Tag Archives: psychology

Postponing Happiness

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Could it be true?

LifeThe other day, I spent some time with a friend of mine who just happens to be a psychology intern at the local hospital. We talked at length about some of the things I’ve gone through in the past few years. Recent events have left me concerned that I might be suffering from PTSD from something seriously weird that happened to me when I worked at the Grand Canyon in 2004. My friend has been helping me work through those concerns, as well as the pain I still feel, over a year later, from my ex-husband’s betrayal and subsequent abuse.

My friend seems to think that I changed after the June 10, 2004 event. She thinks it affected my personality. But although that was a long time ago and my memory isn’t too clear, I disagree. While I admit that I thought about the event every single day for years afterward, I don’t think it made me a different person — at least not on the outside. It didn’t change my dreams and goals; it just made me angry. (Apparently, more angry than I realized.) Sadly, the only person I could talk to about a possible personality change back then — my wasband — isn’t allowed to talk to me anymore. (His new mommy won’t let him. Either that or he’s simply too ashamed of what he’s done to our lives to face me.)

What did change my personality, however, was the illness and subsequent death of my friend Erik. Erik’s sudden illness hit my hard; it made me realize that life can be taken from you at any time and that it was important to do what you wanted to do as soon as you could. Waiting for retirement was idiotic — I knew that better than ever before.

Meanwhile…

As I shed debt, my wasband accumulated it. He bought a condo in Phoenix with a huge monthly maintenance fee as the housing market went into decline; the monthly payments on that were more than our house mortgage payments. He bought a Mercedes sedan he didn’t need. He used the home equity line of credit for overdraft protection on his own personal checking account for years, thus increasing its balance by thousands of dollars while I was paying it down. He was a slave to his job — which he hated — because of the debt he kept building. In the 20-20 vision of hindsight, I realize that he resented me because I had more free time to do the things I wanted to. He didn’t understand that I had that freedom because I simply didn’t have such a huge debt burden forcing me to work harder or longer than I wanted to.

As for his promise to join me on the road…well, that was one of his many empty promises, something he told me to give me hope without actually doing anything to make a positive change in our lives. His 55th birthday came and went; my reminders of his promise were met with new promises that were also broken. I think the broken promises hurt almost as much as the lying and cheating that came later.

I explained all this to my friend, telling her about how the sudden urgency I felt about living my life changed what I did. At the time, I was working two careers — as a writer and a pilot — and was struggling in both, working harder than I ever wanted to and having little time off. I explained how I realized that debt ties us to jobs we don’t really like or want — or, in my situation as a freelancer and business owner, working harder than we want to on jobs we do like — making us slaves. The solution was easy: get out of debt. I stopped buying expensive things I didn’t need, concentrated on investing in my business, and paid all credit card balances in full every month. I made extra payments toward our mortgage and the home equity line of credit to pay them off quicker.

I also told her about the promise my husband had made to me back in 2006, right around the time we married after 23 years together: that when he turned 55, he’d leave his job and join me on the road half the year, spending the summer doing work with my helicopter in a place we could avoid Arizona’s brutal summer heat. One of my business investments had been for a 5th wheel RV, the “mobile mansion,” that was big enough for both of us and our dog. We’d work together and play together all summer long. He’d be able to chase down some of his dreams with the free time we had every winter back in Arizona.

Out of the blue, my friend suggested that I was postponing my happiness.

Of course, I denied it — a knee-jerk reaction to the suggestion. Postponing my happiness? How could I be? After all, I’m happy now. I’m living in a beautiful place I love, surrounded by friends. My business is doing surprisingly well — even in this economy at this time of year — and I have plenty of free time to enjoy the activities I like: hiking, wine tasting, writing, making a new home on a blank slate of 10 acres of my own land.

But then she reminded me about how I’d worked so hard to get my finances in order. Had I been happy then? I thought about it. I told her I was laying the ground work for the future. Besides, I was waiting for my husband to join me.

“Exactly,” she said. “Postponing happiness.”

There was nothing I could say to deny that.

“What about now?” she asked me. “What are you doing to postpone your happiness?”

