Yes, I’m saying “we” because I’m admitting that I have a problem. But I think I may also have recently stumbled upon an important part of the solution.

Two things that maintain chronicity in psychological or behavioral problems are a) lack of specificity and b) lack of taking responsibility or seeing what’s in your control. Self-deception has been found to require vague language, while an “external locus of control” frames the situation as something we can’t do anything about, therefore it’s not our fault and not our responsibility.

To begin to regain control, one can see past actions clearly using specific language, and then label them as choices. For instance a person could say to themselves, “I chose to browse Facebook for 3 hours this morning.” Simply by labeling an action as a choice to yourself, you can immediately regain an “internal locus of control.” (Note that this might not be a good idea to go around telling others about your choices, especially if they determine your employment status, but being honest with yourself is an important step in changing your behavior in a way they would approve of as well.)

You are always doing something.

Every moment of every day you are being productive, even if you take 20 minutes to just sit on the couch and do “nothing,” that is a something perhaps called “sitting on the couch letting my mind wander.” You are always producing some result. The question isn’t whether you are doing something or not doing something, but whether you are doing what you want that is serving your needs and moving you closer to your outcomes.

The thing is, we all have multiple wants and needs. Nobody only wants to work or to play, to focus or to wander. At some times we have lots of energy and at other times we are tired. This is normal.

We can imagine these conflicting wants and needs as a board room with multiple people around a big conference table, all trying to make a decision together. How is this group going to make decisions? One way is by consensus, where everybody goes around and says what they want and what they think is best to do, and all parties keep hashing it out until they can all agree on a single course of action. This kind of negotiation leads to group cohesion but can take a long time in some groups, especially if each member is worried that their department’s needs won’t be met. Other groups bring it to a vote. And still other groups make decisions by having a single appointed party be the decision maker who gets all the information they think they need from the various members and then makes the decision. Any of these decision making styles can work well depending on the group and the context.

What chronic procrastinators do though is more like a boss who fails to call the meeting, and therefore doesn’t even make clear decisions, thus dodging responsibility for making any bad decisions and blaming it on others lower down. “Hey, I’m not in control here–those guys screwed it all up. It’s not my fault!” The chronic procrastinator similarly blames lower drives, or even his or her brain for being the one in charge, thus framing the situation as being a victim to forces outside of my control. Even by saying “I procrastinated” instead of “I watched YouTube videos featuring incredibly cute puppies for 90 minutes” is a way of being vague to avoid accepting the consequences of one’s actions.

I decide what I do, even when I don’t.

The first step therefore is to get sufficient available information and take responsibility for decisions, even the decision to allow something or someone else to make the decisions.

You don’t have to be 100% in control of everything to do this (you won’t ever be anyway), you don’t have to have 100% of the information, and you don’t have to only make decisions that all parts of you like in the moment. You just recognize what information and control you actually do have, acknowledge it, and recognize that “if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.”

A chronic procrastinator can begin to transform into a decision-maker who is in control of their life by keeping an inventory of his or her time, saying, “I decided to do that. I fully accept the consequences of my decision.” Instead of saying, “I did nothing all day,” you might say, “I played video games for two and a half hours, then checked Facebook and Twitter for about 40 minutes, then read several blogs for 90 minutes. Then I did about 10 minutes of work on my report.”

Note this language is non-judgmental. Most procrastinators when they are specific about what they actually did are highly judgmental, saying things like “I wasted away 3 hours on Reddit like a freaking idiot. God, what’s wrong with me?!?” Keep your language objective and neutral, purely descriptive. You can also describe how you feel about your decisions. Again, keep it descriptive. For instance, “I decided to play Skyrim for 12 hours today. I feel physically exhausted, my eyes hurt, my body is stiff. I feel worried about my project that is due Monday, and notice that when I think about that, my heart rate becomes elevated.” This clear, specific, objective language provides you with the information to make more intelligent decisions. Thus talking to yourself in this way makes you smarter than someone who talks to themselves in vague language.

Other popular methods for tracking what you actually physically do are to keep a time log (write down what you did during each 15, 30, or 60 minute interval) or to use the pomodoro technique or other “time boxing” methods.

Seeing the consequences of your decisions

So once you get clear about what you actually are doing with your time and see your actions as decisions, what then? Most people when they consider doing something that bring short term gain for long term pain only think about the initial good feelings. They might say to themselves, “man, I’d so much rather be checking Facebook right now,” or just make a mental picture (often so fast they don’t even notice) of how good it would feel to do so.

What they almost never do is make a mental movie that starts with doing the thing that creates the good feelings and plays out all the way to the unpleasant consequences before deciding. Instead they just play a captivating movie inside that motivates them to do the thing that feels good in the moment. Then they might compare that movie to what they are doing right now and choose the action that feels better. That’s what we call a poor decision-making strategy!

Later they look back with feelings of guilt and regret. But then since the action happened in the past, there’s nothing they can do about it now, yet they feel terrible and want to feel better or avoid feeling bad, so they may indulge again in the thing that feels good now. This is what we call a feedback loop, or a downward spiral.

Hey, could you use this information to motivate yourself differently and make better decisions? You betcha. It could even reverse the loop, creating an upward spiral. While you can’t do anything about the past, you can learn to make better decisions by making mental movies that play out until the logical consequences, thus getting a more accurate feeling about how you’ll feel in the future. This solves the whole problem about hyperbolic discounting and present bias by making the future real now. It’s also what people who don’t procrastinate do automatically.

