Be a Dreamer, Just Don‘t Get Lost in Your Imagination

When I refer to an “optimist“ I’m talking about people with an overly developed “look at the bright side of things” or “focus on the positive,” kind of attitude. I don’t recommend doing that. I’ve discovered that an attitude that only focuses on the positive is out of balance with reality. Sometimes you might go so far as to call it denial. It’s a pretty limiting and unrealistic way to look at the world. You tend to miss a lot of opportunities for improvement, success, happiness, and truth. I find that to be truly wise requires a healthy skepticism.

Overly optimistic people drive down the road working to keep their attention on the positive outcome at the end of the rainbow. Their mantra is “Whatever I focus on I create.” I don’t’ buy this. When I drive down the road I like to enjoy the scenery and keep an eye out for the potholes as well. I don’t’ think I create pot holes by being mindful of them.  They are already there. I just think I have a better chance at avoiding pot holes when I can see them.

At the same time I’m not a cynic or pessimist either. I prefer to do my best and look at everything with open eyes. This might seem like common sense, but actually it’s not that common. I don’t buy into the idea that I am any good at it or even any better than anyone else at it. If I did I might set myself up for a blinding dose of over confidence and optimism.  That blinding aspect can cause you to run into a very painful reality.

Importance of Honesty and Facing the Brutal Facts

In the best selling book Good to Great, Jim Collins outlines in wonderful detail characteristics of successful leaders. One of their characteristics is the ability to honestly face the brutal facts. Collins shares the example of David Maxwell becoming the CEO of Fannie Mae in 1981. At the time the company was losing $1 million dollars each business day. David Maxwell faced the brutal facts and began making uncomfortable decisions to change the company. When Maxwell left in 1991 the company was making $4 million a day.

Facing the brutal facts might just seem like the common sense thing to do. My experience is that it’s not that common. If it was common then why didn’t David Maxwell’s predecessors do something long before his arrival? Perhaps they thought the economic conditions would turn around. Whatever their thought process was it paralyzed them from taking effective corrective action.

Jim Collins shares numerous examples of other companies that had the same relevant factual information but did not accept what it was telling them. They balked at the facts and embraced a more optimistic story instead. Their approach allowed them to feel a little better emotionally until the economic realities hit them even harder.

While one characteristic of successful people is their ability to honestly face the facts. Another characteristic is their gumption not to be overwhelmed and paralyzed by the challenge they face.

What does this Mean to Practical Matters of Your Life

When people pump up the idea about being more optimistic, hopeful, or looking at the bright side of things I’m skeptical of what they are doing. I don’t know if they clearly see what is happening around them. Their mind might use that optimism to hide from an honest assessment. It seems only necessary to prop things up with an optimistic attitude if you are compensating for some negative belief or dark perspective underneath.

If something is really the truth you don’t have to pump your self up to believe in it. I don’t need to convince myself that the sun will come up in the morning. It’s the truth. I don’t need to be optimistic about the sunrise or make myself believe that it will happen. When something is the truth you don’t have to invest your belief in it because it will happen anyways.

Practical Money Matters

On the other hand people who spend more money than they make and run up credit card debt have got to be optimistic people. They really have to believe in a bright future so as not to notice their debt. They have to tell themselves a pretty optimistic story like, “The Lord will provide,” in order to feel okay about their debt situation. If they weren’t optimistic about the finances they might curb their spending habits.

Maybe they put off dealing with the debt because they want to avoid feeling uncomfortable emotions. This seems a lot like emotional denial but might just be an overdose of optimism. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

It’s Not a Lack of Intelligence

I’ve personally seen people with PhD’s run a company into the red and then still not make any changes to the operation. They weren’t alone in this either. They had other very smart people around them that supported the optimistic paradigm. They held strong to the belief that things would change even though nothing did.

Facing those brutal facts isn’t a matter of academic intelligence or education. Those situations come with such an emotional and behavior dynamic that they don’t teach in school. It’s not an academic or intelligence issue. It’s an awareness issue.
Managing your own emotionally driven behaviors is not something that they teach in an academic setting. Without the awareness of how deal with emotional issues people temporarily make themselves feel better by ignoring the reality and hope for a more optimistic tomorrow.

The Dangers of Optimism In Relationships

If you are in an abusive relationship or emotionally controlling relationship being optimistic becomes a dangerous trap. If you are hopeful that your partner will change you are less likely to leave or even ask for help. It is the image in your mind of your partner changing that becomes an illusion that you will cling to. Focusing your attention on that illusion can blind you from honestly assessing the situation.

One clue to this type of behavior is trying to make the relationship appear better than it is to your friends and family. Perhaps you only tell them about the best parts of the relationships and are afraid to share the parts you are embarrassed about. This is a sign that you are avoiding the facts.

Unhappy Relationships

It doesn’t have to be as dramatic as an abusive or controlling relationships. It might just be an unhappy relationship that you feel stuck in.

More than one woman I talked to recalls having serious concerns as she approached her wedding day. She downplayed her concerns and the possible pot holes in the road ahead. She propped up the stories of optimism and hope and forced her self to focus her attention on her hopes. This way she could deny the feeling in her gut until after the wedding. Eventually reality hit and shattered her illusions.

Optimistic about Money

A similar dynamic occurs when we invest money in a stock and then watch it sink. There is a temptation to tell your self; “It will turn around. I’ll wait for it to come back to my buy price and then sell it so I don’t have a loss.” If someone asks, “Why don’t you sell it?” The answer might be, “I don’t want to lose money on this investment.” They some how feel better believing they haven’t lost any money. They imagine that their money is still there even though the value has dropped.

In spite of feeling better temporarily you are paralyzed into being poorer by your illusions of optimism. Later the judge and victim in the mind may kick in and you will be tempted to believe self criticisms for such behavior. This can lead to a downward emotional spiral.

The High Price of Optimism

The philosophy of facing the brutal facts is crystallized with Jim Collins’ interview of Admiral James Stockdale. Adm. Stockdale was the highest ranking POW in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. He was tortured multiple times during his eight year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973.

Jim Collins found him self getting depressed just reading the story of Adm. Stockdale’s imprisonment. Collins had the opportunity to ask Stockdale about his experience and how he maintained his spirits and attitude during his ordeal. It was Adm. Stockdale’s answer that helped Jim Collins clarify the dangers of optimism and how it obscures our ability to face the facts that can lead to great success.

“”If it feels depressing for me, how on earth did he deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?“

I never lost faith in the end of the story,“ he said, when I asked him. “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.“

I didn‘t say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff leg that had never fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally, after about a hundred meters of silence, I asked, “Who didn‘t make it out?“

“Oh, that‘s easy,“ he said. “The optimists.“

“The optimists? I don‘t understand,“ I said, now completely confused, given what he‘d said a hundred meters earlier.

“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, “˜We‘re going to be out by Christmas.‘ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they‘d say, “˜We‘re going to be out by Easter.‘ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.“

Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end“”which you can never afford to lose“”with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.“

“To this day, I carry a mental image of Stockdale admonishing the optimists: “We‘re not getting out by Christmas; deal with it!“”

(Reference http://jimcollins.com/lab/brutalFacts/index.html#)

The important point I want to make is that there are different forms of optimism. Being aware of the subtle differences between forms and attitudes of optimism can be the difference between great success and emotional denial. Choose your form of optimism wisely.

For insights on awareness listen to the free mp3 audio in the podcast area. For exercises and practices on increasing awareness, controlling emotions, and changing core beliefs start with the free audio in the Self Mastery 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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