Farther to Go!

Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

How Important Is Your Need to Be Right?

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being rightA heavy investment in being right can lead to all kinds of problems, large and small, personally and interpersonally, even nationally and globally. The underlying source of our drive to be right is survival. Being right enhances our chances of staying alive. In the distant past, if we were wrong too often or about something really important—such as which food was poisonous or which animal was dangerous—we could have ended up dead.

Being and proving we’re right are knee-jerk reactions to perceived threats. Most of us no longer face the same daily threats to life our long-ago ancestors faced. But our brain doesn’t quite get that because it hasn’t changed all that much. It still operates the same way. To our unconscious (System 1), a threat is a threat is a threat—and that includes threats to our beliefs, our opinions, and our good feelings about ourselves and the people we care about. Furthermore, we not only want to see ourselves as being right, we want others to see us that way, too.

Our need to be right gets in the way of clarity in a couple of different ways.

First, refusing to acknowledge we could be wrong about something automatically clouds our judgment. It restricts what we are able to see and understand because we screen out anything that conflicts with the scenario in which we are right.

Second, an investment in being right creates a singular agenda. Rather than focusing on doing the right, or appropriate, thing in the situation, we’re more concerned about being right—or being seen as right—about what we’re doing.

When you argue and win, your brain floods with different hormones: adrenaline and dopamine, which makes you feel good, dominant, even invincible. We get addicted to being right. …Luckily, there’s another hormone that can feel just as good as adrenaline: oxytocin. It’s activated by human connection and it opens up the networks in our executive brain, or prefrontal cortex, further increasing our ability to trust and open ourselves to sharing. —Judith E. Glaser, Organizational Anthropologist

No one enjoys admitting they’re wrong, even to themselves. But we’re all wrong much more often than we’re right. And nobody’s perfect.

What you can do:
  • Recognize that you’re not alone: everyone has the same hardwired need to be right and to be seen as right.
  • If you’re feeling stuck about something, ask yourself if wanting to be right is getting in the way of your judgment or your ability to think clearly.
  • Remind yourself that you’re not still trying to survive on the savannah. Being wrong may be unpleasant or uncomfortable, but it’s highly unlikely to be fatal.

Additional reading: Anger, Adrenaline, and Arrogance: Addiction to Certainty and Do You Confuse Clarity with Certainty?

Do You Confuse Clarity with Certainty

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road ahead

Although we frequently use the terms interchangeably, certainty is not a synonym for clarity.

Certainty itself is an emotional state, not an intellectual one. To create a feeling of certainty, the brain must filter out far more information than it processes. In other words, the more certain you feel, the more likely you are wrong. –Steven Stosny, Ph.D.

There’s a big difference between being unclear—not knowing which step to take—and being uncertain—not knowing what the outcome of taking that step will be. It’s important to distinguish between the two and to be able to recognize whether it’s a lack of clarity or the fear of uncertainty that’s getting in the way.

There’s another big problem with trying to be certain, which is that we can’t be. There’s no way to predict the future—and randomness plays a much bigger role in our lives than we want to believe—so we can’t be certain about the outcome of anything we do. We end up tying ourselves in knots and wasting precious mental resources chasing an illusion.

So if we wait until we can be certain of the outcome of our actions, we’ll never act because the outcome can never be certain. There are no guarantees in life.

The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry. —Robert Burns

Unlike certainty, clarity is not an emotional state. It’s a state of mind: unclouded, unobstructed, unambiguous. Unlike certainty, clarity isn’t arrived at via a tortuous route. Unfortunately, the unconscious part of our brain (System 1) is biased against uncertainty, and so we are biased against it, as well. This is another example of our brain using us instead of the other way around.

What you can do:
  • Practice tolerating uncertainty and not being attached to the outcome.
  • Learn to distinguish between being unclear (not knowing which step to take) and being uncertain (not knowing what the outcome of taking that step will be).

Additional reading: 12 Signs that You Lack Clarity

12 Signs that You Lack Clarity

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distortionMental clarity means freedom from ambiguity or clearness of perception.

When you have mental clarity, the matter at hand or the situation you’re dealing with is in focus. The path ahead is illuminated. You aren’t weighing pros and cons. Your mind is calm. You know what to do next.

A clear view, a clear sky, a clear mind, and a clear conscience all have the same thing in common: a lack of obstruction (respectively, a building or fence, clouds, an unresolved issue, guilt).

