Блог Анкара

In This Chapter

^ Making sense of problems involving comparisons of ages

^ Adding and subtracting the years to solve problems

^ Dealing with complications of real puzzlers in age problems

Ne of my favorite Funky Winkerbean cartoons starts out with something like, "When Henry was twice as old as Hank was two years after half of

Hank’s age. . . ." And the punch line: "How many apples is an orange worth?"

Some people think this is hilarious. Others don’t find a bit of humor in these

Very involved, contrived, convoluted problems.

In this chapter, I acquaint you with techniques and procedures to use when tackling word problems involving the ages of one, two, or more people. When broken down into their component parts, age problems seem much less intimidating. Here you see how to deal with aging — well, ages of people after a certain amount of time. I hope you’ll see the humor in the cartoon, too.

Doing Age Comparisons

Age comparisons are done almost as soon as a person can talk. Children take advantage of being older than one another to get first in line or get to stay up later or get whatever the prize. Doing age comparisons makes for interesting math problems, too. The usual rules apply: Always let the variable represent a number, and use the math words for clues about adding, subtracting, and so on.

Warming up to age

Before getting into some serious algebra word problems, here are a few warm-ups to get you in the mood.

The Problem: A 40-year-old man married a 25-year-old woman. The woman died at the age of 40, and her husband was so saddened that he wept for years after that. He died 5 years after he stopped weeping, on his 80th birthday. How many years was he a widower?

First, just do some mental calculations. The couple was married when he was 40 and she was 25; he was 15 years older than she was. If she died when she was 40, then he was still 15 years older than she was, so he was 55. It doesn’t matter how many years he wept and that for 5 years he had stopped weeping. The only figuring you need to do is to take the age when he died, 80, and subtract the age he was when his wife died, 55. Subtracting 80 – 55 = 25, so he was a widower for 25 years.

The next problem involves more counting and logic than algebra to figure out the ages.

The Problem: A man has three children. The oldest child is three times as old as the youngest. The second child is six years older than the youngest and six years younger than the oldest. How old are the children?

The second or middle child’s age is halfway between two numbers that are six years away in either direction. So the ages could be 1, 7, and 13; 2, 8, and 14; 3, 9, and 15; and so on. Go back to the beginning of the problem. The oldest child is three times as old as the youngest, so the age of the oldest has to be a multiple of 3. The multiple has to be larger than 13, so the oldest is 15, 18, 21, or some other multiple of three. Also, the oldest is 12 years older than the youngest. So what number can you multiply by 3 and have it turn out to be 12 larger than the original number? It’s the number 18, that you want. If the children are 6, 12, and 18, then the oldest is three times as old as the youngest.

Okay, so you can’t stand not using algebra and an equation to do this problem. I give. Here goes: Let the middle child’s age be X. Then the oldest child’s age is X + 6 and the youngest child’s age is X - 6. If the oldest child’s age is equal to three times the youngest child’s age, you write that as X + 6 = 3(x – 6). Distributing the 3 on the right, the equation becomes X + 6 = 3x – 18. Subtract X From each side and add 18 to each side, and you get 24 = 2x. Dividing by 2, 12 = X. The middle child is X Years old, or 12, the oldest is X + 6 years older, or 18, and the youngest is X - 6 years old, or 6.

Brothers and sisters, I have some

If each child in a certain family has at least four smallest number of children that the family brothers and three sisters, then what is the can have?

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Making age an issue

Traditional age word problems use algebraic expressions to write comparisons such as Twice the age of Or Four years older than And then solve for one or more person’s age. You’ll see lots of parentheses in the equations that are first written so that the meaning is clearly defined and the people’s ages are clearly identified. Age problems can get pretty wordy and confusing, so you want to be sure that you’ve written something to parallel the wording.

The Problem: To be a member of a certain club, you have to meet its stringent age requirement. Three more than twice your age must be equal to 21 more than your age. What is the age requirement (in simpler terms)?

^VLA/V First, decide if the club is worth it. That decided, now tackle the problem. Let X Represent your age. Write Three more than twice your age As 3 + 2x. Then 21 more than your age Becomes 21 + X. Set the two expressions equal to one another, and the equation to solve is 3 + 2x = 21 + x. Subtracting X And 3 from each side, you get X = 18.

You double your pleasure and double your fun when you introduce twins into the mix. The ages of twins is the same (I won’t get into the special case of twins born on two different days even though minutes apart), so you have to be sure to include the age of the twins twice into the problem.

The Problem: The mother of a pair of twins is 30 years older than they are. If the sum of the ages of all three of them (the mother and the twins) is 12 greater than the mother’s age, then how old is the mother?

^VLA/V Let the age of the twins be represented with X. Then their mother’s age is represented with X + 30. Adding the ages of the three people together, you get the expression X + X + (x + 30). Because this sum is 12 greater than the age of the mother, you set this sum equal to (x + 30) + 12. The final equation and its solution is as follows.

X + x + (x + 30) = (X + 30) + 12 3x + 30 = X + 42

2X= 12

X= 6

The age of the twins is 6, so their mother is 6 + 30 = 36 years. The sum of all three people is 6 + 6 + 36 = 48, and 48 is 12 greater than the mother’s age of 36.

The Problem: Libin is three times as old as Larry. If the sum of their ages is 16 more than twice Larry’s age plus 4, then how old is Libin?

Even though the problem asks for Libin’s age, it’ll be easier to let the variable, X, Represent Larry’s age and then answer the question after solving the equation. Letting X Represent Larry’s age, then 3x represents Libin’s age. The sum of their ages is X + 3x. You write 16 more than twice Larry’s age plus 4 With numbers and a variable in exactly that same order: 16 + 2x + 4. Now write the entire equation with the two expressions separated by an equal sign and solve.

