpret, and therefore how we feel about what people say, then other people will change the way they communicate with us. Yes it’s kind of backwards, but the truth is like that sometimes.

There are practical exercises in for dismantling the fear based beliefs in your mind available in the Self Mastery Audio Program. The first few sessions are free.

What is your definition of happiness?

Happiness is a state of emotion. Happiness can be experienced in many different variations such as euphoric laughter, the spiritual bliss of overwhelming love, or just a calm quiet peace. One indicator of happiness is how little chatter there is in your internal dialog. In the happiest moments of your life, you are not thinking. You might have been keenly aware of what was going on with your self, or fully engaged in the situation around you, but your mind was probably very quiet.

What are some important factors in achieving happiness? Why?

The most important factor in achieving happiness is the expression of your love coming out of you. It is expressing the emotion of love that creates the various forms of happiness. That’s a very simple answer, and very natural to do as a child, but as one grows older it becomes more difficult. As people grow older they acquire many fear based beliefs in their mind.

If you are not happy, and you want to be, then the important thing is to identify and dissolve the fear based beliefs in your mind. This is not a one step process. It will require that you develop and practice skills of identifying false beliefs in your mind, and detaching from them. Once you detach from your fears it will be easier to express your love. One of the skills you will need to do this is the control over your attention. Some people learn this from meditation, but there are many other ways.

Do you believe that money can buy happiness? Why or why not?

Money can buy a very basic level of happiness. In this society money is the means for your basic physical needs, such as food and shelter. It is very difficult to be happy, peaceful, and calm when your body is hungry, and without shelter. It is possible but very difficult. There is usually too much primal and instinctual survival fear to overcome in order to be happy.

Once you have enough money to address your basic needs, then money has very little impact on your happiness. That is why many people are still unhappy even though they have everything they need. There are many wealthy and even successful people who are depressed, some even to the point of being suicidal.

After supplying you with basic survival, money doesn’t dissolve any of the fear based beliefs in the mind that interfere with expressing love.

If you were given $500,000 dollars to spend on ANYTHING to make you happy, what would be the most effective choice to use the money on? Why?

The love coming out of me is independent of the activity of trading cash for material things. I’m already happy. Spending money wouldn’t do anything for my happiness. I’d much rather invest it. I have everything that I need. If I invest it wisely I will have what I need for a rainy day as well.

How would you spend the $500,000 if it were entirely up to you? (Regardless of how your happiness would benefit?) Why?

Again, I would invest the money. If you told me that I had to spend it, I would buy stocks or real estate.

If it does, what role does religion (having faith in a God) play in achieving happiness?

If you perceive yourself as one single human in the world and look out at the immensity and the apparent chaos of the world, you can easily feel overwhelmed and powerless. There’s a comfort in believing that there’s a force out there orchestrating it all in a sensible way. This is just one way.

What does having a religion benefit in terms of self happiness? What does it take away?

Religion or spiritual groups can be very supportive for people when they are in need. A community of people is our human nature and we are generally happier interacting with a community. Churches and religions can provide this community that much of society is without.

Religion also impacts people in other ways. One of the dynamics of the mind is that it asks a lot of questions. The mind wants to know an answer all the esoteric questions that it generates, such as, Why are we here? or What happens when the body dies? Religions provide people answers to the many questions that the mind asks. When the mind has an answer its’ “need to know” is satisfied. This satisfaction of the mind can help a person to feel better. However the part of the mind that has a “need to know”, doesn’t care if the answer is the truth or not. Because of this many people accept answers and walk around with religious beliefs that are false.

For instance one of the beliefs that people can have is that God might punish them in Hell after their body dies. This is a lie. If people believe this lie, then they live in fear and unhappiness their whole life for something that will never happen. In spite of this fear, their mind feels secure that it knows what will happen. The real comfort from all of this is the Truth and Love. Truth and Love transcend that mind’s need to have an answer.

Do you believe religious people are generally happier (or unhappier) than non-religious people? Why or why not?

Studies have shown that people who participate in a religious organization are statistically happier than those who don’t have any spiritual affiliation. One of the reasons for this is that it creates an environment where they can express their love in numerous ways. It is the expression of love that creates happiness for a person, not the religion. A person without religion can take a walk in nature and love all the beauty in nature. Just by walking in nature they can achieve happiness with no beliefs at all.

If it does, what role does having healthy relationships (friends, family, coworkers) play in achieving happiness?

The more people you have around you that you can express your love to the happier you are. Your friends and your family won’t make you happy, but expressing your love for them will. If you are an judgmental and angry person then having more people around will give you more opportunities to be judgmental and angry. It’s really not about the people around you, but how you express your self with them.

What is the ideal background/environment to grow up in to being a happier person in the future?

The ideal environment is to grow up in an environment where your parents are happy, unconditionally loving, and accepting. Even then, they will still have to give you boundaries and teach you about punishment and reward. Very few people have this experience. Even if you have this from one parent it is very rare. I haven’t met anyone who has had that perfect childhood. The truth is that at a certain point you realize it doesn’t really matter how you grew up. What matters is right now, and what you will do about being happy in your life now. At a certain point everyone leaves behind the guidance of parents and has to take responsibility for their own emotions.

What is your view on married couples being happier than people who are single? In a general sense, do you believe it is true or false? Why?

The studies have proven that married people are statistically happier than single people. However this is a general statistic and marriage is no guarantee. The Dalai Llama is a single man, and he is a master of happiness. There are also married couples who then get divorced, and that break up can be very painful.

In intimate relationships you have an opportunity to express your love in so many ways. It is the expression of your love for your partner that will make you happy. A single person might not have as many opportunities during a regular day, so a married person that you love and see often is a big advantage to being happy.

However a person can also use their relationship as an opportunity to be selfish. They will attempt to get their partner to satisfy their emotional needs and needs for attention. If you are with a partner like this then you might be happier being single.

Clarification – The Happiness of Children

The point here is that there is no magic formula for happiness. These questions about marriage, money, religion, and God assume a relationship between your emotions and something other than your self. The questions assume that happiness is associated with something external to you. It’s not that complicated. Emotions are something that you create. It only looks like your emotions are determined by external things because of the habits of emotional reactions you have learned to external things and people.

