Use Your FIlter

Hey All - Sunday night, and you know what that means!

We have always been told not to let others' opinions of us affect us.  But we have also always been told that we should be open to criticism, accepting of new ideas, and not resist anything that contradicts what's "in our bubble."

Great, mixed messages.  Gotta love when they come our way.  How are we really supposed to know which way to go?

That's a trick question - we already do.

(1) In what manner is this opinion or "fact" being expressed?  Is it interrupting something you were already saying?  A catcall as you walk by someone?  Is it from someone hijacking, one-upping, or upstaging something you were already doing?  Shut 'em down.  You're dealing with a textbook example of a narcissist, and the only way to "fight" them is to not engage.

(2) Is it coming from someone who's earned your trust?  Is it in private, out of respect?  Is it focused more on help and/or friendship, and less on "I'm right and I'm smarter than you?"  Give it a listen, and listen good.  You don't really know everything.  So if there's something you can use that's being provided, accept it and say thank you!

As with all things, the key here is respect.  Bashing you in public and forcing an opinion on you is not respect, it's an attempt to subjugate and dominate in order to feed someone's ego.  Explaining things in private, with honesty, but not just for the sake of putting someone down, and explaining why they think it should be considered, then that is respect.

(Caveat - there is such a thing as stealth narcissists, who pretend to be your friend in order to manipulate you.  See, I don't only think in black & white)

We have in our minds a filter.  We can accept knowledge that is verified, solidified, trustworthy, and provided from credible sources, and use it to evolve and update our knowledge.  And we can reject unverified and unsolicited information from questionable sources that is not reliable and does nothing to update our knowledge.

But you have to understand this!  But you have to think like me because I'm right!  But you can't tell me that you still believe that!

Then stop trying to sell it.  Planting seeds is one thing, but anyone who forces their opinion on us needs to be removed.  We decide what to accept to update our knowledge, they don't.

In fact, that's one of the most powerful things we have over others:  Our choice whether to accept or reject their messages.  Some people simply cannot handle rejection, different perspectives, or adverse opinions.  They may or may honestly expect people to ask "how high?" when they say jump.  Merely saying "no" to them sets off alarms.

NARCISSIST SURVIVAL TIP:  When necessary, if they don't understand "no" after the nth time, just let them win.   Pretend they know it all, and they schooled us.  They obviously need the "win" more than we need to argue with them.  Then they'll be quiet and we can leave.

THE BUTT U. MESSAGE:

Sometimes you might have a message that others reject too.  If they're not interested, they're not interested.  Move on and don't beat a dead horse.

I EXIST.  I MATTER.  I BELONG.  I DESERVE.

I AM BOLD.  I AM BULLETPROOF.

I AM EMOTIONALLY MATURE.

Night all.  Feel free to comment or PM me!

Don't Be A Groundhog

Hey All - looks like January is all but over.  So coming up next in February, in addition to this being a Leap Year, we've got love in bloom on Valentine's Day and patriotism to spare on President's Day. But even sooner than that is Groundhog Day.

Remember that movie from 1993?  Bill Murray's character is inexplicably caught in a day that repeats itself over and over.  He uses it to his advantage to avoid things that he knows will happen, and eventually, given enough opportunities to correct the mistakes he made the first "day," eventually "gets it right."

Believe it or not, even if the same day is not repeated, we still have the same opportunities to "get it right" that Bill Murray's character did with the repeating day in the movie.  We already know, most likely, what to expect from our usual affairs.  Accordingly, we know what we can do to improve them when that is warranted.

As Betas, we are often end fooled into believing that every day we live is identical and meaningless, and that each one will remain the same until we disappear.  Or as the more cynical among us say, work, work, work, and then you die, and there's nothing else to it.

WRONG.

Every single day we live is an opportunity to change the game.  A chance to avoid the pitfall we might have stepped in yesterday.  A chance to talk to whomever it was we passed by without noticing last week.  A chance to do our job even better than we were already doing it to begin with.  Yes, the date on the calendar is changing, instead of trapping us in a time loop, but we can choose to learn and improve tenfold before each individual day ends.

Don't wait for Punxsatawney Phil to tell you whether or not winter is getting sliced in half.  Decide to let your seasons of learning continue through spring and beyond!

I EXIST.  I MATTER.  I BELONG.  I DESERVE.

I AM BOLD.  I AM BULLETPROOF.  I AM BETA.

So How Did You Do?

Hey All - Kind of a warm day for December, isn't it?

Every year, as New Year's Eve approaches, we like to make a lot of promises to ourselves, but we often fail to follow through on them by the time MLK Day rolls around.  The main reason why this happens is that we think our transgressions of the prior year were minor, irrelevant, or tolerable.  We got so comfortable with them that we didn't seriously feel like changing them.

So how do we overcome this?  A good old fashioned performance review:

(1).  What mistakes did we make?

    (A).   Why did they happen?  Be honest!

    (B).   Did we learn from them?   If so, what did we learn?

    (C).   Is it possible to prevent them?   If so, what?

