do you think that reading books can really help you with something important like overcoming insecurities?
not. people tend to buy self-help books more or less out of desperation, hoping that something will cure them. but a key element in all this is that you are not going to be cured. you will die with these insecurities. one of the reasons is that it’s about triggering: your insecurities are based on being triggered at certain key moments, usually moments that involve fear, and that triggering is inevitable. What I say in my book is going to happen, what’s stopping you? is that first of all you need to understand your insecurities and why you have them. second, you have to accept that they are part of you. you are who you are you are an insecure person. you can’t develop the personality traits of someone who is a confident person. Third, people with insecurities need a map to help them find the way forward. what’s stopping you? it’s not a map, but it tells you how to draw your own map to navigate your insecurities. it should help you plan a way forward that is more positive than the negative and defeatist way you approach things now. You won’t be cured, but you can overcome some of the difficulties your insecurities give you and end up in a better place.
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Let’s talk about how your chosen books fit into all of this. The first is Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, which argues that emotional intelligence is more important than standard measures of intelligence such as IQ.
yeah, that’s the key reveal. but another key element, which was quite revealing to me when I read it, is about the impact of fear on your brain. the impact of fear as a physiological response was well known when he wrote the book, but what was less well known was the idea of fear as a neurological response. pointed to research that shows what happens to the brain when fear is triggered, and it’s very damaging. there is a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is part of the limbic system and deals with emotions such as fear and distress. its main purpose is to alert you to danger and sends an emergency signal. all those physiological responses that you have are basically the body’s response to that emergency signal. that’s what people experience when they experience fear, but it’s not just the fear of a dog barking at you or someone attacking you, it’s a fear based on fear conditioning. These are times when something happens to you that causes fear or anguish, and can include fear of failure or fear of getting angry, and the same response occurs.
That’s why I like the goleman book, because it lets you know that these triggers are going to happen. they will always be there. it is the element of incurability: your first response will always be a response of fear. if you feel insecure, you feel insecure about certain things, and those insecurities will be triggered by certain incidents that act as reminders. that activation is going to happen, it is established in your brain. he calls them “neural hijacks”, that’s the key phrase. the amygdala jumped out and said “here’s an emergency,” and that overrides what goleman calls the thinking brain. that is what is absolutely crucial for insecure people. It’s the one thing you can’t lose, regardless of the claims in all those self-help books.
and you feel paralyzed when it hits you?
disabled is a better word, but yes, it is absolutely disabling. what it points out, which is why I thought it was so brilliant when I read it, is that it’s actually a mild form of PTSD. it’s about traumas that happened when you were very young and it’s about how you deal with trauma, when it’s tangentially reminded of it. that is what creates the fear response. it stops you and prevents you from doing things. It prevents you from really moving forward in your life, it prevents you from taking risks in your life.
let’s move on to the next book you’ve chosen, fuck you: how to survive family life by oliver james.
what oliver james maintains is that all this has to do mainly with conditioning. he’s not saying it has nothing to do with genetics, but there’s a lot of noise right now about genetics and people being born with certain mental conditions. In his opinion, with many mental conditions, such as ADHD, depression, schizophrenia, even Asperger’s syndrome, conditioning is far more important than genetics. it’s about what happens to you between the ages of one and six. You can’t just say, “Well, that’s me, that’s me.” there’s a reason you’re like this, and it usually has to do with trauma very early in life.
What was a real eye-opener for me was their discussion about the scripts. they give you a script for life, and you will always play this script. for example, my script was that I was the younger brother of a sister who didn’t like me very much. that became my script: the annoying little brother. another script I had was that my father was constantly disappointed in me, so I was also the disappointed son. and what oliver james says is that once you have this script, it follows you throughout your life. others will fit into their own script, perhaps in my example acting like my upset sister or disappointed dad. I’ll always play the annoying little brother role. if I’m in a group of people, that script will dictate how I react to people, how I treat people, and my expectations of how I’m going to be perceived.
it was virgina satir who spoke about the family being the factory where people are formed, and oliver james sums it up very well when talking about scripts. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. you feel trapped in this script. so how to get out of it? well, the way out of this is to develop new scripts, which is also oliver james’s message.
another important thing james talks about is how you should develop insight. The key advantage you can have, as an insecure person, is knowing your own insecurities and those of others. everyone is insecure in some way and they certainly have their own script, but you’re the one with an idea of how that process is happening. that gives you a huge advantage. even helps with my sister. she still treats me like the annoying little brother, but now I know that’s the script, so I can handle it.
