In This Chapter
Discovering the benefits of not taking things too seriously
Finding yourself funny ^ Getting more enjoyment out of life ^ Throwing caution to the wind
Sometimes you can make life more difficult than necessary by holding an overly serious view of yourself. This chapter lists ten ways to lighten up a little and experience more enjoyment. Go through the list and pick out the headings that apply most to you.
Accept That \lou Can – and Witt – Make Mistakes
I’m only human
Of flesh and blood I’m made
I’m only human
Born to make mistakes
- The Human League
If you take yourself overly seriously, you’re more likely to consider your mistakes unacceptable. You may also believe that other people may reject you on the basis of your blunders. Moreover, you probably judge yourself harshly when you make a social faux pas or a poor decision.
Everyone gets things wrong and mucks up from time to time. If you try to hide or ignore your mistakes, you can deny yourself the opportunity to develop from them. By acknowledging mistakes, and accepting yourself for making them, you have the chance to do things differently next time. You’ll also become more comfortable with making errors in the first place and are likely to spend less time worrying about whether you get things ‘right’. Most people respect someone who can own up to and take responsibility for his clangers.
Try Something NeuJ
Perhaps you’re reluctant to play a different sport, change your usual holiday destination, or acquire a new language or skill. Maybe you’re even reluctant to try a fresh route to work in case you get lost and look foolish. The fear of looking silly can stop many people dead in their tracks. If you can cope with looking a trifle daft now and again, you’ll find it a lot easier to discover novel things and to acquire new skills. Even doing small things like eating different cuisines or going on a one-day mediation course (or a course on anything that interests you!) can broaden your horizons.
Doing something foolish doesn’t mean you’re a fool. It’s pretty much impossible for you to learn a new language or how to play the piano, without making lots of grammatical gaffes or hitting the wrong notes. By giving yourself the opportunity to try new things, you may have a lot of fun in the process, even if you don’t become a polyglot or a pianist in the Royal Philharmonic.
Stamp on Shame
Taking yourself too seriously can lead you to experience unnecessary emotional upset. For example, if you need to look as though you are in complete control and composed all the time, you’re a prime candidate for experiencing frequent bouts of shame.
Feelings of shame and humiliation are often linked to perceiving that your weaknesses, errors, or faults have been exposed. For example, if you fall over while boarding a train, you may experience intense, unpleasant emotions rather than getting appropriately embarrassed. Your feelings of shame about somebody seeing you trip up are likely to last longer than simple embarrassment, and may likely cause you far more distress than any physical injuries you have sustained.
As one of your goals, you can have a go at overcoming your propensity to feel ashamed. Try deliberately exposing yourself to scrutiny using the following four-step technique:
1. Make yourself conspicuous. Wear a ridiculous outfit, make animal noises, sing to yourself, wear your underwear on the outside of your normal clothing, ask a really stupid question, or do anything else silly you can think of. Whatever you choose, do it On purpose And In a very public place. An excellent place to carry out shame-attacking exercises is when you’re on public transport.
2. Stay in the situation long enough for your feelings of shame and general discomfort to subside on their own. Don’t hide yourself away in the corner, run away from the public place, or remove your clown hat, for example. Stay in the situation until you notice that your uncomfortable feelings are beginning to subside (sometimes this may take ten minutes and other times it may take an hour). The important point is to stick with the exercise for whatever length of time it takes for you to feel Less Embarrassed, ashamed, or anxious.
Don’t expect to feel totally calm and happy when you’re deliberately doing something ridiculous in public. The idea is for you to see that nothing terrible happens to you when other people look at you like you’re weird.
3. Hold an attitude of self-acceptance throughout the experience. This means that you act as if you truly believe that being judged as odd or weird is not the end of the world. (This just isn’t the case, or the world would have ended long ago.) Tell yourself that you can tolerate uncomfortable feelings, which you associate with possible negative evaluation from others. (You can: Feelings of shame and embarrassment don’t kill people.)
4. Repeat variations of the exercise often and without long gaps in between. Doing the exercise once is not enough. Repetition is the key to getting yourself desensitised to scrutiny so that you don’t feel shame as a result. You can do an exercise like the one above daily for a week, which is a great way to feel less distressed.
Laugh at \lourse((
Many people claim that laughter’s the best medicine. This adage may well carry a sizeable grain of truth. Finding the funny angle in an otherwise awkward situation can help remove the sting. Sometimes, you can take the horror out of your mistakes and shortcomings by finding them amusing.
If you’re able to value yourself as a worthy person And Recognise your human imperfection, you won’t fall into the trap of taking yourself so seriously that you’re unable to laugh. Think of people you know who can’t take a joke: They’re very likely people who take themselves and everything they do far too seriously. Being overly earnest is a bit tragic: Anything that happens to you or anything you do that is, in your mind, less than acceptable has a profound impact on your global opinion of yourself. You can glean much more enjoyment out of life and your personal relationships if you can have a giggle at your own expense.
Don’t Take Offence So Easily
If you believe that everyone must respect you and that you’re only as good as what others think of you, then you’re going to get offended if someone fails to appreciate you. You’re pretty much destined to take offence much of the time unless you live in an air-conditioned bubble all on your own. In the real world, sometimes people are rude to each other and fail to behave in a thoughtful, respectful manner.
We’re not suggesting that you take the stance of a passive victim when others treat you unacceptably. You can respect yourself and have clear boundaries about the type of people you choose to associate with and the type of behaviour you’re prepared to tolerate.