(2).   Did we disrespect someone?

    (A).   Why?   

          (i).    Would they have irreparably harmed themselves if we stayed silent?  Were they lost, blind, and oblivious to their own mistakes before we stepped in?  If so, please move along,

          (ii).   Were you angry?  In a bad mood?  Did  you let something get under your skin?  If so, how did that happen?

          (iii).   Were they alpholes?  If so, were you still Bold and Bulletproof?   Meaning, did you fire back at them only after they had tried to provoke you more than enough times?   And did they leave themselves wide open?

     (B).   What can we do to prevent reoccurrences of (i) and (ii)?  And not punish ourseives for (iii)?

(3).  Were we disrespected?

    (A).   Why?

         (i).    Did we instigate something?  See 2.A.1 and 2.   If so, was the retaliation justified?

         (ii).    Did we just show up somewhere?   See 2.A.3.  Did we respond as recommended by this very blog?

    (B).   Were we Bold and Bulletproof in the face of disrespect and bullying?  If not, why?

(4)   Who was in our lives?

    (A).   People who respected us?  And vice versa?   If not, why?

    (B).   Hangers-on?  Friends-of-friends?   People we had to tolerate because they "don't bother" someone else?   Were we able to repel their repulsiveness?  If not, why?

Yes, as you can see, I'm not the answer man this time around.  You are.  Use this checklist, which is by no means exhaustive, to evaluate your social interactions of 2015.  Feel free to expand the situations to school or work.  Take a good look at why you made the choices you did.  Detach from your review any and all negative emotional responses.  Remember your choices from 2015 only so you can make better choices in 2016.

I EXIST.  I MATTER.  I BELONG.  I DESERVE.

I AM BOLD.  I AM BULLETPROOF.   I AM BETA.

Reconciliation For The Next Generation

Hey All -- sorry I missed you last week, but here's the straight dope from the Good Book:

Just as Jacob and Esau reconciled, so did Joseph and his brothers.  He had him right where he could make their lives absolutely miserable, given the power he'd earned, but somehow he saw fit to reveal his true identity and to forgive them for leaving him for dead in that ditch.

Many times in this blog, I have decried the evil of bullies, targeted the alpholes of this world, and sought to eliminate those who enabled them.  But forgiving them?  Letting it go?  Maybe giving them a friendly reminder that you have the means and the desire to flatten them, but you choose not to because it's better to be nice?!?!?!?!

Let's explore this in further detail . . . .

There's a friend of mine who casts a large and imposing figure.  The chance of anyone pushing him around or starting a bar fight with him is slim and none.  Still, when he was younger and smaller, he was bullied.  There was a classic high school loud mouth, undisciplined, spoiled moron who pelted him with spitballs and called him a lot of names bordering on racism.  Years later, after he'd grown to his full size of 6'5, he ran into this jabroni and invited him to throw a spitball "now."  After giving him the scare of his life, he revealed his true identity, and the two ended up becoming friends.

The way he tells this story, there is too much alphaganda and "might makes right" narrative for my taste.  That's not what this blog is all about, because those rules don't apply to us.  So I will extract the central idea and use it to highlight the theme of this biblical scene:  Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

His reasoning is not made clear, but he knew he was right to reveal himself to the 11 brothers who tried to kill him as a younger man.  He understood that, right or wrong, they all had the same father, and they would all have the same responsibility for making sure the nation of Israel would grow fruitful and multiply.  Even though he had achieved a status close to that of the Pharaohs, he never forgot his roots, or his duty to his heritage.  And it appears to me that those higher purposes required him to forgive his brothers, regardless of how hateful they previously were to him.  And, oh yeah, he did instigate some portion of it himself, as he was not just an innocent little lamb.

Israel/Jacob seemed to acknowledge the wrongs of the past by investing in the future.  He blessed Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, echoing the blessing that Isaac administered to him and to Esau.  He placed his right hand on the younger son's head, when tradition would have stated otherwise.  Joseph tried to set him straight, believing him to be mistaken, but Israel explains that no, he's actually doing this on purpose, because he knows that the younger son's lineage will be stronger.  This appears to be his penance for tricking Isaac two generations ago.  Or maybe he's trying to set things straight from the beginning.  After all, G-D told Israel's mother that the younger son will be stronger, so she tried to finagle things to make it happen.  But now that Israel has received revelation directly from G-D, he already knows what lies ahead, so there's no need for trickery to prevent a mistake.

Whatever the reason, he's obviously learned from the mistakes of the past, and wants to make things right before he leaves this earth.  That's to be commended.  It looks like Jacob may have been the most self-aware of the three patriarchs, and his most-favored son apparently followed suit.

So it goes with us.  We are just as flawed as this ancient family, if not more, and it's just as easy for us to make mistakes.  But correcting those mistakes, rectifying the consequences, and taking preventive measures to avoid their recurrence is a sign of maturity.  In my opinion, that is one of the most respect-worthy things that someone can do.  Let's make it happen a little more often, huh?