Develop a Skill
Get good at something. Anything. Even one skill is a safe space for your mind in case you drift into the “I’m worthless” lane that haunts so many. If you know you can become good at one thing—generally because you practiced it a lot—then you know the differences in skills across humankind have a lot to do with who practiced what. And who-practiced-what has nothing to do with your worth.
Take Some Chances
I talked about conquering embarrassment in the Success Reframes chapter because immunity to shaming is one of the most useful business and professional skills you can acquire. If you are lucky enough to succeed at anything meaningful, bad people will appear from nowhere and shame you for the way you did it. That’s guaranteed. People who are immune to embarrassment have more options in life, and those options are often the high payoff kind. But hardening yourself against shame and embarrassment also has an immediate benefit in maintaining your mental health. No one feels good when they also feel shame. That’s why it makes sense to reframe it out of your life.
As I mentioned earlier, a reliable way to become immune to embarrassment is to intentionally put yourself in embarrassing situations. For example, volunteer to give a speech, sing karaoke in front of coworkers, experiment with your fashion and hairstyle, chat up an attractive stranger—that sort of thing. Don’t try to avoid embarrassment. Invite it. You’ll get some good stories out of it, and each mini-shame toughens you up for the next one. So take some social risks. Flame out in front of witnesses. Repeat. You’ll be amazed how quickly you can murder your ego by ignoring its screaming needs.
Usual Frame: Avoid embarrassment.
Reframe: Invite embarrassment and use it as a club to kill your ego.
If someone asked you to deliver a priceless work of art across the street, you might balk at the suggestion. If you were to slip, trip, get robbed or assaulted, that priceless art might get damaged. How comfortable would you be carrying it? It makes sense to be on high alert to focus on protecting the valuable art. That pressure creates a feeling of anxiety.
Now suppose I asked you to deliver an ordinary potato across the street. If you drop it or damage it, no big deal. It was only a potato.
Think of yourself as the potato and not the priceless art. Only your ego makes you think you are worth protecting. And being worth protecting is what makes you anxious. If you can abandon the notion that every speck of harm that comes your way must be avoided at all costs, you can better relax.
Usual Frame: I am a priceless work of art that must be protected.
Reframe: I am a potato that is easily replaced.
Be the potato.
Worry Versus Curiosity
For many of us, worrying feels like a full-time job that sacrifices quality of life now, no matter what happens later. And often there’s not much you can do about how things turn out, assuming you have done all the obvious things one should do in each situation. For example, you intend to study for a test in a subject at which you normally excel. There’s no obvious reason anything would go wrong, but we humans can get twisted up thinking about small risks that loop in our minds for no good reason. A reframe might be just the thing you need to break that loop.
This reframe is one I have used with great success. Like many of the reframes in the book, it looks too easy to be true. I don’t mean to make any of this sound like magic—because any one person’s success with a reframe is hard to predict—but in the unlikely event your brain is wired like mine in this specific respect, you might be surprised how well this reframe works.
Usual Frame: I worry something will go wrong.
Reframe: I’m curious what will happen.
If you succeed in switching your thoughts from your past to your imaginary future, you run the risk of generating anxiety about how things might turn out in your future. I advise you to only imagine positive outcomes, but being human, you will have some worries about the future as well. Instead of focusing on what could go wrong, accept that you live in a world where things usually go wrong—at least a little bit—and instead try to treat the future as a curiosity. What will happen if I do this versus that? You can quickly gamify (turn into fun) the ambiguity of the future. Just keep telling yourself it will be interesting, and you can’t wait to find out what will happen.
Can you really gamify something just by wanting to? Yes. It’s a thing. For example, with the advent of streaming TV apps, I found myself angry and frustrated every time I wanted to watch something. The chosen app would need an update, or it wouldn’t work on the device I wanted to use, or it would say I am already logged in, or my password wouldn’t work. After a few years of that nightmare, I reframed watching TV as “hacking into my own account.” I’m no longer a frustrated consumer with several streaming apps that have poor user experiences. Now I’m a skilled hacker who will use every resource at his disposal to break through the user interface of the sign-in process. My dopamine hit comes from successfully opening an app and using it. I generally find nothing worth watching and call it a night. But at least I got my hacker hit of dopamine.
Aren’t you curious if the curiosity reframe will work for you?
What You Can Control
Humans are built for worry. If we didn’t worry about the future, we wouldn’t work so hard today to make it better. You can’t turn off your natural impulse to fret about the future. But you can reframe it to give yourself credit for “doing everything you can do.” That’s comforting. Having worries is bad enough, but if you compound the worries by worrying you are not doing enough to make yourself safer, your subjective experience will be doubly bad. You might find comfort in reframing your situation from double-bad to single-bad. And by that I mean removing the concern that you are not “doing enough.” Here’s the reframe.
Usual Frame: Worry about all potential bad outcomes.
Reframe: Control the heck out of things you can control. Accept all outcomes.
I won’t be able to persuade you how much better you will feel if you “do everything you can do” to solve a problem. You must experience it. Look for situations in your life in which you can reasonably “do everything you can do” to improve the situation. Notice how much better you feel no matter if things go wrong or right from that point on.
The cleanest example of “doing all you can do” involves your physical fitness. Let’s say you are worried about your ability to attract a mate, get a job, or be healthy in general. If you get serious about your fitness and do everything you can reasonably do to make it better, you’ll feel a lot better even as you hit rough patches in your life. Fitness is a gift that keeps giving. It touches all aspects of your life. And it is highly controllable. So control the heck out of it and see how much better you feel. Same argument with diet. Eating right and exercising are not easy. But they are 100 percent available to all interested takers. Get control of your diet and exercise and watch how the benefits start solving your other problems.
History Is Imaginary
Are you plagued by events from your past? Most of us are, to some degree. The ugly memories that lurk in the dark corners of our minds tend to emerge on their own schedule and inject anxiety into our lives. If that describes you, I can help.
History does not exist in any material way. You can’t grab a handful of history. You can’t eat it, punch it, kick it, or photograph it. If your past is causing you anxiety, put the past in its place. It doesn’t exist. It never will. It can’t touch you.
Usual Frame: History is important.
Reframe: History doesn’t exist.