However, you don’t need to be impervious to bad behaviour from other people but you don’t need to take undue offence to it. You can make your life easier by distinguishing between when, and when not, to bother asserting yourself. For example, if a friend jibes about a recent blunder you made, is it really that dire? Or if someone bumps into you on the street without apologising, don’t consider it an assault on your personal worth and respectability – you may find it rude and annoying, but do you really need to take strong offence.
Feeling offended is akin to feeling angry. Anger is tiring and unpleasant. Chances are that if you hold too serious a view of yourself, you’re experiencing anger more often than you actually need to (refer to Chapter 13).
Make Good Use of Criticism
Constructive criticism is a vital element of learning. Of course, not all the criticism you receive may be delivered in a skilled or constructive way. Nevertheless, if you can step back from negative feedback long enough to access its validity, you can use it to your advantage. Often, other people can see more clearly than you where you’re going ‘wrong’ – others can have the benefit of an objective viewpoint.
If you believe that you Must Get Everything Right or perfect, and that any indication that you’re failing at a task is evidence that you’re inadequate, then you can get very disturbed by criticism. Rather than using feedback to evaluate your approach to a specific task, you’re likely to use it as a battering tool on your sense of worth. You may become defensive at the first sniff of less-than-positive comments on your performance.
Rather than reacting to critical comments oversensitively, you can develop more tolerance to such comments so that you find them useful. Try the following techniques:
Get rid of your defensive stance. Listen openly to what people are saying about you (head to Chapter 16).
Understand that you don’t Need To be right every time. You have the option to behave less than perfectly now and again. Accepting that you can be wrong sometimes means that you can find criticism easier to take.
Take time to weigh up the validity of the comments made and then to use any legitimate information offered to aid your development.
Settle into Social Situations
When you have an overly serious attitude towards yourself, you’re prone to feeling uncomfortable in social settings. The fear that you may say the wrong thing, offend someone, or expose yourself as stupid or boring can lead you to clam up and say little. You may find that you censor much of what you say or rehearse it in your head before you speak. Alternatively, you may try too hard to be witty and entertaining. Either way, you’re not relaxing into the occasion and enjoying the interaction. You’re probably much more focused on the impression you’re making than on what the other people present are actually talking about.
If you fall into this camp, social situations for you are more likely to be something to get through rather than enjoy. You’re probably taking more than your fair share of responsibility for the interaction going smoothly. Remember: You’re only ever Part Of a social group, even when there are only two of you – the other person or people present also have a part to play in the smooth running of conversation.
To help yourself relax and be ‘more yourself in social settings, try these tips:
Focus your attention away from yourself and on to the other people present. Really listen to the conversation and observe others.
Say things spontaneously. Resist the urge to rehearse witty responses in your head before you speak. Take the risk of dropping in comments during the conversation.
Drop your safety behaviours (refer to Chapter 7 for more on safety behaviours). Avoid sitting on the outside of a group or fiddling with your drink, handbag, or phone when conversation lulls. These types of behaviours may distract you from your feelings of social awkwardness but they also stop you from getting used to natural social interaction.
Express yourself until you feel heard. If you start to say something and are interrupted, try again in a few moments, maybe a little louder.
Reign yourself in. If you tend to overcompensate for your social discomfort by talking a lot or putting on a bit of a show, give others the chance to fill in the gaps and silences.
Enjoy yourself. Above all, remind yourself that social gatherings are meant to be fun. Make enjoying the company and conversation of other people your main reason for socialising.
Encourage \lour Creativity to Flout
To act creatively, whether at work or in your personal life, you have to accept the possibility that some of your ideas won’t be considered that great. If you’ve got a suggestion for an advertising campaign at work or a novel way to spice up your sex life, you’ll be less inclined to put forward your ideas if you worry too much about them being rejected or going down like a lead balloon.
Creativity is self-generative: If you try out your ideas, they tend to give rise to more ideas. If you constantly suppress your ideas, you may find that the stream of ideas diminishes over time.
Act Adventurously
Breaking your routine can help you to lighten up. Changing a regular pattern can relieve boredom and improve your mood generally. Even the smallest things, such as choosing a different recipe in a cookbook or walking to a place to that which you normally drive, can make a significant difference to your mood.
Following a routine in order to avoid unpredictable outcomes is all too easy. Unfortunately, getting stuck in a rut may mean that you miss out on new, exciting experiences. Urging yourself to do things differently or to risk a foray into unknown territory, can challenge the demands you hold about having control at all times. Most people like to have some degree of control in their lives and to feel that they have some degree of certainty about what they can expect from life. However, in reality, life is unpredictable and our sense of certainty is largely an illusion.
Accepting your limitations to control events and to be certain about the outcome of events, can help you to act more adventurously and live life more fully. Increasing your tolerance for uncertainty and limited control is also likely to help you become more adaptive for when life throws unexpected problems your way. (Head to Chapter 9 for more on coping with anxiety.)
Enjoy l/oursetf: It’s Later than \lou Think
Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think,
Enjoy yourself while you’re still in the pink,
The years go by as quickly as you wink,
Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think
- The Specials
There’s no time like the present for chilling out and lightening up. If you never get round to making time for pleasurable or novel activities, you may find that you don’t ever do them. People who hold a responsible yet light-hearted attitude about themselves, and life in general, are usually far more pleasant to hang around with. These people give off an air of ‘seizing the moment’. Making the most of the present moment can keep you young at heart, even as the years go by.
Inside the ear is a gold mine of prospective massage points, and it would be silly of you to stay away just because the inside of the ear is pink and potentially "yucky." Go ahead, promise yourself youTl wash your hands immediately afterwards, and then rub away on the little ridges and rolls within the cavern of the ear, exploring for new areas of pet pleasure.
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