Why The Tea Party Sucks

Tea PartyFor those of you who wondered if I was a raging conservative after reading my review of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, I present my counter argument in which I tell you why I think the Tea Party sucks just as badly.

As opposed to OWS, I find the Tea Party rather effective.  They seem to have gotten their act together as a grass roots movement that is having a big impact on the Republican party.  What I find distasteful about them is their mix of economic and religious policies. [Read more...]

Week 1 Of The New Me

This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series Experiments In Self

Julie and I arrived home three nights ago after an amazing two weeks in Croatia (which I highly recommend for anyone looking for a beautiful place to go).  I’m tired, I’ve had a miserable weekend because I caught a cold on the flight home but I’m also incredibly happy. The honeymoon showed me just how much I love her and how wonderful our life together will be.  It also showed me how much I have changed as a person since my divorce.  Anyone who tells you that people can’t change is a liar.  People can’t be forced to change but they can definitely change if they want to and if they have enough motivation.

I’ve also noticed that there are more changes I want to make.  I want to be healthier, more productive, friendlier, more outgoing, add a new hobby and a whole host of things that are still on my to do list.  Some of these, like health, are even more important now that I’m married because I’m no longer responsible only for myself.  Let me use health as an example (this is taken from a recent post on my fitness blog, 60 in 3) [Read more...]

Let’s Go Have A Beer

I was all annoyed and frustrated on Wednesday. I was having a bad day at work and I was tired. What made things even worse was that I made a promise to Julie to cook for her that night. That’s usually something I look forward to but my frustration at work was causing me to look at this as a chore. I was already tired, why should now have to do this extra thing? I wanted to cancel it, I wanted to tell her “let’s go out to dinner instead” but I was afraid. She’d be unhappy, she’d be upset with me breaking my promise and ruining our dinner.  What could I do?  How could I change our plans without causing a mess?  It was moments like this one that had ruined some of my previous relationships. Well, not specifically moment like these but the general way in which I handled them.

I wanted very much to make Julie happy, but the plan for the night was one which was making me unhappy. Seemed like I was screwed either way. If I tried to figure out some other plan, she would be unhappy. If I pretended to be ok with the current plan, she would pick up on it and then we would both be unhappy. I could call her up and tell her how annoying and frustrated I was at work and hope that she picked up on it and suggest a different alternative I suppose, that’s what I would have done in the past, but I hate having conversations like that. It reminds me of the way I used to act and how destructive it was to my relationships. [Read more...]

My Brother-In-Law Problem

35 StrangersI have a brother in law problem.  The problem is that my brother in law is too good.  He’s educated, smart, nice, knowledgeable, wealthy, hardworking, great conversationalist, successful… In other words, he’s everything I want to be and I resent him for it.  I resent him because he has what I want, because I fear being compared to him, because saying “I want to be like him” is embarrassing.  What’s my fiancé going to think?  Will she compare the two of us?  Will she resent me because I’m not as successful?  Will family gatherings consist of people thinking “wow, look at that amazing guy over there and look at that loser on the other side…”?  So this is my brother in law problem.

Dan Arielly had this great article about the measures of a man’s happiness.  In it he discussed the fact that many men based their self-worth not on their own absolute accomplishments but on a relative comparison to their wife’s sister’s husband (the brother in law).  In other words, if you want to be a happy man, marry someone whose sister married a total loser.  Except that won’t work for me.  I love my fiancé very much and I’m not about to lose that because her brother in law is too nice.   And since I’m not going to sabotage his success in some way, I need to come up with a different solution. [Read more...]

Don’t Use Skepticism As An Excuse For Inaction

Now Is The Time To Try Something NewLast week Tim Ferris, of The 4-Hour Workweek fame, put out a new book called the The 4-Hour Body .  In it he describes the variety of ways in which he’s hacked apart his body and put together a healthy lifestyle.  It’s filled with a lot of tips, entertaining stories and a variety of pseudo science the likes of which every diet book contains.  It’s even got a great section about sexual performance with a hilarious addendum on sperm donation.  I picked up this book because I like Tim’s blog but I didn’t really have an intention to follow any of the ideas in it.

[Read more...]

Your Unwillingness To Make A Decision Is Driving Us Crazy!

Difícil Decisión / Hard DecisionYes, you! The guy who refuses to say where he wants to go to lunch and just says “where ever you want to go”. Yes, you! The girl who says “oh honey, I don’t care where we go on vacation as long as we have fun”.  Yes you! The coworker who says “whenever you want to meet, just let me know.” You folks and your unwillingness to make a decision are driving the rest of us crazy!