Children don’t know about God, religion, money, or marriage, however children are naturally happy. They are happy because their mind is not filled with fear based beliefs. They have little or no judgments, they don’t believe they are right, they don’t blame others, and their mind isn’t filled with worries of what others will think of them. They have very few or no habits based on these beliefs. Because their mind has very little fear they are free to express their love in whatever they are doing. For them it is easy to be happy. They don’t need money, but they do need their physical needs met. They don’t need marriage, or a religious group, but they do need someone to express their love to.

Wisdom and Awareness for Lasting Happiness

As an adult, if you really want to be happy, you will have to dissolve the fears, and fear based beliefs in your mind. As adults you do not have the choice to be innocent like children, but you can be free of fear. To do this you will have to control the opinions and knowledge in your mind instead of letting it control you. To free your self from fear, you will have to become wise. It is through this wisdom, or what I call awareness, that you can live in a vast, unfathomable world, and be happy.

What got you interested in studying happiness and your journey? What made you want to share your knowledge?

Being happy became my number one priority in 1994. I had just broken up with my girlfriend and was miserable. I had also just left my career where I had been overworked and was burned out. My career and relationship had left me disillusioned. I realized that I had made my happiness dependent on these two external sources. I let both of these sources be driven by other people, and they drove them into misery.

I decided that I wanted to be happy no matter what. It became my number one priority. I decided that I would figure out what was in my unconscious decision making process led me to be unhappy and I’d change it no matter what. Two weeks later I met my mentor, don Miguel Ruiz. He taught me how to find and dissolve false beliefs and the fear in my mind. He taught me to open my heart and love with no conditions.

Several years later, I took time to thank him for all he had done for me. I asked if there was anything I could do for him in return. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and said “No, I’m already happy.” Then after a pause he said, “But if you want to, you can go and share what you have learned with other people so that they can be happy too. If you want to of course, it’s just a choice.”

I would really appreciate your help with a question. I’m graduating from high school this year and trying to figure out what I should do.

When reading about your background, I noticed that you have a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I have been accepted to a University for that very program. I’m going into engineering because of the many doors it opens and for the money but I don’t feel optimistic about it. I think I would prefer to do a skilled trade. I’m afraid I will get stuck doing a monotonous job if I don’t go to University however.

You said that you had a miserable career because you went into engineering? I would value your opinion on this: Should I get a degree in engineering? How does it affect your life in terms of relationships, etc.? I’m really worried – I don’t want to lead myself down a path of misery.

Thank you, Alex

Dear Alex with a Future,

I didn’t have a miserable career experience because I studied engineering. I’m not sure how that got interpreted. Engineering is an education that has served me very well in many ways. It was a conglomeration of things that created my misery at that time in my life. The biggest factor was that I was unaware of the world of emotions and beliefs that I was living in my mind.

The second biggest factor was working 80-100 hours a week at something that I wasn’t enjoying any more. I enjoyed it for a number of years, loved the challenges, and the action. (Ran nuclear power plants and drove an aircraft carrier) But not having balance or time to do things that I enjoyed eventually left me drained and unfulfilled. (I should note that I didn’t have time to discover what things I enjoyed.)

At the time I didn’t understand the importance of putting my happiness as a priority. I had just assumed that if I was successful, and in the “right” relationship, then I would be happy as a consequence. This was a set up for a big disillusionment.

“Should I get a degree in engineering?”

Expecting someone to answer this question is disrespectful to your self. You are the only one that is responsible for the decisions you make. Other people are not. You will live with the consequences of your choices. No one else will. Make the decision for your self and not because someone else says it is a good idea or not.

At the same time be aware of your inexperience at making such choices and take the time to consider what other experienced people have to say. They will have awareness and insights that you have not yet accumulated. This can be of great benefit. Always remember, in the end, it is your decision.

Planning for an Unknown Future

In working through a decision that involves such a long time frame, recognize that you can’t know the future. Therefore you can’t know if it is the “right” decision before you take action. Some roads you have to go down, explore and see if they work for you.

For this reason it is most important to give your self the freedom to change your direction later. Your comment, “I don’t want to lead myself down the path of misery,” sounds like it has assumptions based in fear of being trapped. That fear alone will paralyze you from taking any action. It also sounds as if you are not allowed to change your choice once you commit to it. This kind of mindset and inflexibility in your choices is what creates the feeling of being trapped.

What is an Education For?

My technical education has served me well and still does. I’m comfortable learning programming on my own website because of programming classes in college. One of the ways I see the structure of people’s belief systems is much like a mechanical engineering system. I see how different parts of the mind interact and trigger one another as if it were diagrammed in a schematic. In school I learned how to think in terms of inter-related systems. That skill helps me to understand things like emotional dynamics in relationships. It turns out that I learned a lot of skills in my engineering classes that could be used elsewhere.

Getting an education doesn’t mean you are limited to working in that field. One of my favorite jobs was in sales. I got to visit different customers and help them solve their problems. It was like learning a new puzzle and solving it every other day. The job was a sales job, but it was made easy because of my technical competence and experience in engineering. It was at that time I discovered the challenge of working with people and my interest piqued in that area. That is something that I couldn’t have known before and only found through discovery and exploration from technical sales.

If you think of an education or degree as something that locks you into a career for the rest of your life, then you will feel trapped, and sabotage the opportunity.

But what happens if you see education as preparation for a journey into unknown worlds ahead? Twenty years ago there wasn’t an internet, and only a few people worked in computers. You don’t know what new fields of business and science will emerge in the next 20 or 40 years. No one does. The most prepared for success may very well be the most flexible and creative minds. How will you prepare your mind in this adventure of life?

How can you best prepare your self to adapt to a changing world? This is what an education is for. (Many educators don’t take this approach.) The goal of an education is not to limit you into one small area defined by a degree. One of the goals of an education is to make you more prepared and more adaptable to any area of life.