X + 3x = 16 + 2x + 4 4x = 20 + 2x

2X= 20

X= 10

So Larry is 10 years old, making Libin 30 years old.

Going Back and Forth into the Future and the Past

Age problems get even more exciting when you get out your crystal ball and make predictions about the future or look back in a photo album to reminisce about the past. The equations used to solve age problems about the future and past get more complicated because the same amount of time has to be added to or subtracted from each variable expression.

Looking to the future

How old will you be in seven years? Some of us grimace at the thought of another significant birthday, but it’s better than the alternative. Add seven to your age, and you know how many candles go on your birthday cake.

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The Problem: Jake is six years older than Jack. In 7 years, the sum of their ages will be 52. How old are Jake and Jack now?

Let Jack’s age be represented with X And Jake’s age represented with X + 6. (An alternative would be to let Jake’s age be X And Jack’s be X - 6; most people prefer to work with addition instead of subtraction.) Now deal with In 7years. Add 7 to Both Ages, so Jack’s age will be X + 7 and Jake’s age will be X + 6 + 7 or X + 13 in seven years. The sum of their ages in seven years will be 52, so the equation and its solution are as follows:

(X + 7) + (X + 13) = 52 2x + 20 = 52

2X= 32

X= 16

So Jack is 16, and Jake, who is 6 years older, is 22. In seven years, Jack will be 16 + 7 = 23 and Jake will be 22 + 7 = 29. The sum 23 + 29 = 52.

Some age problems also use comparisons where one person is twice as old or four times as old in a number of years.

The Problem: Molly is 30 years older than Margaret. In 18 years, Molly will be twice as old as Margaret. How old will Molly be when she’s twice Margaret’s age?

Let Margaret’s age be represented by X And Molly’s age be represented by X + 30. In 18 years, Margaret will be X + 18 and Molly will be (x + 30) + 18 = X + 48. At that time, 18 years from now, Molly will be twice as old as Margaret, so you write that Molly’s age, X + 48 = 2(x + 18), twice Margaret’s age. Solving the equation, you multiply through by 2 on the right to get X + 48 = 2X + 36. Subtract X From each side and subtract 36 from each side to get 12 = X. So Margaret is 12 years old now, and Molly, who is 30 years older than Margaret is 12 + 30 = 42 years old. In 18 years, when Molly is twice Margaret’s age, Molly will be 42 + 18 = 60 and Margaret will be 12 + 18 = 30.

Catching up in age

In an old Abbott and Costello movie, there’s a discussion about the ages of a husband and wife. When they marry, the husband is four times as old as his bride. Eight years later he’s three times as old as she is. And 24 years after that he’s only

Twice her age. Abbott asks Costello how long it’ll take for her to catch up with him in age. Of course, that’s impossible, but what were the ages of the couple when they married? (Try to keep it legal in most states.)

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The Problem: Stan is four times as old as Steve. In ten years, Stan will be twice as old as Steve. How old are Stan and Steve?

£,?LAiV Let Steve’s age be represented by X And Stan’s age by 4x. In ten years, Steve will be X + 10 and Stan will be 4x + 10. Because Stan’s age in ten years will be twice Steve’s, you write that 4x + 10 = 2(x + 10). Multiplying through by 2 on the right, 4x + 10 = 2x + 20. Subtract 2x from each side and 10 from each side to get 2x = 10, or X = 5. So Steve is 5 and Stan is four times that, or 20. In ten years, Steve will be 15 and Stan will be 30.

Going back in time

Looking back on things, you recall those good times with close friends and what you did when you were all younger — by two years or ten years or more. Just as with adding years in word problems, when you have so many years ago in a problem, you subtract the same number of years from each age involved in the situation.

The Problem: Today, Ernest’s age is four years more than twice Christine’s age. Three years ago, the sum of their ages was 31. How old is Christine right now?

Let X Represent Christine’s age right now. That means that Ernest’s age is represented by 4 + 2x. To adjust for Three years ago, You subtract 3 from each age, so Christine was X - 3 and Ernest was 4 + 2x – 3 = 2x + 1 years old. The sum of those two ages, three years ago, was 31. The equation and solution are:

(X – 3) + (2x + 1) = 31 3x – 2 = 31 3X = 33 X= 11

Christine is 11 years old right now, so Ernest is 4 + 2(11) = 26 years old. Three years ago, Christine was 8 and Ernest was 23. The sum 8 + 23 = 31.

With multiple births comes multiples of the same age. Each person involved has his age adjusted in the same way.

The Problem: Three years ago, the sum of the ages of the quintuplets and their older sister was 155. If Sis is five years older than her siblings, then how old are the quints today?

.jVLAiV First, Quintuplets Refers to five siblings born at the same time. Designate the variable X As the age of the quints today. Their sister’s age is then X + 5 years. Three years ago, the quints were X - 3 years old, and their sister was X + 5 – 3 or X + 2 years old. The sum of the ages of these six children is written by multiplying the quints’ age by five and adding the sister’s age: 5(x – 3) + (x + 2), and that sum is set equal to 155 for the equation.

5 (X - 3) + (X + 2) = 155

5x – 15 + X + 2 = 155

6x – 13 = 155

6x = 168

168 oa X = —Q – = 28

The quints are each 28 today. Their sister is five years older, so she’s 33 years old. Three years ago, the quints were 25 and Sis was 30. Multiplying 25 x five you get 125. Add 30, and the sum of the six ages is 155.

The Problem: Amanda’s age is two years more than twice Bill’s age. Nine years ago, her age was three years more than three times Bill’s age. How old will they be in five years?