Here’s how you do it:

Think about a behavior that feels good in the moment but has long-term consequences that you don’t want. Close your eyes and make a mental movie starting with the choice to do the short-term behavior and play a movie that goes out long enough to link that choice up with the natural consequence—that is, until you feel the pain now of what would happen if you made that decision (instead of feeling pain in the form of guilt and regret later when it’s too late to do anything about it). Then think about an alternative behavior that has more desired long-term consequences and make a second mental movie. Again play the movie out all the way until the natural consequences so you can feel what that would feel like if you made that decision. Compare the movies side by side and choose which one you want. You can make as many such movies as you want given however many decisions you want to consider.

That’s it in a nutshell. If you think you’re terrible at visualizing, you’re probably not (everyone dreams vividly every night whether they remember it consciously or not), and in any case it doesn’t really matter because just pretending to visualize usually works just as effectively. So just try “acting as if” you can see it, or even write out the consequences in sensory specific detail as if writing a novel, then read over the stories and decide which one you want.

For best results, practice in advance, when it’s easy. Don’t wait for the moment of temptation when it’s hard. Practice again and again and again until you realize this new decision making strategy is better and you choose it every time.

This is but one strategy that is useful for overcoming chronic procrastination. Although can’t say I’m totally reformed yet, I’ve made huge strides myself in making better decisions (and I was the WORST!), so I believe that you can do it too. I also provide personal change consulting for those who want professional support in making such changes, so feel free to get in touch with me if you’re interested.

Many of these ideas were inspired by the work of Andrew T. Austin, especially his models of chronicity and his perspectives on anxiety and weight loss. I highly recommend you check out his work or attend one of his trainings.

Most people live in boxes. It is easy to measure lumber and sheet rock and metal and wood for flooring, etc. in height, length, and width. This makes boxy houses easier to construct than rounded, wavy, or triangular domiciles.

Buckminster Fuller was an outside-the-box thinker. He invented many things including the geodesic dome, a kind of archetypal anti-box. Many people thought that in the future we’d all live in dome-shaped houses, but alas domes aren’t all that nice to live in. They frequently leak. Sounds easily travel from one side to the other of a dome, making for little privacy. And domes are difficult to furnish in a box-shaped world—nothing quite seems to fit. Indeed, few of Fuller’s inventions fit our boxy world either. Nobody drives a Dymaxion car.

Boxes can be limiting however. What we can easily measure, predict, and control can also control the possibilities we conceive of. You can’t describe the movement of planets with just height, length, and width, even if you add in time. The cosmos is curvy. So boxy thinking never quite describes reality accurately.

Some boxes are very spacious, complex, and beautiful—so much so that we don’t recognize their sharp angles and boxy nature at first. To think outside of a box we have to open at least one side to let fresh air in. This makes things more wide open, unbounded, yet conditional, context-sensitive.

It’s not necessarily always better to be unboxed and uncontained, but life in a box lacks the freshness of a summer’s breeze.

Recommended Reading
The Power of Mindful Learning by Ellen J. Langer
The Ecological Thought by Timothy Morton

I’m looking to work with 5 people who were in New York on 9/11/2011 and experience traumatic flashbacks related to the events on or after that day.

Each person will be given one free (normally $100) video Skype or phone coaching session. During your session, I will guide you through a technique that has been effective in resolving Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) flashbacks for many people. Sessions will be up to 75 minutes long, but may end early if we’re done earlier.

Sessions will be recorded, and some or all recordings will be posted online along with a description of the technique and the steps as an educational resource. Participants will not need to mention the content of their past experiences as this is a process-based intervention.

The technique is called the Visual-Kinesthetic Dissociation Protocol and has been effective in the resolution of phobias and traumatic flashbacks for many individuals, including in New York City immediately after 9/11 and for war veterans.

I have facilitated this technique (and many others) successfully many times with clients and have received training through NLP Comprehensive and Andreas NLP Trainings, probably the best sources for learning these techniques.

While the risks involved are low as this is a very gentle process, there are no guarantees and this does not replace other psychological or medical treatment. Please consult with your existing therapist or doctor before taking part in this to make sure it is compatible with any other things you have been doing. Available only until 9/30/2011 for the first 5 people.

Click here to schedule your
free 75-minute coaching session!

Or you can email or call me to schedule:

Duff McDuffee
andrewmcduffee [at] gmail [dot] com
303-800-4385 (note: I don’t receive text messages)
Skype: duffmcduffee

Please share this post with anyone whom you think might benefit. Thanks!

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Kids’ board games often emphasize the enjoyment found in other people’s misery. Take the game Sorry! in which one pretends to be sorry when landing on an opponent’s piece, thus sending it back to the start and gaining a competitive advantage. Sorry! encapsulates a universal human experience—delight in causing another misery coupled with pretending to not feel such delight. This experience is so common that the apology in the game of Sorry! is obvious in its insincerity to the point of sarcasm. It’s a “sorry! (ha ha)” that recognizes one’s gain at another’s loss.

Another common human experience is to delight in causing others misery and then feeling guilt in response to one’s delight. Some sensitive modern kids feel bad when playing Sorry! with their parents or friends. They will first say “sorry” in the sarcastic way, but then quickly switch to a more sincere-sounding “sorry” and an explanation of how it is “only a game” or “you’ll probably win next time,” thus all players will eventually get to feel the pleasure of causing others’ pain!

