This is the second part of a series of three. You can find part I here.
Responsibility
Be a hero: learn, engage, become powerful, give back
How my new mindset stuck
So coming back from vacations, I was looking into environmental stuff and I found this weird guy. He had a strange voice, was crying on an interview and answering a question about whether being a prophet. I was mixed: it was pretty weird for sure, the guy was actually carefully considering the prophet question ; but at the same time I was mesmerised: the precision of speech, the emotions, the deepness of thoughts. He opened another door. I felt I was discovering a different level of human: hyper emotional, hyper thoughtful, hyper articulate, hyper considerate... I remember feeling a strange connection, like he reflected many parts of myself. He inspired me. For someone who had never truly aspired to become anyone or anything, I'd collected two in the span of a few months. Some change was occurring!
The guy was Jordan Peterson. Some of you may know him, and part of you might dislike him. I understand. But his vision of responsibility is what got me going with my inner quest (psychologically we could talk about self-actualisation) and my willingness to share it with others.
Jordan Peterson is a very renowned psychologist, author of many books and science papers. He's also well versed in philosophy. Needless to say, he gives solid advice on how to live your life. His political views are unconventional, and controversial, but it's not the matter here. One of the essence of his philosophy is: one of the best things you can do in life is take full responsibility for your self. In responsibility, there is meaning, and this meaning is what you need. Happiness? Not worth. Meaning through responsibility? Yes Sir! He bases this on the archetypal hero journey: be the hero of your life and you will live a great life and help others, even if there is a high suffering price to pay. Your psyche has evolved for that.
Bring order to chaos: a human growth process
I've always considered myself a pretty lax person. Like I am the kind of person who loves building plans, schedules, and never stick to them. I tend to favour the present-moment and its opportunities. I truly found wisdom in Jordan's words as it helped me balance out this tendency, as his favourite saying goes: bring order to chaos. Yin/Yang. You find great life at the intersection of both. Interestingly enough, this intersection is also the condition for Flow, the optimal experience, the best condition for growth.
It might sound silly, but I since make my bed every morning. You'd be surprised how simple routines like that can keep chaos at bay, and keep you within a safe and focus zone. But more generally, he instilled in me the willingness to make more conscious decisions, to stop letting things happen to me like I can't change it. Tony Robbins would say "change the victim into a victor". Like the words or not, the principle is simple: the quality of your life depends on you. This mindset switch is powerful in itself, and its impact even more, as you progressively craft a more suitable life, based on everyday micro-decisions. Two years ago, my baseline stress was super high. I was basically under constant anxiety. Through this hygiene only could I get out of it, small step by small step, taking responsibility to craft something better for me in every parts of my life. "Don't let dragons grow under your carpet!"
Out of nihilism, the re-integration of subjectivity
This philosophy pretty single-handedly got me out of nihilism as it helped me find "superior" meaning. Orienting myself towards responsibility gave me a north star. I was craving one! I had fallen deep into the relativist trap. Nothing was truly meaningful to me. Every thing I believed I could do always seemed to have drawbacks, seemed to be oppressive in some way. For instance, I always felt that I didn't deserve my salary, that I only ever had luck which led me here. I felt guilty of it, and I wouldn't spend it. I didn't see any way to truly give back to society what I had earned either, and that made me feel constantly close to depressed, and for good reason: I had no true meaning for life. Pretty solid reason if you ask me.
The work of Jordan Peterson helped me on that by re-ordering a value system. By digging into mythology, religion, philosophy, science, he found that some values are pillars of all of them, and that it would be a pretty safe bet to keep those in mind as top value. A value system is what I needed to reorientate myself, and be eager to engage in the world, embody the hero archetype, without too much pull back from materialistic relativity: "nothing actually matters, you know?"
This actually ties pretty strongly with my spiritual awakening. Reality can be described from 4 different perspectives (Integral theory), which co-exist at all time: individual subjective, individual objective, collective subjective and collective objective (cf picture below). So far, I had been very entrenched on the right side of this quadrant, trying very (too) hard to see life only through a rational objective mindset. This whole journey brought me to re-awake to and re-consider everything subjective: what I actually feel, love (see next section) and what I believe in, i.e. my values, meaning! Spirituality is of the realm of subjectivity. By recovering meaning, I discovered spirituality.