^VLA* Let Bill’s age be represented with X So that Amanda’s age can be represented with 2 + 2x. Nine years ago, Bill was X - 9 years old and Amanda was 2 + 2x – 9 or 2x – 7 years old. Amanda’s age nine years ago was equal to Three years more than Bill’s age At that time. The equation to use is 2x – 7 = 3 + 3(x – 9). Notice that both ages in the equation are those representing nine years ago.

2x – 7 = 3 + 3 (X - 9) 2x – 7 = 3 + 3x – 27

2X-7=3X-24

17 = X

Bill is 17 years old right now, and Amanda is 2 + 2(17) or 36 years old. In five years, Bill will be 22 and Amanda will be 41.

Facing Some Challenges of Age

My Funky Winkerbean story, at the beginning of this chapter, is an example of how some age problems can seem awfully complicated and difficult. The problems in this section may seem impossible at first, but, by taking them apart and putting them back together again as logical equations, you see how those challenges of age aren’t all that bad after all.

The Problem: Mike and Ike are good friends and like to challenge new acquaintances with the following riddle, saying that they’ll pick up the tab at the restaurant if the riddle can be solved. Here’s what they pose to the unsuspecting: Mike is twice as old as Ike was when Mike was as old as Ike is now. Right now, Mike is 36 years old. How old is Ike right now?

The most common plan of action is to let Ike’s age be represented with X And then write some expressions and equations involving that variable. In this case, because you know Mike’s age already, it makes more sense to figure out how many years ago the riddle is referring to — solve for X. Here’s what you know:

Mike is twice as old as Ike was. . . So, since Mike is 36, Ike was 18. Mike was as old. . . Letting X Be the number of years ago, Mike was 36 – X. Ike is now. . . The number of years since Ike was 18 is 18 + X.

Does that look like sleight-of-hand? Look at Table 15-1, showing possible ages of Mike and Ike if X Is the number of years since Ike was 18.

Nine years ago, Mike was 27, which is the same age that Ike is now. When Mike was 27, Ike was 18 (or half Mike’s age now). If I had just written the equation 36 – X = 18 + X And solved it to get 18 = 2x or X = 9, you might not have believed me. For the naturally skeptical, Table 15-1 helps.

The next problem uses more number theory than algebra. Haul out your prime factorizations to do this problem.

The Prime factorization Of a number is the unique set of all the prime numbers whose product is that number. For example, the prime factorization of the number 105 = 3 X 5 X 7. The prime factorization of 100 = 22 X 52.

The Problem: Mike and Ike are back at it again. They point to a family with three children enjoying their dinner at a nearby table. They offer to buy dinner for that entire family and the person they’re making the bet with if this poor, unsuspecting person can figure out the riddle (otherwise, this person pays). The riddle: At the nearby table, the product of the ages of the three children is 72, and the sum of their ages is today’s date. How old are the children? The bet-taker thinks for a while and then says, "But that isn’t enough information!" Mike takes pity and offers him a clue, "Okay, I’ll tell you that the oldest child doesn’t like pizza." Can you determine the ages of the children?

Haul out another list or chart. The prime factorization of the number 72 is 23 X 32. Use the factors to figure out all the different numbers that divide 72 evenly — and include the number 1 (which isn’t a prime number, but is a factor of 72). All the possible ages — numbers that divide 72 evenly are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, and 72. Using these numbers, you create a list of the possible ages of the three children from combinations that multiply to give you 72. For example, 72 and 1 and 1 multiply to give you 72. The numbers aren’t very probable for the ages of three children, but I’m sure it’s happened. Another combination is 36 and 2 and 1. Making this list is fine, but a table is more helpful, because you want the Sum Of the ages, too. Table 15-2 lists all of the possible ages and their sums. Notice that the ages multiplied together are always 72.

(continued)

You see all the possibilities for the ages. So, if the bet-taker had worked out all the possible ages and sums and compared the sum with today’s date, he could have answered the question — unless today is the 14th. That’s why he needed more information. By giving the hint that the oldest child doesn’t like pizza, the answer to the riddle is clear. The children must be 8, 3, and 3 years old, because the other combination with a sum of 14 is 6, 6, and 2 where there are Two Older children.

One more age problem to consider mixes in a little number sense with ages now and in the past.

The Problem: Ben is a teenager. Bob is one-third as old as Ben was when Bob was half as old as Ben is now. How old are Ben and Bob?

Identical applications

Two men apply for the same job. They are iden – hiring asks, "Are you two twins?" They respond, tical in appearance. They have the same mother quite honestly, "No, we aren’t." How is this and father and birth date. The person doing the possible.

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^VLA* First, you can narrow down Ben’s age to being either 14, 16, or 18. This conclusion comes from the fact that he’s a teenager and Bob is half his age; Ben’s age has to be evenly divisible by two. Of course, this assumes that the problem only deals with whole numbers, and that’s a good assumption. You can just play around with the three guesses to see whatever numbers work, or you can be a bit more systematic. Let X Represent the number of years ago in the problem:

Bob’s age = ^(Ben’s age — X) Bob is one-third as old as Ben was X Years ago.

3Ben’sage — Bob’sage = i X 33

Ben’s age —3 Bob’s age =x, Simplifying the equation by distributing the fraction and then multiplying each term by 3

Ben’s age — X = ^ Ben’s age, when Bob was half as old as Ben is now. 2 Ben’s age = X, simplifying the previous equation in terms of Ben’s age.

Ben’s age —3 Bob’s age =x 2

A Ben’s age = x, so

Ben’s age — 3 Bob’s age = ^ Ben’s age, letting the two equations ending in X Equal one another and simplifying

2 Ben’s age = 3 Bob’s age Ben’s age = 6 Bob’s age

So, if Ben is six times as old as Bob and Ben is a teenager, then Ben must be 18 years old and Bob must be 3.