Some parents and teachers also attempt to move away from such competitive zero-sum games that emphasize joy in winning at the expense of another’s agony of defeat. One commonly criticized way of doing so is to keep the rules of game the same, say softball, but to reward all participants for something. For instance a poorly behaved player with low skills may receive an award for “most improved.” As a middle-schooler I was an uncoordinated softball player and distinctly remember winning an award at the end of the season for “most bubble gum chewed.” I’m not sure which is worse—simply being an uncoordinated loser, or being singled out from all players on the team for one’s quantity of gum-chewing…even more so because my friend won the award for “best bubble blower”—I wasn’t even good enough at blowing bubbles with my gum, something that we frequently competed over.

No doubt the adult coaches found themselves in a similar dilemma as the sensitive child playing Sorry! with their parents. On the one hand I was a terrible player (in part due to a rapid growth spurt), was mostly made fun of and bullied by the other kids, and had major authority issues to boot, so I spent most of my time chewing the gum that was always available when we played. But on the other hand I was a likeable enough kid and the adults wanted to be nice and supportive so that all the kids would thrive. The attempt to be nice and focus on something positive in each player was in conflict with the irritation the adults no doubt felt with me and the fact that I was by far the worst player on the team. I can imagine that they took pleasure in presenting me with their facetious award for “most bubble gum chewed” in a similar way that someone feels pleasure when saying “sorry” in the board game of the same name. But since it was technically an “award,” they could assuage their guilt in the pleasure they took in giving me the insulting award.

Rewarding all kids for participating and saying things like “everyone’s a winner” is frequently cited as causing narcissism and inflated self-concept in children. I certainly was not fooled into thinking I was a great softball player or a valuable member of the team upon receiving my award for gum consumption. However, I do remember feeling surprised by receiving something, some acknowledgement of my existence from adults, even if it was a joke at my expense. While I sucked at sports and social interaction, at least I was good at gum chewing! At the time it was difficult for me to see anything positive about myself at all besides a talent in math, which mostly got me made fun of and beat up. The fact that some adults were willing to see something positive about me—even if faked—was genuinely helpful.

On the one hand, competitive zero-sum games like Sorry! or even softball encourage taking delight in causing misery, but on the other hand they allow this universal human experience a safe and relatively harmless outlet. Delight in causing harm to others is the basis for what makes someone a psychopath, but it’s a matter of “to what extent.” If you’ve read Beyond Growth in the past, for many months I was negatively fascinated (i.e. disgusted and compelled) with psychopaths and narcissists and wrote numerous articles about this topic. It is obvious in hindsight that this repetition compulsion was due to having internalized abuse from some young psychopaths/narcissists in my own past combined with not dealing with my own psychopath or narcissist within.

Core Transformation has been the most helpful technique I’ve encountered in not only getting to know such inner parts of my experience, but also actually transforming them. It’s not good enough in my opinion to simply get to know parts of me that delight in causing harm, for I absolutely do not want to abuse others in the way I was abused. But it is also not enough to simply call others psychopaths and narcissists and not recognize the pleasure I experience in having power over or harming others. Just as saying “I’m not a racist but…” is nearly always a lie, so in the same way is saying “so-and-so is a psychopath” and not acknowledging one’s own pleasure in another’s pain. For example, I and many others have taken pleasure in seeing James Arthur Ray convicted of homicide. Some have gone further and and secretly (or not so secretly) taken pleasure in imagining him to be subject to the abuse of prison rape (as many comments online have joked about). We should be careful not to confuse justice with vengeance.

Recently I’ve begun exploring more parts of myself with Core Transformation that delight in the misery of others. It’s a dark and disturbing thing to look at, very difficult to face within myself as I’ve always had an identity of being a “good person.” One part of me had something like the following desires (each one more important than the previous):

• to control others
• to make or force people to do what I want
• to have all my desires fulfilled
• Peace

Obviously going about it in this order is a problem for multiple reasons. One is the harm involved in controlling and forcing others to do what I want, which even if that worked wouldn’t necessarily fulfill all my desires, and desires are endless thus fulfilling them isn’t such a good strategy for reaching peace. Much better is to just live from a state of being of Peace, and by doing so I don’t have to fulfill all my desires, controlling others doesn’t make sense and in fact compassion for others spontaneously arises (and sadness that I desired to control others).

Granted, I didn’t live out this part of me in a gross and harmful fashion like James Arthur Ray at his deadly sweat lodge. But even so, these dark desires are part of our human experience too—they do not only belong to those “other” people who are psychopaths and narcissists, racists and bigots. We are all these things to some extent (and yes, extent matters), so we can all do better by really diving deep into understanding the root causes of these experiences and desires, thus transforming the psychopath and narcissist within. Note too that the outcome “to have all my desires fulfilled” is a common theme both in personal development marketing and amongst narcissists!

So should we stop playing zero-sum games like Sorry! and softball? I don’t think so. Competitive games bring out what’s already there, the psychopathic anti-social aspects of ourselves. But it’s also true that competitive games have cooperative aspects, both within a team and even between opponents, bringing out the best of each player. It doesn’t hurt to also play some cooperative, non-zero-sum games too like painting, building something together, playing music, discussing literature or movies, etc. But these cooperative games can become competitive at times too as in music auditions. Ultimately if we are to be whole human beings, we must embrace all the aspects of ourselves and our shared humanity.