Consider these two scenarios in terms of flexibility, opportunity, and choices. If you get a college degree, how easily can you transition into a trade. If you go into a trade, how easy is it to transition into management, or engineering later?

You have choices

You can’t know if something isn’t good for you until you check it out. At 18 I chose mechanical engineering as a major even though I wasn’t even sure what mechanical engineers did. I just wanted to know how things worked. I couldn’t have understood what I was getting into until I got into it.

It is only once you have experience that you can make an informed choice. The irony is that you can’t get that experience until you make uninformed choices. That informed choice may very well be to get out and find a different path. But at least at that point it is an informed choice. That’s what happened for me in the military, and in a couple other pursuits. I got excited and got going on something and when I learned more about it, I decided it wasn’t for me. With each new experience I was able to make better choices. You can’t predict the future. You can’t know what will be most fulfilling for you in your life and what won’t. That’s one of the exciting parts of discovery in this adventure. See the Dan Gilbert video about people’s expectations on happiness for more on this point.

What should I do after I Graduate?

Some people approach questions like this as if they can know the “right” answer before they explore the experience. This comes from too much pattered book learning. Too many times our mind has been patterned with the scenario that there is only one right answer, and it has already been defined before we make a choice. It drives the feeling to check the answer guide in the back or confirm our feelings with an expert to ensure we make the “right” choice. This isn’t my experience when it comes to making choices about the future. And when I think about it, choices that affect the future are the only kind there are.

Trial and Error – Discovery and Exploration

So much of the journey in life is trial and error. But that approach only looks acceptable if you remember that you have the right to change your choice. Your awareness that you have a choice, and that you can change it, will give you a sense of freedom, and power. Not to be aware of these opportunities will leave you feeling trapped, powerless, and helpless in any choice you make.

If you don’t like the term “trial and error” because the voice in your head generates too much fear of failure, then you can think of it as discovery and exploration.

Increase your Awareness by being Grateful

Be grateful for the opportunities that you have. Be really grateful. I pretty much enjoyed my service in the military with the exception of the last few months. In the end it wasn’t really bad, I was just tired. I was ready for change and I wanted a different path. The problem was that in the military I just couldn’t give them 2 weeks notice and leave. I had a several months left, and considering the consequences, no real choice about it. That was a situation of not really having choices and being somewhat trapped.

About half the world population lives on less than 2 dollars a day. They have a lot fewer choices. Many days they don’t have a choice of what to eat, or if they will eat.

If you practice being grateful for the choices you have you will be more aware of your power to make choices. That awareness will give you a sense of freedom, and allow you to see opportunities that others don’t. The less grateful you are, the less awareness you will have of your choices. With less awareness of your choices you are more likely to feel trapped and powerless. Practicing gratitude and appreciation for the choices you have will help you stay in touch with that source of power.

As a reference to making better decisions I suggest reading Source’s of Power by Gary Klein. He has awareness and insight into how the mind really makes decisions. In Klein’s book The Power of Intuition he provides several practical techniques for improving your decision making process. It’s not going to be much help in the “What should I do after Graduation” type question, but you will be making many more decisions in your life. You might as well be aware of how your mind does that so you can improve the process.

Gary

For a practical guided meditation in Gratitude listen to the first free session of the Self Mastery Program.

The most important aspect to master when dealing with a liar is your emotional reactions. You can’t always change the behavior of a liar, but you can change how you feel and react to them. Once you learn to change your emotions about a situation you begin to see a lot more options.

If you are honest with the situation you will realize that your happiness is more important than their behavior anyways. The motivator for wanting someone to stop lying is so that you don’t end up unhappy.

Change begins with Awareness

The first step in dealing with liars or emotional issues is awareness. With awareness you can deal with a liar without being upset. We’ll start by understanding how someone becomes a liar to begin with.

Our social conditioning has trained us to be liars to some degree. In some ways it is required of us. When you are aware of how people are socialized your expectations change. As your expectations change the judgments in your mind dissolve along with your emotional reactions to them.

This doesn’t mean you learn to condone lying or agree with it. You just no longer have emotional reactions about it. When you are aware that someone lied to you because they were trained by other people and circumstances you won’t take it personally. You then have an opportunity to deal with the situation in a way that isn’t driven out of emotional reactions.

We learned to lie in order to be polite and respectful.

Just for starters we learned to lie in order to be polite. When we were kids, and we visited relatives or friends we ate whatever they served for dinner even if we didn’t like it. If we really hated it we might have slid it under the table to the dog so it looked like we ate it. When the host asked, “How was the meal?” we did the polite thing and told them how much we enjoyed it.

We lie so we don‘t get punished or hurt

When I was in grade school I was visiting my friends house after school. One of the cool things we did was climb onto the garage roof and jump off into grass. My friend’s mom came home later in the afternoon and asked us what we had been doing all afternoon. We didn’t mention the jumping off the roof part. We lied to our parents so we didn’t get punished.

We lied in order to build trust and loyalty

If kids are playing and they break something they try to hide it. If they are playing with something that they shouldn’t play with they don’t confess the truth. Children don’t want to be punished so they lie or withhold the truth.

As a kid if we broke something like a vase while playing we made pact with our friends or sibling not to tell. When the parent asked what happened to the vase we answered, “I don’t know.” We lied to our parents in order to maintain the trust and loyalty of our friends. Of course parents don’t give up that easily. Usually kids will succumb to the pressure of their parent’s questions and tell the truth eventually. This turns the promise of loyalty and secrecy with our friend into a lie.

Without awareness we trapped our self in a conflict of agreements. You either kept the promise of secrecy to your friends by lying to your parents. Or, you told the truth to your parents and your loyalty with your friend became a lie. We end up with either our parents or our friends not trusting us.

Later in life we learn some advanced lying techniques

Lie to people with Power

Learning to lie to parents when we are kids leads to lying to other authority figures later in life. When the higher ups in the company propose a new direction or program do you tell them what you really think? Or is it easier to be quiet and not create the conflict with people who have power over your paycheck. Even when they ask for your input it makes a lot of sense to not rock the boat. It is easy to couch your words and only hint at your concerns. Depending on the power and emotional reactions of the person perhaps you keep your mouth shut altogether.

