Tens of thousands of teenagers grow into adulthood resenting a parent because they never felt understood . . . and as a result, unloved.
Carolyn Fleck opens Chapter 2 of Validation with a story of a sweet woman who was desperate to reconnect with her college-aged daughter. Their relationship had turned so sour, her daughter refused to answer the phone any time she called.
Dozens of emails and text messages went unanswered. Dr. Fleck asked to see the collection of messages to better understand the situation, and learned that despite how warm, upbeat, and positive the mother’s messages were, they were also invalidating. Chronic leukemia was slowly killing her daughter. The daughter also been hospitalized a couple times after a night of heavy drinking.
The mother minimized their mother-daughter conflicts as normal problems every family faces and she’d send articles about the damaging effects of alcohol on immune function. This approach infuriated her daughter and led to the end of communication.
Bitter words and name calling from her daughter two years prior embedded in her heart and impacted the way she saw herself. She was struggling to see herself as anything other than a “bad parent.” Fleck describes the situation this way:
Addressing this belief was as critical to me as improving her relationship with Kamia. Self-invalidation is like a cancer – it spreads throughout the system, becoming increasingly difficult to contain. It also operates like a cruel, self-fulfilling prophecy. Feelings of insecurity undermine a person’s ability to be effective, which in turn reinforces their insecurity.
And so we see as Chapter 2 unfolds that as a parent, we can fail to validate our children, and in turn we can invalidate ourselves for our failures, creating a cycle of failure.
Before Fleck could help the mom reconnect to her daughter, she asked her to pause all attempts to communicate with her daughter and recognize how she was invalidating herself. Only after she addressed this issue could she move towards her daughter without self-sabotage.
In a painstakingly slow process, she then rebuilt connection with her daughter by first acknowledge the gravity of the pain and loss felt by their disconnect. It wasn’t “just” something normal every family goes through. It wasn’t just something to ignore and work around.
If you can’t earnestly acknowledge someone’s pain, you cannot be a safe person for them to turn to.
As a parent, we have an awesome power and opportunity to cause our children to feel heard, understood, and known. If we pass up these opportunities, our inaction tells them a story they take with them for the rest of their lives:
”My pain isn’t important. No one thinks it’s real or that big a deal. Yet it hurts me so much and makes me feel like I can’t go on. How could I ever let people in who treat what matters most to me as unimportant?”
Regardless of whether we’re tired, distracted, confused, or anxious, parents wield a god-like influence in the lives of their children when they validate or invalidate their children’s feelings.
Fleck also makes a handful of claims in Chapter 2 that I’m not going to elaborate on, but I’ll share the bullet points:
As I continue to share my thoughts from each section of the book, I’ll include summarized stories or bullet points that impacted me, as well as stories from my own life or art that connect for me.
I hope you’ll read the book for yourself, and find more layers of benefit than what I’m covering here. When you read the book for yourself, let me know your thoughts.
It’s not an understatement to say that reading even the first chapter of this book improved my marriage.
If there is one thing you could count on me doing in a conversation with my wife, it’s to try to solve her problems. Advice, ideas, suggestions. I was in mission to accomplish mode as soon as she started talking.
I was going to be her hero and rescue her from trouble. Period.
Except I didn’t. And I wasn’t.
The interruptions I blasted at her communicated several unintentional truths:
When I began reading Carolyn Fleck’s book, it was God timing. I don’t say that often, but it’s true. My wife had asked me countless times in her own way to change the way I handle her and validate her feelings.
Fleck starts the book with a story of her residency as a psychologist. Her client was thinking of killing himself. She felt the sobriety of the moment and knew that if she didn’t handle the conversation right, his world would come crashing down.
The man didn’t want to use the usual skills therapists attempt to equip their patients with. He didn’t want to divulge more about his recently ended relationship. If she followed protocol, he would be hospitalized and medicated and he’d never want to speak to a therapist again.
Instead of following the script, she changed course and uttered these words:
This sucks. You let your guard down for one second and are immediately attacked with questions from the overzealous graduate student you want to believe gives a shit but is most likely just doing what she’s told. And if that wasn’t enough, the whole thing is being broadcast to a room full of people you’ve never met.
