adaptation

Feb 15 2012

Eighteen Most Common Self-Defeating Behaviors

Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. It’s not that we can’t be successful and find fulfillment in life. It’s that we too easily sabotage our attempts to do so. Here are eighteen behaviors that can get the better of us and prevent us from thriving.

  • Procrastinating. If you’re always late on completing tasks, people will stop relying on you and begin resenting you.
  • Getting involved with the wrong people. If you continuously get involved with bad people, you’ll be the one who has to clean up the mess.
  • Saying “yes” when you want to say “no.” This results in burnout, loss of credibility and loss of respect from others and yourself.
  • Assuming others don’t want anything in return. It is human nature to almost always want something in return, even when people say they don’t. Thinking ahead about what others might want can save you problems in the future when they try to collect.
  • Playing it safe. The world is in a rapid state of change. Doing the same old thing over and over and expecting it to be good enough may turn out to be not so safe.
  • Always having to be right. This can create resentment and helps build a constituency of people who can’t wait to see you fail.
  • Focusing on what others are doing wrong. This is a demotivating habit.
  • Not learning from your mistakes. Successful people don’t make fewer mistakes than unsuccessful people, they just repeat fewer mistakes.
  • Talking when nobody’s listening. This leads you to think that what you’ve said is going to be done, when in fact it’s not. You will have to repeat the entire process at a later date.
  • Taking things too personally. When people take criticism too personally instead of seeing that it is about fixing a problem, the problem becomes larger and takes longer to fix.
  • Having unrealistic expectations. When you confuse what is reasonable with what is realistic you set yourself up to fail.
  • Trying to take care of everybody. In attempting to take care of everyone, no one — including you — will be satisfied.
  • Refusing to “play games.” Politics, schmoozing and small talk are all necessary in order to succeed. Putting them down because you do them poorly is costly.
  • Being envious of others. Teamwork is ruined when team members envy each other to the extent that they root against each other.
  • Quitting too soon. If you always quit, you’ll never succeed; if you always try, you’ll eventually succeed.
  • Letting fear run your life. If you let fear run your life, it might just run you out of your job.
  • Not moving on after a loss. When you spend more time mourning your losses than you do moving ahead, you can’t move ahead.
  • Not asking for what you need.If you don’t ask for what you need — whether it be for someone to help you do your job or for a promotion — you’re leaving it to other people’s imaginations.

Adapted from a list by Dr. Mark Goulston

Why is it so doggone easy to sabotage our plans and make life ineffectual? Comment here>>

By Jeff Vankooten • adaptation, Attitude, Behavior, Cognitive distortions, Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: ,

Feb 9 2012

Like Rip Van Winkle Waking Up

In an essay entitled, “The Man on the Train”, Walker Percy recounts the life of a man very much in control. He gets up at the same time every morning, eats the same breakfast, goes to work taking the same train at the same time. He manages his routines carefully at work and goes home on the same train and engages his predictable routine at home. From all outward appearances he is a man who is “making it”. He is climbing the corporate ladder, his marriage seems strong, his kids are going to the finest school.

Yet inside the man is empty. His feeling toward life is vapid, caught in the grip of nothingness. There is a huge incongruity between the appearances of his outward life and his sense of meaninglessness on the inside. As the author continues, the man is waiting at the same station for the same train when he suffers a massive heart attack. In the blink of an eye his world is turned upside down and out of his control. He finds himself being rushed to a hospital he has never visited in an ambulance he has never ridden in being worked on by people he has never met. Strangers in a strange land.

Soon he’s lying on a gurney being whisked away to surgery. On his way to the operating room he becomes transfixed on his right hand. It mesmerizes him. He is overwhelmed by its complexity and intricacy and wondered how he overlooked it all his life. The skin had a beautiful translucence he never noticed before. Even the overlay of liver spots on the top of his hand takes on a deeper meaning for him on aging. What a magnificent appendage the hand is!

The surgery is a success and he finds himself back at home with his family. The house never seemed so big and his love for his family never seemed so expansive. His job became a nuisance as he began to align who he is inside with the life seen on the outside. He decides to quit his high paying job for one that pays less but is more fulfilling. He begins to court his wife again and reconnect with his kids in ways he never did before. His life has been transformed by an unexpected event in his overly predictable life and meaning restored by what was right in front of him all along.

The author concludes the essay by pointing out that this man, who is now finally aligned to the core of his being, is like “Rip Van Winkle waking up.” To awaken to a new world after being “asleep” and unaware is a renewal of meaning and a gift toward fulfillment. It usually takes an unexpected and threatening event to rouse us from our slumber. Some mystics call it the “dark night of the soul”. Others call it a “tragedy” and some others simply, a “tough time”. Whatever you want to call it, meaning is often birthed from hardship and beauty often recognized through pain.

Are the any examples of lives transformed and deepened by pain, hardship, and unexpected events? Comment here>>

By Jeff Vankooten • adaptation, Attitude, Change, Community, Core Abilities, crisis, Hope, Persistent Adaptation, resilience, tough times • 7 • Tags: , , , , ,

Feb 6 2012

Tactics for Tough Times: Practice Bricolage

An oxygen tank in the service module of the ill-fated Apollo 13 space capsule ruptured and the astronauts were slowly asphyxiating from a build up carbon dioxide gas. The NASA engineers on the ground in Houston were tasked with creating a filtration system using only the materials that were available to the Apollo 13 astronauts. Duct Tape, tube socks, plastic moon rock bags, log book cardboard, and other limited assets were used to successfully construct an apparatus that saved the astronauts.

This is an example of “Bricolage”,  a word derived from the French that carries the connotation of tinkering and doing odd jobs. It’s the creation of something useful using only the resources that happen to be at hand. It is the epitome of “thinking inside the box” and stretching the limits of what you can accomplish there.  We all have parameters based on who we are as unique individuals. We have to make the most of the “box” we find ourselves. We have to practice bricolage.

Living in uncertainty and change can seem like we are living unscripted and unrehearsed lives. Professionals who are good at  improv comedy come to the stage open to the surprises of the moment. They are masters of spontaneity and ad lib because they’ve learned to do much with little by practicing the techniques of improve, and by extension bricolage.

  • Move the Scene Forward. Improvisation uses the immediate scene at hand and uses its plot line to move the story forward. Those who practice bricolage accept the scene they are in, find an opening in it, and exploit it to move their circumstances in directions they intend.
  • Trust your gut. Improvisational actors don’t hesitate to make decisions in the moment.  They trust their gut. They go with their instinct and express it spontaneously. They don’t let fear and self-consciousness dictate their direction, nor do the belabor a decision to act.
  • Say “Yes, And…” This is a technique essential to bricolage. The first actor makes a suggestion or statement and the second actor builds upon it by saying “yes, and…” It’s all about accepting what others have to offer. Don’t discount something because it’s something you never encountered before. Keep learning, keep exploring, work with the contributions of others.
  • Play to the top of your intelligence. Jerry Seinfeld said that raunchy comedy is lazy comedy. It’s easy to throw in expletives and dirty jokes often at the expense of the show. Those who practice bricolage to effectively engage tough times play to their best material and strengths.

What ideas do you have for practicing bricolage to engage the tough challenges today?

 

By Jeff Vankooten • adaptation, Collaboration, creativity, Uncategorized • 3 • Tags: , , ,

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