Chapter 16

In This Chapter

► Understanding low self-esteem

► Appreciating the principles of self-acceptance

► Strengthening your self-acceptance

► Dispelling myths about practising self-acceptance

M ■isturbing feelings, such as depression, anxiety, shame, guilt, anger, envy, V^^and jealousy, are often rooted in low self-opinion. If you’re prone to experiencing these feelings, then you may well have a problem with your self-esteem. You may assume that you’re only as worthwhile as your achievements, love life, social status, attractiveness, or financial prowess. If you link your worth to these Temporary conditions And for some reason they diminish, your self-esteem can plummet too. Alternatively, you may take a long-standing dim view of yourself: However favourable the conditions mentioned above, your self-esteem may be chronically low. Whatever the case, you can follow the philosophy of self-acceptance that we outline in this chapter, which can significantly improve the attitude you hold towards yourself.

Identifying Issues of Self-Esteem

Implicit in the concept of self-esteem is the notion of Estimating, Or rating and measuring, your worth. If you have high self-esteem, then your measure of your value or worth is high. Conversely, if you have low self-esteem, your estimate of your value is low.

Condemning yourself globally is a form of overgeneralising, known as Labelling Or Self-downing (we talk about overgeneralisation in more detail in

Chapter 2). This thinking error creates low self-esteem. Labelling yourself makes you feel worse and can lead to counterproductive actions, such as avoidance, isolation, rituals, procrastination, and perfectionism (which we talk about in Chapter 7, 10, and 11), to name but a few.

Examples of labelling or self-downing include statements, such as the following:

‘m disgusting ‘m inferior ‘m inadequate ‘m unlovable ‘m incompetent ‘m weak

I’m a failure I

I’m useless I

I’m not good enough I

I’m worthless I

I don’t matter I

I’m no good I

‘m stupid

‘m less worthwhile

‘m bad

‘m defective

‘m pathetic

‘m a loser

When you measure your worth on the basis of one or more external factors, you’re likely to go up and down like a yo-yo in both mood and self-concept because life is changeable.

Developing Self-Acceptance

One approach to tackling your low self-esteem is to boost the estimate you have of your worth. The underlying problem, however, still remains; and like an investment, your self-esteem can go down, as well as up.

Self-acceptance is an alternative to boosting self-esteem and tackles the problem by removing self-rating. If you don’t have a sturdy belief that your value is Intrinsic, Or built-in, you may have difficulty concluding that you have any worth at all when things go wrong for you.

Unconditional self-acceptance Means untangling your self-worth from external ‘measures’ or ‘ratings’ of your value as a person. Eventually, you can become less likely to consider yourself defective or inadequate on the basis of failures or disapproval, because you view yourself as a Fallible human being, Whose worth remains more or less constant.

Self-acceptance involves making the following assertions:

I As a human being, you’re a unique, multifaceted individual. I You’re ever-changing and developing.

You may be able, to some degree, to measure specific aspects of yourself (such as how tall you are), but you’ll never manage to rate the whole of yourself because you are too complex and continuously changing.

Humans, by their very nature, are fallible and imperfect.

By extension, because you’re a complex, unique, ever-changing individual, you cannot legitimately be rated or measured as a whole person.

The following are the principles of self-acceptance. Read them, re-read them, think them over, and put them into practice in your daily life to significantly enhance your self-acceptance. The principles are good sense, but we’re leaving it up to you to decide how ‘common’ this kind of sense is. The principles are derived from the rational (self-helping) thinking methods developed by Albert Ellis and Windy Dryden.

Understanding that you have Worth because you’re human

Albert Ellis, founder of rational emotive behaviour therapy – one of the very earliest approaches to CBT – states that All human beings Have Extrinsic Value to others and Intrinsic Value to themselves. But we humans gamely confuse the two and classify ourselves as ‘worthy’ or ‘good’ on the basis of assumed value to others. We humans too easily allow our self-worth to be contingent upon the opinions and value judgements of others. Many cognitive behaviour therapists (and indeed other kinds of psychotherapists) hold the implicit value of a human being at the very heart of their perspective.

Imagine how much easier your life will be, and how much more stable your self-esteem will be, if you realise that you have worth as a person Independently Of how much other people value you. You can appreciate being liked, admired, or respected without it being a dire necessity to get it, or living in fear of losing it.

Appreciating that you’re too complex to globally measure or rate

You may mistakenly define your whole worth – or even your entire self – on the basis of your individual parts. This is pointless, because humans are ever-changing, dynamic, fallible, and complex creatures.

Humans have the capacity to work on correcting less desirable behaviours and maximising more desirable behaviours. You have the distinctive ability to strive for self-improvement, to maximise your potential, and to learn from your and others’ histories, mistakes, and accomplishments. In short, you have the ability to develop the ability to accept yourself as you are, while still endeavouring to improve yourself if you so choose.

Consider a bowl of fresh, hand-picked fruit, beautiful in almost every respect. Now imagine that one of the apples in the fruit bowl is bruised. Do you consider the whole bowl of fruit to be worthless? Of course not! It’s a great bowl of fruit, with a single bruised apple. Avoid overgeneralising by seeing that your imperfections are simply Facets Of yourself and do not define the whole of you.

Letting go of (abetting

Self-acceptance means deciding to resist labelling yourself at all and rather to entertain the idea that ratings are inappropriate to the human condition. For example:

You lied to a friend once. Does that make you a liar forever and for all time?

You used to smoke cigarettes but then you decided to give them up. Are you still a smoker because you once smoked?

You failed at one or more tasks that were important to you. Can you legitimately conclude that you are an utter failure?

By the same token, if you succeeded at one important task, are you now a thoroughgoing success?

As you can see by reviewing these examples, basing your self-esteem on one incident, one action, or one experience is a gross overgeneralisation.