He softened just a little bit, and she managed to take HIS side and acknowledge HIS feelings. In other words, she validated his experience.
Where many therapists would fear enabling a troubled man, she disarmed him with validation. She didn’t attempt to talk him out of suicide or reduce his risk in any way.
Instead, she focused on trying to connect with the experience of this guy who desperately needed help but had learned not to trust anyone who offered it.
When someone declares that their life isn’t worth living, you don’t agree with them, right?
I can tell you from experience that I have encountered friends and loved ones who confessed feelings so dark and so hopeless that I felt obligated to encourage them with words of hope and disagree with them that all was lost. I felt like agreeing with them in any way would tip them over the edge and terrible things might happen.
Turns out, people desperately need validation. We feel deepest dark when we feel alone. When no one understands what we feel. Not only that, but when people tell us we shouldn’t feel the way we feel. It’s demoralizing. It’s isolating.
Whether you tell people they shouldn’t feel that way or offer solutions without hearing their hurt, you won’t get far without validation.
But how do you validate without empowering darkness?
Stay tuned. More to come.
Are some people born superstars and business moguls? Are they made of different stuff than we are? Or are their successes achievable for us as well?
When we look at those who have achieved dramatically greater success than the average person, it’s helpful to know that there are reasons why this occurred beyond magic, inheritance, and luck.
We’ll dive into those reasons in future posts about this book. Since Useful Humans exists to react to and learn from great books, you’ll want to subscribe if you haven’t already, to keep track of all the different trains of thought that stem from a single book on the reading list.
In our lifetime, it’s become popular to envy the rich and famous to the point of bitter criticism, and an entitled desire to see them brought low through extensive taxation and misfortune.
I think this reaction is the result of ignorant envy. When we don’t know how to do better for ourselves, there’s a temptation to consider it unfair for anyone else to experience significantly greater outcomes.
Rather than trying to bring the successful down, let’s aim to educate ourselves and through effort and mentoring rise to the occasion.
“I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. He should have informed us that we are the masters of our fate and the captains of our soul BECAUSE we have the power to control our thoughts.”
A concept we’ll struggle to accept. In an age where fleeting thoughts and feelings are rated the most authentic forms of our selves, it’s no wonder we haven’t learned to consider ourselves the master of our own thoughts.
After all, we’ve each had some pretty crazy thoughts pop into our heads from time to time. Where did they come from? Without a credible explanation for the source of thoughts and ideas beyond our own selves, we attribute each thought as the creation of our own personalities and/or subconscious minds.
I’m not here to tell you how to define your subconscious mind. I will, however, challenge you to ponder how sensible it is to attribute every mysterious thing within you to this undefined, unlocatable part of yourself that you cannot prove other than by pointing to inexplicable events as some sort of unscientific proof.
By doing this, every single thought that has ever occurred to us gets automatically and, perhaps carelessly, attributed to our own personality.
Are you REALLY satisfied with that conclusion? That every thought was originated by you? Even the ones that you find repulsive and disturbing? You just have this Jekyll and Hyde-like soul that both creates the beautiful and the profane?
Technology companies are actively working on the ability to see, recognize, and understand thoughts. At this exact moment, the tech exists to observe thoughts occurring and differentiate on some level different types of thoughts.
If a machine is capable of seeing thoughts at all, then thoughts must have an energy signature. They must be a type of broadcast signal. And if they are, what if you’ve always received broadcast signals from elsewhere, outside yourself, but lacked the awareness and skill to discern one source from another?
So here we are, faced with a very important question:
Do all thoughts you’ve observed come from you? If so, how did you conceive of so many intrusive thoughts that disagree with your behavior, patterns, and experiences?
If not, where did some of those thoughts come from? What is your responsibility toward them? How do you achieve the power to control your own thoughts?
Without attempting to explain the more abstract nature of thought, Napoleon Hill describes how we can not only control our thoughts, but also control and direct our belief.
We’ll dive further into those concepts in another post.
“Before success comes in any man’s life, he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat and some failure…
More than 500 of the most successful men told the author their greatest success was one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them.”
