For the remaining 20 percent of your self-esteem, go ahead and beat yourself up for not being better. That’s a productive tension, which can help pull you where you want to go. We humans don’t do well when all our problems are solved. Be thankful for any useful irritation that is getting you on your feet and making you try harder. Don’t lose that.
Usual Frame: Learn to love yourself as you are.
Reframe: Be glad your brain is pestering you to improve.
Imagine the self-critical voice in your head as one part of you that is talking to the rest of you . . . and then don’t take yourself too seriously. You do your best work when you are self-critical. Attacking your own self-esteem is an example of you operating perfectly. You wouldn’t want it any other way. Self-criticism is how you power up to make the changes you want to make.
Giving Advice
In the course of your daily life, you will encounter people who ask for advice as well as people who don’t ask for your advice but you are sure you need it.
Resist the urge. Use this reframe instead.
Usual Frame: This person needs my advice.
Reframe: This person might need some information, empathy, or some help organizing their thoughts.
Given my flawed character, if you were to offer me advice, I might respond in a defensive way. My first instinct would be to tell you why your advice is worse than whatever I was already doing. If I accept your advice, it will make me feel dumb for not solving the problem on my own. I might feel as if I moved down a rung on the social ranking. I hate getting advice even though my cartooning career depended on it. As I mentioned, I’m flawed. I’m also typical. People don’t respond well to advice, sometimes even when they ask for it. It’s a normal human thing.
Instead of advice, suppose you asked me if I’m aware of a new study that could change my decision. I like learning new things, especially stuff that is relevant to my life. I would see your mention of the study as helpful, and I would be likely to research the new information on my own to confirm it. That’s how I would turn your advice to me into my advice for myself. If you frame your advice as nothing more than an offer of information, I will happily accept it. Later I will feel as if I made my own decision, perhaps influenced by what you told me.
A method I use that does not involve giving advice is asking questions about a person’s thought process and priorities. If I can prompt you to describe how your plans make sense and you struggle, you are likely to self-correct without my annoying advice. The gaps in your logic will be apparent to you as you discover you can’t describe your idea coherently.
Also, be aware that people enjoy complaining—and being heard—more than they like getting advice, even if they ask for it. Sometimes the best way to help is to be an empathetic listener. I’ll trust you to read the room and know when listening is the best strategy for being helpful.
Handling Complaints
In my teens, I worked at the Sugar Maples Resort in upstate New York, and I learned a valuable lesson from my boss. One of my jobs involved working the front desk and taking complaints from customers on various imperfections in their rooms. My boss told me my job was to write down the complaint in front of the guests on a form titled “Work Order.” That’s how the guest would feel “heard.” And I could tell from the guests’ reaction that it worked. They always acted as if they had successfully completed a task. They left the front desk happy.
The flaw in their plan is that many of their complaints were logically or practically impossible to fix. That didn’t matter, as my boss explained. He told me some guests just enjoy complaining, so if you listen to them, they’re happy. You don’t even need to fix their problem. The “being heard” part is what matters more to some guests.
We fixed whatever was fixable, but that was maybe half the complaints. As events played out, my coworkers and I started competing to see who could crumple up and toss the Work Order form in the trash the fastest before the guest got too far away. Only one guest heard the crinkling and challenged my coworker about it. I think he said he discarded something else.
Usual Frame: People who complain want solutions.
Reframe: Some people who complain just enjoy complaining.
The practical implication of this reframe is that you need to know what people want, not what they ask for. If you deal with enough complainers, you soon learn which ones are doing it for their own entertainment, or to feel powerful, and which ones have valid problems in need of fixing. There is no obvious way to know in advance the motivation for people’s complaints. But you can usually figure it out if you look for a pattern in which the complainer puts more energy into the complaint than the solution.
Toxic People
You might have someone in your life who has a so-called “strong personality.” That’s one way to put it. But if you accept that frame, you’re probably already a victim or will be soon. If someone with a “strong personality” does something messed-up that affects you, you might be tempted to chalk it up to that strong personality.
Don’t do that.
“Strong personality” is usually a nice way to say a person is toxic. And in my experience, toxic people can’t change. They have a different reward system, which means they’re acting rationally according to their priorities. For example, your reward system might involve feeling good because you helped someone. A toxic person would be rewarded by watching you fail so they feel superior.
The only known way to deal with toxic people is to remove them from your life and block them on all social media. Don’t fall for the trap that if you fix their current problems, it will be smooth sailing. Toxic people never run out of current problems.
Usual Frame: This person has a strong personality. I must become stronger to deal with it as an equal.
Reframe: This person is toxic. I must escape now.
The universe is very old. In all that time, no one has ever expelled a toxic person from their life and regretted it. You will not be the first. It’s one of the few things in life that works every time.
Compliments
Giving a compliment is an easy way to improve your life experience. When you offer a sincere, unsolicited compliment, people remember it. They have a better feeling for you and are more likely to hire you, befriend you, marry you, trust you, buy from you, and just about anything else with you. Most people get zero compliments during a normal day. If you’re the one who breaks that streak, you will be remembered in a positive way.
But what’s the downside?
In America, at the time of this writing, the downside is that any compliment from a male over the age of twelve can be construed as suspicious, especially in a work environment. Your culture might be different. I trust you to know when a compliment is appropriate. Outside the workplace, the risk of complimenting a person is low. I’ve been complimenting people my entire life, and I don’t recall a negative outcome. It’s one of the lowest-risk ways to get “free money” that this reality offers. And by free money, I mean you give people a good feeling about you.
Usual Frame: Giving compliments is awkward, creepy, or manipulative.
Reframe: Withholding a compliment is almost immoral.
Life can be challenging for even the luckiest among us. One unexpected compliment can turn someone’s day around. And it costs you nothing to deliver your little verbal bouquet of niceness. If you have a positive thought about someone, let it out.