Believing gou’re more than the sum of gour parts

Take a look at Figure 12-1. The big/is comprised of dozens of little Is. So, what’s the point of the figure? When you evaluate yourself Totally On the basis of one characteristic, thought, action, or intention, you’re making the thinking error that a single part (the little i) equals to the whole (the big I).

Along similar lines, consider a finely woven tapestry comprised of countless variations of textures, colours, and patterns. Within this tapestry, you may find one or more flaws, where the colours fail to meet or the patterns are slightly out of sync. The flaws in the tiny details don’t cancel out the beauty or value of the overall piece. And what about the Venus de Milo? Over the years, she’s lost a limb or two, but the officials at the Louvre don’t say, ‘Um, sorry, she’s flawed: Put her in the bin!’ The fact that the statue is damaged does not diminish or Define Its overall worth. The statue is valued As it is, And the absence of arms does not negate the impact it has on our understanding of the evolution of art.

If your child, sibling, or nephew failed a spelling test, would you judge them a total loser? Would you encourage them to think of themselves as a global failure, based entirely on one action? If not, why are you doing this to yourself?

Start acting in accordance with the belief that your parts do not define your wholeness. If you truly believe this idea, what do you do when you fail at doing something, behave badly or wickedly, or notice that you have a physical imperfection or character flaw? How do you expect to feel when endorsing this belief?

Take a pack of self-adhesive notes and a large, flat surface. A wall or a door works well – or try a mate if he has a few spare minutes. Write down on one of the notes a characteristic that you, as a whole person, possess; then stick the note on the wall, door, or volunteer. Keep doing this, writing down all the aspects of yourself that you can think of until you run out of characteristics, or sticky notes. Now step back and admire your illustration of your complexity as a human being. Appreciate the fact that you cannot legitimately be rated globally.

Acknowledging your eVer-changing nature

As a human being, your nature is to be an ever-changing person. Even if you measure all your personal characteristics today and come up with a global rating for yourself, it’ll be wrong tomorrow. Why? Because each day, you change a little, age very slightly, and gather a few new experiences.

Consider yourself as work-in-progress and try holding a Flexible Attitude towards yourself. Every skill you acquire or interest you develop effectively produces a change within you. Every hardship you weather, every joyous event that visits you, and every mundane occurrence you endure causes you to develop, adapt, and grow.

TfbOUT/f Ellis theorises that your essential value or worth cannot be measured accu-^CJJa^X rately because your Being Includes your Becoming. Ellis suggests that each human is a Process With an ever-changing present and future. Hence, you cannot conclusively evaluate yourself while you’re still living and developing.

Forgiving flaws in yourself and others

Interestingly, you may overlook some imperfections in yourself while condemning the same shortcomings in others, or vice versa. To some degree, this relatesto what you consider important, your flexibility, and your level of self-acceptance. Consider the following scenarios:

Julian works in a computer shop. Whenever he’s about to close a sale, he gets excited and trips over some of his words. He feels a bit foolish about this, although none of his customers has ever mentioned it.

Margarita has a poor sense of direction. Sometimes she forgets which way is left and which is right. When she’s driving, Margarita has difficulty following directions and frequently finds herself lost.

Carlos is a good student, but has difficulty in exam situations. He studies earnestly, but come the day of the test, he forgets what he’s read and performs poorly.

You can’t always change things about yourself. Sometimes you can improve a bit, but sometimes you can’t change at all. If you’re a fully developed adult and five-foot tall, you’re unlikely to be able to make yourself grow to six foot through sheer determination. The trick is to begin to recognise where you can make changes and where you can’t. Living happily is about accepting your limitations without putting yourself down forthem and capitalising onyour strengths. So, taking the three examples above:

Julian may be able to make himself less anxious about a potential sale; therefore, he

May speak more coherently. By accepting that he mangles his words sometimes, but not condemning himself for it, he may come some way towards overcoming this aspect of his behaviour.

Margarita may simply be someone who’s not particularly good at navigation. She may improve with practice, but she may also do well to accept that she’s the person who turns up late for parties two streets away from her home.

Carlos can look at his studying habits and see whether he can study more effectively. However, he may simply be someone who does better on practical assignments rather than tests.

Overall, Julian, Carlos, and Margarita can choose to accept themselves as fallible human beings and work to improve in the areas described, while also accepting their personal limitations. They can choose to embrace their inherent fallibility as part of the experience of being a human, and understand that their ‘less good’traits are part of their individual composition as much as their ‘good’ traits.

Alternatively, they can choose to evaluate themselves on the basis of their ‘less good’ traits and judge themselves as worthless, or less than worthy. But where, oh where, do you go from there?

Accepting your fallible nature

Sorry if we’re the ones to break it to you, but human beings are flawed and imperfect. You may be the pretty impressive product of evolution, but essentially you’re just the smartest animal on the planet. Even if you believe you’re the creation of a divine entity, do you really think the design brief was perfection? Maybe being complex, different, and with an in-built tendency to make mistakes are all part of the plan. When people say You’re only human,’ they have a point: Never, ever, can you be flawless or stop making mistakes. And neither can anyone else. It’s just how we’re built.

During the process of accepting yourself, you may experience sadness, disappointment, or remorse for your blunders. These healthy negative emotions may be uncomfortable, but usually they can lead to self-helping, corrective, and ‘adaptive’ behaviours. Self-condemnation or self-depreciation, on the other hand, are likely to lead to far more intense, unhealthy negative emotions, such as depression, hurt, guilt, and shame. So, you’re more likely to adopt self-defeating, ‘maladaptive’ behaviours, such as avoidance or giving up.