I’m reminded of Thomas Edison. It’s said he tried more than one thousand times to create a proper light bulb. He didn’t call the first 1,000 attempts failure, but rather he said he found 1,000 ways that didn’t work.
That sounds clever at the onset. But if you had tried to create something even 50 times and failed, at what point do you conceded that the answer is unknowable to you?
Place yourself in his position. You have no idea how exactly it will work. There’s no hindsight or clues. You try, you fail. You try again, you fail again. You try 50 more times, and fail each time. You have no idea whether the solution will present itself on the 51st attempt, the 550th attempt, or the 1,001st attempt.
I launched a product for sale on Amazon in 2017 with minimal budget. 100% wool dryer balls. They help your clothes dry faster with fewer wrinkles. But it was already a highly competitive market. By 2019 it was clear that my product couldn’t compete in the market against more established brands with thousands of positive reviews. I tried five different listings in search of the magic sauce, but eventually the only tactic that moved merchandise was lower price point.
I closed down the product line after deciding that it wasn’t worth my effort or my time to troubleshoot this product or continue further attempts to differentiate it in a saturated market.
Was there anything wrong with the product I chose? Not at all. With enough startup capital, I could have weathered the storm of the first 3-5 years and by now we’d have a thriving business that would probably have expanded to multiple other products based on the success of the first.
But that never happened. In fact, I never tried selling another product on Amazon again. Is Amazon a faulty system? Not at all. Thousands of people make excellent money selling products on the world’s largest marketplace website.
The difference is that I gave up. I was not willing to take another step forward after suffering defeat and supply chain issues.
I did not witness the glory of success because I failed to follow the example of exemplary men and women all over the world. I quit and moved on.
There’s nothing wrong with quitting, though.
In some cases, the ability to cut losses and move on is the secret to future success.
We view the world through limited vantage points. We see one person quit a business only to launch a successful business later, and we call that wisdom. We see another person quit one business only to fail at a second business and we call that foolish (or at least unprepared).
And that’s the rub, isn’t it? We’ll never know in advance whether quitting or persevering is the answer for the particular challenge we face.
And yet, the choice remains . . .
Earlier this week I published my initial thoughts on this book by John Eldredge. I want to share a few more quotes and respond.
“A hesitant man is the last thing in the world a woman needs. She needs a lover and a warrior, not a Really Nice Guy.”
I felt the barb from this quote as I was renown in high school as the “honest nice guy”. I wouldn’t let the cool kids copy my work. I still remember turning down a pretty girl and feeling so frustrated that she was ethically compromised.
A couple years later, my best friends were the two most popular rebels from our high school and I was the nice guy their girlfriends would turn to for advice and insight, wondering whether their guys were faithful.
Lots of girls flirted with those two guys. And absolutely no girls were beating down my door at the time.
From an early age, women respond to strength, confidence, and decisiveness, even when it’s fake. There’s safety and security in a relationship with a man who knows his purpose and believes he can get there. That strength of conviction and courage to face insurmountable odds elicits admiration and respect.
A hesitant man, on the other hand, demonstrates fear and weakness to a woman. He’s not reliable, because he could change his mind or turn and run when it gets tough.
Nice, passive, hesitant guys fail to project safety and security. Women notice. How many times has the nice guy in a group been relegated to the friend zone?
“A wound that goes unacknowledged and unwept is a wound that cannot heal.”
Whatever we hide, we empower. That’s a phrase that has stuck with me my entire adult life. If I can’t expose it to the light, it controls me. I am bound.
“Unwept” is a powerful term. I’m not even sure it’s a real word, but the meaning is clear. How many men have never wept for a wound because they felt they weren’t allowed to have a need? Men feel compelled to project strength. It’s expected of a man to handle his business regardless.
And when we don’t practice expressing our pain, our grief, and truly mourn, we bottle up the pain inside and it festers like a cancer. Unwept wounds kill a man’s soul.
This ties in to another book I’m reading that I’ll share with you soon. It’s called Validation, by Carolyn Fleck, PhD.