Maybe you have a relationship with your boss where you can speak freely and that can be great. But do you speak with that same freedom to the vice presidents and owners above your boss. Most people don’t. If people give their “honest opinion” their behavior is often considered inappropriate or political suicide.

Not many company cultures can handle an honest assessment of the negative side of an issue without an emotional reaction. With people who don’t take 100% responsibility for their emotions their upset will be your fault in some way. The paradigm of power over our livelihood combined with the instability of emotional reactions suggests that we lie by omission.

In all fairness it is also a rare person who can give an honest assessment of the down side that affects them without it partly motivated by their emotional reaction.

A Liar doesn‘t want to hurt people‘s feelings.

In personal relationships we lie so we don’t hurt the feelings of the people we care about. Suppose a couple is sitting at a restaurant and an attractive woman walks by. What does a man say when his partner asks, “Do you think she’s pretty?” Can the man say, “She is gorgeous?”

He can be honest if he is with a very secure woman. He can also be honest if she has pretended to be a very secure woman. (lied about her security) He can also be honest if he doesn’t care about sleeping on the couch for a while.

Men lie to women at times so that they don’t hurt the feelings of the people they care about. Men might also lie because they don’t want to be punished by the people that love them. Women lie to men for the same reasons.

You might dismiss all these examples as being “white lies.” These are small lies told to be tactful or polite. But the motivations for lying don’t change when the stakes get bigger. If a person cheated on their spouse would they hide it from them in order not to hurt their feelings? If your friend was cheating on their boyfriend would you tell the boyfriend? Would you tell him if he asked?

The motivation for lying increases in direct proportion to the emotional reaction and potential emotional pain.

We lie when we are in Emotional Denial

When something hurts our feelings we cover it up and say it is no big deal. When we are upset or sad we say we are fine. When our heart is broken we can get mad at our ex, yet we will say we don’t care about them anymore. It’s a lie.

If we didn’t care it wouldn’t matter so much emotionally. If we really didn’t care we wouldn’t be so hurt and angry. The truth is it hurts so much that we tell our selves we don’t’ care to avoid and deny the emotional pain. We lie about the emotions we feel to pretend they are not there. We lie to our self in an effort to feel better because we don’t know a different way to let go of the pain. We attempt to lie our way to happiness.

The best way to deal with people who are liars

The first and most important thing is to manage your expectations. When you have awareness of how people were socially conditioned you have an opportunity for compassion. With awareness your understanding expands and your judgments dissolve. Be honest and aware enough to recognize the socialization patterns that people face growing up. Also be aware of the consequences that telling the truth might incur.

When you realize the extent of social conditioning you gain a greater understanding for why people compensate with lies the way they do. The emotional reactions you had behind the judgments aren’t there any more.

In relationships you are responsible for your half of the emotions.

Taking care of your half means noticing where you are lying. If you are upset with someone for lying it is because you believe they should be telling the truth. Your expectation is that they should drop all their years of social conditioning overnight.

You believe they should adopt a new behavior and become a person you expect them to be. You believe they should be the image you hold in your mind about them. They are not the image in your mind that you want them to be. When you want another person to live according to your expectations you are lying to your self about who they really are.

Use Awareness to Deal with your Lies

Being aware of the image in your mind of another person and your beliefs about who they should be will give you an opportunity to change your beliefs. Being aware of the deeply embedded social conditioning that programs a person to lie will help you drop your misplaced expectations of another. Dropping your false image of them and managing your expectations will go a long ways to dissolving your emotional reactions to someone else’s socially conditioned behavior.

If you are having emotional reactions about someone who is lying then you will need to deal with your half. Your half includes the lies in your mind about who they should be.

Why People Lie

People lie because they have been conditioned through emotional reactions. Emotional reactions aren’t intellectually logical. They are more powerful than that. That’s why people lie in spite of it being the logical or intelligent thing to do. People will stop lying as they learn not to fear their own emotions or emotional reactions from others. Learning not to fear your emotions is a beginning step to being honest that leads to Self Mastery.

If a person isn’t skillful and effective at dealing with their emotions it is unwise to expect them to change the behavior of lying.
I’m not condoning, justifying, or defending lying. I’m attempting to expand the conversation. If you are going to deal with liars or your own lying you will need to deal with the emotional reactions that drive the behavior. Whether the pattern was learned from the past, or you are afraid of consequences of being punished today it is about the emotions. When people learn how to master their emotions they won’t fear honesty and the Truth.

Boundaries

When you have dissolved your emotional reactions to someone that is lying then it becomes a simple process of boundaries. But that doesn’t mean that you need to wait until you have dealt with your emotions before you put up boundaries. Putting up boundaries is a good way to protect your self from your emotional reactions until you clean them up.

Use of boundaries also means you might want to put a boundary on what you believe. Stop believing what they tell you.  Living by the assumption that a liar will tell you the truth is just another way of lying to your self.

For exercises in how to deal with your mind, including emotional reactions, expectations, and changing beliefs download the free audio sessions in the Self Mastery course. I also suggest you listen to the free mp3 audio podcasts on Awareness and Consciousness.

Interesting story about the challenge of radical honesty versus lying.

I hope you are well.
I thought I’d give you an update on how things are going.

Gratitude has become an integral part of my life now and is such a powerful yet simple tool. I thank you so much for introducing the practice of gratitude into my life. Recently I have been reading a lot of material by Guy Finley and have found that it echoes of what you teach.

Realizing that we are not our thoughts was a major shock for me and really made me start asking the question: ‘Who am I?’ It was while I was contemplating this that I remembered the Free Session in the audio course you offer called ‘The Attention’. I couldn’t believe it, all my questions were answered….I had listened to it many times before but this time it made so much more sense. I realized that I have created so many different false selves that I have mistaken them for actually being the real me, but they are not the real me.

I was really excited when this awareness came to me but then I became scared….fear and anxiety kicked in big time. Since then the false self seems to have become louder and I think that this is because I am challenging its existence and it doesn’t want to die. I know that the false self is not real but it does appear to be so much of the time because of the emotions I feel, especially anxiety. It feels that I haven’t moved forward but I know this is also the trick of the false self.

