Many moons ago, I wrote a list of 12 Prin­ci­ples that were the basis of my under­stand­ing, both of my life and of my coun­selling prac­tice. I’ve been think­ing about pulling them together into a small book that I could give to new clients.

I’ve decided that I’d, at least for now, tackle each of the top­ics here, in the blog. We’ll see how it goes.

2. It is impos­si­ble to live life free of anx­i­ety. There is the anx­i­ety that comes when decid­ing to shift one’s way of being—the anx­i­ety of change, of pain, of growth. And, there is the anx­i­ety of try­ing to stay the same, in denial, pre­tend­ing. Shift­ing, to me, seems the bet­ter choice. From there, I can be inti­mate, and choose to love well.

“Fall down seven times, get up eight.”

One of the things I’m most inter­ested in is the idea that we can shift both our under­stand­ing of how life is, and how we relate to our­selves, to oth­ers, and to the world.

But the weird part is that we are fight­ing against our natures—our egos—which are highly invested in keep­ing us stuck in society’s view of “normal.”

Anx­i­ety, then, might be seen as the result of what hap­pens when society’s— our ego’s—demands do not match our real­ity or our experience.

The prob­lem comes when we think our ego view should trump what’s actu­ally happening

Zip­pity, do dah to you, too!

While I could be accused of exag­ger­at­ing here, it seems to me that most of my clients have a pretty com­mon view of how life ought to be. I call it the “Blue­bird of Hap­pi­ness” model. I coined this one after think­ing about the lit­tle car­toon blue­birds that flit­ted about in car­toons I saw as a kid. My favorite one is shown here: uncle Remus and the blue­birds, from the Dis­ney movie, “Song of the South.”

This par­tic­u­lar model ele­vates hap­pi­ness to the pin­na­cle of life.

The odd part, of course, is that it is impos­si­ble to define hap­pi­ness. Hap­pi­ness is highly sub­jec­tive, and from per­sonal expe­ri­ence, and work­ing with clients, it’s also some­thing that seems to be always just out of reach. The founders of the United States got it right—they listed unalien­able rights, one of which is “… the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness.”

Hap­pi­ness is some­thing we chase, but never quite catch. It’s “out-of-reach-ness” is what causes our anxiety.

Any­way, here’s a list of the expec­ta­tions most of my clients implic­ity or explic­itly have:

* I will always get what I want, when I want it.
I will only be in rela­tion­ship with peo­ple that love and respect me.
* If I have chil­dren, they will be bright or even excep­tional, every­one will love them, and they will suc­ceed in every­thing they do.
* Peo­ple will find me inter­est­ing, attrac­tive, and will desire me.
* My pri­mary rela­tion­ship will work on autopi­lot, because I am with my soul mate, who has noth­ing bet­ter than to do than to be every­thing for me, to do my bid­ding, and to make me feel good about myself.
* Money will flow through my fin­gers like water, but there will always be time to make up for any over­spend­ing.

* “The sys­tem” is in a never-ending upward spi­ral, every­thing I touch turns to gold, and true suc­cess is mea­sured in the size of the pile of stuff I’ve accu­mu­lated.

* Peo­ple who love me always agree with me.
* It’s my right: to demand that my feel­ings take prece­dence, to blame oth­ers for them, to express them harm­fully, and to be end­lessly for­given for what­ever I’d dump on whomever I choose.

* I’m afraid of my sex­u­al­ity, deny my inter­est, and resist feel­ing the flow of energy in my body, all the while pro­fess­ing com­plete com­fort in mat­ters sex­ual.
* I do not think that I should have to put any effort into com­mu­ni­ca­tion, because if I am mis­un­der­stood it’s the fault of the other per­son.
* I go through my life wish­ing that some­one would “get me,” yet my expe­ri­ence is that I am unloved, judged, and rejected, even by my near­est and dear­est.
* I know that hap­pi­ness is just around the cor­ner, so I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing, as I wait, breath­lessly, for every­thing to “work out.“

Now, you may be think­ing that this very long para­graph doesn’t apply to you at all.

And I’m not really say­ing that every per­son believes all of these things. What I am say­ing is that most peo­ple that I’ve met over my five plus decades are pretty much stuck in this gen­eral belief sys­tem.

It’s one or more of these themes that bring clients in for ther­apy. Ini­tially, almost all of them come with the agenda of fix­ing oth­ers.

So I hear a lot about things that hap­pened 20, 30, or 40 years earlier—how abuse they were, how their par­ents did them wrong, what a strug­gle it’s been, and how, even to this moment, no one will coöper­ate with them.

