What's That About?
By Les Mottosky
Understanding a little about how our own complicated mind works provides huge advantages. For sure in our career relationships, and with friends and family, but maybe more importantly with how we relate to our own life experiences.
All those other relationships depend on how we relate to/with ourselves.
"Happiness psychologist" Sonja Lyubomirsky has made the assertion that when it comes to interpersonal connection, a jarring or bad memory will often over-power the good memories that accompanied it.
As an example, if you have 99 great interactions and a single infuriating experience with the baristas at your fave coffee hangout, the one that will be recalled down the road, will be the enraging one. This is common wisdom in the restaurant business too. Customers are about seven times more likely to share a poor dining incident than a satisfactory experience.
This is fascinating, given environmental experiences – vacations, picnics, outdoor recreational pursuits etc. – seem to get better with time. Despite the set-backs. Think: stuff like a delayed flight, extreme weather, mosquitoes or a flat-tire. As the weeks and months tick by, the mechanisms of the memory seem to slowly dissolve the set-backs while brightening the highlights.
Lyubomirsky's observation that in certain situations bad memories can be stronger than good ones goes a long-way to explaining the idea of 'holding a grudge'. Her theory is also supported by the relative absence of a popular opposite to the grudge.
Nurturing goodwill would be its conceptual counterpart, but outside of a marketing boardroom or a sermon at church, this is a strange concept. Ask a 9 year old to define 'holding a grudge' and 'nurturing goodwill' and you'll likely only get one accurate response.
All of this talk about memory creates a heavy responsibility. And a critical one.
To move through the world in a way that supports an energy forward trajectory, we have to become – not just good – but ruthless at pruning our bad memories. If a "bad" memory can cause us to re-write the reality of an experience solely based on its intensity, then we're deluding ourselves and potentially hurting others.
Meaningful progress requires us to work from accurate data.
We need to align with reality.
Problem: The modern human isn't equipped to perceive reality. We're controlled by a desire – bordering on a need – to be right. In the past, this served us well in small, 150 person communities and a less media intensive life. Today, the combination of ego and media is used to manipulate us socially and politically.
Our task is to make sure we aren't manipulating ourselves – and distorting our vision – because of an irrational emotional tattoo. This is an urge to let go of the energy of that experience. Because it's not the memory that's so sticky or destructive, it's the energy the memory generates.
'Letting go' is one of those phrases that's easy to utter but difficult to execute. It's challenging because there isn't always a 'why' that's more compelling than the chemical rush of the memory.
Letting go is just a trendier version of forgiveness. A crystal clear, counter-intuitive definition comes from author Byron Katie: "Forgiveness is realizing what we thought happened, didn't happen."
This is a more radical view of forgiveness than the conventional one ("They wronged me, but I'll forgive them anyway."). Katie's approach creates the opportunity for forgiveness to arise because it aligns with reality. It dissolves the underlying delusion – "This happened to me exactly the way I remember it." – leaving nothing to forgive.
And that's the reason it works. Katie's observation reveals the lie in the belief. We don't let go of the experience – something she maintains is impossible. But with her radical reframe – and the subsequent alignment with reality – the experience lets go of us.
Bad interpersonal memories may be stronger than the good ones.
But a bad delusion is weaker than reality.
So what delusion do you need to realize didn't happen?
TAGS: #What's That About?
Les Mottosky
Adaptation Strategist // I help organizations turn creativity into their competitive advantage by aligning leadership, culture and strategy to unlock adaptive innovations.
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