Lighten Up

Lighten Up!

To be less of a worrier, controller, fake, or any of the other problematic types, you would be smart to take yourself a little less seriously. Its not easy to do, of course, but thats probably what people have been telling you when you have been engaged in your troublesome behavior.

˜˜Lighten up! they say. And you say back, ˜˜Thats easier said than done. This is who I am. Its hard to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps, isnt it? You, your self, when you are feeling some kind of angst, in some strange way, become the angst. You even rely on the verb to be in order to communicate your angst. You say, ˜˜I am angry . Its like saying, ˜˜I am the embodiment of anger itself! You cant just switch it off. After all, if you are the angst, who is left to flick the switch? It would call for some kind of transcendence. But transcendence is exactly what we are talking about.

It reminds me of a recurring problem I experienced during the days when I did a lot of public speaking. I would stand in front of groups of people and confidently declare, ˜˜You can choose to be happy! When youre down, dont be! Pick yourself up. I would look very intense during these moments. My eyes would squint with certainty. My voice would be loud and clear. I knew that the volume of my voice and the absolute certainty of the message would tend to elevate the audience.

Then, after the event, I would get into a car or go up to my hotel room. In a private, reflective moment, relaxing and thinking about the presentation a bit, my thoughts would settle and I would find myself admitting, ˜˜I dont buy it. But the next day I would get up and tell the same ˜˜lie to another group .

The reason I thought it was a lie is that I was really never able to do it myself. I couldnt cheer myself up when I was down. In fact, when my wife would see me moping around a bit, and she was in a certain mood, she would say to me, ˜˜Okay smarty pants, go aheadmake yourself happy. Be a little Shirley Temple for me. ˜Pick yourself up and dust yourself off!

Should we take all of our emotional responses less seriously? Well, many times the answer is a flat-out no. As we have said, feelings are critical. They are a response to the world and their purpose is to keep us behaving in a way that helps the species to thrive. Feelings lead us to make babies. They make us cherish life. They inform our every decision. When they are negative or painful, we are best to embrace them to move through them.

But if you are consistently engaged by some matter and you conclude that the anxiety or intensity is not a desirable or useful response, then lightening up might be smart. But heres the tricky thing. Because we identify with our feelings, it is difficult for us to gain any distance from them. To learn how to do this, we need to think a bit more about how we manufacture self.