In case you wonder: you can't find any meaning in the objective quadrants. Science, objectivity, rationality cannot provide you with meaning, as meaning is subjective. The interesting thing is: if you only trust rationality, ask yourself why? then you'll realise that you elect rationality as supreme value, in a subjective decision. You might not realise it, but blindly trusting rationality is the same as having rationality as a religion.
To sum up. I was nihilistic, I lacked passion, I lacked drive, I thought nothing I could do could change anything meaningful, I thought I wasn't deserving the successes I had, I thought I didn't truly deserve to fully engage in life and live my dreams. I actually self-loathed myself for being so privileged. I changed thanks to him. I'm still conscious of the luck I have, my "lottery ticket", but I'm eager to become the most I can be, so I can give back the most I can. "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure [...]".
To go further:
Know and love thyself
What if you could be your friend?
I describe to much length how reconsidering the principle of responsibility actually made me realise in what sense I was not taking it. But in essence, I'd been a pretty "responsible" person, in the naïve version of it. I'd studied well, I'd performed well in my endeavours, I was autonomous. From an external perspective, I was a responsible person. I came to realize though that I wasn't taking enough responsibility of the corest of things: my self.
I had always been pretty keen on personal development, learning about people, myself, grow. Yet I missed a few critical points:
I was always trying to be better, but I didn't truly accept my self as it was, I was tyrannising myself
I didn't understand that I longed so much for belonging that I was constantly trying to be different. I had to belong to myself
I didn't fully realise that life is a journey, you're not stuck, there is no fixed you
Let’s go into more details
1. I was always trying to be better, but I didn't truly accept my self as it was, I was tyrannising myself
There is a lot of meaning in growth. One could argue it has one of the deepest meanings. However, when it stems from self-hate, it's pathologic. I encountered many coaches and psychologists in my last year, and at least 2 of them confronted me with the question: do you love yourself? Writing this still gets me emotional. No, I didn't. I had always tried to be different. I had always felt I was a weirdo and I didn't belong. I was constantly trying to make up for it. One day, I was chatting with a friend, and the sheer truth came out: I felt my inner child so desperate for love and acceptance, deep down. I burst out in tears in my friend's arm. Surprise! I'm a pretty emotional person, but I usually control myself. I mostly play the role of the person who helps others, not the one who shows this level of vulnerability.
It felt so good though. It felt great to respect the sadness of this child. It was one of the first steps towards truly accepting myself and loving myself unconditionally, respecting my needs and desires. I'm working on it everyday, it's really hard, when you're not used to it. But it's a hell of a road to walk! And if you feel like it's really selfish, consider this: without loving yourself, it's impossible to truly love others! W. Dyers is a one big advocate of that claiming that intelligent people are not people with high IQ, but people who know how to craft happiness in their lives, through self-love (Your erroneous zones).
Practically…
One thing that helped me self-love was to look at successful people and observe in what ways they're similar to me. That way you learn to love that part of yourself. One example for me: Elon Musk. I considered myself too anxious to run too many responsibilities. Then I saw him stutter in public talks. I felt compassionate, and in turn became compassionate of my self being anxious at times. Now I don't believe anxiety is a red flag for big responsibilities anymore.
Also, I read a lot of personal development books about traits that I considered flaws in myself. I read about introversion, hypersensitivity, hypercognition... It was really helpful to see those traits through a positive lens. If you feel bad about those, you usually beat yourself up too much, and society has in some ways given you the impression that these things were bad. Reframing your opinion positively is essential.
And remember, your strength is in your difference? it's true of any amazing success. Have your pick: they always play on key differentiators which create their edge and success. Some of those I've been truly inspired by: Steve Jobs, Emmanuel Faber, Frédéric Laloux, Maisie Williams, Rafael Nadal... Ben Horowitz puts it in a nice way in "The hard thing about hard things":
"Embracing the unusual parts of my background would be they key to making it through. It would be those things that would give me unique perspectives and approaches to the business. the things that I would bring to the table that nobody else had ... embrace your weirdness, your background, your instinct."
2. I didn't understand that I longed so much for belonging that I was constantly trying to be different. I had to belong to myself
I have been craving belonging for a long time, without realising it, and it provoked the weirdest behaviour: I was always trying to stand out in any situation. For instance in my job, I would always try to bring a new perspective, try to be the smartest person in the room. Don't get me wrong, it was useful, to some extent, but it was also inappropriate a lot of the time. Brené Brown made me realise this in her book Braving the Wilderness. She describes how belonging is a core human need, and how true belonging is belonging to yourself, it's not fitting in. Usually, you either fit in or you draw back and refuse to fit in, entertaining the need for belonging further. I, as she did, did the latter.