I could think of just one thing: delaying the construction of my new home. But there were reasons for that and there was nothing I could do to change them. I had to wait.

In the meantime, I was working on my land, settling in my bees, making a pathway, prepping for next season’s garden, planting wildflower seeds. I had friends over for dinner at least once or twice a week. And I did lots of other things that made me happy, including getting out with friends and traveling.

I knew that I wasn’t happy when I was married. I knew that my wasband was part of that problem — during that last year we were together, he was never happy and he seemed to constantly disapprove of anything I wanted to do. I knew that in that last year, my happiest times were the times I was away from home, in Washington, free to do the things I wanted to do when I wanted to do them. Free from the man who seemed to try so hard to make me feel guilty about my life decisions and the happiness they gave me.

I’d never thought of my marriage as something that was postponing my happiness, but it so obviously was.

So the question remains: am I still postponing my happiness? I don’t think I am. But her suggestion has planted a seed in my mind. You can bet I’ll be thinking about it in the months to come.

Atychiphobia

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The fear of failure.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why some people — including someone who was once very close to me — don’t achieve the things they purportedly want to in life. I’m talking about people who have dreams or goals and don’t work toward reaching them.

As anyone who knows me or reads my blog knows, I’m not like this. I’ve been called an “overachiever” (meant as an insult, if you can believe that) and a “Renaissance woman” (which I assume wasn’t referring to my Renaissance painting full figure). I set a goal and do what’s necessary to achieve it. Sometimes I fail but, more often, I don’t. The point is, I do what it takes — or at least try to — to make things happen.

Being like this puts me at a disadvantage when trying to understand people who aren’t like this. People who claim to have dreams and goals but then do very little or even nothing to make them happen. It’s almost as if they believe that just telling others what they want to achieve is enough. They don’t follow through — and they often don’t seem to have a problem with it. Or, worse yet, they blame others for holding them back — when, in reality, the only person holding them back is themselves.

Learned Helplessness

I was talking to a friend about this yesterday and how it relates specifically to a certain person no longer in my life. This friend was also in a relationship with a man like this — a man who never managed to achieve anything he supposedly wanted to achieve. Instead, her guy relied on her to help him through life, like an emotional and financial crutch. She said the condition he suffered from was learned helplessness and suggested that my guy had the same problem.

I looked it up on Wikipedia:

Learned helplessness is the condition of a human or animal that has learned to behave helplessly, failing to respond even though there are opportunities for it to help itself by avoiding unpleasant circumstances or by gaining positive rewards. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses may result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.

This didn’t sound right to me. The person I was trying to understand did fail to help himself when there were opportunities to do so, but the rest of the description just didn’t fit. I thought for a while longer about what was likely holding him back and I realized that it was probably a fear of failure.

Fear of Failure

Wikipedia has an entry for that, too. It’s called Atychiphobia:

Atychiphobia (from the Greek phóbos, meaning “fear” or “morbid fear” and atyches meaning “unfortunate”) is the abnormal, unwarranted, and persistent fear of failure. As with many phobias, atychiphobia often leads to a constricted lifestyle, and is particularly devastating for its effects on a person’s willingness to attempt certain activities.

A person afflicted with atychiphobia considers the possibility of failure so intense that they choose not to take the risk. Often this person will subconsciously undermine their own efforts so that they no longer have to continue to try. Because effort is proportionate to the achievement of personal goals and fulfillment, this unwillingness to try that arises from the perceived inequality between the possibilities of success and failure holds the atychiphobic back from a life of meaning and the realization of potential.

By definition, the anxiety of any particular phobia is understood to be disproportionate to reality, and the victim is typically aware that the fear is irrational, making the problem a largely subconscious one.

This describes the problem perfectly: constricted lifestyle, unwillingness to attempt certain activities, unwillingness to take risks, unwillingness to try to succeed. The sad result is indeed that the sufferer is held “back from a life of meaning and the realization of potential.”

