Too Close to the Edge?

[Danneskjold]

Ok, so heres the scenario. Let's say a person is an extremely motivated person. This person is an objectivist and holds closely to the majority of standards especially concerning ego. I set standards for myself that I want to live up to, and whether I consider myself a success or failure is solely based upon myself, not what everyone else thinks. However, the goals are set so high that most people would consider it a tremendous success to come anywhere close. However, this person isn't happy unless he passes them in all areas of the goal. He sets goal after goal pushing himself farther and farther. Then after a while he starts to feel the pressure he puts on himself. He can't stop setting goals for himself because it's what he's done for as long as he can remember, but the goals won't let him rest. If he doesn't achieve his goals he feels like a failure, but he doesn't feel like he can sustain himself this way. He can't commit suicide, he would consider it failure, and it's gotten to the point where he would see a wheelchair as a nice way to escape his goals.

Is the state of mind I've just described too far?

[BAMF]

Whoa, bro! Yes, I think it is if the thought of suicide has crossed your mind. I don't really have any advice for you though. What are the goals you are setting for yourself? Damn, all I can really say is keep on keepin' on and wait for the many great pieces of advice I know you will receive from the OLers.

[Danneskjold]

Any thoughts of suicide have been quickly dismissed. It's just that sometimes after a near car crash or something I'll imagine what would have happened if we had actually crashed. And when I think about possible results, I don't necessarily see those ones with me coming out in a wheelchair as bad. The idea of a break from the pressure is nice. However, I've been injured before and I ended up sitting there waiting to get back on the field so I also know that it's not a long term solution. Just one of those passing thoughts.

I don't mean to sound like some wacko being driven to the edge. I'm just wondering how to balance my life while not risking my drive that will push me to the next and higher levels of achievement. Essentially just a sustainable intensity as opposed to a psychotic pace.

[BAMF]

Well, I'm glad you've dismissed those thoughts. It's so strange to even think about it, but you know something's up when it crosses your mind.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Danneskjold,

I once read on a Tee Shirt:

If you're not living on the edge, you're using up too much space.

That was my motto for years, and in many respects, it still is. But I melted down into drugs and alcohol, partly because of my constant leaps into the face of glory, and partly from pushing myself harder and harder and harder, until I pushed myself right up into the big one where I burned out.

After I fell, I had to learn a simple word the hard way. It took years, but if I had not learned it, I would not have survived. The word is "balance."

If the fastest cars, boats, airplanes, and rocket ships that can be made are not run in balance, they crash. That goes for a human soul.

There is something only you can do. That is introspect until you understand your natural limits. This goes for all areas where you wish to act with competence. Once you understand that, you will understand how hard you can push. It's OK to push your natural limits harder than normal, but you have to understand that they will never double. Ever. With time, rational discipline and persistence, you can go far... very far. But one person will take one month and another will take two years to get to the same spot.

Try to learn that reality about yourself: whether you have a natural knack or whether you need to work harder than normal. It is OK to be limited. All of us are. It is not OK to let a limitation stifle a dream and let this make you bitter or lazy. And it is not OK to ignore a limitation in pursuing a dream and become a nervous wreck because of the unreasonable pressure and constant failures.

And, at your age, there is a danger for high-achievers. If you try to become an expert in calculus, a crack mountain climber, a successful football quarterback, a hot guitarist, read all of Shakespeare's plays and the works by Immanuel Kant in a year, write a screenplay, and become a master at poker, all you are going to achieve is to become exhausted, then frustrated. You will probably not be very good at much anything after a while.

I suggest focusing on one thing, or two at the most, and setting demanding goals in these areas only. As for the rest, just enjoy them. That's enough.

Another thing. Always stop and rest when you get so far past the point of diminishing returns that you are making silly mistakes. This is normal and your body and brain are telling you they need to recompose. Do something else that is not demanding for a while. Or sleep. Or watch TV or do something light. Then go back when you feel rested and "up."

I learned these things by burning out. You don't have to do that. It's no fun. (Well... that's not accurate. It's a quite a joyride going down. Everything in flames and adrenaline galore. Then thud. That usually hurts like hell. But it's the slow agonizing climb back that's a bitch.)

Nowadays, I try to take Socrates seriously: "Know thyself." It's very hard to do this correctly.

By extension, if you want to be happy, try to find out what makes you happy and do more; then find out what makes you unhappy and do less. That's easy to say, but it's almost impossibly tricky to get it right. From what I have seen, most people never manage. They stop looking and just settle for a second best life after a while. There's nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but it's not for me.

Michael

[Barbara Branden]

Danneskjold, I have a suggestion I hope you'll consider seriously. When you're about to set a goal -- any goal -- ask yourself: Is this what I really want to do? Is it what I really want to struggle for? Would the steps toward it give me pleasure and a sense of fulfuillment? Or is it something I've uncritically told myself I should try to attain?

From your post, I strongly suspect that you've burdened yourself with a great many "shoulds" that have little or nothing to do with your real interests and desires. And few things could be more difficult -- impossible, in fact -- than struggling to reach goals that arise from a sense of duty rather from your own first-hand and deeply personal values.

