David Krueger MD

The topic of shame appeared recently in my New Wellness Story® Coaching Group, with a couple of individual clients, and in a training seminar. These stimulating discussions have prompted me to revisit some ideas and earlier writing about shame that are rooted in my former profession of Psychoanalysis, but require new consideration in Mentor Coaching. I am interested in any responses, resonances, and ideas that you have as a reader of the notions that follow.

Self-esteem vs. Shame
Ideals and needs are at the core of identity, part of the foundation of self. Ideals are internal standards of excellence. Ideals serve as a personal model of value – an internal guide to purpose. Living up to a personal, attainable ideal generates a sense of worth and esteem. Failure to live up to an internal ideal results in the feeling of shame. Shame can be pervasive over a lifetime, while remaining masked to its creator.

There are two major detours from self-esteem to arrive at shame:

• In childhood, the ideal offered by parents of what is “good enough” is never attained, and shame results. Parents neither resonate with expansiveness, nor praise talents and achievements. Or even offer shaming remarks to make someone smaller: “Who do you think you are?”

• The ideal presented by parents is that females should be loving, kind, giving, and not have or act on her own needs; when she lives up to this ideal, she fails at her own growth. However, if she grows successfully, she fails to live up to this ideal. By adulthood, this internal model is a shadow that she can’t escape, one that can darken the joy of any success.

Shame is one of the most primitive human emotions we have – the most painful and difficult to deal with. It drives the sense of “never good enough.” The birthplace of shame is the fear of disconnection. In childhood, failure to live up to the ideals of parents threatens disruption of that bond. In adulthood, failure to live up to one’s own internal ideal as an adult threatens self-alienation along with shame. Since shame is the perpetual shadow story, behavior to counter this shame must persist.

Gender Expression
The message of shame and shame-based dynamics are partly gender-related, especially in their expression. Perfectionism is a common adaptation to shame. “If I can do it perfectly, I can avoid shame, judgment, and blame.” An unspoken causal explanation is, “If I had just been more perfect, I could have avoided this.” And perfectionism looks different for males and females.

Some gender-specific expressions of attempts to counter shame:

• For females: be perfect, pretty, thin, quiet, helpful, loving and giving to others. Or the desire to spend and shop to counter the unconscious whispers of “You need to look better.”
  
  
• For males: be stoic, strong, unemotional, do more, and make more. Or the desire to compete physically or by expensive acquisitions to counter the unconscious whispers of “You have evidence of worth.”

Your Money Story
I work with many individuals in developing their money stories who need to understand the old story that contains a storyline of shame, to create new storylines of worth, belonging, and “good enough.” The new story defines attainable ideals—including growth and success—so that self-esteem can be generated internally.
Consider these questions:

• Are you writing your money story from a totally current model that allows abundance, gratitude, and fulfillment by attaining all that you are capable of doing and being?
  
  
• Do you have an end point of “good enough.”?

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Thanks to all of you for your kind words and support to make The Secret Language of Money a Business Bestseller—and now translated into 10 languages. www.TheSecretLanguageofMoney.com

Dave

David Krueger MD

You can fulfill a desire you didn’t know you had by spending money you don’t have.  You can define yourself by acquisitions not paid for.  You can borrow based on how much money you will be lended rather than by how much money you can pay back.  

Spending money generates the perception, both by the spender and observer, of having money.  Fulfilling a wish creates the desire.  When desires define identity, they can become unrelenting.  Many people who fall heavily into debt do not necessarily have psychological problems, but because their spending takes on a life of its own.  

Spending money is addictive; it changes a state of mind.  

Elastic boundaries distance the obligation of debt.  A credit card segments the pleasure of purchase from the pain of future payment.  Our optimism bias then makes rainy days and repayment an abstraction.

Four stages of a debt cycle can occur:

Compulsion->Shame->Disavowal->Compulsion

• Compulsion
  A debt cycle begins with an urge to buy something that cannot be afforded; yet we feel compelled to buy because of how we believe it will make us feel.  Spending is emotional, prompting an output of dopamine, the same brain chemical that creates the high of drug use.
  
  
• Shame
  Shame, the recognition of not living up to one’s internal ideal, sets in with the recognition of spending money that we do not have.
  