I think a lot of people suffer from this in varying degrees. But it really depends on the person’s imagination. Someone who lacks the imagination to come up with goals worth pursuing and does not pursue goals can’t be said to suffer from atychiphobia because they simply don’t have anything to potentially fail at. But someone who does have the imagination to come up with achievable goals and doesn’t pursue them — well, what can be holding them back if it isn’t a fear of failure?

You Can Only Blame Yourself

Failure is a part of life. While no one likes to fail, there’s no reason why a fear of failure should hold someone back.

If a goal is achievable and a good plan is made to work toward that goal, why not give it a try? By weighing risks and rewards — and the potential for each — a person should be able to make the decisions necessary to move toward any achievable goal. And by measuring levels of success, failure, and risk along the way, a person should be able to determine, on a day-by-day basis, how he’s doing and whether he’s likely to succeed.

The person I’m trying to understand shared many dreams and goals with me throughout his life. I was as supportive as I could be, actually helping him with brainstorming, writing, designing, and doing web work in a few instances when he began attempts to achieve some of these goals. But in the end, he simply stopped trying, abandoning file folders of incomplete notes in favor of “unwinding” in front of a television.

Being blamed for holding him back was particularly painful for me, especially since I was working so hard to build my business so it would support both of us. I wanted badly for him to achieve the kind of self-satisfaction that I achieved throughout my life. I wanted to see him free from financial burdens so he could have the time to chase down one of his dreams and make it a reality.

Unfortunately, I would never get to see that happen.

Move Forward

Meanwhile, I’ll continue formulating goals, evaluating them, and either discarding them or chasing them down. I’m looking forward to rebooting my life in a beautiful place that I love, surrounded by friends with plenty of work to keep me busy. I’m facing the challenge of designing and building a new home that exactly meets my needs. I’m building my apiary with solid plans for producing comb honey and other bee products by next summer. I’m forging new friendships and new relationships to take me forward in my life.

I’m not afraid to fail so I’ll throw everything I have at every goal I want to achieve.

How about you? What’s holding you back?

Courage

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I never thought I’d quote Oprah, but here it is.

I was wasting time yesterday, surfing the web for interesting things, when I came upon an NPR piece about one-liners. In it was a one-liner from Oprah Winfrey:

Having the courage to stand up and pursue your dreams will give you life’s greatest reward and life’s greatest adventure.

And I truly believe this. To me, life is continuous quest to do and learn and see new things. To pursue my dreams.

The Status Quo Trap

It’s easy to sit back and settle in for the long haul in a comfortable home with a comfortable job, doing the same things every day with the same people around you. You know what every day will bring; there are no surprises. Easy, no?

But maybe you dream of doing other things. Maybe you’ve dreamed about some of these things for your entire life, things like starting a business based on one of your hobbies or interests, patenting the inventions of your creativity and imagination, or even just learning a new but difficult skill. Everyone has dreams.

But pursuing these dreams takes courage — the courage to work hard and smart, the courage to face difficult challenges, the courage to accept that the only alternative to success is failure.

So you sit back and relax in your comfy status quo, letting your life slip away with every day, month, and year, letting your dreams slip away with them.

That’s the way a lot of people think. I know — I was married to one of them.

Step Out of Your Comfort Zone and Live

But I don’t think that way.

To me, there’s nothing to life without challenges. There’s always something new to do, something new to learn, something new to see. I’m smart enough to understand that I can’t make these things part of my life without leaving my comfort zone to go after them. And I’m brave enough to do it.

The past year has been a challenge for me — one I did not choose and did not want to face. But I faced it and I got through it. And I’ve emerged on the other side, a better, stronger, and freer person with more self esteem and better health.

And now I face new challenges — some a result of my husband’s betrayal and others of my own choosing. I have the courage to face them. I have the strength to persevere.

As for the events of the past year, well, I look at them as a setback. I expect to be back on track for the semi-retired life with fun and travel that I’d planned (that was well within reach last summer) within a few years. Best of all, I won’t have to drag around the dead weight that was holding me back in recent years.

Oprah is right. I know from experience that pursuing and achieving my dreams is life’s greatest reward. And my life will be an adventure until the end.

How about yours?