The Courage to be Seen As You Are

At her TED talk, "The Power of Vulnerability," Brené Brown points out that courage and vulnerability are two sides of the same coin. When I first heard this, it seemed oxymoronic, but then it made total sense. You need courage to be vulnerable to others and when you are vulnerable, you can have real relationships, which makes you strong, courageous. Here's an except from Brown's TED talk:

There was only one variable that separated the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people who really struggle for it. And that was, the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they're worthy of love and belonging. That's it. . . . What they had in common was a sense of courage. . . . [T]he original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word "cor," meaning "heart" -- and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly. . . . [T]hey were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection. The other thing that they had in common was this: They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating . . . They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, "I love you" first ... the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees ... the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They're willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental.

. . . .

[W]hen we work from a place, I believe, that says, "I'm enough" ... then we stop screaming and start listening, we're kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves. 

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Life’s Meaning and Friendship Connections

We are intensely social beings. This is a predicament because it takes a lot of work to maintain social connections and even the strongest of connections can sometimes fail. It’s worth the work and it’s worth the risks, though, because this social predicament offers us our only chance to live a meaningful life.

Many people who are shy or (like me) introverted might be tempted to think that a meaningful life can be sustained by passively observing the world around us. We might be tempted to think that we can retreat into some sort of safe place, somehow living a meaningful life while watching the crazy, beautiful and (sometimes) dangerous social spectacles crisscrossing our space-time at a distance.

But a meaningful life is only possible when we work hard to forge deep vulnerable personal honest connections with others. Life can be meaningful only to the extent that we bravely reach out to others at the risk of failure and rejection.

Our journey is thus a non-stop crisis. The human condition compels us to keep approaching social intersections of danger and opportunity. There is no place to pull over to be neutral. There is no way to fully light up our potential by vicariously living the adventures of others, including the adventures of sports heroes or Hollywood characters. To the extent that we fail to take personal risks of connection, the meaningful life withers. If we had been given instruction manuals at the moment we were born, this would be Lesson One: Maintaining close personal connections with others is a necessity of life, as important as food, water and air. Chapter Two: A Life without close friendships is an emotionally impoverished life. Lesson Three: We will often fail in our attempts to connect with others and when this happen, it will hurt.

Lesson Four is that we can often get up, dust ourselves off and be better and stronger because of failures to connect with others. This “good” type of failure is only possible, however, if we can ridicule and silence voices that tell us to stop taking risks, whether these are voices of other people trying to “help” us or whether we are broadcasting these pernicious voices inside of our own heads.

I’ve been thinking about these things a lot recently. For the past year, I had been in a period of relatively blissful “normal” life, where everything seemed safe and steady, including an ongoing romance. But then a huge wave hit me from behind and everything was instantly upside down. It’s as if I were at a movie theater where the movie screen caught fire and I started thinking: “This incredible CGI makes it look like there is a real fire,” but then I realized it was a real fire. Then the announcer stated: “We’re taking a break from normal life. Good luck to you.”

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What To Do About Your Broken Heart

A broken heart can really hurt. It can physically hurt and it can be distracting, obsessive, depressing and unrelenting. The internet offers a lot of advice about what to do when your heart is broken, but this advice is anecdotal, hit and miss at best. That's why I then searched for articles based on science and I found one the offered an effective way to lessen the pain of a broken heart.

At Scientific American, Psychologist Guy Winch discusses a study that considered three strategies, to see which of these best helped heartbroken subjects reduce their love feelings.

In the first condition, subjects focused on negative reappraisals of their ex-partner (eg, by responding to prompts about their ex’s annoying habits). In the second condition they were asked to reframe their loving feelings as less problematic (eg, by endorsing prompts such as ‘It’s okay to love someone I’m no longer with’). The last condition used distraction (eg, questions about the subjects’ favorite food) to get the participants’ mind off their heartbreak. The researchers found that only negative reappraisals were truly effective in reducing love feelings. However, doing so did increase feelings of unpleasantness.

According to Winch, although this unpleasantness might seem to be a big price to pay to reduce feelings of love, there are two ways to address this unpleasantness: 1) Remember that "when we are heartbroken, our mind is likely to bombard us with highly idealized snapshots, memories and thoughts both about our ex and about our relationship." When we force ourselves to remember the downsides of the relationship, we are correcting for these untrue idealized images that are causing the pain 2)  We shouldn't contemplate only the person to whom we were attracted. Instead, we should force ourselves to think of the dynamics  of the relationship itself.  That's where we can best see the problem, because quite often a relationship consists of two smart good-hearted people who merely lack the chemistry to be a pair.