Now you see the beginning of this journey, of navigating your insecurities…
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aren’t oliver james’ opinions controversial?
as for your script, it is based on the work of others, and that is not so controversial. but with his downgrading of genetics, the debate is certainly raging. people are very divided on this. I don’t really see why it’s so controversial, because all he’s saying is that even if there is a genetic element, and according to him, there’s no evidence that there is, it’s not helpful to assume it’s genetic. it is much more useful to assume that it is conditioning.
your next book is by a man i’ve never heard of but sounds fascinating, viktor frankl. his book is called the search for the meaning of man.
frankl was a psychiatrist in vienna in the 1930s and was later taken to auschwitz with his whole family. he was the only one who survived. In the midst of this enormous trauma, he decided he was getting incredible insight into human responses to stress. Instead of waiting for some Nazi guard to kill him, he was going to use what was happening to him to comment on the human condition, and it completely transformed his view of his circumstances. he was watching some of his fellow inmates sink and give up, and finally die. he was seeing others who did not die. why didn’t they die? what made them behave in a way that helped them survive? he came up with the idea that it’s not what happens to you that matters, but how you respond. has this quote “everything can be taken from a man except one thing: the last of human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any set of circumstances.” you can choose how you respond to something, even being in auschwitz. it is enormously powerful.
The idea is that suffering gives you perspective, and that your suffering will stop the moment you see it in perspective, the moment it has meaning. she realized, in auschwitz, that her suffering made sense because she was going to write about it. His suffering stopped at that moment.
He uses another example, of a man grieving for his wife. he just couldn’t live without his dead wife. Frankl met this man and said, “Actually, the fact that she died first means that you have spared her pain. your suffering makes sense, because she spared him the pain.” that was a great help to him. the idea that suffering has a purpose is incredibly illuminating. It also fits nicely with James’s notion of insight.
your next option is stephen covey’s seven habits of highly effective people, which i think is pretty well known. mentions how you should imagine what you want said about you at your funeral, which made me laugh.
I’m not that interested in that. I think visualization is a very good thing, but not at your funeral. I don’t think you mind, because obviously you’re not going to be there. I think you should think about where you want to be in ten years and visualize it very closely and in great detail. then you can start looking at where you need to be in five years to get to that point in ten years, and then in two years, etc. what you are trying to do with the mention of your funeral is to get into your values. everyone wants to be seen as a good person, so have strong principles, because those principles will be read at your funeral.
the reason i chose covey is that it is the best of the normal self help books. most self help books start at step one, and what they promise is to take you from 0 to 100. but most people who read those books don’t start at 0, they start at minus 100. so even going down to zero it’s quite an effort. reading goleman, james and frankl, we come to zero. now we are at zero. and now we can read covey, which is incredibly practical. The seven habits are so good that you shouldn’t ignore them.
covey has this fantastic quote: “by choosing our response to circumstances, we powerfully affect our circumstances.” that echoes frankl and actually quotes frankl; In fact, it was Covey who alerted me to Frankl.
It also talks about compartmentalizing the things that happen in your life. He talks about the “circle of concern” and the “circle of influence”. the circle of concern is anything that affects your life, which could be things like the weather. within that is the “circle of influence”. obviously you can’t influence the weather, but there are other things you can influence. Effective people focus on the circle of influence, but it is the classic response of the insecure person to criticize a circle of concern where they have no power or influence.
another thing it says is that you have to “act or be acted”. this was a classic for me. If you don’t become proactive in moving toward what you want, what will happen is other people who have goals will simply recruit you. you will end up working for someone else’s plan. he’s basically saying, “get a plan”. then work out the plan sequence and do things in the right order.
Another element that I really like about this book is that Covey really starts the process of dealing with people. the biggest barrier for any insecure person is other people. you can find yourself in these horrible situations where you come to see a relationship, let’s say with your boss, as a battle between you and them. covey would take a look at that kind of situation and say “what are you fighting for? you have to think win-win. you have to help him achieve his goals and then he will help you achieve your goals.” he also says, seek first to understand , then be understood. you should try to understand what is going on and who you are dealing with. usually you want the other person to understand what they are going through, whereas if you first seek to understand their situation, you will have a lot more information. /p>
but does covey refer primarily to a business environment?
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no, it’s not a business book, it’s very personal. it has a lot to do with relationships, which is really relevant to my latest book…
yeah, talk to me about not worrying about the little things.
don’t worry about the little things is almost a self-help book for people who are put off by self-help books. Of these five, it’s the one you’re likely to find in the downstairs toilet. it’s very readable, all these nice 300-word bits. it’s brilliant for people with low self-esteem because it really throws you, how you should rethink the world. One of the things that happens, if you have low self-esteem, is that you don’t like yourself, so you end up not liking other people. that’s a very negative dynamic. what you should do is start the process of gaining self-esteem by liking other people, forcing yourself to like other people and that will help you to like yourself. how do you do that? what carlson says is that you must develop your compassion. that runs all the way through this book: the idea of developing your compassion. he is saying that people are complicated, people have problems as serious as yours and you should develop compassion for them. if you make sure that’s on your mind at all times, it will make you like yourself more. you won’t be thinking “oh that person is trying to do me again!” It undermines his self-esteem. instead, he’s bolstering his self-esteem by saying “the reason they’re behaving that way is because of this or that.” if all you can see is the impact something has on you, it becomes ineffective. What I like about this idea of developing your compassion is that it’s something you can proactively embrace. even after everything went wrong, even after you’ve had the wrong reactions, all those things that support your low self-esteem or your insecurities, then you can say, “you know what? I was wrong. you can mentally develop your compassion even after the event.