In the first chapter, she talks about acceptance as a necessary step to change. It sounds counterintuitive, since we think acceptance leads to identity building and worldview shaping. But really, we’re talking about validating pain.
If you can’t weep for your wounds, you likely haven’t validated them. The live rent-free in your body, wreaking havoc on your nervous system and cellular biology.
To heal, you must first validate the pain is real and it is worthy of being addressed (rather than stuffed away). Then you can weep for yourself, or the child within. Once you have allowed self to process the pain, you can move forward and address the issue of what to do next.
It’s life-changing to experience grieving for the first time without hiding or shame. You’re just a person who feels things. And it’s okay.
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, because what the world needs are men who have come alive.”
I’m still debating what to do with this quote. It actually flies directly in the face of another quote I’ve heard and followed regarding one’s life purpose.
The OTHER advice was to ask yourself “What is the thing you are skilled to do that the world needs? That is your purpose.”
Eldredge says no, what makes you come alive? The world needs men who are alive with passion and purpose and who are fueled and motivated to do the work before them. That life gives life to others.
I think the other quote gives men a starting point when they feel lost, and I think Eldredge tells men further down the road not to settle for just any old problem solving.
That’s it for me on this one. If you want to discuss a different topic from the book, let me know.
“Deep in his heart, every man longs for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.”
Men are wired for action, purpose, and connection.
That’s the message from John Eldredge’s best-selling book, Wild at Heart.
In order to face the battles worth fighting, a boy must be initiated into manhood by another man. He must be told he has what it takes to be a man. He must be tested and he must endure.
Trouble is, we’re short on men willing or aware of the need to mentor these boys into manhood.
When my fourteen year old son Micah grabbed me and squeezed to test his strength, he caught me by surprise and I almost knocked him down with my reflex response.
As I listened to this book on my morning walks, I realize that I’ve been too controlling at times when my boys want to express their energy and boyhood.
They’re very well behaved and respectful in public, but I think they’ve been deprived of a few wild adventures. And now that it’s on my radar, I take it very seriously.
I don’t want to raise “nice” boys. I don’t want to shame my sons into behaving. They deserve to know that their manhood is a blessing, and not a toxic trait to be tamed.
Self-control is definitely still a fruit of the Spirit. I haven’t forgotten. But boys who are repressed express their feelings in other, more destructive ways.
John Eldredge writes that boys need a physical exchange and the passing on of a masculine substance from father to son. They crave it and they desire it. and they’re shamed they will be confused and uncertain about what to do with these primal but instinctual desires and urges.
It sounds like they need to wrestle with me far more than they have and use their strength against me. And I need to be man enough to be OK with it and not feel threatened.
It’s not that I feel threatened, it’s that when they use their strength against me, I feel an obligation to address it so that they don’t use that same strength towards women or weaker men. I’ve needed more of a rudder guiding me so I can guide them.
My wife expressed concern when I mentioned that I was reading this book, because I think the general consensus has been that books on healing masculinity tend to ignore the actual feelings and needs of a woman. Or maybe they promote a hyper-testosterone fueled hunting/guns/gym misogynist.
I don’t know why this book stood out as a must-include in my list, but it did. During a time of prayer, I came up with a list of books on masculinity and being a man and peppered them into the 50 Book Challenge.
You don’t have to be a man to read it or get some valuable insights from it. And there are certainly some moments where the author displays his view of masculinity as a very external, expressive and muscular expression… and that’s not necessarily wrong.
But most of us have certainly been domesticated by college, jobs, PTA meetings, HOAs, church conferences, etc. So it’s easy to overreact to the masculine in this book as excessive when, perhaps, we just haven’t stepped up our game and we’re offended that his descriptions sound so different than us.
Just a thought.
I have a few other takeaways from the book this Friday. If you haven’t started reading yet, pick up your copy and listen while you walk like I do or grab a Kindle copy.
Part 2 of my reflections on Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Pick up a copy today!
“What was your name again? I’m terrible with names.” It’s a common line. I’ve used it. You’ve probably used it. But is it true? Are we really terrible with names, or have we maybe just focused on other details?
Principle 3: “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
This is one of those truths that we don’t like to hear, because it makes us feel pretty self-centered. Does it make me a bad person because I didn’t care what your name was?