Maybe if you really didn’t care what you ate, where you went on vacation and when you met then this behavior would be fine. However, you actually do care. The rest of us know this because when we suggest something you say “oh, not that” or “oh, I’m busy then”. That’s right, you don’t care unless we suggest something you don’t like in which case you reject our suggestion and wait for us to make another one, and this what drives us crazy.

Listen, you’re not doing anyone a favor when you play the martyr. I know it’s makes you feel good to be giving, to allow others to get what they want and to pretend like you’re only concerned with their happiness, but believe me when I say this, your efforts are having the exact opposite effect. We don’t appreciate you for only caring about our needs and being willing to give up your own because that’s absolutely not true. We resent you for forcing us to try and read your mind. We’re annoyed because you want to offload the decision making process to us, feel smug about your desire to please and still get your way.

So, now that I’ve ranted a little…

Let’s get smart here, this is after all self improvement for smart people, not random internet rant site 2341. When you say things like “I don’t care, you choose”, you could mean one of two things:

  1. You really don’t care. This is a perfectly valid answer in some cases. For example, my friend asks me “Do I want to go to get Mexican food at Taco Bell or Burgers at McDonald’s?” I consider both restaurants to be crappy and try to avoid both as much as possible, but if these are my only two options then I really don’t care. My friend might as well make the choice and just inform me of where I’m going.
  2. My girlfriend asks me “where would you like to go on vacation?” and I answer “wherever honey, I don’t care.” This is passive aggressive crap! Yes, I do care. I hate Europe for example and I love beach resorts. (I’m just kidding honey, I love your idea for a European vacation!) So when she comes back with an idea for a great trip to Italy, we have a problem. I’m not going to be very happy at which point she’s going to be upset and she’ll have every right to be. I’m the one who failed at communication here, I clearly cared about the outcome but I failed to communicate that. I somehow expected her to read my mind, know that I hate Europe and come up with a good vacation plan.

Essentially, what you’re actually saying in these situations is “Oh, I don’t care. Why don’t I sit here and do no work? However, you better pick something I like too or else I’ll be upset.” That’s just wrong and it’s a very poor way to communicate.

If you truly don’t care about something, which means you will absolutely not mind one way or another which decision gets made, then fine. However, if you do care but still don’t want to make a decision, then how about trying one of the following, smarter, methods of communication:

  1. Well, I don’t really mind as long as… – For example, when I ask my girlfriend what she wants for dinner, she usually answers with “You know what I dislike, anything else is good”, which is a perfectly reasonable answer. She’s eliminated the choices she would refuse to accept with her “You know what I dislike” which I do in fact know. At that point she really doesn’t care anymore. So whatever I pick is fine.
  2. I’d prefer X, but I’m willing to accept other stuff as long as it’s not Y… – This is another method by which you can still let the other person make a decision but with your stated preferences. You’re saying what you prefer, what you’re willing to accept and what you’re unwilling to accept. For example, if you’re trying to setup a meeting with a coworker, don’t just say “whenever is fine” because I know that’s not true. How about saying “well, I’d prefer to meet on Monday in the afternoon but Tuesday and Wednesday all day can also work. Just as long as it’s not Thursday or Friday.”

Both of these methods work because you’re stating your preferences. You’re not just providing zero information and yet expecting the other person to make a choice which meets your needs. However, note that in both these cases you’re still expecting the other person to do the hard work of making a decision. Whether that’s good or not is up to you and the other person involved in this discussion. Sometimes there is one person who makes decisions and sometimes you’ll alternate or make decisions together. Any of these options is fine as long as you’re both stating preferences.

And that’s the key takeaway from today’s post.  If you care about the outcome of a decision then participate in the making of that decision, at the very least by stating preferences.  In the words of the greatest philosopher mankind ever produced “If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice”.

P.S. This was one of the many lessons that was reinforced for me through my month long experiment from radical honesty.  Stating your preferences is always better.

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My Thoughts On Radical Honesty

Honest Advertising, Hernando, MississippiA month ago I made a pledge to myself to try something called Radical Honesty.  I’m a pretty honest guy in general, having learned my lesson a while back that lies don’t pay off in the end, and I usually recommend honesty in all things.  However, radical honesty takes things to the next level.  Rather than just being honest about the big things, radical honesty insists that you be honest about everything, including the little things.  So yes, if your girlfriend asks “do these pants make me look fat” you answer with the truth, regardless of what that might be.  If your husband asks “Hey honey, do you mind if we spend this weekend hanging out with my college buddies Bullethead and Fireass?”, you answer with the truth.  If your mom asks you why you don’t have her over for dinner, you tell her the truth.  If your coworker asks you if there’s an issue with their performance, you’re honest with them.  Sounds hard?  Not at all.