Conscientiousness is single biggest factor promoting longevity according to the Longevity Project. This is probably because conscientious people are more likely to follow certain rules like “don’t smoke cigarettes,” “exercise for 30 minutes 3-5 times a week,” and “eat your vegetables.” These rules are simple, easy to remember, and don’t conflict with each other. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but lately in just about every field imaginable, there is so much information available that it is difficult to keep up with all the rules, let alone sort out the numerous conflicts!

Take nutrition. It used to be simple: drink your 8 glasses of water a day, eat your veggies, don’t smoke cigarettes, moderate or abstain from alcohol, exercise a little every day (pushups, pullups, situps) and walk or play sports, etc. Nowadays we’ve got raw vegans vs. paleo diets, gluten free vs. whole grains, diets based around cultured vegetables and kefirs and other “probiotics,” alkaline diets, low carb protein power diets, studies showing alcohol is good for you, studies showing sugar causes obesity not fat which was previously thought, studies proving eggs were bad but now good again unless you have certain pre-existing conditions in which…and that’s just nutrition!

As we get more and more information about how things really work, we get more and more complex rule sets emerging. Many of us don’t want to do the same exercise as people did 100 years ago, we want the latest and greatest, personalized to our bodies, our goals, our sport-specific requirements, and our pre-existing injuries. Either that or we skip exercise altogether because it appears to be so incredibly complex, or we have recurring injuries that exercise seems to make worse.

For most people it is difficult enough to follow a simple program like “do 3 sets of pushups, pullups, situps, and squats each morning.” But what if I can’t do pullups because I’m too heavy for my strength? What if pushups aggravate a shoulder injury? What if squats hurt my knees? What if situps hurt my neck? Should I really exercise the same muscles every day? And aren’t these movements all very linear? What about twisting movements and balance exercises and cardio and my tight hamstrings and…. What then?

Then we must add additional rules—rehab programs, specific adaptations, additional exercises, more complex movements, stretching, foam rolling and trigger point massage—all of which either must be outsourced to a professional (a personal trainer, a nutritionist, a massage therapist, etc.) or the individual must not only learn these multiple modalities and their rules, but also create or follow an additional program with additional variables if they wish to answer these additional questions.

Once upon a time, we didn’t have all these options. We didn’t know what we were missing. We didn’t know we could live without a high-density black foam roller and a pair of toe shoes and ignorantly (but not blissfully) engaged in static stretching before going out for a run in a pair of New Balances (and no GPS connected iPhone mapping our progress either!). Once upon a time we ate eggs and bacon and oatmeal for breakfast with black coffee and then we discovered eggs are high in cholesterol and bacon will give you a heart attack and oatmeal is full of gluten so we switched to Cheerios which then we discovered are devoid of nutrition so we had green smoothies with soymilk and agave nectar but 5 years later discovered we were allergic to soy which was once considered a superfood and agave is high in fructose which is apparently toxic and the real cause of the obesity epidemic so now eat amaranth and chia seeds with stevia powder but are afraid we are eating too much of the same thing and killing the enzymes by cooking it and chia seeds are just so hard to find organic that we’re thinking of switching to organic quinoa flakes and flax meal. We still haven’t figured out lunch. And we’re still drinking the coffee, but now it has antioxidants apparently. Maybe we’ll just skip lunch, do some intermittent fasting (for economic justice?).

The world has become very complex (or was it always that way), and thus conscientiousness has also become more complex. In order to keep up with all the rules for self-development, for health and for getting ahead in an ever more complex world, we learn to follow ever more complex rule sets. Those that succeed appear like capitalist supermen (and women)—able to cope with the bewildering madness of modern global society, and enthusiastic that you can too. When we encounter these übermench we doubt not only our own ability but our own sanity. Perhaps the world isn’t insane, perhaps we are for not taking advantage of all these shiny new opportunities. Should we attempt to master the ever more complex rules? Do we have a choice? Yes, we shall give it one more try, starting tomorrow. But if it doesn’t work this time, let’s buy an RV and drive up into the mountains someplace where cell phones and wifi don’t reach, where we can be simple again, simple and free. But no such place exists anymore, does it?

Frugalism on the other hand is about getting more out of life by maximizing value for one’s dollars over time, since life is time and time is money. A frugalist may or may not like Macs and iPhones, depending on whether they are worth the cash, can get them for free or cheap, can fix them easily themselves (thus saving on repairs), how long they last, whether they could do without a phone or computer altogether, etc. Frugalists frequent yard sales, fix up things they get for free, and always think “does this save me money in the long term based on saving and investing?” and “does this allow me to spend my time doing what I want to do with my life?” Frugalists may or may not have aesthetic concerns, and often have an aesthetic based on the deal they received or the rarity of the item they acquired. A frugalist’s home may be full of knick-nacks or sparse, may be clean or dirty but is much more likely to contain reclaimed materials with many imperfections than a minimalist’s. Rarely will a frugalist purchase anything new unless it was 80% or more off the retail price, or else the frugalist will consider this purchase a rare indulgence, whereas for a minimalist newer often has a simpler aesthetic and matches with other things already purchased.