  
• Disavowal
  Lawrence Ausubel, an economist at the University of Maryland, found that cardholders admit to only four of every $10 they owe.  Intelligent people willfully disavow 60% of their debt for the same reason that alcoholics underreport the number of drinks they have.  People mentally wipe off their fingerprints to wish they hadn’t done what they did, pretending that they actually didn’t do it.  Disavowal tactics may include not opening bills when they come in, paying the minimum on credit card statements, hiding bills or statements from a partner, or lying about bills owed or balances due. 
  
  
• Compulsion
  Compulsion continues, now to also remedy the discomfort of shame, as well as to counter the initial feelings and desires that set the cycle in motion.  An addiction is anything—or any process—that you feel you can’t do without.
  

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Your Personal Money Psychology Quiz

David Krueger, M.D.

We make money—a ubiquitous metaphor that can represent anything—a portal to the immaterial and the intangible. At the same time, we see it as the path as well as the possession. Yet money always relies on the meaning we assign. We give it our power, then perceive the power to be its own.

The antithesis of money is not poverty—it’s a credit card. And we impart intention to both.

We organize much of our lives around money, paying attention and energy to its acquisition, management, even at times its repudiation. It can never be ignored, both positively and negatively, so it is quintessentially ripe for metaphor. Money has become our medium for wishing, the frame and fuel for our fantasies. Metaphors are the real things that have been distilled and artistically reconstructed by the unconscious to represent hidden truths.

Money is a way of thinking that we know exactly what we are getting. We assume we know what money is by what we think it can do for us. We bet that the more we pay, the more we get. In many instances, this is true. In many, it’s not.

We believe money will guarantee our expectations. If I pay a large amount for this luxury sedan, I expect certain performance and amenities. In some ways, money can assure certain prediction of aspects of our future.

Yet there are even some semi-tangible things money can’t buy. If a patient goes to a psychoanalyst and attempts to bribe the psychoanalyst with more money to treat him better, this is something that money can’t do. More money can’t buy a better access to the unconscious. It can’t promise a better cure for the patient. While it cannot buy the cure, it can buy the conditions for a potential cure.

Since money promises infinite possibility—a ceaselessly renewable hope of buying a better experience—consider reflecting on these questions.

• What do you really want when you want money?
  
  
• What does it mean when you want more money? And also if you want less?
  
  
• Is there a part of yourself for which money is not the currency, nor can ever be?
  
  
• Is money simply the most convenient way to describe the “more” that you apparently want? Or feel that you lack?
  
  
• Is there a part of you that is progressively silenced in a society that speaks with money and where money speaks to it? Or is simply driven to distraction?
  
  
• What can money not buy more of?
  

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Now available: Your New Money Story®: Roadmap for Money Mastery
by David Krueger MD

A Seminar Series on 5 CDs + Workbook
(also available as mp3 + pdf for international purchasers)

www.NewMoneyStory.com

David Krueger MD

1.  Focus on the system.

Devote special attention to the things that seem frustrating, out of your control, and impossible to address: politics, corporations, and economics. Systems must remain in focus as broad categories for you to feel distanced and disaffected. 

2.  Maintain a focus on theory.  

Avoid detail, singular aspects, and application.  Remain theoretical about how to transform various systems, about what needs to be done, maintaining the frustration of what seems to continue to be out of your control.

3.  Believe that the answer will appear when you step out of the box, or when you simply oppose the system.

4.  Keep the point of reference external; keep believing that the antithesis of conformity is opposition; know that one or the other of these external points of reference of conformity or opposition holds the real truth. 

5.  Do not decide. 

Allow the urgency of a situation to decide for you. The gravity of a last-minute emergency forces action and avoids planning.    Waiting for the deadline excuses responsibility for thoroughness and excellence.

6.  Believe that the answer is more rules and further structure.

7.  Debate the obvious; give energy to the controversial.

8.  Believe in experts unequivocally, and that expertise is authoritative.

Dismiss any notion that expertise is perceived, processed, and filtered through assumptions, belief systems, and prejudices of experts. 

9.  Do not seek your own information or develop your own solutions when you have experts to listen to.

Rather, find someone to provide a map for you and avoid anyone who wants to help you develop your own navigation system.