I am confident that with my commitment and persistence with this process of self-awareness I shall succeed….it is inevitable.

Again, thank you Gary for the wisdom that you offer.

Peace and love to you.

M in the UK.

Dear M.
A big part of figuring out what you are involves figuring out who you are not. Notice that I say “what you are” and not “who you are.” That’s because “who you are” is very much a function of the false self.

It is astute of you to notice that the false self is playing this trick of telling you that you are not moving forward. The interpretations the false self makes of emotions is usually that you are moving backwards or getting worse.

Keep in mind that our emotions are real feelings, but the interpretations we make about them are not facts. In the beginning the assumptions we make about emotions are usually incorrect because the come from the false self, or what we can call ego mind. he truth is often about 180 degrees from what the false self thinks it is.

I agree with your assessment that the fear that you are feeling is the fear that the false self is generating. It is afraid of being found out and losing control of the Authentic You. I allude to this in a couple of my podcasts. I think it is on the podcast about on Overcoming Fear.

It is kind of amazing that the false self has an emotional reaction to being found out and then tricks us into thinking it is our emotion. It then gives us a false interpretation of what is causing “our” emotion. We believe the thoughts that aren’t our own about emotions that aren’t our own. This is a very clever trick and one that requires a good deal of self awareness to slip out of.

The journey to discover what you really are is mostly about discovering what you are not. When you dissolve all the illusions about your self, only the Truth is left.

About your commitment to succeed, be wary here. The idea or ideal of “success” can also be a trick of the false self. This is particularly true if we hold beliefs about failure in relation to our definition of success. When we use terms like success in this process we are often getting set up for some type of false self judgment about measuring progress and failure.

It would be wise to clearly understand what you have defined the symbolic word success to mean.

If you define success as love, peace, happiness, joy, compassion, and Truth, then yes, continue to use the word success. But if this is what you mean, then why not use these symbolic words instead.
By the way, in your quest to sort out all this false self stuff from the authentic you it might be helpful to be aware that only the False Self asks the question, “Who am I?” The authentic self doesn’t bother with such questions.

Gary

I often witness people who don’t feel ready to heal emotionally. They come up to the edge of taking action to free themselves from emotional pain, only to back away. Their mind has many stories as to why, but at the core it is often the same basic reason. They are afraid. It’s kind of crazy to think that people would be afraid of healing their emotions, but I never said that people were logical.

I’ll get into the fear of emotional healing later.

The inspiration for this post comes from a conversation I had the other day with woman we will call Kelly. I had spoken to her a few months about some jealousy issues that was poisoning the relationship with her partner. She had listened to a couple of the free sessions in the Self Mastery course and was encouraged at the possibility of change. She was going to sign up for the remaining sessions and do some individual session with me to focus on her specific beliefs and behaviors. Kelly didn’t sign up for the program and she didn’t schedule a session with me.

When I ran into here recently she brought up her lack of action. Her explanation to her self and me was that she was not ready to heal emotionally.

I could go in a lot of directions with this material but just want to focus on the sabotaging logic of the ego mind that is operating here. From a certain angle it is a factual truth that she doesn’t feel ready to heal emotionally. Notice I say “factual truth” and not a real truth. She doesn’t feel ready, but it is the lies in her belief system that are creating that feeling. In any case that is no reason not to engage the process.

Thinking and feeling that we are not ready for emotional healing is a factual truth that hides a self sabotaging lie. It’s not the feeling of not being ready that stops us. It is the hidden lie that keeps us from taking action. The hidden lie is that we need to be ready to heal emotionally in order to start.

We were not ready to learn to walk when we first began taking steps. When we began to learn to read, we weren’t ready to read. When people begin having sex they generally don’t feel confident and prepared. When parents have their first children, they don’t’ feel ready either. Not only do parents have no experience in being parents, but those kids don’t come with an instruction booklet that would give them the illusion of being prepared.

When we take on any endeavor worth doing in our life it is new until we have been doing it a while. In the beginning we are learning to do something and we stumble through it as best we can. We are never going to be ready to do something that we have no experience doing. But that doesn’t stop us.

When we endeavor to eliminate our emotional reactions and clean up the projections in our mind we are taking on a task that we have never done before. If you haven’t done much of it before then you probably are not very skilled at emotional healing. The next lie hidden in the decision making logic of the mind is that if you aren’t very good at emotionally healing then you shouldn’t start. Of course if we use this logic we will never do anything different in our life.

It is this kind of hidden belief that is buried into the meaning of these words. “I’m not ready for emotional healing.”

If we only do the things we are ready for we would only do the things we already know how to do. If this were the case we would never learn to walk, read, take up a hobby, have sex, or raise children.

The mind is a peculiar thing. It can propose the idea that we are not ready to heal emotionally. It can even make that idea appear to be factual. It is true that if we haven’t done something before that we are not skilled and proficient at it. This may be a fair assessment.

But then the mind does something amazing. It is so subtle that we don’t notice it unless we spend some time developing awareness. The mind tricks us into accepting the one idea of not being ready and assumes the decision is made. Without words it ends the investigation and stops all action on that one note. An unconscious decision has been made not to evaluate any other angles.

The ego mind fixates on one bit of information and uses that one fact to determine the whole stopping of our personal and emotional growth. It would be as if we went to the doctors with stomach pains and when the doctor found our temperature to be 98.6 degrees he sent us home.

All other desires, considerations for the health of our relationships, and future happiness are discarded with this fixation on one fact of not feeling ready. The mind invites us to go unconscious, stop evaluating different possibilities, and become unaware of all these other considerations.

This is the kind of unconscious logic and decision making of the ego mind that keeps us in loops of emotional suffering.

The path to freedom from this kind of self destructive logic is awareness and healthy skepticism. If we develop self awareness we will learn to see past these misdirection traps of words, and hidden decisions. A healthy skepticism and a process of questioning will pull apart the misguiding logic and free us from such an ego mind.