Valuing your uniqueness

Who else do you know who’s exactly – and yes, we do mean Exactly - like you? The correct answer is no one, because the human cloning thing hasn’t really taken off yet. So, you are, in fact, quite unique – just like everyone else!

You alone are possessor of your own little idiosyncrasies. So learn to laugh it up, because the mistakes and foot-in-mouth moments will just keep on coming, whether you like it or not.

Taking yourself overly seriously is not a successful path to obtaining good mental health (which we talk about in Chapter 22). Your individual human fallibility can be both amusing and illuminating. Think about comedy programmes and films. Much of what makes these shows funny is the way the characters Behave, The mistakes they make, their social blunders, their physi-cality, their personal peculiarities, and so on. When you laugh at these characters, you aren’t being malicious – you just recognise echoes of yourself and of the entire human experience in them. Furthermore, you’re unlikely to put down these characters on the basis of their errors. Give yourself a similar benefit of the doubt. Accepting the existence of personal shortcomings can help you to understand your own limitations and identify areas that you may wish to target for change.

Why self-acceptance beliefs work

At first glance, self-acceptance and self-acceptance beliefs may seem like a tall order or ‘not what people think’. However, incorporating self-accepting beliefs into your life can really make a difference in your life, and we recommend it for the following reasons:

Self-acceptance beliefs are helpful. You’re inspired to correct your poor behaviour or address your shortcomings on the basis that you give yourself permission to be flawed. You allow yourself a margin for error. When problems occur or you behave poorly, you can experience appropriate and proportionate negative emotions and then move on. People are generally more effective problem-solvers when they’re not severely emotionally distressed.

Self-acceptance beliefs are consistent with reality. Do you know anyone who’s entirely

Flawless? If you have only conditional self-acceptance, you’re subscribing to a belief that you cease to be acceptable, or worthwhile, when you fall short of those conditions or ideals. Basically, you’re telling yourself that you must succeed at any given task. Because you can (and do) both fail and succeed, the evidence suggests that your demand to always succeed is erroneous.

Self-acceptance beliefs are logical. Just because you Preferto Behave in a certain way, doesn’t mean that you Must Behave in a certain way. Nor, does your failing to act in that manner logically renderyou a failure in all respects. Rather, this’failure’supports the premise thatyou’re a fallible human capable of behaving in differing ways at various times. To broaden the point, this ‘failure’ highlights your humanness and your inherent capacityto do both ‘well’ and ‘less well’.

For example, we have a couple of our own quirks that we try to accept, and even celebrate, as unique. Rob does this weird little twitch every now again when he’s tired. The twitch is a bit disconcerting when he’s driving, but most of the time it’s just something that Rob does. Rhena tends to fiddle with her jewellery when she’s thinking or just idle – irritating to some, endearing to others.

You’re unique because no one is a facsimile of you. At the same time, you’re also not special or unique in any way, because Everyone Is an individual and, hence, unreplicable. Your uniqueness means that you’re Different From all others and paradoxically that you’re the Same As all others.

Using self-acceptance to aid self-improvement

As we touch upon in the nearby sidebar, which covers accepting flaws in others and yourself, self-acceptance can lead to healthy and Appropriate Negative emotional responses to adverse experiences. This type of emotional

Response tends to lead to functional or Adaptive Behaviours. Self-denigration, on the other hand, leads to unhealthy, Inappropriate Emotional responses, which in turn tend to produce unhelpful or Destructive Behaviours. Look at the following situation:

Wendy’s been a full-time mum for the past ten years. Before she had her children, she worked as a legal secretary. Now that her children are older, she wants to return to work. Wendy attends a job interview. During the interview, she becomes very nervous and is unable to answer some of the questions adequately. She notices that she’s becoming flustered and hot. It also becomes clear to her that secretarial work has evolved in the past ten years and that she lacks the computer skills necessary for the post. Unfortunately, she doesn’t get the job.

Now consider two very different responses to the interview:

Response A: Wendy leaves the interview, ruminating on her poor performance all the way back home. ‘I looked such an idiot,’ she tells herself. ‘They must have thought me a real amateur, blushing and stuttering like that. I’m such a failure. Who’d want to hire someone as lacking in skills as me? I don’t know what made me think I’d be able to get into work again anyway. I’m clearly not up to standard at all.’ Wendy feels depressed and hopeless. She mopes around the house and continues to think about what a failure she is. She feels so ashamed about failing the interview that she avoids talking about it to her friends, thus denying herself the opportunity to receive feedback, which may be useful or help her feel more balanced. Wendy stops looking in the employment pages.

Response B: Wendy leaves the interview and thinks: ‘I really didn’t present very well in there. I wish I hadn’t been so obviously nervous. Clearly, I need to get some computer skills before I’m likely to get a job offer.’ Wendy feels very disappointed about not getting the job, but she doesn’t conclude that failing one important task makes her a failure. She feels regretful, but not ashamed, about her performance and talks to a few friends about it. Her friends give her some encouragement. Wendy then enrols on an IT course at her local college. She continues to look through the job ads in the paper.

In response B, Wendy is understandably disappointed with how the interview turned out. She’s able to recognise her skills’ deficit. Because she accepts herself with this Specific deficit, She takes concrete steps towards increasing her skills base.

In response A, Wendy is not thinking about how to do better at the next interview. She’s thinking about how she’d like to crawl under the carpet and spend the rest of her days there. A bit of an extreme reaction considering the circumstances, but Wendy isn’t considering the circumstances. She has decided that messing up an interview equals total failure, and she’s feeling far too depressed and ashamed to start problem-solving.

Generally, your failures and errors are not as important or calamitous as you think they are. Most of the time, your failures mean a lot more to you than they do to other people.