But I don’t think it make you selfish to feel strongly motivated to reward a person who recognizes, remembers, and uses your name. This is the very start of intimacy.
It’s common to hear a person’s first name upon greeting and, after a brief conversation, to casually ask a second time for their name as you depart. We didn’t prioritize their name, but focused instead on what value they offered to us. Then, if enough value was offered to warrant another conversation later, we might recognize we don’t recall their name and ask for it in an attempt to preserve the memory.
What does it say about us that we’re focused on what the person has to offer rather than who the person is? Is that only a negative? Or is it a reasonable approach given how many pieces of new information we encounter each day and the obvious fact that we need to prioritize remembering the pieces that might be useful later?
Give yourself a pass for historical miscues like forgetting people’s names, but recognize that this is a new day and you have the opportunity to significantly improve your situation by making little course corrections like this one.
And that’s how I’m going to end this book. There are more than a handful of other useful tips. I recommend you read this one.
It’s common sense, mostly, and yet filled with choices we don’t make regularly enough.
If you want to have friends or influence people, you’ll need to know how to make them feel important.
Reflections on Dale Carnegie’s best-selling book
I’ve been mulling over these first few chapters for weeks. I’ve spent my early mornings walking down to the bay and back while listening to this audiobook.
It’s refreshing to hear a man write in a style that predates my own generation. I find the dignity in his voice and style strangely comforting. It probably helps that the narrator sounds like an older, established gentleman.
Let’s dive in to chapter one. . .
We are not dealing with creatures of logic, but of emotion. It’s important to recognize that our decision maker is typically more emotional than logical. The logic is the justification we give to support our emotional decision.
Chapter One talks about criticism, and how it literally kills motivation. One example was Thomas Hardy, an author of several books I’ve read. He quit writing due to the criticism he received. What a tragedy!
Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes them strive to justify themselves.
“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain and most fools do.”
This chapter felt like a much needed slap in the face. From my late teens to early 30s, I was a critic of everything and nearly everyone. The smug superiority I displayed in my early 20s was alarming.
Years later, as I’ve lived and suffered and grown, I’m now a father of three children who are almost all in their teens. Motivating and inspiring our children really matters to me. And the stories Carnegie tells about how much more output employers gain from compliments and words of affirmation astounds me.
It’s easy to justify criticism. From my perspective, criticism points out what to avoid, which seems to motivate unmotivated people. Carnegie says the exact opposite. People who see quality and are encouraged for the effort they put in will rise to the occasion. Sometimes we just need to know it’s possible and borrow some positive energy from someone who believes in us.
It’s worth reading the poem, A Father Forgets, by W Livingston Larned – Link here.
The key to influencing people is to give them what they want, which is feeling important, appreciated, and valued.
“I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset that i posses.”
Charles Schwab
The way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambition of a person as criticism from superiors.
“I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I’m anxious to praise but loathe to find fault. If I like anything I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.”
Carnegie also states: “I never met anyone who performed better under criticism than under praise and approval.”
But the goal here is sincere appreciation. Flattery doesn’t earn the same result. Kind words of appreciation nourish our souls and change lives.
“Every man I meet is my superior in some way.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This is a mindset we should all cultivate. Ralph Waldo Emerson was supremely talented writer, and yet he found a talent or ability in each person that made them his superior. With this approach, we look for and honor the value we find in people. We behave in such a way that demonstrates we know we’re not above everyone else. True humility is very appealing.
Encourage others to talk about themselves and their desires, and show genuine interest in their interests. Closed doors of opportunity often open up as a natural result of demonstrating genuine interest in other people.
There’s nothing any of us likes more than to think or talk about ourselves. It’s a big boring turnoff when someone approaches you and talks about what they want and what they need and then try to convince you to do something for them. Where’s the payoff? But demonstrate a sincere interest in people and they’ll often be genuinely happy to help you reach your goals.
Stay tuned for thoughts on Section 2. As always, I hope you’ll share your thoughts below.
