Four ways to be more effective in your WHOLE LIFE (or Dodge The Dangling Carrot of Self-Delusion)

Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly-Effective People is a great book.

It, like others of its genre, covers the ins and outs of success — mostly in the workplace. And that’s where most people strive to succeed.

But most people are missing something really important: work is not where you need to be highly effective. In fact, you will never be effective at work (in your career) if you keep missing the point of why you’re working. And that blind spot is where everything changes.

Your work, what you provide to the world, is a reflection of you.

You’re working to be happy. And happiness happens from the inside-out. Until it tranforms inside of you, nothing will change in your outer world. YOU can change your outer circumstances: take new jobs, bounce from place to place, person to person, but it will eventually feel like the movie Groundhog Day. Same shit, different day.

People like to make fun of happiness like it’s about unicorns and glitter or something but I have hung out with a lot of people, thousands, and MOST OF THEM ARE UNHAPPY. I was unhappy for 85% of my life so I have a pretty good bullshit detector.

Many people just hang out with other people in the hopes they don’t trip each other’s bullshit detector.

It’s tricky to believe this because MOST PEOPLE are extremely competent at putting up incredibly convincing facades. I find this more among people aged 20–45. My peers, if you will. It is rare to find a young adult who isn’t acting a part. Speaking from a script. Hiding and dodging behind reality and interacting from a distance. “Keeping it cool and light.”And this is the game everyone plays with each other to such a degree that no one even realizes it’s a game. It becomes virtual reality because everyone maintains it so solidly.

And it’s ineffective. How do I know? Because I did it. For years. And then I reached my saturation point and started being myself and sought any resource I could find to make that person really awesome. Working day in and day out. For YEARS. I’m still a work in progress, in case it wasn’t obvious. And now I interact with people SO MUCH each day, I have become highly attuned to the fakes, the phonies and the real deals. It becomes incredibly obvious in a few minutes.

Are you wondering which one you are?

OK, take a look at your life. And no one is around to impress right now, it’s just you reading this, so you don’t have to make up some story or hold a facial expression and use body language to try and convince people you have it more together than you actually do. That’s what most people do most of the time. Once you stop doing it, you will see what I mean.

Seriously take a look at your life from 20,000 feet.

No? Too painful? Too real?

That, right there, is why you’re being ineffective at work.

Your work, what you provide to the world, is a reflection of you.

And if it’s too painful to take an honest look at what that reveals, that tells you something.

Instead of looking and doing something to transform it all from the inside-out (as Steven Covey and others recommend) you’re making the choice each day to spend your time, energy and money on things to numb that dull ache of mediocrity. Of low self-esteem and self-confidence. Of having no integrity. Of the victim-mindset that pervades EVERY WORD YOU SPEAK AND EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE. Of jealousy when others succeed — those people who express themselves well and are open and vulnerable and REAL.

If you’re still reading at this point, that’s good. Most people would have given up by now, because that’s how they live life. And they wonder why they aren’t successful — in work, in love, in anything.

And it’s coming through in their speech. It’s coming through in their appearance. It’s coming through in their choices around time, food, money and other resources. It’s coming through in their habits, patterns and goals and how they speak about their goals and other people and all of it.

ALL OF IT. They aren’t happy and there’s always some person or reason or job or boss or colleague or friend or thing that is to blame. And if they could just, “_____________________________” things would work. They could succeed. They would be happy.

The dangling carrot of self-delusion is what keeps people from being happy and truly successful. That thing that people keep tied around their necks and chase their whole lives thinking the answer lies somewhere “out there”.

Listen. Listen to yourself. Listen to other people. This will start to become clear.

Are you happy? Are you ready to start doing something about it?

These are some recommendations:

1. Get a therapist. Part of shifting who you are and how you behave is by understanding how humans do that with each other. There’s a whole field of study around it because, contrary to your internal narrative, you aren’t the only one who’s messed up. If you think you don’t need therapy, go back and read this post from the beginning.
2. Do some personal development work. You can read books. You can go to courses. I think the ones where you actually have to listen to someone else reflect back to you what they see, (a.k.a. call you out on your shit) help you make progress faster. A course I recommend is Landmark Education. You might have heard of them, people often call them a cult. If that’s true, I guess something they are doing is working because they helped me get out of MY OWN way and look at the bright, shining success I am! ;) In all seriousness, no place or program is perfect but I have good things to say in general about this place. In fact, I will probably write a post about it soon to describe my experience.
3. Find some spirituality. Spirituality helps when life feels weird. It may help you choose to change if you feel connected to something beyond what we can see right here, right now. I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school (with uniforms and all) from kindergarten until my Senior year of high school. And then I said, “fuck this” and did nothing until I was 23 or so. Since then, I would say I’m pretty much a full-time Buddhist but that only picked up speed in the past 3 years or so. At any rate, spirituality gives you something to think about and a context for the bullshit of everyday life when it feels unmanageable. At least, it does for me, and others who also have a spiritual practice. Well, they may not say it like I did, but you get the point. I enjoy anything that the Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, writes or says. You might too. Look her up.
4. Start seeing your own dangling carrot of delusion. Just SEE that you have one. Seriously. Stop running and hiding and living each day like you did yesterday. Take a personal inventory. Just check out the carrot of self-delusion above your head or acknowledge that it’s there. That’s a good place to start. And remember that most people have one, so you’re not alone. You’re not broken or bad. You’re doing what most people do. And once you see it, you can do something about it.