Being a skeptic is an opportunity for freedom from emotional suffering. If we are a skeptic we will question the logic that says if we don’t feel ready then we shouldn’t begin the process of emotional healing.

A skeptic will scrutinize this type of logic and realize that if they followed it they wouldn’t attempt or do much of anything in their life.

A skeptic will realize that you become ready to do something by doing it over and over again until you get good at it. You become ready to heal emotionally by doing things that don’t work out and then doing them again until they do. You don’t become ready to do anything by hesitating and waiting.

Many times you only become ready to do something after you have done it for a while. You will only really feel ready to ride a bike after riding long enough that you aren’t afraid to fall. You will feel more comfortable in raising children after yours are grown. You’ll feel more comfortable with sex after you have been practicing a while. The same is true for emotional change. You will only feel ready to heal emotionally after you practice working through some of the stories and beliefs in your mind.

The Catch 22 for Kelly is that if she waits until she is ready to take take action she won’t ever take action. If she starts when she feels ready she won’t ever heal emotionally.

In the Self Mastery Audio course there are exercises that will help you to be a healthy skeptic of the self defeating logic in your mind. There are also exercises for emotional healing. If you are not yet ready to heal emotionally it would be a good time to start.

If you eliminate the sources of your unhappiness your life will be significantly happier without all that emotional drama from fear, stress, frustration, sadness and anger.

This might appear to be a simplistic big picture approach in how to be happy. It is. It’s also helpful to very clearly understand where we are going and how we will get there. If you don’t have a big picture of the process you can easily get lost in all the details on your path.

Of these two paths to happiness the one most often chosen is the first one. I think this can be an excellent choice under certain circumstances. If you have the capacity to completely focus your attention on actions and thoughts that fill you with love, happiness, and fun, by all means do so. However my experience is that very few people have the mastery over their attention necessary to make this approach work. Most people have minds where thoughts and emotions run around in there uncontrolled at times.

If you are able to completely avoid letting your mind engage in emotional reactions, sabotaging behaviors, fears, insecurities, and self criticism, then by all means take the first path towards happiness.

If you find that you occasionally have fears, get angry, feel frustrated, or fall victim to other emotional reactions and don’t have complete control over your mind you may want to consider the second path. It is an important component in how to create deep sustaining happiness. It is the path that is less traveled. Perhaps that is why only few people live their lives with a deep sustaining calm and happiness.

Directly challenging the causes of unhappiness has a lot to do with evaluating the interpretations in the mind and changing the core beliefs that are at the foundation of those interpretations. It is a bit of work to come to “Know Thyself” in this way, but you get a high quality emotional return on your investment.

You should know that this path of introspection isn’t reason to judge your self as a failure at happiness or life in any way. It is actually quite common and normal for people to experience unhappiness at various times in their life. Even the Buddha pointed out in his Four Noble Truths that life involves some emotional suffering. But don’t let the commonality of unhappiness trap you into the belief of accepting that it can’t be any different or that life will always be that way.

Being unhappy at some point in your life doesn’t mean you are a failure. Your unhappiness could be due to any number of things including an inability to live in complete denial of your emotions. This isn’t failure. It’s being successful at being in touch with your emotions. Being in touch with your emotions is important in feeling deep meaningful happiness in your life.

I’ve personally found that the path of eliminating the causes of your unhappiness is far more effective. However I don’t recommend it, I even discourage it. I don’t encourage people to go face their fears, inner judgments, and tangle with stories of victimization in their mind? That stuff is unpleasant. Just admitting to our self that we engage in these types of behaviors and feelings can be disheartening. This kind of internal battle isn’t permanent but is often something people avoid for the sake of their ego. Of course avoiding the truth about this dark side of our self just keeps it repressed there until it jumps upon us another day.

The path of ruthless honest truth is the kind of thing that sets you free from emotional suffering. It isn’t pleasant challenging your inner demons, but neither is it pleasant to live day after day, year after year pretending we don’t have them.

What is the best path to choose when you are deciding how to be happy? Whenever I have a choice between two options I sometimes like to take both.

Make a concerted effort to pursue what you enjoy so that you can facilitate your happiness. At the same time take notice of when you have emotional reactions that take away from being happy. Use those opportunities to dig into the root causes of those emotions. When you do you will often find core beliefs creating false assumptions, expectations, judgments, and stories of victimization. Take your time to inventory the beliefs behind these emotional reactions and change them. When it is cleaned up go back to doing your best to create happiness and love in your activities and relationships.

By pursuing both paths to happiness you create a push-pull effect that facilitates being happier faster than if you just pursued one approach.

How to be happy in your life is a question that no one can answer for you. Each person will enjoy different things. Someone else’s formula will not work for you. In the big picture approach there are two paths to follow. Pursue what you love enjoy. Simultaneously take time to be ruthlessly honest with your self and challenge your inner demons of fears and false beliefs.

If you are interested in more specific steps to creating emotions of happiness and eliminating the causes of unhappiness engage in the exercises in the Self Mastery Audio Program.

It was many years before I began to find a different kind of courage. It was a kind of courage that wasn’t easy to spot at first. It wasn’t the kind of courage that inspired external actions or would result in any medals or awards. I think of it as real courage.

From my point of view real courage is that attribute necessary to face and challenge our own inner demons. Real courage is that gumption to go face to face with your fears, anger, insecurities, and the voices of sabotage, doubt and judgment in your mind. It is a willful act of personal strength that you draw upon to deal with the conflicts in the mind and make peace within. Many people have fought wars with enemies outside of them. It is a rare kind of courage to take up the fight to make peace within.

To face that critical voice in your head and tell it that you will not believe its criticisms isn’t an easy thing to do. Oddly enough it isn’t even something that many people consider doing. They just go along with the less than favorable opinions they have of other people. They go along with the unkind and even self abusive opinions about themselves. Why do we fail to stand up to these self abusive comments? Why don’t people stand up against the tyranny in their own mind? Perhaps it doesn’t occur to us to challenge those thoughts. But perhaps it doesn’t occur to us because we are afraid of what will happen if we challenge those inner demons.