From the title, it seemed like this book was about keeping things in perspective, but you’re saying it’s really about compassion.
it’s about both. one of the key problems is self-obsession. I don’t remember if he actually uses that word, but it becomes obvious that’s what it’s all about. you need to stop looking at the impact everyone has on you and look at the impact you have on them. one of the things he likes to say is “be nice to receptionists”. you see people being rude to receptionists and it’s incredibly ineffective. if you are nice to the receptionist, everything is fine, you feel compassion for them, you are smiling, you make them feel good and everything is fine and nothing is a problem. but if you’re rude to receptionists because you don’t value them, or just think they’re a barrier, then everything goes wrong. in fact, it reinforces your low self-esteem and insecurities.
Is it really possible to follow the advice in these books?
obviously we are who we are, we are fragile human beings that are caused by our insecurities. Carlson is not saying that you are a perfect person. he is saying that we all have these complaints, negativities and complaints and this is a new way of looking at them. you should catch yourself and then look at them differently. one of the things I keep saying in my own book is that it’s not about your first reaction, it’s about your second. someone walks up to you on the street with a copy of the big issue [the British magazine sold by the homeless], and your instant reaction might be “get the fuck away from me you dirty!” but your second reaction might correct this. “no, no”, we should think. “The right thing to do here is to at least be polite and friendly, even if you don’t want to buy a copy of the big issue.” the first reaction is going to happen, ignore it. no matter. it is the second reaction that is important, considered. eventually, it becomes such a habit that your second reaction is almost instantaneous. you’ve had this rush of understanding and you’ve managed to catch yourself, you’ve managed to react in the right way, externally. however, you have reacted internally, you have reacted in the right way externally. that’s all carlson says, and that’s why i liked the book. he’s saying, “just think about this for a bit. take a break. react better and that will help you.”
what covey is trying to do in his book is to structure a positive path by which you can, every day, take a step forward. he is very interested in us keeping a diary and planning our future, he is very interested in us taking small positive steps. each day you slowly build towards a better future. it’s very structured, there’s even a schedule in seven habits that looks like the old school schedule. from 8 am to 8 pm you are supposed to structure your day and fill it with positive actions.
There’s also a brilliant matrix in the book, which is the time management matrix. Divide each activity you have into things that are not urgent and are urgent and things that are not important and are important. the box of activity you need to focus on to make progress is the non-urgent but important one. says that this is the box that you neglect the most, because what happens is that you spend your time in the urgent box, either important and urgent, which is fine, or not important and urgent, which are basically someone’s interruptions, and then what happens is you’re so tired after that that you end up in the not important and not urgent box, which is basically watching tv or surfing the internet. once you realize that this is how your time is divided, it’s incredibly useful. you can start that process of saying “well, the non-urgent but important box is the key box”, and that’s where it starts. that should drive everything else. it’s basically rearranging your life so that things are structured in a different way.
so, in answer to your question, I would say yes. Covey has rearranged your life, made you start a journal, made you make some plans, and made you create a schedule. sure you can fail, but by that time you should be in the flow of things that work best for you, you should have a plan…
did you do all this?
oh yes, absolutely. I made a ten year plan. what you do is keep a diary (physical, not electronic), and as you swap diaries, you have to rewrite your plan on the back. write down your goals and principles, that’s key to covey. invokes the United States Constitution. he says, if you think about the united states, for hundreds of years it has lived by this constitution, by its founding principles. America often goes wrong, like Watergate or Guantanamo Bay, but it has a point of reference. in fact, when people say that something is not american, what they mean is that it goes against the constitution of the united states, because they have principles enshrined in this constitution. that is a powerful document. so we should develop our own constitution and have our own principles and you write them down and every year as you change the paper you rewrite them, because they can change, like the American constitution has.
Have these books really changed your life?
yes. some of them more than others. for me, emotional intelligence really made the scales drop from my eyes as to what was going on in my head. stephen covey definitely made a big difference in terms of reorganizing my thinking about my future and making me an effective person. absolutely. Carlson is more of a nice book to read, it gives you a warm feeling. but also this idea of developing your compassion is very important. It’s not important because it’s the right thing to do, it’s important because it’s incredibly effective.
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