The Life-Changing Blueprint for Finding Happiness and Purpose in Your Next Chapter
As I mentioned on X, I recently took a left turn from the 50 Book Challenge and wound up reading a book NOT on my list. Get ready for a book that will challenge you to rethink the way you see you!
You can blame or credit my wife, Heather for this one. The title is From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks. It’s an enlightening message for the high achiever facing a frustrating decline in creativity and innovation at work.
As always, you’ll greatly benefit from reading the books I recommend, but I read them so you don’t have to.
What you get in the second wave of your career is more valuable than in the first.
Brooks breaks down a person’s career into two primary phases:
It’s worth noting that some careers have a 6 year window for the first phase. Some have 20 years. But all high achievers share a common frustration: when the creative, award winning innovation phase is over, it’s really over.
We can save ourselves years of heartache once we recognize that statistically we only have a limited number of years from the start of a career to innovate, create, and dazzle the market. The limits sound rather concrete.
Tenured researchers maintain positions they can no longer deserve because they’ve unknowingly reached a second phase of career which is not conducive to the same approach we take when we are young.
We’ll call this the wisdom phase. This is the phase of one’s life in which it would be ideal to pivot into more of a teaching, mentoring, curating role for others. The accumulation of wisdom over the prior years provides the raw data which your now older and wiser self can weave into a cohesive tale that instructs, inspires, and warns.
The secret to success in this second wave is to recognize first that you’ve entered it (self-awareness), and then to seek a more fitting role given the understandings we take away from the remaining chapters of this book.
The first section of the book is the most interesting to me, because it defines a situation. I didn’t know existed outside of personal experience. It’s reassuring to know this is more of a observable fact among professionals everywhere.
As he launches into a multi-chapter tutorial, the author takes a left turn that some of my fellow readers will find difficult to follow. He references the Buddha and the eight laws as a tool for exercising and adjusting ones mindset.
It is here I will provide you a lengthy quote so you can read it in his own words.
“I have learned through my worldly success to search for satisfaction in the world‘s rewards which are ultimately not satisfying. I will suffer with dissatisfaction if I attain these rewards if I’m attached to them and suffer even more when I no longer earn them them.
The only solution to this problem is to shed my attachments and redefine my desires. To do so is my path to enlightenment, and my second curve.
Neither Thomas nor the Buddha argued that there is something inherently evil about worldly rewards. In fact, they can be used for great good. Money is critical for a functioning society and. supporting your family. Power can be wielded to lift others up. Pleasure leaven’s life. And fame can attract attention to the sources of moral elevation. But as attachments, the focus of our life‘s attention, and as ends instead of means the problem is simple: They cannot bring the deep satisfaction we desire.
We chase our worldly attachments up our first success curve. We work ourselves to death to gain the elusive satisfaction. When the success curve starts to bend back down, the attachments give us tremendous suffering. These attachments must be chipped away. To make it possible to jump onto the second curve.”
Put in my own words, we start this life, seeking trophies and money, and fancy things because we believe that possessing them will usher in this great and satisfying life of luxury. Whether it’s the desire to silence, the fear of financial security, or to accumulate enough valuable things to demonstrate our own value, we mark our success we set our goals based on these accomplishments.
This lines up with everything I’ve heard and read from celebrities and millionaires who acknowledge that the greatest depression they reached was at the height of their fame and wealth, because that was the precisely the moment in which they realize that there goals couldn’t make them happy.
And so, logic dictates that if we are going to transition from a high achiever/creative/innovative career to something humbler, will have to redefine our measurements of success.
A teacher rarely ever ear celebrity or fame or significant wealth. But they can experience the deep and satisfying reward of having enrich the lives of others who might learn from our victories and our mistakes.
Bottom line: It’s not over for you because you’re no longer the alpha innovator. What you’ve learned along the way is priceless and useful for the next generation. It’s up to you to find a way to use it to give them a higher, stronger foundation.
P.S. If the chapter titled “Ponder Your Death” feels a little uncomfortable, it’s supposed to.
This book wasn’t intended to be on my list of books for my 50 book challenge, but I couldn’t wait to dive in when it arrived in the mail. You can order your copy here if you want to read before comparing notes with me.