What will happen if we look face to face at our anger instead of just expressing it? What will happen if we look into all the justifications for why we are angry and say, “I don’t want to justify and defend feeling this way. What will happen if we look directly at our stories of insecurity, stand up for our self and say, “You have no power over me”?

Why does challenging the voices and rationalizations behind our unhappiness take such courage? Part of the issue is that we have come to unquestioningly trust our mind. We trust it to make decisions for us and to keep us safe from physical pain and emotional hurt. It has structured a giant list of rules to follow in order to keep from getting hurt. It constantly reminds of these rules with its “should” and “shouldn’t” chatter. We learned follow our thinking mind blindly. Yet it is those same voices that can keep us up at night with uncontrollable chatter driving us to fear and anxiety with imagined stories of terrible outcomes. Oddly we trust this very same mind to guide us to happiness.

So what is so scary about challenging the beliefs, thoughts, and opinions, in the mind that it needs real courage? Very simply, if we can’t trust our mind then what can we trust? This notion of not trusting our mind to tell us what to do can push us towards a fear that we will want to avoid.
A person needs real courage to challenge the thoughts in their head because without that mind in charge what are we going to trust to keep them safe from emotional pain? We have come to rely on every thought from our mind as being true that we feel we need it there to guide us. We trust our mind to keep us free of emotional pain and yet it is the principle means by which we generate emotional pain and anxiety.

There is a slight shift you can make to help begin the journey. It is to make a difference between trusting your mind and trusting your self. You can learn not to believe in the thoughts in your mind and still believe in your self.

What are those rules in our mind that are driven by our inner demons of fear? Fear tells us, don’t fall in love or you will get hurt. Fear tells us, that if we start that business we might fail. Fear tells us not to speak up in the meeting because we might look foolish. Fear tells us not to do something for our self because we don’t want to be labeled as selfish. Fear tells us not to climb too high we might fall. Those thoughts are rules that are supposed to help us be better off emotionally. Of course each rule requires loading our self down with a fear.

Challenging your demon thoughts and beliefs is like letting go of a hand rail that we have hung on to for safety. Our fear says that we should hang on or else we might fall and get hurt. Our fear has been reminding us ever since we fell down on the play ground as a little kid and got hurt. It has been pounding the message into our being until we don’t let go of any handrails. Learning to hang on to the handrails may be a good idea when we are little and haven’t fully developed our balance and muscle control. However when we get older we still follow the advice of fear in our mind. Fear has become our adviser in making choices in our life.

You can’t run very fast or far in your life if you don’t let go of the handrail of fear.
We sometimes fool ourselves and think that we are gripped by fear. The reverse is true. We hang on to fear as a trusted adviser gripping it as if it were going to keep us from getting hurt emotionally. We cling to all its advice in hopes that we won’t get hurt. We don’t realize that hanging on to these beliefs and fears extracts its own kind of emotional price. Fear becomes our mythological god. We follow its counsel, we trust its words. When we obey those voices of fear in our mind and serve our personal god of fear and all its laws.

What happens when we disobey the god of fear? Perhaps we hold the belief that bad things will happen to us if we disobey the rules of the god of fear. Perhaps that god of fear will judge us for being stupid and not following its advice. There is the fear of being punished or feeling guilty for disobeying. There become fearful consequences for challenging our fears. Imagine that, fear of breaking free of agreements of fear.

To challenge your personal fears may feel like taking on a whole nest of inner demons. It’s more than just letting go of the hand rail, it’s fighting off the fearful reactions in the mind that happen when we break the rules in the mind. That takes real courage. We are also risking the possibility that people will react differently when we act differently. We are stepping into the unknown. To challenge these inner demons and step into the unknown consequences takes a different kind of courage.

In my last post I shared that what we typically think of as courage often has larger fears at the foundation. What looks like a brave act may really have deeper personal fears as part of the motivation. What I have come to realize is that it takes a real kind of courage to challenge these deeper internal fears at the foundation of our behaviors and actions. To challenge the inner demons and fears in the mind is a truly heroic act that only few dare take on. That is why it is often referred to as the mythological journey of the hero.

What is different about facing your fears and inner demons is that there is no public glory in it. No one will notice that you are reflecting on your own behavior, emotions, and reactions. No one gives you medals, and hardly anyone recognizes the kind of courage it takes. There is no one rooting you on. You go on this inward journey alone. This solo adventure that you don’t do for anyone else and don’t do with anyone else is part of why it takes a different kind of courage.

It also makes for a kind of courage that doesn’t get corrupted with the self importance of getting attention and recognition from others. It has a kind of humble integrity that is independent from other people’s opinions and how they measure you.

Having the courage to take this kind of inward journey beyond your own inner demons has no external rewards, at least not in the beginning. However the internal changes and personal freedom gained is its own reward. To be free of fear, to no longer be subject to the emotional reactions of anger, jealousy, and insecurity is a reward. To no longer have to prove your self to any one, even your self is an incredible relief. To have immunity from fear of what other people think of you is an internal reward that can’t be externally measured. To slay the voices in the mind of doubt and criticism and create peace within is a completely unseen reward.
To challenge your inner demons and win over your fears is a heroic feat. It is truly a hero’s journey to face and win the war within. It is a feat that requires a different kind of courage.

I’m in awe of anyone who even tries. To me it is not important to win. We don’t know how long we have to live, maybe just a week, or month, or year. We can not count on winning over our inner demons when we don’t know how long we have. In any case this Hero’s Journey it is not about winning. If we make it about winning we are also making it about losing, and perhaps the fear of losing becomes another one of our demons. The journey is more about letting go of the fear of losing and the fear of failing that so often corrupts the desire to win or succeed.

In the challenge against our inner demons of fear and judgments winning and losing is not important. It is only important that we find the courage to try.

RELATED MATERIAL
For a step by step process on dealing with your inner demons listen to the session in the Self Mastery Audio Program

For guidance on challenging your inner demons and recovering your integrity see the Workshops and Spiritual Power Journeys events page
MP3 audio podcast on Overcoming Fear

The Courage to Live Consciously by Steve Pavlina

This definition of courage is as good as any other.

