Huevos

Ok, I guess I've got time today to post my first self-improvement note.

Everyone remembers the movie Annie Hall, right? Do you remember at the end, where Woody Allen turns to the camera and talks about how his life has been ruled by two old jokes? One of the jokes is this chestnut:

Guy goes into a shrink and says, "Doc, you gotta help me, it's my brother. He thinks he's a chicken."

Doc says, "Oh my, that sounds serious, how long has this been going on?"

Guy says, "It's been three years, doc, we gotta do something."

Doc says, "Three years!? Why are you just coming to me now?"

and the guy says, "Well, doc, we needed the eggs"

Ba-dum-bump

What I think Woody meant, what I've always got from this is, whatever behavior pattern you have in your life, at some level you do it on purpose because you think you need the eggs. Whatever you do, however destructive it may be, somehow, somewhere, you're getting eggs from it.

An implication is, you can't change your behavior unless you understand what eggs you're getting from it. If you steel up your resolve to stop your overeating without understanding that you're getting emotional satisfaction from eating, you're doomed to fail. If you hate your job but stay with it anyway, the eggs (immediate paycheck, some security) outweigh the costs (from annoyance to soul-destroying) or the costs of changing (fear of interviewing). When you realistically analyze the eggs and the cost, you may change your mind. If you can get a decent paycheck elsewhere without destroying your soul, it might be better. If the security of your job is illusory, you might be better off without it. If you're really just afraid to confront the fear of interviewing, you can consider whether you need to figure out how to do that and just face it. Or not. But until you know what eggs you're getting and what you're paying for them, you're not going anywhere but in circles.

But, like I said, I've believed in this principle for a long long time. Not quite since the movie first came out (I was pretty young then) but say at least the last 20 years. So why now is this suddenly having such an impact on me?

I recently put two and two together and started applying this idea to a particular destructive thought pattern that had previously been immutable. It's the whole original basis of this blog - "I'm an idiot". Trust me, inside my head "idiot" is one of the kinder things I call myself. And calling myself names is (was) one of the kinder things I did, it was more of an internal mental smack upside the head. It almost hurts to write, my mind is travelling those ruts as I write about it, and I've been mostly free of it for several weeks now. The effect was to derail my thinking, to force it onto this negative track instead of letting it run free.

So I asked myself: What is so important that hurting myself is a better answer than facing it?

And here's where it gets a little fuzzy. I didn't get a clear answer that I can easily relate here. Part of it has to do with a very ugly experience I had about 23 years ago, out of which I decided to just be whoever and whatever I needed to be to get by. I'm not going to tell you that story now, probably not ever. Part of it is ideas I got at this blog - stevepavlina.com A lot of what he says is kind of mystic woo-woo, but much of his approach is very similar to mine. I'll go into specifics in later entries, but two things stand out for brief mention: You've got to be integrated, goals, beliefs, values, actions. You can't change anything all at once, it's like going to the gym. I'd like to be able to bench press my weight, but I can't go down and try to do that every day until my muscles get stronger. I'd quit pretty darned fast. I've got to start where I am, bench what I can, and expand that over time.

So there's no one-to-one correspondence. I didn't answer my question. Or I guess I did, and the answer was simply, nothing in my life is worth hurting myself that way. I wasn't getting enough eggs for it.