10. Always find some cause-and-effect relationship to explain things otherwise not understandable.

Maintain a consistent external focus to blame someone, or find some tangible explanation that offers a specific, concrete focus on what is wrong. Warning: Much work is required to maintain this caveat, as you must be certain that the obstacle can never be totally removed, or its causal effect would have to be confronted as inaccurate. The perceived cause must always be just beyond reach and remedy in order to remain as effective blame.

11. Keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome.

If the outcome doesn’t change for the better, do the same thing harder.  

12. Be suspicious of new ideas.

13. New ideas, being perturbations of the existing system, must be curbed or even silenced.

14. Meticulously guard against mistakes; the best way to be sure to avoid mistakes is to keep doing the same thing again and again with perfection as the goal.

15. Maintain a focus on failure, giving it the proper respect of fear so that it remains ever in focus with its guiding principle of avoidance.

16. Be extremely wary of new strategies and solutions, and invest instead in enforcement of the existing approach.

17. When you make mistakes, focus on the mistakes and attempt to get them right.

18. Continue to hold prejudices because they are markers of emotional landmines.

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Excerpted from Your New Money Story®: Roadmap for Money Mastery, a Seminar Series on 5 CDs + Workbook by David Krueger MD
www.NewMoneyStory.com

David Krueger MD

Dan Pink and I were discussing our recent books, and the application for Professional Coaches.  From his already bestselling Drive, Dan mentioned that a brief passage about two questions seemed beneficial to life and business coaches.

The first comes from Claire Booth Luce, one of the first women to serve in the United States Congress.  She conferred with President John F. Kennedy in 1962.  She was concerned that Kennedy’s attention was divided among many different priorities and that he would be less than effective with his attention scattered.  She worried that Kennedy was trying to do too many things.

She told him, “A great man is one sentence.”  Abraham Lincoln’s sentence was that he preserved the Union and freed the slaves.  Franklin Roosevelt’s sentence was he lifted us out of a great depression and helped us win a world war.  

Perhaps your sentence is: “She raised two children who became happy and productive adults.”  Or: “He helped many people grow to become more who they really are.”

As you reflect on your purpose, begin with the question:

What’s My Sentence?

Small questions can be like single steps in creating a new life story.  At the beginning of each day you may ask what you will do that day so that you’re better than yesterday.  What will you learn or do to be better?  Look for the small things, like writing two pages, or eating five servings of vegetables, or learning a new word, or working out.  

As you go to bed each night ask the small question:

Am I Better Now Than I Was Yesterday?

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Dave’s latest book, his sixteenth, The Secret Language of Money  (McGraw Hill) is a Business Bestseller and translated into 10 languages.  www.TheSecretLanguageofMoney.com

David Krueger MD

William James wrote over a century ago that the greatest discovery of his generation was that human beings could alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.  Neuroscience validated his assertion, and added that creating new experiences changes neuronal pathways in the brain, neurotransmitters, and even alters gene expression.

A wise, elderly colleague many years ago would simply tell his patients, "Sometimes you just gotta change the way you act before you can change the way you think and feel."

We assume that change is necessary and beneficial, with its absence inferring resistance or stuckness.  However, not changing at times of pressure, impulse, or various seductions may be a valid, informed decision.  C.S. Lewis addressed another aspect of this issue.  “We all want progress.  But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be.  And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.  If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

How surprised we are to learn that our fears are not in the dim shadows of the past’s unknown, but in the hopeful light of this moment’s change.

David Krueger MD

Once you have an understanding of your relationship with money, you can then systematically change your money story.  Here are some considerations in that process.

1.  You’ll never do anything important that will feel comfortable in the beginning.

2.  Having a definition of success and an internal ideal of “good enough” are essential for satisfaction.

3.  Rich is knowing you have enough.

4.  Long-term goals are necessary to keep perspective, while short-term goals are necessary to sustain enthusiasm and tolerate frustration.  

5.  Respect the boundaries between business and personal life.

6.  Develop your emotional and interpersonal expertise as well as your technical expertise.

7.  Thinking, feeling, and imagining are all active forms of doing something.  (Yet they are not physical action).                                  

8.  Judgment resides in the potential space between urge and action.

9.  When your head and your gut both agree, and you act accordingly, you won’t go wrong.    

10. Assess what reaching a goal will do.  

11. Just having a choice can make choosing the same thing feel very different.

12. Growth and change are hard.  The only thing harder is not growing or changing. (If you are uncertain or concerned about change, it is already occurring).