“Courage is a quality of spirit that enables you to face danger or pain without showing fear.”

Then there is the more profound understanding that you can be afraid and still have courage. Mark Twain said, “Courage is not the absence of fear. It is acting in spite of it.”

The Truth is sometimes about 180 degrees out from what you think it is. I think before going deeper into understanding what courage is, it will be helpful to shatter some misconceptions about what courage isn’t.

I’m going to share the kind of understanding of courage I grew up with. I think it’s the common understanding. Then I’ll share with you what a Marine Corp Staff Sergeant taught me that caused me to re-evaluate everything I believed about what courage is.

Growing up as a boy I saw the John Wayne movies and learned to associate courage with fighting a fierce enemy and being a hero. Courage becomes something boys and young men aspire to have. Particularly in an effort to become what we think a man should be, we want others to see us as having courage. We don’t want to be perceived by other boys, and especially girls, as being a coward, sissy, or wimp. All of these are relative labels of courage.

For boys and young men, developing courage becomes an important part of the self image and self esteem we create in our mind. How others think of us in terms of courage becomes an important part of that self esteem and self acceptance equation. Women may not relate to this in the same way because they were not raised with the same expectations as boys. Feeling a need to gain approval and acceptance in this attribute also varies with the culture. For me as a boy growing up it was important to demonstrate courage of some sort or risk being made fun of and be considered a wimpy. Self acceptance and feeling better about myself was hinged to the labels and expectations others might put on me.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

When I was in college I was fortunate to spend some time with a Marine Corp Staff Sergeant (SSgt). Let’s call him SSgt. Matt because I haven’t seen him in years and don’t have permission to put his name here. SSgt. Matt taught me something about the common misunderstanding of courage that I never forgot.

SSgt. Matt had qualified for a very competitive Marine Corp officer program that enabled him to go to college and get his degree. After which he would be commissioned as an officer in the Marine Corp and continue his service. He was using his time there to study Military History. In short he was smart. He also had an well developed ability to think laterally. By that I mean outside the box of conventional perspective. This was continually demonstrated by his sense of humor and story telling that could hold your attention while keeping you in stitches. But I digress. The point is that as a die hard Marine he knew about courage. Not just from a soldier’s point of view. He knew about military men, their actions, motivations, human psychology, bravery, and fear because he studied it.

We were both between classes one day and I got into a conversation with SSgt. Matt and he was educating me about the psychology men. He was talking about different armies going all the way back to ancient Greece and Sparta and describing the training that made them disciplined and successful. How some were able to function so tightly and effectively as a unit and win against overwhelming odds. He explained the real motivation that a soldier fights in ways that exemplify courage.

SSgt Matt shared with me that when most people think of soldiers who do things like run out of foxholes and rush a machine gun nest they think of that as courage. We think facing such a thing and doing it exemplifies the trait of courage. They are facing their fears, including their fear of death and they act in spite of their fears. This fits with my previous understanding and definitions of courage above. People get confirmation of this belief by the military (the supposed authority on courage) by giving medals for exemplifying “courage” in the line of fire in these situations.

Here is the bit if truth that is 180 degrees from our assumptions. SSgt. Matt told me the real reason that soldiers rush the machine gun nest is because they are afraid. They are afraid of letting their buddies down. They are afraid of what their buddy in that fox hole will think of them if they don’t. They are afraid of being thought of as a coward. They are afraid of losing the respect from their peers that they spent the previous months or years bonding with. They are more afraid of this personal rejection and shame than they are of death. They go face the machine gun because they can’t stand the idea of their self image if they let their buddy down.

I’m not saying this is a cowardly or bad thing. And of course every person in every situation is different. I’m just recognizing that it may not be the kind of fearless courage that we would assume applies from our growing up years. There is more to the motivation. You can’t call it fearless or “courageous” when rushing a gun position might be motivated by a bigger fear of personal rejection and self judgment.

With this larger understanding it was harder to measure courage in the same way. I could no longer look at the same action and say that it exemplified courage. It may have exemplified a much larger and hidden fear that motivated their action.

I’m going back to what I said earlier about young boys and men growing up. When we are afraid of what others think of us we will have a need to prove our self in order to compensate for that uncomfortable fear. We have a need to do something brave to avoid the ridicule, rejection, and shame that would come with disappointing others.

I do the emotional calculation this way. The greater is a person’s insecurity and fear of being rejected, the greater their need to prove themselves worthy to another. What is interesting that this kind of agreement in the mind makes a person easy to control through the power of opinion.

SSgt. Matt pointed this out about boot camp. When they get a new recruit there is an important mental game of breaking down a person’s individual identity. In doing this they take away the self esteem they had associated to their individual identity. They then recognize and reward people for being team players and taking care of their buddy. In this way your worth as a person is dependent on how well you work with and support the unit. Your self esteem and self worth is determined by what you do for another.

The corollary agreement in the mind becomes: If you let your unit down, you are unworthy. This in it self can be a motivator to do what others expect from you. Your actions are more driven by reactions to these agreements about self worth than conscious choice. If this is the case a person who looks courageous is really just reacting to fears about a self image associated to a lower self esteem. In their mind they tell themselves it is being brave. The culture they are in, such as the military, agrees that it is brave and supports this perception. To everyone who doesn’t know they are compensating for other fears they look courageous.

However, if you have a greater awareness you may not be so quick to make the assumption that someone is courageous based just on their actions. You might wait and get to know them better. They might just be compensating for even larger fears that they don’t yet have the courage to face. I also understand that at the same time a soldier also fights because of their care and respect for their fellow soldier.

My point here is that after I had that conversation with Marine SSgt. Matt I realized I needed a different definition for courage.

I needed a definition of courage that didn‘t include running away from bigger fears.

In my next post I share what I feel is Real Courage.

RELATED POSTS WITH DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ON COURAGE

Courage at the level of Generals also includes how person’s of authority react with opinions.

Is challenging your own peers and authorities a sign of courage, or of cowardice?
Courage to some is having the power not to have to please others.

For the whole amazing video on the guy in front of the tanks go to CNN

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