Barbara

[Danneskjold]

Thanks for the advice everybody. I understand what you are saying and am sure it will help. A large part of my goals are baseball oriented. I just find that my goals are increasingly hard to achieve and that I feel like a failure when I don't achieve these goals that no one expects me to achieve in the first place. Things like not making varsity in baseball as a freshman at the beginning of the year. Then feeling like a failure again when I wasn't hitting at the varsity level once I was there. This all seems extremely illogical as I try to explain it, but it just seems like not working as hard as I am would just end up taking away whatever edge I have.

[Barbara Branden]

Danneskjold, here's an excellent quote from Nathaniel Branden that may be helpful:

"When admirers of Ayn Rand seek my services professionally, they often come with the secret hope, rarely acknowledged in words, that with Nathaniel Branden they will at last become the masters of repression needed to fulfill the dream of becoming an ideal objectivist. When I tell them, usually fairly early in our relationship, that one of their chief problems is that they are out of touch with their feelings and emotions, cut off from them and oblivious, and that they need to learn how to listen more to their inner signals, to listen to their emotions, they often exhibit a glazed shock and disorientation. I guess I should admit that seeing their reaction is a real pleasure to me, one of the special treats of my profession you might say, and I do hope you will understand that I am acknowledging this with complete affection and good will and without any intention of sarcasm. The truth is, seeing their confusion and dismay, that it's hard to keep from smiling a little.

"One of the first things I need to convey to them is that when they deny and disown their feelings and emotions, they really subvert and sabotage their ability to think clearly -- because they cut off access to too much vital information. This is one of my central themes in The Disowned Self. No one can be integrated, no one can function harmoniously, no one can think clearly and effectively about the deep issues of life who is oblivious to the internal signals, manifested as feelings and emotions, rising from within the organism. My formula for this is: "Feel deeply to think clearly." It seems, however, to take a long time -- for objectivists and nonobjectivists alike -- to understand that fully. Most of us have been encouraged to deny and repress who we are, to disown our feelings, to disown important aspects of the self, almost from the day we were born. The road back to selfhood usually entails a good deal of struggle and courage.

"I know a lot of men and women who, in the name of idealism, in the name of lofty beliefs, crucify their bodies, crucify their feelings, and crucify their emotional life, in order to live up to that which they call their values. Just like the followers of one religion or another who, absorbed in some particular vision of what they think human beings can be or should be, leave the human beings they actually are in a very bad place: a place of neglect and even damnation. However, and this is a theme I shall return to later, no one ever grew or evolved by disowning and damning what he or she is. We can begin to grow only after we have accepted who we are and what we are and where we are right now. And no one was ever motivated to rise to glory by the pronouncement that he or she is rotten."

Barbara

[omphalos]

...

From your post, I strongly suspect that you've burdened yourself with a great many "shoulds" that have little or nothing to do with your real interests and desires. And few things could be more difficult -- impossible, in fact -- than struggling to reach goals that arise from a sense of duty rather from your own first-hand and deeply personal values.

Barbara

What happens when you strip away all the "shoulds" and "oughts" and find you're not motivated toward accomplishing anything? Got any exercise to capture squelched values?

Jim

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jim,

Napolean Hill wrote about cultivating a "burning desire" in Think and Grow Rich!. It has been years since I read this book, but I remember that he gave at least one solid technique for obtaining a burning desire if you don't have one.

There is great wisdom in fostering an emotional drive along with rational procedures.

Michael

[Rich Engle]

Goals. Good things, to be sure. Sometimes they can look like 800 lb. gorillas, though!

It is good to distinguish goals, short-term, and long-term. Realistic, obtainable short-term goals are wonderful because they can give you immediate gratification, affirmation, bolster self-esteem. I think they also support the attitude needed for pursuing long-term goals. All goals can, if you aren't right about how you look at them, create anxiety, for one thing. But they are yours; you have set them.

You can see why Barbara says to make sure the goal is what you wish. And, sometimes in pursuit of a long term goal, you realize you don't really want it, despite contemplating it heavily. That is OK because you have still worked. Always, I think the process is as or nearly as important as the goal itself. Take account of the process: what has that done for you? It is part of personal evolution.

Good luck, just stay with it and honor yourself as you go.

Or, as my boss (a major prime mover) always says: stop feeling sorry for yourself, it never does a damn bit of good... (he's a wise man, albeit a little gruff). :twitch:

[Rich Engle]

Another thing Nathaniel wrote that might be of use to you...

A lot of people have an everyday way of starting out. It's a good idea in general to get focused. I like Nathaniel's very much-- it is simple but not really. He says start each day with:

"What is good about today," and "What needs done?"

If you look at his definition of self-esteem (the two components being self-worth, and efficacy), these two statements address them quite well. "What's good about today?" helps you start with a healthy mindset. There's always something good! And of course the other gets you moving in the right direction.

If I can get done with a day and honestly be able to say that I've done one or two concrete, specific things that were important, make a difference, then I call it a good day, to be sure.

[omphalos]

"What is good about today," and "What needs done?"

I like that, esp. the first question. Turns the topic away from navel-gazing, and provides a much broader outlook.

[Rich Engle]

Yeah, taking away shoulds and oughts...

My girlfriend has an interesting perspective. She says that as far as she's concerned, "try" does not exist-- you either do it or you don't.

I have never once heard her use the word in conjunction with any important goal or undertaking...