I want you to look at this book with me because it speaks to the mindset of this entire project.
Before you engage in a life-changing project to read 50 books, you need to know that you are shaped by your thoughts, and that you are also the master of your thoughts.
Here are 5 truths I’ve pulled from As a Man Thinketh that I’m going to cover here with you:
We are not formed by our circumstance.
We decide which thoughts we allow and engage.
Thoughts eventually blossom into actions.
Love and fear predict outcome more than prayer and wishes.
We don’t attract what we want. We attract what we are.
You have control, and that means you have responsibility. And that means you have the capacity to manage your thoughts completely.
Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself.
James Allen
As James Allen wrote, when we look to outside circumstances as the explanation and cause of who we’ve become, we rob ourselves of the ability to change, because we rob ourselves of the truth.
When will we stop looking to those “exceptional people” who rise above their circumstances as superheroes or superior people? They are just people, like you and me, who refused to allow what was happening around them to define them. This consistent, willful decision may be extraordinary in comparison to the norm, but it is by no means beyond your grasp.
This realization will change each of us dramatically. And not only are we not victims of what happens around us, we can shape who we become by infinitesimally tiny choices.
Every man is where he is by law of his being; the thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance, but all is the result of a law which cannot err.
James Allen
We Decide Which Thoughts We Allow And Engage
It’s easy to misconstrue the reality of how thoughts and thought management works. The unchallenged assumption most people have is that thoughts are like little magical entities that erupt from the substrate of our subconscious.
We tend to consider every thought in our minds as originating from us, regardless of how unintentional they are. And so, if the thoughts are ours, regardless of how impossible it is to trace to a reason for existence, we tend to accept them as-is and offer no effort or time in addressing them.
Thoughts Need To Be Tended. Constantly.
Concept #1: Not all thoughts in your head are actually yours.
I’m not convinced that all thoughts originate within our minds. Thoughts are frequencies and I believe that thoughts can be “received” as well as “transferred”. How and why are not my expertise. Needless to say, engineers are actively and successfully developing technology that reads thoughts, and so it is likely that thoughts can be sent/received somehow.
Concept #2: It’s your job to evaluate, challenge, and steward the thoughts that pass through.
It’s revolutionary to consider yourself the gate keeper of thoughts. Or the shepherd. Or even the gardener. If you are tending to the thoughts, you hold a very important judging capacity.
With this worldview, you are less a victim of undisciplined and unpredictable thoughts, and you are more an active police force, questioning the validity of thoughts. Challenging their necessity. Holding them accountable. Refusing continued access if they can’t pass the test.
We must discard this lifelong assumption that we are passive recipients of thoughts only and that these thoughts are beyond our control.
Every thought-seed sown or allowed to fall into the mind and to take root there, produces its own, blossoming sooner or later into act, and bearing its own fruitage of opportunity and circumstance. Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad fruit.
James Allen
Thoughts Eventually Blossom Into Actions
Allen wants you to accept that thoughts are like seeds. That’s why your function as the gatekeeper is so important. Once a series of seeds is planted, it’s going to eventually bear fruit. They take root deep inside and they grow beneath the surface. Eventually they break through and surface, directing actions and character.
We can waste a lifetime whacking weeds that pop up. But the weeds are the fruit of the seeds we could have challenged and refused much earlier.
Look, it’s not a fun idea at the onset to consider a lifetime of evaluating and challenging thoughts. It takes intentionality. It takes energy. It takes commitment. Those mental reps are like hitting the gym every single day and getting in your reps with the weights. You don’t become Arnold Schwarzenegger overnight. But you do end up massively stronger after two years of consistent weight training.
No one is teaching children en masse the skill of critical thinking. So we allow unchallenged thoughts to go deep and grow weeds which confuse the daily execution of our purpose and mission later on.
Love And Fear Predict Outcome More Than Prayer And Wishes
Not what he wishes and prays for does a man get, but what he justly earns. His wishes and prayers are only gratified and answered when they harmonize with his thoughts and actions.
James Allen
Allen offers a profoundly important statement. For the Christian who prays for everything but seems to receive almost nothing, there have certainly been times when you evaluate your process and wonder why prayers go unanswered. You may question whether God answers prayer. You may feel that the whole thing is a sham.
