In the Mirror Series: How Seeing Ourselves More Clearly Can Make the World a Better Place

Part 4: Your Greatness Bottled

Have you ever noticed that when you are actually trying to gain or lose weight, your body always seems to drift back to a set point, like a thermostat?

In "The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts That Make Us Overeat," Stephan J. Guyenet Ph.D. reveals why this happens and how we can overcome this tendency in order to finally lose weight and keep it off.

This got me thinking about how people, myself included, also have a Misery thermostat. You might alternatively call it a Happiness thermostat.

Think about a person you know that no matter what, is always at the same, miserable level. Good weather or bad, good fortune or bad luck, they always gravitate to a certain level of misery. Take a moment and look in the mirror and you may notice that you do the same thing. Whether our set point is high or low, we always gravitate back to it regardless of life's events.

So if this is true, are we just stuck, Joe? Like our weight, is there anything we can do to move the set point permanently?

Great question!

To change your Misery thermostat, find the joy in your misery and fill it in a different way.

What this means is you must first determine what goal being miserable serves in your life. Once you figure that out, you can replace the misery-related activities with more positive activities, but always in service of the same goal.

For example, let's say a person has a miserable attitude towards school. They place low expectations on how they do in school because they don't want to compete directly with their older sibling, who has always been exceptional in school. So they learn to dislike school and check out of the competition.

What goal does this serve? The goal is to not be hurt by lack of their parent's approval or love.

So by being miserable in school and not trying they hope to avoid any comparison with their older (in their mind, better) sibling which might negatively affect their parent's love for them.

Once this dynamic is understood, they can then replace the dislike of school with other, more positive activities that serve the same goal of positive attention from their parents. As long as the ultimate goal was their parent’s approval, no amount of other remedies related to making school better or changing schools will matter.

There isn't a single answer here, but the person might instead get more involved in a hobby or interest of their parents, find a specific part of school that they can excel at, or even face the competition and do their best with the realization that their value is not determined by the evaluation of other people, including their own parents.

Your Move: What things have you done to move your Misery Thermostat? What do you plan to do?

Over sushi had a chat with a friend (let's call them Turtle) who was nervous and unsure of what to do. Turtle had a business trip to meet an executive who is a heavy hitter in their field and wanted to get to know them better. Turtle had an inspired idea to ask the executive to go watch a baseball game together, but was hesitant. The usual doubts and worries surfaced. Would the executive be too busy, not interested or somehow be off put by the invitation?

I got the sense that Turtle wasn't exactly putting the executive on a pedestal, but was definitely affected by the executive’s heavy hitter status. This was making Turtle question what seemed like a fairly reasonable, low risk / high reward move.

We talked about Principle #2 of the Connection Counselor's 4 Perspective Principles - EQUALITY.

When we come across people who have a higher status than us, whether it is in our family, company or society, we have a tendency to lose perspective of an important point.

Even the most exalted among us are in the most important ways, our equals.

Pick someone you would not dare approach. They might be an athlete, a musician or a CEO. Now imagine the two of you stranded on a desert island without food or water. Or dealing with a serious illness. You quickly see that we all have the same basic wants and needs. When we have this perspective, it frees us to be more comfortable with ourselves and others.

Later that day, I received a message from Turtle. They had emailed the executive who replied they'd be happy to go to the game. At this point, Turtle wasn't even sure why they had been so nervous in the first place. That's the funny thing about perspective.

When we lose perspective and suddenly get it back, our previous struggles can seem silly.

Here's to feeling silly!

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Do you ever wish you had more talent in a given area? Do you see others who seem to know what to do naturally, while you struggle mightily? Despair not. Did you know there is a tremendous upside to being terrible at something?

One area that I’ve always struggled with is being more empathetic to others. Without getting into my childhood and the patterns that shaped me, let’s just say on a scale of 1-10 where 1 is Hannibal Lecter and 10 is the Dalai Lama, I’m probably a 3 or on a generous day, a 4. That said, I believe you can learn and change. The upside to my being terrible at empathy was I could see very clearly the things that one should not be doing when trying to be more empathetic.

For your amusement and perhaps edification, below are my 4 Cardinal Rules of Empathy:

Rule #1: Never assume how another person is feeling

For example, avoid, "You must be (feeling)."

Instead, say "I imagine that might make you (feeling)."

Rule #2: Never reframe how they should feel

For example, avoid chucking optimism in their face, "At least (insert even worse situation)."

Instead say, "That seems (feeling)."

Rule #3: Never try to change how they are feeling

For example, hold off on the silver lining, "The good thing is (insert silver lining)."

Instead say, "I'm so sorry this happened."

Rule #4: Never assume that another person will react to a situation the same way you would

For example, avoid, “I totally know how you must feel.”

Instead, ask an obvious, but powerful question, “How are you feeling?”

What helps you be more empathetic? What empathy fails have you noticed yourself or others making? Please share in the comments below…