'Wrong-making' & The Curse of 'Not Good Enough' - The 'What Worked?' Weekly - 16-11-19

Another week, another chance to consider what worked, and what didn't.

[Thanks as ever to Brad Blanton, founding father of Radical Honesty]

I realise that the week has always been busier than I recall when it comes to reflecting in this way. Maybe that's a 'not good enough' example to consider straight off the bat? Underestimation and affirmation-deficit are surely good symptoms of that chronic condition.

Funny thing is that I never saw myself as one of those people who judged and limited themselves in this way. But I've thought again.  

Recently, in dreaming, I saw that the peer group of my 20s was, and still is, the jury of my coolness and capability. I wonder what 'they' think; I use them to shame myself; I project my inferiority/superiority games onto them, attacking as the best form of self-defence.

I see how, if not them, them others have been drafted into my life - strong characters, often the noisily fragile - to satisfy my need for shame. And I don't blame them. I am not a victim. I arrange it all as the production that, as Vinny Grant calls it, is the theatre of my mind.

Feels like, seeing it, I'm done with it now. Though, I understand there will be residues and relapses as the well-practiced, deeply ingrained, habit of decades is allowed to wither and perish. 

Making others wrong is a great way to cover up one's own inadequacies. Thanks to the input of Landmark Education in my 30s and 40s, I'm aware of what it is to make people wrong, make myself 'right' as a survival strategy. What's more, I realise what an inefficient strategy it is for enjoying fulfilling relationships.

Cue: Ian's 'Biggest Mistake'...

One of the biggest mistakes people make is when they have an understanding, or have come to an understanding, or have figured something out for themselves, they start judging others.
Not only judging but unfortunately shaming others who think differently. Or haven’t yet come to the place of that understanding.
This alienates those two groups of people from one another. People who have that understanding, and people who have yet to come to that understanding.
This creates more conflict, friction, and aggression.
Usually leading to the other group of people starting to attack and shame the first group of people who figured it out.
What could be done differently?
This is where a huge responsibility lies on the people who have figured things out first.
It is their duty to articulate and prove their point with words as well as actions.
Provide real proof of their discovery.
This is a very long process if You understand that there are about 8 billion people on this planet and the information gets distorted constantly.
This lengthy process has a good chance of leading to bitterness because no one is listening to those amazing new ideas that the first group already figured out.
People’s minds take a really long time to understand something new and difficult. Be it that it might be something that has great potential in enhancing their lives.
The first group has to live it, speak it and basically prove it.
This will take a long time (from a human perspective) and one just has to deal with it if they want to change something meaningful on this planet. This comes with the territory of leadership.
I’m guilty of doing this myself and through my wrongdoings, I understood that it’s not my job to shame and ridicule people into new understandings and new ways of being. It is my job to live it, do it, write it, speak it, teach it. That is all.
If You are a person that has amazing ideas that have the potential to help humans in some way, take Your time. It’s a long ride.
Your job is to create new worlds, not to shame the old ones for existing. Although the latter is easier to do, You must resist the temptation and focus on creation instead.

Ian Altosaar

This was a Facebook post, under which I commented:

This is the theme of my week. #makingotherswrongThe other is the drama (and effect) of the 'not good enough' program.
Soon after seeing Charlie's share of this post. I realised that they are the same thing.
Who is the person we most 'make wrong? Ourselves!
I put this quiz to my wife Louisa...
"Who do you most make wrong?" I asked.
"You," she said.
That wasn't the answer was I was looking for (as revealing as it was!). Yet on further quizzing, she corroborated my theory.
Making wrong is a disaster. (Extinction Rebellion are actively trying to polarise opinion with this method. The results are telling.)

Not being good enough is a conclusion I arrived at early in life and it was the safest bet to take it as received and figure out work-arounds in an attempt to survive and prosper. Trouble is, that early 'program' has continued to run in the background of my life, decades later, with the results that showed themselves in the foreground - so-called reality.

Which brings me back (again) to last night's, late-night posting...

We don't have a rite, a ceremony, a process, to acknowledge and resolve the survival strategies of our childhood. We therefore carry them beyond youth, making a playground of adulthood. Infants, under-tens and teens lurking in grown-up bodies, desperately seeking functionality - sometimes managing 😂

I think I need to create one. Or more. With the amazing individuals who are showing up around me with the energetic technology to comprehend and re-write the 'software'.