13.  Recognize your limits in order to achieve success.  

14.  Admit mistakes in order to cut losses.

15.  Put your ego in a blind trust and seek suggestions, critiques, and advice.

16.  Distinguish lack of information and organization from unconscious conflict.

17.  Planning and strategy are essential components of a game plan:  establishing a goal will enhance motivation; developing a strategy will focus concentration on efforts.  

18.  Examine the process that gets you to a good result.  Examine the process that gets you to a bad result.  You can learn immensely from both.

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Excerpted from Your New Money Story®: Roadmap for Money Mastery, a Seminar Series on 5 CDs + Workbook by David Krueger MD
www.NewMoneyStory.com

The Neuroscience of Premature Closure

David Krueger MD

In our quest to understand, we believe that merely giving something a name accurately explains. The unknown in medicine can be ascribed to “a virus”. Mathematics constructs “chaos theory” to explain what defies logic and cannot be understood. The “random walk theory” of Wall Street officially postulates that the market cannot be predicted. We create the illusion of understanding and even of mastery by assigning a diagnosis.

The brain operates efficiently, to expend the least amount of energy to do a task. This efficiency means that the brain takes shortcuts based on what it already knows—the tracks already laid down and neurons tailored to certain tasks. The shortcuts save energy. The shortcuts also mean that past experience necessarily shapes current perception and processing. Psychoanalysts call this transference. Neuroscientists call it the efficiency principle. Behavioral economists call it diagnosis bias (physicians should as well, but often do not). For all of us, the brain perceives things in ways it has been trained to do. How we categorize something determines what we see.

This works great for many things. But the challenge is that imagination, which comes from perception, can be limited to what we already know. We can only imagine from our current experience and our known paradigms. Neuroscientist Gregory Berns examines the science of thinking differently—iconoclasts in particular—to emphasize how we need to put ourselves in new situations to see things differently and boost creativity.

When the brain encounters the unaccustomed or unexpected, perturbation occurs. The brain has to reorganize perception, which influences how we see things. We are pushed to see things in a different way—to be creative. Prompts include a novel stimulus, new information, or an unaccustomed context.

Here are some suggestions for creative stimulation.

• Be aware of the categories that you use for a person or idea—in order to go beyond or outside them.
• Seek out environments in which you have no experience.
• Bring together ideas from different disciplines and different perspectives to the same subject.
• Engage a Mentor or Coach to challenge new ways of looking at things.
• Follow intuition and gut feelings: write them down.
• Brainstorm and free associate: allow a stream of consciousness not bound by usual categories.

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The Secret Language of Money, a Business Bestseller, is now translated into 10 languages.

(Hint: Reach Beyond and Fail Frequently)

David Krueger MD

Significant new research suggests that we do not come close to tapping into—or actualizing—our true potential.  

David Shenk in The Genius In All Of Us believes that we have a “latent talent abundance” that scientists call our “unactualized potential.”  Since intelligence is made up of the skills that we develop, we can train ourselves to be successful.  Deliberate practice changes the brain.

Epigenetics—the study of how our environment and experience determines the way genes are expressed—shows that there are no fixed genetic limits.  

Superior talent, rather than being a rare gift of a few, is a result of the art and science of highly concentrated effort.  Malcolm Gladwell gave us the 10,000 hour rule of success in Outliers: It is not innate genius or talent that creates great achievers, but seized opportunities to put in an extraordinary period of time—a minimum of 10,000 hours—to develop their talent.  

Another fellow who made somewhat of a name for himself concurred with that theory before it was a theory: “It is not that I’m so smart, but that I stick with problems longer.”  (That was Einstein)  

Talent is not a thing, but a process.  It is not something we have, but something we can do by creating the discipline to practice and co-creating a supportive environment.  

The findings suggest that the old saw about how to get to Carnegie Hall is right: practice, practice, practice.  The repeated attempts to reach beyond our present level can produce changes in the brain and create new heights of achievement.  This deliberate practice can result in frequent failures.  So, make it an organic process and follow the subtitle: Reach Beyond and Fail Frequently.  

And remember to learn from the failures while you keep practicing. 