Where a minimalist might carry a $12 Moleskine journal, a frugalist would be much more likely seen carrying scraps of paper already printed on one side, cut and stapled together into a makeshift pad. A minimalist might be seen wearing all black or single color clothes which are brand new and have some unusual cut, whereas a frugalist is more likely to be wearing something comfortable purchased at the Goodwill or a yard sale that is slightly out of style, perhaps with some holes patched up by hand. A minimalist might wear Vibrams 5-finger shoes to get back to nature and do “barefoot” running, whereas a frugalist would simply go barefoot, or wear an old pair of leather sandals which have been resoled several times. A budding minimalist may aspire to one day own a Prius and live in a large eco-home in the woods overlooking a stream or else travel the world with a Macbook Pro and an REI backpack, whereas a budding frugalist will instead aspire to downsize — perhaps living in an RV, a log cabin she builds herself, or a small sailboat — where the cost of living approaches zero, thus freeing one to work for money or not.

The minimalist is always concerned whether adding something new will destroy the aesthetic they are creating, whereas the frugalist is always concerned whether adding something new will burden them with financial obligations or be a bad use of one’s life energy in the long run. Thus a minimalist will acquire digital things in lieu of physical ones unless they are beautiful, whereas a frugalist will often accept many physical or digital things as long as they are cheap or free or otherwise a good investment, can stash them somewhere, and are in good working order (or at least potentially fixable). A frugalist will often collect ugly things that still work fine — like a beat up old truck, or an old iPhone 3 which can be used with Skype over wi-fi — even if they don’t need them right now if they think they can use the items (or parts of them) at some later date. A minimalist would consider this “junk.”

Most people are not philosophically consistent however, so we will at times make choices based on either a minimalist aesthetic or a frugalist ethic or some other perspective altogether. In addition, the above was somewhat of a simplification and there are other concerns at play here, like the frugalist aesthetic of preferring to do things with one’s hands, or the minimalist’s ethic of focusing on what is most important. There are also overlaps, for instance this blog has a minimalist aesthetic and here I have several articles criticizing minimalism! But it can be helpful to sort these things out to make sense of what is going on when people talk about “minimalism” within the personal development world, and why primarily minimalism as expounded by the A-list bloggers is about the simple aesthetic, not the frugal ethic.

Them: Hey, you want a drink?

You: Yea, I’ll take a glass of water, thanks.

Them: Don’t you want a beer or something?

You: No thanks, I’m trying to quit.

Them: Come on, it’s just one drink…

Now here’s where most personal development writers will say “you should stay away from such negative people—they are only trying to bring you down.” I think it’s exactly the opposite.

Most people who try to pressure you to engage in a behavior you are avoiding have a positive intention for doing so, even though their behavior can be really annoying. For instance, they may want to have fun together, to share in some experience, or just to feel better about their own indulgences. These aren’t negative intentions of harm and ill will, but positive intentions of shared humanity (except perhaps the last one, but wanting to feel better isn’t necessarily a bad thing either).

When people gently pressure you to indulge in a behavior you are abstaining from, you shouldn’t necessarily avoid them but learn how to deal with their comments first. The easiest way is to avoid justifying, arguing, defending, or explaining your decision…unless you are really close to this person and have the time and space to really get into the reasons, and think this person will listen and empathize with you at this time. This strategy can be summarized as JADE*, which is what you don’t do—justify, argue, defend, or explain—when you want to deal with this kind of peer pressure, or otherwise avoid unnecessary drama. Basically it’s a way to end the conversation about your personal decision and force the conversation to move on to some other topic without being a jerk.

Note in the above example the speaker says “no thanks, I’m trying to quit.” Big mistake! Now the conversation becomes about the reasons you’ve decided to make a personal choice for yourself. By saying “I’m trying to quit,” you open a door for the other person to elicit your reasons for wanting to quit and argue with them.

Here’s a great strategy for responding to such peer pressure that I recently learned from Andrew T. Austin on his excellent Weight Loss: A Neurolinguistic Perspective audio program:

1. Have a catchy phrase/affirmation to describe your decision. Example: “I choose what goes inside my body.” What I like about this one in particular is that to challenge it, someone would have to argue that they choose what goes inside your body! Most people will not be that rude. Whatever your phrase is, own it!
2. Respond kindly and politely three times to anyone who pressures you to do something you don’t want to do. It’s best to keep it very simple like “no, thanks!” with a smile, really assuming they have a positive intent while maintaining your decision. DO NOT JUSTIFY, ARGUE, DEFEND, OR EXPLAIN. Good: “I just want water.” Bad: “I’m trying to lose weight.” Good: “I appreciate the offer, just water please.” Bad: “I said I just wanted water, you jerk! Why do you always have to be like this?” Good: “I don’t want any, thank you.” Bad: “Did you know alcohol is a known nervous system toxin? You should really quit too.”
3. If the person pressures a fourth time, don’t be nice. Say something like, “I’ve said ‘no thanks’ three times, and yet you’ve pressured me a fourth time. Now, are you going to knock it off, or do we need to have a larger conversation about treating people with respect?” Note that saying it this way keeps the focus on the real issue—having your decision be respected, rather than defending your personal choices as in whether or not to drink alcohol. Very few people will push it this far. If someone is pushing you this far and they are a friend, you may want to ask yourself whether you want to be friends with someone like this. If they are family, well you probably have to deal with them—having a deeper conversation may help. If they are a stranger, you might consider leaving the situation. In any case, you should prepare for this to happen once in a while and be willing to say something like the above which does not justify, argue, defend, or explain your decision.
4. Practice the above before it happens. Play act various scenarios with a supportive friend, therapist, or coach, or just rehearse in your head or out loud until you get it down. Try it out in the real world, and repeat your practice as necessary.