Understanding that acceptance doesn’t mean giving up

In the example of Wendy, we don’t suggest that she must resign herself to a life of unemployment simply because she lacks computer skills. Why should she? Clearly, she can do things to ensure that she stands a good chance of getting back into the job market.

In Wendy’s case, self-acceptance means that she can view herself as worthwhile, while getting on with self-improvement in specific areas of her life. By contrast, if Wendy refuses to accept herself and puts herself down, she’s far more likely to resign – perhaps even condemn – herself to her current state of unemployment.

Resignation requires little or no effort, but self-acceptance can involve a lot of personal effort.

I High frustration tolerance (HFT) is the ability to tolerate discomfort and hard work in the Short term, En route to achieving an identified Long-term Goal. In response B in the job-interview example, Wendy accepts herself and holds an HFT attitude. She is prepared to do the work necessary to reach her goal of getting a job.

Low frustration tolerance (LFT) is unwillingness to tolerate Short-term Pain for Long-term Gain. An LFT attitude is present in statements, such as ‘It’s too difficult to change – this is just the way I am’, and ‘I may as well just give up’. Resignation and LFT go hand in hand. In Wendy’s response A, she refuses to accept herself in view of her recent experience and resigns herself to unemployment.

Resignation may seem like an easier option than self-acceptance because it means that you have to Do Less. However, people tend to feel pretty miserable when they resign and condemn themselves, refusing to put effort into improving their situation.

Being Inspired to Change

You may think that self-acceptance is all fine and well when talking about human error, social gaffes, and minor character flaws, but the dice are more loaded in instances where you’ve transgressed your personal moral code.

If you’ve behaved in an antisocial, illegal, or immoral manner, you may have more difficulty accepting yourself. But you can! Accepting Yourself Does not mean accepting the negative behaviour and continuing to do it. On the contrary, accepting yourself involves recognising that you – an acceptable human being – have engaged in a poor, or unacceptable, behaviour. Accepting yourself makes you more likely to learn from your mistakes and act more constructively – which is in both your interest and in the interest of those around you.

Consider the following two scenarios:

Malcolm has an anger problem. He puts unreasonable demands on his wife and children to never get on his nerves. He has a bad day at work and comes home to find no dinner on the table and his two young children playing noisily in the sitting room. Malcolm shouts at his wife and slaps her. He calls his children names and hits them. His family is afraid and upset. This happens on a regular basis.

Fiona works in a shoe shop. She’s been stealing money from the till to buy alcohol and codeine-based painkillers. Usually, she takes the tablets throughout the day and drinks heavily in the evenings, until she passes out. Lately, she has called in sick to work more often because she has terrible hangovers and feels very depressed. Fiona often calls herself a ‘useless drunk’ and ‘a low-life thief, and then drinks more to stop herself thinking. She works hard to hide her drinking and stealing, and feels ashamed of herself most of the time.

Are Malcolm and Fiona bad people, or are they just currently exhibiting bad behaviours? If you condemn Malcolm or Fiona – or, indeed, yourself – as a ‘bad person’ on the basis of bad behaviour, you’re missing the point that a person is more complex than a single act.

In order to overcome destructive or socially unacceptable behaviours, you need to do the following:

Take personal responsibility for your bad behaviour. Rather than deciding you’re just a bad person who has no control or responsibility for your actions, accept that you’re doing bad things.

In the example above, Malcolm’s doing very bad things when he takes out his anger on his family. But, if he decides that he’s a bad person overall, he relinquishes his responsibility to change. Basically, he’s saying: ‘I beat my family because I’m a bad person through and through and therefore I can’t change.’ He’s also more likely to attribute his violence to external factors rather than to his own unreasonable demands: ‘They know what I’m like and they should bloody-well stay out of my way when I come in from work.’

Identify clearly what you’re doing that’s wrong or unacceptable. You

Must be specific when pinpointing bad behaviours.

For example, Fiona has two definite serious problems or ‘bad’ behaviours. First, she has an addiction; second, she’s stealing to support that addiction. Fiona’s shame and self-condemnation are very likely going to get in the way of her overcoming her problems. She cannot put in the hard work needed to recover from her addiction (which includes seeking professional help) if she can’t accept herself as worth the effort.

To move on in life in a way that contributes to the kind of world you’d like to live in, assume personal responsibility and keep working on your self-acceptance.

Actioninq Self-Acceptance

Just like virtually all skills worth acquiring, you’re going to have to work hard and practice in order to achieve successful self-acceptance skills. This section focuses on ways to start integrating self-acceptance into your daily life.

Self’talking your Way to setf-acceptance

What’s in a name? Rather a lot, actually. As we discuss in Chapters 3 and 9, most people largely Feel The way they Think. In other words, the meanings you assign to events have a great deal to do with how you ultimately feel about those events.

Similarly, meaning is attached to the names your call yourself. If you use abusive, harshly critical, or profane terminology to give utterance to your behaviours or traits, then you’re heading towards emotional disturbance.

The notion that you may start to believe something if you tell yourself it enough times, is partly true. Fortunately, you can Choose What messages you give yourself and, therefore, choose how you think and feel about yourself.

How you talk to yourself impacts immediately, or obliquely, on your self-concept. Try the following self-talk strategies to make the best impact on yourself:

Desist with global labels. Humans often call themselves losers, idiots, failures, stupid, or unlovable because of certain events or actions they’ve been involved in or done. You may use even worse language on yourself in the privacy of your own head. Why? Because, you’re caving in to the temptation to rate your entire selfhood on the evidence of one, or more, isolated incidents.

Be specific with your self-assessments. Before you classify yourself as a failure, ask yourself the following questions: ‘In what specific way have I failed?’ ‘In what specific way have I acted stupidly?’ It’s far less easy to fall into global self-rating when you force yourself to be specific.