The right way is to accept your need to belong, and then realise it comes through truly accepting who you are (cf part above).
For me one impact was that I stopped clinging onto my opinions, and trying to be as perfectly rational as I could. Sometimes, it was worth. Sometimes, I didn't have the courage, or I didn't feel like it, and so I respected it. I stopped being a cliché of myself and naturally got feedback that I was much easier to work with. In turn it helped create more bonds with people, thus a feeling of closeness and... belonging! I hadn't realised how such a barrier to connection my persona was, and how I was entertaining this situation I resented.
This had nearly divine impact for me. It was the strangest thing. The more I listened to my inner voice, aligned and embodied my difference, but in a respectful and approachable way, the more life seemed to echo positively. Like you're finally properly attuned. I've got feedback from at least five people in the span of few months the like of "how much you've changed, it's crazy, it's super nice talking to you" or "I very rarely have discussions that interesting with people" or "you're a very special person". I still can't believe it to this day (compliments are typical bits of love I still have a hard time letting in). It's the power of belonging to yourself. "Give and you will receive".
3. I didn't fully realise that life is a journey, you're not stuck, there is no fixed you
Though I have been into personal development for a long time, I hadn't realised how much life was about the journey. In essence, I felt I was done. Adulthood was a pretty finite state. I could only marginally improve, horizontally. I was a product of nature. I was a good guy, good job, good friends. Pretty nice, right? Then I learnt about ego development, I learnt about shadow and jungian individuation, I learnt about the integral approach to life. It opened my eyes on new forms of development (including vertical development). I realised what a growth mindset truly meant (and it's not only about keeping up with the latest trends in growth hacking ;)). I realised that every day and every situation was an opportunity to become a better person, to challenge things I knew and build an ever healthier and complete personality. I realised I was conditioned by my past, my thoughts, my emotions, but by being conscious, I could create a new conditioning. And in particular I glimpsed exponentiality: how I could exponentially become more complex, when I used to blindly envision only marginal, linear, skill-based improvements. There is work you can do which brings you effectively on the edge of human developmental level, that opens up perspectives very few humans (in history!) have seen and implemented. This is extremely exciting.
This probably was the thing that definitely got my mood thermometer above 0 (in celsius degrees 😁). With each day comes crazy challenges, why not take them? why take things as fatalities? You are not fixed, you are not a you by any standard parameterised definition. You are journeying, and the journey is exciting!! I feel like I'm such a different person than I was a year ago, and it feels great. In particular, I feel free, free to craft a future I'm excited about, free to get rid of conditioning I no longer need, free to act in the present moment despite the past.
About this journey ahead...
Without getting into too many details, let's just say it's researched that there are at least 12 different forms of intelligence you can develop (ethical, aesthetic, spiritual, affective, musical...), that there are for most people two to three major perspective shifts on the world that can still be experienced (from ethnocentric to worldcentric to kosmocentric), that we all project a persona of our self in social situations that selects what we deem as good and repress what we deem as bad thus creating an oppression of the psyche, which resentment we project onto other people who are now the "bad people"...
One useful exercise I practice is: when you truly can't bear someone for some trait of their personality, ask yourself: why would this person legitimately do that? empathise with them. Then, you find two truths: this person has this need that you've just identified; and you have it too, but you repress it. Now you can integrate that perspective and become more loving towards this person and towards yourself. It's called integrating your shadow (Jung), and it's one way to stop projecting the devil onto other people. It might help build a more peaceful world 🕊
Food for thought
You may notice that some of the points above seem contradictory. They are, to some extent. In fact, they are polarities, paradoxical propositions. Like: growing your self and accepting your self. You need both, and it's ok! Maybe you are more leaning on one side and you would benefit from balancing it out. As Jung says, some of the most profound wisdoms are found in paradoxes. They inherently hold the truth that any meaning-making is constructed, yet essential for the ego and thus humans to live... That fascinates me.
Sooooo.... belong to yourself, learn to love all your self, be your best friend... and enjoy the journey, it's all that matters!
To go further:
To know yourself
Quiet, on introversion
The HSP, on hypersensitivity
Les philo-cognitifs, on hypercognition (in french)
To love yourself
Socrates: "One thing that differentiate me from others is that when I don't feel like doing it, I don't do it"
Growth