In my experience, it might take some work to see the downside to a relationship, especially when one is the dumpee rather than the dumper. But it's not always difficult.  There might be low-hanging fruit, things like addictions or rampant dishonesty, things that would have been absolute deal-breakers on Day One.  If only your lover had revealed these things at the very beginning of your relationship.  Imagine a Match.com profile indicating: "I will tell you the opposite of what I'm really feeling when we discuss important issues."  Or "I will become annoyed when you come over to spend time with me because I'd rather spend time with my other friends, who like to get drink heavily."  For most of us, dysfunctions like these, if revealed up front, would destroy the possibility of ever having a first date.  Once a romance has been going on for months, the confirmation bias encourages us to overlook any evidence pointing to major problems like these.  Once the relationship fractures apart, major issues like these often become obvious, sad and embarrassing memories.  But once the relationship is over, stark bad memories like these are also the best medicine to lessen the pain of your broken heart.  The better the hurt, the better the cure.

Even in the absence of major issues, there are doubtless various reasons why any particular relationship failed.  There had to be friction and frustration, even if nothing "major," and even if the cause is ineffable. Even where one doesn't understand why the relationship was not smooth sailing, one certainly experienced that it was not smooth sailing.

Winch suggests the following as the best salve for a broken heart, whether the issues were major or minor:

If you are trying to get over heartbreak, make a list of the person’s faults as well as of the shortcomings of the actual relationship and keep that list on your phone. Whenever you find yourself having idealized thoughts and memories, whip out your phone and read a few reminders in order to balance your perceptions and remind yourself that your ex was not perfect and neither was the relationship.

I have tried this approach to the letter and I highly recommend it.  Reviewing your own long list of real grievances turns a wonderful movie about you and your ex-lover into a sad and frustrating movie that makes you want to throw popcorn at the screen and walk out.  Once you see your ex-lover as they were, not merely as you crave them, it's much easier to turn the page to a new chapter of your life.

What follows is Winch's TED talk on this same topic:

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The Hidden Trade-offs Made by Successful People

Shane Parrish has written another excellent post at Farnam Street Blog. The topic is trade-offs. We can't have it all, and we can benefit when we recognize the trade-offs we must make in every aspect of our lives:

Economics is all about tradeoffs. A tradeoff is loosely defined as any situation where making one choice means losing something else, usually forgoing a benefit or opportunity. We experience tradeoffs in zero-sum situations, when a plus in one area must be a negative in another. A core component of economic theory is the study of how we allocate scarce resources and negotiate opportunity costs.

Economics offers tools that we can use as guides for getting what we want out of life if we take economic lessons and apply them to resources other than money. We all know our money isn’t infinite, yet we end up treating our time and energy and attention as if they are. Many of us act as if there are no tradeoffs—we can just do everything if we try hard enough. The irony is that those who know how to make tradeoffs can get so much more out of life than those who try to get everything.


Parrish notes that successful-seeming people all make secret trade-offs. They are not great at everything. I have wondered about this when seeing so many people who I suspect are of modest means, driving cars much more expensive than mine, going out to eat and drink much more often than me, and generally conspicuously consuming much more than me. I have this fantasy where everyone's budget and bank and credit accounts floated above them, and I could then confirm, "Oh, they aren't saving for retirement and they are one missed paycheck from disaster!"  The same thing happens with time as with money.  We can't be super-competent at all things. When we are proficient at some things, it is always at the expense of other things.

Can we reach homeostasis? It's not easy per Parrish:

We’re constantly going off-kilter in one area or another and having to make course corrections. When one area goes well, another is usually sliding. It’s like a game of whack-a-mole. Focus on one area and it’s often to the detriment of another.


One solution to getting a grip on this problem that we must make trade-offs is to track your time. I did this for two months and it was extremely telling. I was spending time pursuing my declared life goals a LOT less than I spent time in mundane chores like cooking/eating/cleaning up, driving and various unproductive activities. I was unconsciously making choices to do less important things at the expense of the things that I treasure (good conversations with close friends, artistic pursuits, working on website and my book). I wrote about my approach to tracking time earlier here.

Parrish offers many other tips in his article. For instance, you need to get over the awkwardness that you won't be great at everything.  That would be impossible

I'm taking heed of the many good ideas in this excellent article.

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The Many Benefits of Playing Music

My parents offered me the chance to take guitar lessons when I was 7, and I agreed to do that, so now, decades later, I'm doing what many guitar players are doing: Playing self-learned keyboards! Truly, I am grateful to my parents for digging deep to buy me a guitar and provide me with lessons. I'm still playing lots of music--it is a wonderful way to spend time on planet Earth. Here's one my most recent compositions, which I call "Striding."



As much as a digital studio (Logic Pro) provides endless enjoyment, I also still love playing the guitar, absolutely love it. And I love my guitars. If the house ever caught fire, I'd work hard to save them. There is a lot to love about music, especially if you end up hitting a high enough level of competence that you are comfortable sharing your music with others in your community. I was lucky in that regard. In my late teens, I was co-band leader for a 7-piece jazz rock band that played throughout St. Louis. I treasure those days.

But now I learn that there are many other benefits to playing music that are backed by science. "Music Lessons Were the Best Thing Your Parents Ever Did for You, According to Science" lists 13 of them, along with links to the science. Check out this article for explanations and links to the science. This is an impressive list:

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