They’re so caught in the drama that they miss the pattern.

One per­son I know, for exam­ple, gets into a “blam­ing cycle” about every six weeks. She tells me of the lat­est affront—and it always has some­thing to do with oth­ers not agree­ing with her per­spec­tive, or demand­ing that she change—and how she’s not going to put up with it. What changes is the spe­cific “unfair­ness” she is presently mad about.

What she misses is the pat­tern of being affronted every six weeks.

Until she can step back and see the pat­tern that she is cre­at­ing, she is doomed to repeat her dis­sat­is­fac­tion. Her approach, 100% of the time, is to lit­er­ally or fig­u­ra­tively leave the rela­tion­ship. And then she gets to do it all over again, with some­one new, or she cre­ates a new sit­u­a­tion with some­one old.

To restate the key point of this sec­tion, the anx­i­ety she cre­ates regard­ing her dis­sat­is­fac­tion with oth­ers is more appeal­ing than the anx­i­ety she imag­ines she would feel if she dropped this approach and did some­thing different.

It seems to me that the work of adult­hood is to chal­lenge our pre­sup­po­si­tions.

In other words, to exam­ine what we believe in the cold light of reality.

• Is it really pos­si­ble to have a healthy rela­tion­ship by demand­ing, end­lessly, that our part­ner change—judging that every­thing is his or her fault?
• Is it really pos­si­ble to moti­vate our­selves to change through end­less self-criticism and judgment?
• Is it really pos­si­ble to expect that all of our wishes will be granted, just because we want some­thing, and with­out ever con­sid­er­ing how our wishes clash with the wishes of our near­est and dearest?

Now, this is not to sug­gest that you do life the way oth­ers want you to. That’s what got you into this mess in the first place.

This is a pre­scrip­tion for direct per­sonal obser­va­tion, and clear­headed eval­u­a­tion of the results you are get­ting regard­ing the choices you are making.

Being an adult, then, is demon­strated in our will­ing­ness to drop behav­iors that don’t work — I think that is only pos­si­ble when we are will­ing to drop our invalid beliefs. I call this “The courage not to be your­self” model, because it takes great courage to drop what we always do in favor of what works.

And the only way you dis­cover what works is to do it.

Our approach, then, is twofold.

• First, you must be will­ing to explore each and every one of your beliefs, in order to gain per­spec­tive on how you stay stuck—repeating the same old stuff. As I noted in the long para­graph on silly cul­tural think­ing, these weird beliefs are hooked into hap­pi­ness, as in, “If only peo­ple under­stood this rule, and changed their behav­ior, and gave me what I wanted then I would be happy.”
• Sec­ond, you must be will­ing to face the anx­i­ety of change. I want to be clear here. You are chang­ing your behav­ior, not your essence. What I mean is your beliefs are as old as you are, and are going to be there until you die. There is no way to get rid of them. There is a way to make peace with them. As they arise, we hear them, we acknowl­edge them, and we let them pass with­out enact­ing them. This is hard, hard work. Anx­i­ety pro­vok­ing work. Most peo­ple would rather remain stuck.

As I wrote in my book­let, “The Watcher,” your goal is to cre­ate an alter­na­tive voice, another per­spec­tive, a clearer, more direct, and ele­gant approach to life. With time and with prac­tice, this voice becomes the dom­i­nant voice in your head, and the process of choos­ing effi­cient behav­ior becomes simpler.

But as with any new learn­ing, the learn­ing curve is the steep­est at the beginning.

Ther­apy gives us the oppor­tu­nity to look at our beliefs through the eyes of another—someone who is not invested in defend­ing those errant beliefs. There is also the oppor­tu­nity to explore other ways to enact our lives. This sort of work gives us the tools we need to deal with the anx­i­ety that change cre­ates. We move from expect­ing end­less hap­pi­ness to under­stand­ing that life is really about acceptance.

We start from a place of accept­ing where things are, drop the end­less bitch­ing, accept our­selves as we are, and then make bet­ter choices.

There’s noth­ing par­tic­u­larly com­pli­cated about this view. It just requires per­sis­tence. Once you under­stand that “the way it is, is the way it is,” once you fully land in this moment, you are sud­denly aware that with­out pre­con­ceived notions your options are end­less. It is the one and only way out of the labyrinth. Labyrinths require courage, cre­ativ­ity, and mak­ing friends with your anx­i­ety, so that you can dis­cover the way out.

And hav­ing a guide that has con­quered a labyrinth doesn’t hurt, either!