Honestly (which by the way, is a very annoying word to use in a conversation because it implies that you’re not usually honest), I found this experiment very hard at first.  I think we as a society have become extremely used to telling little white lies as a way of smoothing over our social interactions.  We don’t want to tell our boss that we went drinking, we don’t want to tell our friends that we have certain embarrassing hobbies, we don’t want to tell our families that they annoy us and so on and so forth.  We’re afraid to offend and to embarrass so we lie thinking that this will save both sides some hard feelings.  So yes, the beginning of this experiment was very difficult for me.  I had to mentally correct and remind myself at various times that lying was no longer an option.  In fact, there were several times that I actually went back to someone and corrected something I had said.  The expressions on their faces were quite confused :)  However, as the experiment progressed, I found myself having an easier time with it.  I still needed to remind myself at times that I cannot mislead, even by omission, but it got easier and easier as time went by.  I also learned quite a few things about what it means to be honest.

Don’t Be A Jerk!

The first thing to remember is that radical honesty is not the same as being a jerk.  If my wonderful girlfriend asked me if she looks good or not in a certain outfit, I don’t need to say “oh my god, you look awful!”  I can simply say “hey sweetie, I don’t think that outfit fits you very well, why don’t you try that red one?  You look amazing in that one.”  If my coworker asks me “hey, is there a problem with my performance?”  I don’t have to say “yes, you suck at your job.”  I can simply say “listen, I have a problem with what happened in that meeting.  Would you mind sitting down with me and working this out?”  The point isn’t to insult and offend, the point is simply to be honest and not lie.

Some Things Are Better Kept To Yourself

The second thing to remember is that radical honesty is not an excuse to lose all self control.  Yes, some proponents of radical honesty believe in going this far but I don’t.  My brain is an amazing organ capable of wonderful things and armed with an imagination that knows no bounds, even if sometimes it should know a bound or two.  For example, I don’t feel a need to go up to every random woman I see in the street and tell her “hi, I just imagined you naked!”  There’s an inner monologue of thoughts which have no need to become public.

What Honest DOES Mean

So if being honest doesn’t mean being a jerk or losing all control of your inner thoughts, what does it mean?  Well, it means no more little white lies.  It means no more obfuscating the truth because you’re trying to smooth over the little things that cause conflict in your life.  Ahh, I can already hear you saying, “how can you do that?  If I don’t smooth over those things, my life will be miserable!”  No, sorry, the truth is it’s those little white lies that allow the conflicts to fester and grow and become unbearable.  That’s what I discovered this month.  When I tell the truth, I experience a momentary discomfort, a short term fear that things will go bad, but then I find that things improve quite quickly.  Conflicts get resolved, questions are answered and issues are met head on.

In fact, that was the best part of this experiment.  Forget about the fact that I no longer had to worry about what I told to who about where I was last night (I’m kidding honey!), the greatest part of radical honesty is that things get resolved!  Because you’re honest and tell the truth, problems are dealt with and not ignored.  You work out issues with your friends, your family and even your coworkers.  I have to tell you, I haven’t been this productive at work in a very long time.  So yes, there is a little bit of discomfort but once you get used to telling the truth, you’ll never want to go back.

By the way, another part of radical honesty which I really appreciated was being honest and asking for what I want, but that’s a topic for another post.  I’ll talk about that next week!  In the meantime, I would recommend radical honesty for everyone as this was one experiment that turned out very well.

An Experiment In Radical Honesty

I read about radical honesty a few years ago in Esquire and it sounded interesting but impractical.  In fact, it sounded a bit too extreme to me.  Rather than being honest, it sounded deliberately offensive, as though someone forgot the line between inner thoughts and outer speech.  I’m a great believer in honesty as you can see from previous posts, but I’m also a big fan of not insulting the people around for absolutely no reason.  So while I thought the idea was interesting, I put it away as something unsuitable for my life.

I think I’ve come to a point where experimenting with this kind of honesty is not only called for, it’s past due.  So, for the next month (October, 2010), I’m going to experiment with what it means to be totally honest.  To not lie, even little while lies, at all.  We’ll see if I still have a job and a life after this :)

Why?

Why not is a better question but I’ll give you at least one specific.  Last night I caught myself in a little lie.  It wasn’t anything big, it was just one of those little things we tell the people around us because we don’t want to hurt them.  Well, that little lie exploded into something big and stupid and hurtful.  So maybe there is something to this radical honesty.  Maybe even the little things matter when we’re talking about lying.  Who knows, maybe I’ll learn something from this experiment and maybe I won’t.  At the very least you can be sure I’ll give you my honest opinion on it.

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Thank you to The Skilled Investor for including my sunk costs post in their latest financial planning carnival.