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Now available:  Your New Money Story®: ROADMAP for Money Mastery.  A Seminar Series on 5 CDs + Workbook.  An extension and application of The Secret Language of Money. www.NewMoneyStory.com

David Krueger MD

This was the first question I was asked by one of the participants in a seminar series I conduct on the art and science of wellness.

She elaborated, “Everything you discussed about our resistance to change resonated with me. I’m wondering about something I’ve witnessed in others and myself: Why is it relatively easy to make changes that undermine our best interests? Is the ease of making the ‘bad change’ the path of least resistance, and of our hedonistic tendencies?”

Brevity is neither my gift nor my aspiration, but here goes:

• We naturally resist moving away from our comfort zone of familiarity, not only because we know the outcome, but also because it’s the default mode grooved in both the mind and the brain.

• “Bad” choices usually involve immediate reward (cheesecake, drugs, risk). Dopamine mediates the excitement of even anticipating a pleasure.

• “Good” choices involve later payoff (broccoli, exercise, saving money). See: Sleep On It: The Neuroeconomics of Striking When The Iron Is Cold.

The good news is that with repeated new experiences we can rewire our brains and revise mind software – new pathways to new communities in the brain.

• The key success strategy to write the next chapter of a life, wellness, or money story is a structured plan, and to stick to it.

• An aspect of that plan is to learn specifically from the past what you don’t want to include.

• Commitment devices can make good choices consistent. Prioritize “shoulds” and then reward with “wants” to reframe the “wants” as part of a performance ethic. This contingency removes guilt from what you know you’re going to do anyhow.

• A continuity program makes a good decision automatic. An example is automatic withdrawals to fund a retirement account.

David Krueger MD

We enter and exit states of mind fluidly and invisibly, like the precision passage of the baton between relay-team members. Each of us has a set of different states of mind: Relaxation. Alertness. Anxiety. Anger. Centered attention.

A state of mind is a psychophysiological state, an internally organized software program of expectations, attitudes, meanings, and feelings. From an infinite sea of stimuli, the unique software package of each state of mind determines what data are relevant for input, and how processing occurs.

Each mind-body state determines how we perceive and process information and how we respond. A key element is our awareness of our different states of mind, in order to know which state works best for what purpose. For example, creative writing and editing require different states of mind; brainstorming and completing a project also require different states of mind.

The regulation of feelings and states of mind involves the understanding and mastery of access to each of your different states. Some examples of how artists and authors enter a creative state to fit their intended work:

• Dame Edith Sitwell would lie in the stale solitude of an open coffin as a prelude to entering the state of mind she needed to write her macabre literature.
• Dr. Samuel Johnson and the poet W. H. Auden maintained a continuous state of stimulation by constantly consuming tea as they wrote.
• Willa Cather read the Bible to set the right tone prior to her writing.
• Voltaire used his lover’s back for a writing desk.
• Diane Ackerman writes (as did Benjamin Franklin) on a pine plank while soaking in a bathtub to get the “floaty, relaxed” creative state
• The painter Turner liked to be lashed to the mast of a ship and taken for a sail during an incredible storm, so he could later recreate this experience on canvas.
• Some authors play a piece of music repetitively during the course of writing to create an emotional framework to house their evolving story.

The corresponding state of mind in the reader often matches with that of the author, who guides the reader to a state of mind through the senses: the music and voice of the words, the texture of imagery, the rhythm of feelings.

Each of us has a continuum of states. Mastery results from recognition of which state is most effective for creative endeavors, cognitive planning, a business presentation, to relaxation for sleep. And how to enter each state.

Self-regulation involves different parts of the brain. It is internal—emotional and cognitive. In order to reach longer-term goals, we need a different kind of goal-setting and brain involvement. Here are a few applications of the principle:

• Schedule blocks of uninterrupted time to sustain a state of mind and its “flow.”
• Preclude interruptions by turning off telephone and ringer.
• Recognize the best time of the day to do certain tasks, such as creative time, and protect those times.
• Write out the tasks of that day, in one-hour blocks.
• Cluster the activities that require the same state of mind (errands).

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Excerpted from TELLING AND SELLING YOUR STORY

The Art, Craft, Science, and Business of Authoring Your First Book

By David Krueger MD www.NewBookStory.com

David Krueger MD

Activation of the self-conscious mind occurs most vividly at the beginning of a new, exciting endeavor. This “honeymoon period” generates the most energetic attention and passionate engagement. The conscious awareness focuses on present attitudes and beliefs. When our conscious minds are more in charge, we generate the behaviors and qualities we most aspire to. Buddhist spiritual practice – now affirmed by biology and physics – terms this mindfulness.