And James Allen would inform you that prayers are as ineffective as wishes when the prayers don’t line up with his daily disciplined thoughts and actions. In other words, if I call myself a Christian and I pray to God requesting healing for my body but I turn around and treat my body like its junk, my prayers and my thoughts do not harmonize. I am asking God to force my body to be healthier than I am willing to sustain.
Bottom line: If my prayers disagree with my choices, even my internal choices, then I am being disingenuous. I either need to quit praying for changes or start holding myself responsible for as many of those changes as I am able.
We Don’t Attract What We Want. We Attract What We Are
I couldn’t help but think about “The Secret” when I read this book. James Allen’s book obviously predates that pop culture phenomenon, but he was aware of people already believing that they can attract what they want in life.
Preparation leads to opportunity. Desire is good so long as it takes action.
A couple quotes that fall in line with this idea:
“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
“Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.”
We see people “burst” onto the scene with a new album, new book, new gig, and we are amazed at how suddenly they achieved success. Except it wasn’t suddenly at all. They were tending their gardens for years prior, and when their skills matched the weight of responsibility of opportunity, they were equipped to capitalize on an opportunity that presents itself.
I can daydream about being an author every day of my life. If I don’t type words on my laptop each day, that daydream will never become reality.
I can daydream about being physically fit and toned, but if I don’t wake up and exercise every day or two, that daydream will never become reality.
“Set your intention” is a massively popular phrase right now. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with it. Because the root word of intention is “intent”, i.e. the ACTION you intend to deploy to achieve a goal.
Closing Thoughts
There’s a lot of meat here for such a small book. The message that I’m going to take away from this book is that each person is the master of their own thoughts, and therefore they are the masters of their character. And therefore they are the masters of their circumstance. Because circumstance is what is formed by our actions, and our actions are what is formed by our thoughts.
if I could put this into even simpler terms, James Allen is telling me that I have no one else to look to or to blame or to hold accountable. But that I am empowered with the exclusive right to determine my thoughts, which will shape my beliefs, and my actions which will shape my outcomes, and my circumstances which will intern shape my entire life..
These seem like abrasive, condemning thoughts to the person who is undisciplined and unwilling to make consistently responsible decisions.
Have you heard about people who’ve taken sick days to recuperate from the heavy emotional toll of world events? When a tragedy strikes, some people are so caught up in the details and the stories that it affects their ability to function.
Even if you don’t feel incapacitated, you still run the risk of feeling powerless and hopeless in the light of so many tragic and terrible things happening all around the world.
Whether it’s North Korea, Iran, Ukraine, Uganda, Nepal, Kosovo, or a dozen other places in the world, tragic wars and disease and suffering have occurred on a massive scale.
We see the breaking news hit our social feeds and we tune in to see what is going on. With real-time news and user generated content, we can easily devote a significant portion of our time and attention to the stories of other people’s problems halfway around the world.
However, in the meantime, there are people in our own neighborhoods with needs. There are people in our same counties who are suffering.
That’s a tough question. The answer is NO. But ignoring the suffering of others MAY be your way of staying focused on the significant tasks you are responsible for in your everyday life. Think about it: If you spend 3 hours a day consuming stories and updates on someone else’s suffering you aren’t making better, what could you have done with those three hours to make your life and the lives of your neighbors better? There are ACTUAL people in your life who need you, even if you’ve never spoken.
C.S. Lewis addressed this issue:
“I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know. God may call any one of us to respond to some far away problem or support those who have been so called. But we are finite and he will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us.”
– C. S. Lewis
If we feel helpless to make a difference in the face of so much darkness all around the world, perhaps we can come to terms with our own limitations and accept that if a million of “us” take care of our neighbors, everything changes.
Your neighbor shouldn’t have to wait for someone in Europe or Australia to hear about the terrifying conditions people experience in your home town in order for someone to care or take action. You are close for a reason. These people are the sphere of your ACTUAL influence.
It takes courage to actually go and do something. May we all find the courage and make the choice to be a good neighbor.