When you have clarity, you know it. But how can you tell when you don’t have it? You probably lack clarity if you:

  1. Come to a major fork in the road and are unsure about what to do or which path to take
  2. Struggle with minor decision-making
  3. Feel confused, overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, or tired
  4. Are in a fog or feel “brain dead”
  5. Rehash the same situations or problems over and over again
  6. Feel stuck
  7. Are chronically disorganized
  8. Feel ineffective or unproductive
  9. Always have too much to do
  10. Are easily distracted
  11. Operate by consensus
  12. Constantly question yourself

There can be other causes for these symptoms, of course, and hopefully you don’t have all of them at the same time. But there’s no question that a lack of clarity can make your life much more difficult and challenging than it needs to be.

The bad news and the good news is that we confuse and obstruct our own minds. We create our own lack of clarity. In general, we do it by letting our brain use us instead of the other way around. If you can identify how you habitually get in your own way, you’ll have a much better chance of stepping aside.

I’ll talk about some of the most common obstructions to clarity in upcoming posts.

In the meantime, here are some questions to ask yourself to help you get in touch with your experience of clarity—and the lack thereof.

What is something you HAVE clarity about?

How does being clear affect your thoughts, feelings, and actions?

What is something you DON’T HAVE clarity about?

How does being unclear affect your thoughts, feelings, and actions?

Please feel free to share your thoughts, feelings, or experiences concerning clarity.

Introducing the Manifesto

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Farther to Go Manifesto

Company manifestos have become popular probably in part because they’re a lot more interesting than mission statements. The best manifestos are fun, visually appealing, and succinct. The worst spout interchangeable vague generalities—or at least seem to—and sacrifice quality for quantity, verbiage-wise.

I wanted to avoid those pitfalls. So in spite of the fact that I love words and fonts nearly equally, it took me quite a while to get around to creating a manifesto for Farther to Go! The specific content eluded me—until it didn’t. Just another example of how clarity makes the path ahead obvious.

When I sat down to put this together last weekend, it was effortless. I asked for feedback from a handful of people who are familiar with the work, and one person responded, “The courses in a nutshell.” After making a few minor tweaks, I sent it off to the printer.

For me, creating this was a great exercise in identifying what Farther to Go! is all about. It’s also a reminder of the many things I’ve learned along the way, some of which I need to relearn from time to time. I hope you enjoy it.

Click here to view the Farther to Go! manifesto at full size or to download it.

You and Your Stuff

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cluttered_room

Do you have too much stuff? Most of us would probably answer in the affirmative. I’ve lightened my material load considerably, but I still have too much stuff, too. Our relationship with our stuff can be complicated, thought. And it’s partly due to those complications that, instead of getting rid of some of it, we continue to accumulate more and more. Holding on to things becomes a habit.

My deep and now-abiding interest in clutter and having too much stuff (the two often go together) is related to the effect it has on the brain. Clutter tends to snag your attention on a regular basis and in dozens of different ways. It takes up space in your head that could be better occupied by something more productive or even just more interesting. You don’t have an unlimited amount of System 2 (conscious) attention. How much of it are you letting your stuff siphon off?

Not sure? Here are a baker’s dozen questions to ask yourself.

  1. How much stuff are you holding onto because you might need it someday?
  2. How much stuff are you holding onto because it has financial value or “might be” valuable?
  3. How much stuff are you holding onto because it has sentimental value?
  4. How much stuff are you holding onto simply because it’s already there?
  5. How much stuff do you think you’re holding onto that you probably don’t even know you have?
  6. How many clothes or shoes do you have that you no longer wear—or that don’t even belong to you?
  7. How many drawers, cabinets, closets, countertops, and shelves are so full you can’t fit anything else in or on them?
  8. How much work do you have to do before you can clean your living or work space?
  9. How much time do you spend looking for things? Have you ever failed to respond to something because you lost track of the paperwork?
  10. How much of your stuff needs to be repaired, refinished, repurposed, or recycled?
  11. How often do you notice something in your living or work space and think “I really need to do something about that”?
  12. Have you ever panicked at the thought of someone coming into your home and seeing the mess? Conversely, have you ever said, “You think your place is bad, you should see mine”?
  13. How many times have you gotten everything in one area completely tidy and organized only to find the clutter slowly creeping back months, weeks, or even days later?

Maybe it’s time for you to take the plunge and clear some space. Clearing space isn’t the same as getting organized. (In fact, it’s possible to be an extremely well-organized hoarder.) Clearing space means getting rid of things you no longer use or need. After you’ve done that, you’ll probably find it much easier to organize what remains.

Clearing your physical space can have a profound effect on your well-being in many different ways. It can give you clarity. It can ease your mind. It can relieve you of at least some of the guilt, anxiety, or depression that often accompanies being weighed down by too much stuff. It can create space for something new.

Clearing space can change your life! It changed mine.

Contact Me

joycelyn@farthertogo.com
505-332-8677