Here are some times to not JADE:

• when facing peer pressure to put something inside your body that you don’t want to (alcohol, sweets, drugs, gluten, etc.)
• after setting a reasonable limit with a child you are parenting (consider explaining later though when things cool down, away from the candy aisle, etc.)
• when dealing with annoying relatives
• when talking with people who regularly push boundaries or play power games: narcissists, psychopaths, 2-year-olds, etc.
• when talking with an addict about their addiction to alcohol, drugs, etc.
• when someone is being verbally abusive—a spouse, a boss, a pushy salesman, a manipulative “pick-up-artist,” etc.
• when you’ve done something wrong and someone is confronting you about it. In this case, simply admit wrongdoing, genuinely empathize if you’ve hurt the person, and only if you are absolutely sure you will follow through, state what you will do differently or to make up for it. If you have repeatedly broken promises like this though, don’t make any amends verbally—just change your behavior for the better in secret. Broken promises of better behavior simply compound your problems. (Sometimes a little context can help the other person to understand your behaviors, but it’s best to not to try and explain away the behavior first, providing context only after admitting wrongdoing and harm if the other person cares to hear it. Make sure to emphasize that you providing context is not an attempt to excuse the behavior and that you admit to yourself and the other that it was wrong.)

JADE Gone Wild

There are however times it is appropriate to justify your actions, to engage in an argument, to defend your position, or to explain your behavior. Every principle has it’s limits, and taken to extremes can do the opposite of its intended outcome.

Let’s say you decide to change your name from your given name Robert to Tzechal (I don’t even know how you’d pronounce that) because of a vision you received during an Ayahuasca ceremony. Don’t be a dick about it—if you want people to call you Tzechal it’s reasonable to give at least a sentence describing your reasons, something like, “I had a really powerful experience in Peru and was given this name. I’d like it if you’d call me this from now on.” At this point, explaining further may not be helpful, as people are either going to accept this request or not, and you’ll have to live with the result. If you consistently make these kinds of requests of your friends, or change your name more than once in your adult life however, be prepared for people to roll their eyes and ignore your request.

Or let’s say you have some unusual health problems and think you might be allergic to gluten because your friend is, but you aren’t sure if you are yet. Demanding that your family all stop eating gluten immediately and then refusing to explain why is unreasonable. A little explanation—ideally away from meal times and when people have time to really sit down and listen—can provide the space others need to help meet your needs.

Some people make negative changes in their behavior and then refuse to JADE because they believe they are always in the right! For instance an abusive alcoholic might come home at 4am drunk and refuse to explain where he’s been to his spouse. Usually in these cases though, the person will then argue, but not explain, but sometimes you get people like Tim Ferriss and his “policy on haters” to simply ignore their valid criticisms. Obviously this is a poor use of this principle.

Justifying, arguing, defending, and explaining some of your choices and behaviors can be reasonable when a) you are talking with someone you love/respect (or you are in a court room), b) you both have the time and space to get into the details, c) you feel are being listened to, and d) the conversation is leading towards mutual appreciation and understanding. Avoiding JADE is useful for bypassing excessive drama, dealing with people who are seem like they are never going to back down from their position, or when you sense the conversation isn’t ever going to end up with mutual understanding and appreciation.

A hair-trigger response to all negative feedback such as immediately labeling someone as “a negative person” and cutting them out of your life (or banning them from your forum, etc.) reduces an individual’s intelligence by cutting out feedback that would expand their perspective. This is why I like the strategy of three polite “no thank you”‘s before initiating a deeper confrontation/conversation, and only then considering cutting someone off (with some exceptions for abusive or violent behavior, comment spam, etc.).

There are of course many other possibilities that you can imagine when JADE is reasonable, and when it’s best to avoid. In any case, I hope you’ve found this article useful. Next time you are considering making a positive change in your behavior that may lead to peer pressure from others, I hope you will practice these ways of responding in advance to give more support to your success, while maintaining a balanced approach in your communication.

* Hat tip to @Mjausson on Twitter for posting an article on JADE today that spurred my thoughts.

Which brings me to a new $497, 28-day course “worth thousands of dollars” in changing habits called The Habit Course, from Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and friends. (Hat tip to @7breaths_.) Personally, I think the most important habit to create in your life is the habit of avoiding overpriced personal development products, of which there will always be more. The chances are for most people who purchase this or any other program, compliance will be very low, the forums are likely to be dead, and the added “bonuses” will likely lead to overload and analysis paralysis.

In addition, anything other than just working on your habit is not working on your habit, and fundamental changes simply take time. While it can be helpful to learn a few things about successfully forming habits, it is all too common to become an armchair expert in the theory of success without doing the actual work. Just as it would be ridiculous to eat a menu, confusing it for the meal, we consumers of personal development often eat up the inspiration instead of being nourished by the actions required to make real change—most of which are completely free.