Later, habitual traits programmed into the unconscious mind take over. This switch from mindfulness to habitual behavior parallels the neurochemistry of the excited, honeymoon phase with dopamine and epinephrine transforming to the maintenance system of norepinephrine. See: Sleep On It: The Neuroeconomics of Striking When the Iron is Cold.

Approaches to revising limited and outdated beliefs and rewiring brain pathways require that we keep our self-conscious mind focused in the present, attuned to specific purpose and intent. Otherwise, it slips into the past or future, back to autopilot.

Mindfulness is an awareness of what’s happening while it’s happening. Mindful attention – a full awareness of self – is an inherent human capacity. The Buddhist tradition offers one effective way to access and refine this mindful attention (in Asian languages the words for mind and heart are the same). The coaching application I teach of this mindfulness is self-regulation, with mastery of states of mind.

Psychoanalysis addresses coming to the end of an old story, but not how to strategically create a new story. Quantum physics recognizes the participation of the observer in the creation of reality, but omits motivation. Neuroscience illuminates workings of the conscious and unconscious mind, while disregarding the spirit. Psychology helps us understand the developmental role of effectiveness and mastery, yet remains silent on brain contributions. Early interpersonal development shapes both brain and psyche – our capacity for insight and empathy.

I integrate and apply these perspectives with strategic coaching to help clients systematically rewrite even longstanding behavioral programs. Guided along the pathway of desired intentions, this journey can move from passive to active, responder to initiator, victim to creator.

Your brain and its unconscious programs are not fixed or unchangeable. You can rewrite mind software and rewire brain hardware to create a new life and money story.

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Announcing the release of Your New Money Story™: Roadmap for Money Mastery Seminar Series on 5 CDs + Workbook www.NewMoneyStory.com

David Krueger MD

Behavioral patterns and belief systems downloaded especially from parents in the first years of life become automatic, to operate without observation or awareness. Neuroscientists estimate that about 95% of our behaviors and core beliefs are pre-programmed in the subconscious mind, operating on autopilot. We rarely ever observe these behavior patterns and beliefs because they’re subconscious.

Then, we create two stories simultaneously:

• The surface story that we run our lives with conscious intentions and aspirations. This dialogue includes “This is what I want from life.” “These are my positive aspirations.” Yet the conscious mind is a tiny processor that controls the mind and brain systems less than 5% of the time.
  
  
• A subconscious story that ghostwrites behaviors—at times in a different direction than conscious intention. When your life and actions don’t meet your positive aspirations, the dialogue can include, “I can’t get what I want.” “The system keeps me from doing what I need.” “I don’t have what it takes.”

Recognition that you have operated on the download of other people’s beliefs into your subconscious mind presents the opportunity to forgive yourself. Recognition that all the people you have ever interacted with were operating from a similar automatic download of invisible behavioral/belief programs from their childhood subconscious mind may allow you to forgive them. (Maybe not because they deserve it, but because you do). They were personally unaware of much of their own contributions that invisibly impacted your life.

J. K. Rowling said, “There is an expiring date on blaming your parents for criticizing you for going the wrong direction.”
Acceptance – and especially forgiveness – in order to claim all your present energy and attention is a vital component to write a new life story. In the present moment whatever you think, feel, and experience is what you actively create. This recognition requires ownership and present responsibility for that story.

In adulthood, everything you experience you either create or accept.

But, positive thinking in itself doesn’t reprogram beliefs. Positive thoughts are generated in the conscious mind. Using positive self-talk in order to change behavior will have the same impact as talking positively to a software program on your computer in order to change it. You have to know how to revise the software. You have to know what to do with the old program as well as how to write a new one. And you may need a guide.

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Excerpted and adapted from Live a New Life Story™: The Owner’s Guide by David Krueger MD, curriculum for New Life Story™ Coaches Training. www.NewLifeStoryCoaching.com and www.NewWellnessStory.com

David Krueger MD

Tiger Woods, called the greatest golfer of all time, stated from the beginning of his career as an amateur, and repeated regularly throughout his professional career, that he can – that he must – become better.  He said it after his finest seasons and biggest championships.  He still says it now, about his personal and professional life.  He understands mastery.  He assures himself, with us listening in, that he still pursues it despite his own induced setbacks.  

