āThere is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living.ā
DAVID STARR JORDAN
In more than 25 years of working with people in business, university, and marriage and family settings, I have come in contact with many individuals who have achieved an incredible degree of outward success, but have found themselves struggling with an inner hunger, a deep need for personal congruency and effectiveness and for healthy, growing relationships with other people.
I suspect some of the problems they have shared with me may be familiar to you.
ā¢Iāve set and met my career goals and Iām having tremendous professional success. But itās cost me my personal and family life. I donāt know my wife and children anymore. Iām not even sure I know myself and whatās really important to me. Iāve had to ask myselfāis it worth it?
ā¢Iāve started a new dietāfor the fifth time this year. I know Iām overweight, and I really want to change. I read all the new information, I set goals, I get myself all psyched up with a positive mental attitude and tell myself I can do it. But I donāt. After a few weeks, I fizzle. I just canāt seem to keep a promise I make to myself.
ā¢Iāve taken course after course on effective management training. I expect a lot out of my employees and I work hard to be friendly toward them and to treat them right. But I donāt feel any loyalty from them. I think if I were home sick for a day, theyād spend most of their time gabbing at the water fountain. Why canāt I train them to be independent and responsibleāor find employees who can be?
ā¢My teenage son is rebellious and on drugs. No matter what I try, he wonāt listen to me. What can I do?
ā¢Thereās so much to do. And thereās never enough time. I feel pressured and hassled all day, every day, seven days a week. Iāve attended time management seminars and Iāve tried half a dozen different planning systems. Theyāve helped some, but I still donāt feel Iām living the happy, productive, peaceful life I want to live.
ā¢I want to teach my children the value of work. But to get them to do anything, I have to supervise every move⦠and put up with complaining every step of the way. Itās so much easier to do it myself. Why canāt children do their work cheerfully and without being reminded?
ā¢Iām busyāreally busy. But sometimes I wonder if what Iām doing will make any difference in the long run. Iād really like to think there was meaning in my life, that somehow things were different because I was here.
ā¢I see my friends or relatives achieve some degree of success or receive some recognition, and I smile and congratulate them enthusiastically. But inside, Iām eating my heart out. Why do I feel this way?
ā¢I have a forceful personality. I know, in almost any interaction, I can control the outcome. Most of the time, I can even do it by influencing others to come up with the solution I want. I think through each situation and I really feel the ideas I come up with are usually the best for everyone. But I feel uneasy. I always wonder what other people really think of me and my ideas.
ā¢My marriage has gone flat. We donāt fight or anything; we just donāt love each other anymore. Weāve gone to counseling; weāve tried a number of things, but we just canāt seem to rekindle the feeling we used to have.
These are deep problems, painful problemsāproblems that quick fix approaches canāt solve.
A few years ago, my wife Sandra and I were struggling with this kind of concern. One of our sons was having a very difficult time in school. He was doing poorly academically; he didnāt even know how to follow the instructions on the tests, let alone do well on them. Socially he was immature, often embarrassing those closest to him. Athletically, he was small, skinny, and uncoordinatedāswinging his baseball bat, for example, almost before the ball was even pitched. Others would laugh at him.
Sandra and I were consumed with a desire to help him. We felt that if āsuccessā were important in any area of life, it was supremely important in our role as parents. So we worked on our attitudes and behavior toward him and we tried to work on his. We attempted to psych him up using positive mental attitude techniques. āCome on, son! You can do it! We know you can. Put your hands a little higher on the bat and keep your eye on the ball. Donāt swing till it gets close to you.ā And if he did a little better, we would go to great lengths to reinforce him. āThatās good, son, keep it up.ā
When others laughed, we reprimanded them. āLeave him alone. Get off his back. Heās just learning.ā And our son would cry and insist that heād never be any good and that he didnāt like baseball anyway.
Nothing we did seemed to help, and we were really worried. We could see the effect this was having on his self-esteem. We tried to be encouraging and helpful and positive, but after repeated failure, we finally drew back and tried to look at the situation on a different level.
At this time in my professional role I was involved in leadership development work with various clients throughout the country. In that capacity I was preparing bimonthly programs on the subject of communication and perception for IBMās Executive Development Program participants.
As I researched and prepared these presentations, I became particularly interested in how perceptions are formed, how they govern the way we see, and how the way we see governs how we behave. This led me to a study of expectancy theory and self-fulfilling prophecies or the āPygmalion effect,ā and to a realization of how deeply imbedded our perceptions are. It taught me that we must look at the lens through which we see the world, as well as at the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world.
As Sandra and I talked about the concepts I was teaching at IBM and about our own situation, we began to realize that what we were doing to help our son was not in harmony with the way we really saw him. When we honestly examined our deepest feelings, we realized that our perception was that he was basically inadequate, somehow ābehind.ā No matter how much we worked on our attitude and behavior, our efforts were ineffective because, despite our actions and our words, what we really communicated to him was, āYou arenāt capable. You have to be protected.ā
We began to realize that if we wanted to change the situation, we first had to change ourselves. And to change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.