One of my values is frugality—using your life, time, and money well due to the recognition that all of the above are limited resources. Now this doesn’t mean I’m a “freegan” or a freetard. It is reasonable to charge money for your product or service. Indeed, often times purchasing something—a book, a therapy session, a piece of exercise equipment, etc.—can be the best use of one’s time and money. A single kettlebell might cost $70 including tax and shipping, but if you used it every day for a year it could save hundreds over a gym membership…and still be in perfect condition to resell if you didn’t like it, or wanted a heavier one.

Leo B. also advocates for frugality, minimalism, and simplicity. For instance once of the “free bonuses” for The Habit Course comes from Trent Hamm of The Simple Dollar. (I like that his bonus has a “$2 value”—the most honest assessment of any bonus I’ve seen in a marketing launch like this.) Yet the $497 price tag is hardly a fit for the frugal personal development consumer. Like Leo’s love of this minimalist mansion (which he said in the comments he has since retracted), his stated values and his actions seem to be once again incongruent. While there is a money-back guarantee after week 1 if you don’t like it, I just can’t see any benefits above maybe $50 from a 28-day course on such a generic, well-known subject as habit formation. Why not just keep it simple and offer less?

My recommendation? If you want to learn about changing habits, get a book from your local library on the subject, or purchase just one physical book that you can resell on Amazon afterwards. Read it and test the principles in your real life with at least three habits. Refine your process based on real feedback. Cost: $0-$10 + a lot of hard work, a savings of $487 or more. Either way the bulk of real change comes from that hard work part, so why not invest that $500 instead? If you invested $500 a year instead of spending it on products like this, at a mere 5% return over 20 years you’d have over $18,000 extra bucks!

If you find that idea insufficient, I have an additional program for you, dear reader. Instead of giving Leo and friends your $500, give it to me. Send $500 by PayPal to andrewmcduffee at gmail and tell me the habit you want to keep for the next 28 days. If you keep it to your satisfaction, you get all your money back (minus the interchange fees). If you don’t, I keep the money. You can’t beat that deal for it’s simple effectiveness!

To summarize, a wise man once said, “Stop buying the unnecessary.”

I posted a long comment in response that I thought Beyond Growth readers might enjoy. My comment includes some ideas I’ve been working on around the philosophy of personal growth which is also critical of some of the presuppositions of The Forum. For context, you may want to read Jack’s post first.

Interesting review, Jack.

I’ve come to believe lately that the notion “There’s no meaning intrinsic to events that happened in our lives” is false, even though “Humans act like ‘meaning making machines’ and construct the meaning of everything in our lives,” is true. There are a likely number of possible meanings to any event which is not infinite and has contours based on individual history, cultural context, etc. Of these limited meanings, unlimited minor variations can occur, but they occur in the same way that one could take “unlimited” positions within a single room, bounded by the same 4 walls regardless. I think this view on meaning is consistent with the latest research into categories in Cognitive Linguistics (see Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things by George Lakoff).

The major difference between my view and the view “There’s no meaning intrinsic to events that happened in our lives” is that the latter is aggressively nihilistic and the former constructivist but not requiring constant maintenance to avoid falling into a meaningless void. We can see this same aggressive nihilism in the movie Fight Club, where the ultimate solution from Tyler Durden is to form a violent, anarchist cult that seeks to destroy the structures of modernity.

If we believe things are ultimately meaningless, then we must constantly, consciously, and willfully be constructing this meaning. This leads naturally to the highly aggressive happy seeker who must at all times be in control of what things mean, bringing more people into their worldview or else it will all fall apart. While we do in fact construct meanings in our lives, there are not infinite possible storylines but likely clusters, common themes, etc. that bind us together as human beings. These aren’t exactly “objective” but more clusters of subjective possibility that we can select from and edit appropriately to fit the specific details of actual events in our lives.

Thus the events of our lives do have a sort of pre-given possibility for meaningfulness, meaningful specifically to the human subjects that participate in them. There is no need to fear any meaningless “objective” universe for such a thing is an abstraction—not an ultimate, observable reality—and instead we find that by surrendering into an unknowing void of meaning, we discover a peace of Being that is beyond aggressively grasping for meaningfulness or imposing our chosen meanings onto others.

I also have challenges to other basic principles of Landmark education, for instance the idea “We are all inauthentic assholes who lie and cheat our way through life, take the easy way out, and blame other people for our own problems.” I know plenty “authentic assholes” too, in fact most people who talk a lot about authenticity qualify as such, content to spew their insides out at all times, neglecting the importance of tact, of civility, and of social graces (including the authenticity of representing yourself differently in different contexts).

The shallow notion of authenticity as “just being yourself, the exact same in all contexts” is faulty for many reasons, not least of which is that who I fundamentally am changes depending on the context because I am a semi-permeable system in relation with other systems, not an autonomous impermeable entity. In fact, I feel that the biggest lie of them all is that one can act the exact same in all contexts, or that this would be somehow preferable. Should I wear a ratty tee shirt to a funeral? How about a tuxedo to a dance club? This kind of contradiction runs deep in Fight Club as well, for instance how Durden says “you are not your fucking kakhis” yet the entire movie is dressed in extremely stylish clothes. Or how millionaire actor Brad Pitt playing Durden says, “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t.” The critique of culture is nullified due to participating in creating what is being critiqued while making the statement.