Daniel Pink tells us in Drive that mastery is an asymptote – a straight line that a curve approaches but never quite reaches.  Mastery – the urge to get better at something that matters – is a mindset.  The motivation of effectiveness, demonstrated in the first months of life, evolves in various expressions throughout the entirety of life.  With a mindset of mastery, improvement continues.

Now, what about us?  When something bad happens to someone we envy – someone notably famous and wealthy – the result is that we feel a particular kind of good, first cousin to gloating.  Neuroscientists at the University of Cambridge found that the news of the downfall of the rich and famous activates the dorsal interior cingulate cortex of the brain.  Their humiliation activates this region of the brain that responds to conflict and social rejection.  In fact, the studies show that the more we envy someone, the greater the pleasure in his or her downfall.  This accounts for our pleasure in seeing a high-powered CEO who earns tens of millions in bonuses get humiliated in front of a congressional committee exposing indiscretion, or in doing the perp walk.  When Bernie Madoff got shoved on the sidewalk – be honest – how many times did you rewind?

Our minds are drawn to the stories of the extreme, at times to compare ourselves and feel better.  Our minds respond in reaction formation to the envy of their wealth and fame; our brains fire in reaction to their humiliation and shame.

• “At least my debt isn’t as bad as hers.”
  
  
• “I’m glad I’m not him.”
  
  
• “My problems are nothing compared to that.”  (Reality shows regularly take this one to the bank).
  

And remember the words of fellow Texan Kinky Friedman, smart enough both to run for President and to withdraw before any possibility materialized, “If you look deep enough inside yourself, you will see everyone else.”

What about the rest of the story?  For Tiger, Kinky, and us:  A perpetual series of occasions for the pursuit of effectiveness and mastery, to personally and professionally get better at what really matters.   

(But thankfully not for Bernie—or did my cingulate cortex just diesel a bit?)

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The Secret Language of Money is now a business bestseller and translated into nine languages.  Thank you for your support and kind words. 

David Krueger MD

In traditional science, truth is arrived at by proffering a hypothesis, then accumulating data to prove or disprove it. The data force the conclusion. Reverse truths work the opposite -- the hypothesis or belief creates the data. Our assumptions select what we perceive of the world and determine what meaning we attach to our perceptions. Believing is necessary in order to see.

Astute parents have known this principle for generations. The most vital reverse truth is our belief in our children. They look to us as a mirror of who they are, and they become what they see. If we trust and respect them, they become trustworthy and respect themselves.

Some parents have this reverse truth backwards, thinking that they will trust a child only after he or she has proven to be trustworthy. There are forward truths, but this isn't one of them. Our belief in our children is taken in by them and metabolized into their own belief in themselves. We convey to them in an unspoken message: "I'll believe in you until both of us can." When that affirmation isn't there, they may spend their lives looking for outside approval to fill what’s missing inside.

Carlyle was right. "Tell a man he is brave and you help him to become so." As a parent, the trick is that you have to believe what you say, for feigned praise and inauthentic interest are forgeries immediately discernible to a child's expert eye.

Fast forward to adulthood: This reverse truth still holds. Believe in someone and then he or she will show you why you do. Neuroscience has demonstrated that authentic belief in someone activates their brains to create a state of mind that transcends usual thinking and performance. I saw this repeatedly in therapy and analytic patients, as I see in now in coaching clients.

Here are some of the corollaries of this reverse truth:

• How much you believe in yourself will determine how much others believe in you.
  
  
• What you believe will show.
  
  
• How you are, and how you behave with someone else, shows most in how it affects others responding to you.
  
  
• What you believe will become true, because you will live it.
  
  
• You are always creating outside to match inside.
  
  
• Your experiences are always consistent with your beliefs.

It is vitally important to know your beliefs and assumptions quite well since you are always living them out. Once in awareness, you can change the ones that don’t work, stick with and enhance the ones that do, and generate new beliefs designed for growth.

Ulysses S. Grant said all this much more succinctly: “I succeeded because you believed in me.”

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The Secret Language of Money is now a business bestseller and translated into nine languages. Thank you for your support and kind words.