Say what you mean and mean what you say. You may be saying to yourself right now: ‘Oh, but I don’t Mean It when I call myself those bad names.’ No? Then don’t say them! Get into the practice of using language that describes accurately your behaviour and is in keeping with self-acceptance beliefs. Instead of muttering ‘I’m such an idiot for missing that deadline,’ try saying: ‘Missing that deadline was a really bad move. I’m really disappointed about it.’

Resisting self-abusive language cuts two ways. This chapter focuses on self-acceptance, but much of the advice applies to acceptance of others, too. Generally, people are nicer and more forgiving to their mates than they are to themselves. But, people are still capable of damning others and calling them ugly names. Start exercising a different type of consistency: Stop name-calling, full stop. When you do put a halt on name-calling, it can lead you to feel less intense anger and hurt when others behave poorly, which helps to reinforce your self-acceptance beliefs. If you’re practicing not globally rating others, then you’re also minimising the tendency to globally rate yourself.

Following the best-friend argument

Out of habit, most humans employ double standards: You judge your friends by an entirely different, often more accepting, standard than you use on yourself.

Try to take the same attitude of acceptance towards yourself that you take towards your friends and family. Consider the following:

Act like your best friend by judging your behaviour but not judging yourself. Eustace has been having difficulties in his marriage. He has been staying out late, drinking with his mates, before going home and being verbally abusive to his wife. His best mate, Lucian, has highlighted Eustace’s poor behaviour in their conversations but he has maintained an understanding attitude towards his friend’s unhappiness. Lucian is not about to define Eustace as a complete bastard on the strength of his recent, excessive drinking and arguments with his wife.

Accept your failings as you would those of a dear friend. Laura just failed her driving test for the fourth time. She feels very down about it. Her best friend Maggie tells her to try again and to be less hard on herself. Maggie wants Laura to do the driving test again. She doesn’t view Laura as a total failure based simply on her difficulty in passing a test. Even if Laura never drives, Maggie will likely remain her friend because of other things she likes and appreciates about Laura.

View your behaviour within the context of your circumstances, and above all, be compassionate. Rivka had a pregnancy terminated following a short affair. She feels very guilty and can’t imagine putting the event behind her. Rivka’s close friend, Carla, reminds her of the unfortunate circumstances she found herself in at the time, and tells her that she’s still someone that she likes and respects very much. Carla can see that Rivka has made a difficult decision. She compassionately considers that Rivka has acted out of a degree of desperation. Rivka may have been unlucky, or a bit careless, with respect to birth control, but Carla does not judge her on the basis of the abortion.

Ask yourself whether the punishment fits the crime. Are you being fair on yourself? What punishment would you dole out to your best friend for the same behaviour? Be aware that you may be making yourself feel extremely guilty, or ashamed, inappropriately. If you wouldn’t like to see anyone else feeling such extreme emotions in response to the same transgression you’ve committed, then you’re applying a double standard that’s loaded against you.

IBEfl Are you created so differently that you must subscribe to an exceptional code of conduct? (Consider this an inverted inferiority complex.) Having some exceptional code of conduct implies that you, and you alone, are somehow designed exclusively to transcend the ubiquitous human essence of fallibility. However, you are human. You don’t fail any more extravagantly than any of your peers – nor do you succeed more dramatically than they do. If you’re going to exercise compassion towards your friends’ failures and wobbles, you need to consistently apply the same rules of compassion and understanding towards yourself.

Dealing With doubts and reservations

Many people feel that by accepting themselves, they’re simply letting themselves off the hook. But, self-acceptance is about taking personal responsibility for your less good traits, actions, and habits. Self-acceptance is about targeting areas that you both Can And Wish to Change and then taking the appropriate steps towards change. Self-acceptance is not saying: ‘Hey, I’m human and fallible! Therefore, I just am the way I am and I don’t need to think about changing anything.’

You are, at baseline, worthy and acceptable, but some of your behaviours and attitudes may be simultaneously unacceptable.

Another common fear is that by accepting yourself, you’re actually condoning undesirable aspects of yourself: ‘Hey, I’m an acceptable human being and, therefore, all I think and do is acceptable.’ Not so.

Work on accepting your overall self on the basis of your intrinsic human fallibility, and be prepared to judge Specific aspects Of yourself. You can both condone your personhood and also condemn, or reject, certain things that you do.

Selecting the Self-help Journey to Self-Acceptance

A common reason for people persistently putting themselves down, is that they hope to become better by calling attention to their mistakes, flaws, and failings. Unfortunately, this process frequently includes feeling depressed or anxious, which may well already be underpinned by low self-esteem.

Trying to solve an emotional problem at the same time as calling yourself useless, worthless, and pathetic is much like trying to learn a foreign language while hitting yourself over the head with a textbook – your actions are likely to make both jobs much harder.

Accepting yourself has two interesting implications for overcoming emotional problems and personal development. First, you’re equal in worth to other human beings just as you are, which helps to reduce emotional pain. Second, because you’re not distracted by beating yourself up, you can focus better on coping with adversity, reducing disturbance, and self-improvement.

Imperfect self-acceptance

As you’re a fallible human, you won’t be perfect at self-acceptance either. You’ll very probably slip into putting yourself down from time to time, as everyone does – us included. The aim is to accept yourself more often and to accept yourself again more quickly, if you notice that you’re putting yourself down. Such acceptance definitely gets easier and more consistent with practice.

Broadly speaking, you may be using one of two common strategies to manage low self-esteem:

Avoiding doing things, or doing things excessively. For example, a person who believes they’re worthless unless they’re liked by everybody may try extra hard to avoid rejection or to win people’s approval, while a person who regards themselves as a ‘failure’ maytryto avoid situations in which they might fail. Have a look at Chapter 21 for more avoiding potential failure.