These kinds of errors in philosophy multiply when you combine them all together in one seminar. While I do think there are benefits to catharsis and the various exercises performed in such workshops, I think the errors in philosophy and aggressiveness of psychological methods ultimately make it something I cannot support or recommend to others for sustainable, long-term personal change.

For those seeking other critical views of Landmark Education and The Forum, here are some good resources:

• Landmark Forum entry on The Skeptics Dictionary
• Landmark Education on Rick Ross

The truth is, it’s much easier to buy something than actually change yourself. Hence why we get self-help as consumerism. Gurus of self-help products regularly contribute to this problem. At the Tony Robbins “Unleash the Power Within” seminar I attended, Robbins encouraged everyone present to give a several hundred dollar deposit for his “Mastery University” series of very expensive seminars, using such twisted financial logic like “if you think you can’t afford it, that’s just your limiting beliefs about money that will keep you poor forever” and encouraging people who didn’t have the money in their checking accounts to write a post-dated check and “find a way” to get the money into their account before the check cleared. (The truth is I know several folks who declared bankruptcy from using this method to attend Robbins’ seminars.) Talking out of the other side of his mouth, Robbins also frequently harps on people who read self-help books and go to seminars but don’t take enough “massive action.” Personal development authors encourage selling with emotional triggers to get impulse buys from customers, yet then turn around and blame the customer for not getting results. Talk about not taking responsibility!

Having thumbed through Tim Ferriss‘ book and read numerous comments on this blog and elsewhere, his 4-Hour Body in the words of the NY Times, “reads as if The New England Journal of Medicine had been hijacked by the editors of the SkyMall catalog.” Discussions online about the book seem to center on which products to buy, whether the PAGG stack, the Philips goLITE (something I’ve been considering myself for fixing my messed up sleep schedule and SAD), kettlebells (something I enjoy exercising with, but purchased and honestly didn’t really use for several years), etc. Even discussion about the various diets in 4HB are about what to consume—whether “slow carbs” or a gallon of milk a day.

Whatever happened to things like, say, discipline as the foundation of self-help?

I got into self-help because I lived with constant, debilitating anxiety as a kid. Nobody could be courageous for me—I literally had to do it myself. I think everyone should be involved with self-help to a degree precisely because there are things one can only do for one’s self—whether assessing one’s level of honesty, expressing one’s emotions authentically, getting sufficient daily exercise, managing one’s personal finances in the way that best fits one’s values, etc. Note that there is no purchase necessary to develop self-discipline, to pursue greater honesty, to manage one’s finances, or even to exercise (you can start with or even go your whole life just with walking, barefoot running, pushups, pullups, situps, bodyweight squats, playing sports, etc.). There are still many self-help consumer goods that tempt me—especially exercise equipment of various kinds—but I know myself well enough now to realize that if I don’t have the discipline first to exercise regularly, buying a heavier kettlebell certainly isn’t going to magically give me that.

One of the major problems with the effectiveness of modern medicine is what doctors call “compliance.” For example, if you have a bacterial infection, chances are penicillin will kill it. But chances are also good that you won’t remember to take all your medicine, thus leaving some little nasties still floating around in your body, waiting to erupt again later, and possibly even becoming immune to antibiotics because you didn’t take the full course of your medicine. Compliance is even worse for things like diabetes that require major lifestyle changes—in the US, non-compliance is 98% for folks with diabetes, and non-compliance is “the principal cause of complications related to diabetes including nerve damage and kidney failure” (source: Wikipedia).

Regardless of what your opinion is of Western allopathic medicine, the fact is that following through is difficult for most people for a variety of reasons: unexpected side-effects of the treatment, cost of prescription medicine, complexity of the regimen, poor trust or communication between patient and health provider, and even simple forgetfulness or other psychological factors. And that’s just for easy things like taking a pill every day. For things like diabetes and hypertension, the lifestyle changes required are so huge for most people they can’t even conceive of doing the basic things required.

Note that this compliance issue also occurs not only with health professionals but also with self-help purchases—whether a set of supplements learned about in a book like The 4-Hour Body, a late night infomercial exercise program, or an overpriced motivational seminar, chances are you’re not likely to follow through with the incredibly difficult path that such purchases require to get the advertised results. There may even be unforeseen side-effects that the sage on the stage somehow neglected to mention during his 4-hour sales pitch. This is why I generally recommend to people that they try something free and foundational first, then and only then think about buying something that might help. For instance, if you’re looking to get in shape, start with three 15-minute walks a week. If you can do that for a month, add 3 sets of pushups from the knees with your walks. Keep that up for a month and then change your breakfast to something like oatmeal and fruit or some hard-boiled eggs with or without the yolks.

This same principle is true of technology that supposedly makes you “more productive” (B.S.—technology amplifies your current habits and tendencies whether productive or distracted by every shiny object on the internet), exercise equipment that supposedly gives you a six-pack (B.S.—visible rectus abdominus muscles come only from low bodyfat percentage, which largely comes from consistently eating healthy and not too much), or techniques that supposedly make sex bigger and better (B.S.—almost everyone agrees that sex is best when intimacy is present, which is the natural result of trust and commitment built over time).

Focus on the fundamentals, the things that require patience and persistence and are basically free or cheap, the things that are ultimately virtues, and then maybe buy something. But know that deep personal change has almost nothing to do with buying the right thing.

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