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Decisions.

Today I came across an e-book, and a set of videos that accompany it, by a guy named Andy Stanley. It’s called Your Move: 4 Questions to Ask When You Don’t Know What To Do.
Who hasn’t been there?

I can’t say it better than Stanley, so I’ll let him tell you about the study:

And via an excerpt from the book, I’ll also let Stanley share one of the questions he asks — one I think all of us should ask ourselves more often:

“Here’s the first of the four questions:

Am I being completely honest with myself?

We’re all experts at selling ourselves on whatever we really want to do, whether we should do it or not. We’re all very good at deceiving ourselves, because we feel so compelled to justify our unwise decisions. It’s as if our hearts are wrapped around a certain choice, then they send our brains a message that says, “Quick, find me some reasons for it!” Our brains manufacture the reasons, and then we start believing them.

Why aren’t we more honest with ourselves? Because for the most part, we’re on a quest not for truth, but for happiness. Our hearts cling to whatever choices we think will make us happiest, no matter how unwise they might be.

So, we need to ask ourselves, Why am I doing this . . . really? What’s the real reason for the choice I’m making? We don’t often ask ourselves this because it’s convicting and uncomfortable. There are times we don’t really want to know why we’re making a certain choice.”

If you’re interested in the study, it and the videos are available for free download here through April 30, 2011.

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Twenty minutes: Wholehearted.

I couldn’t do it justice if I tried, so I won’t describe this video. But I will implore you to take 20 minutes out of your day to watch or listen to it. Worth it. Trust me. Fabulous. Thanks to Rhett Smith for posting it on his blog this morning.

If you’re reading this on a blog reader and you don’t see a video above this line, click the title of the post and see it at my blog.

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Don’t “should” on me.

When I was a little kid, I stood in front of a department store’s fitting room mirror in what would become my new dress. I twirled around in it. I fiddled with its floppy collar and poked its buttons and bows. I held up a matching hat and patent leather purse. I smiled.

“Aren’t I pretty?” I asked my mom.

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

“Good,” I thought. Her answer satisfied me. And simply, I moved on.

I didn’t know then that when girls grow into women, it is rarely that easy. Most of us don’t smile anymore when we look at mirrors. Instead, we scrutinize. We point out the parts of us we think are too big or small. Fret over wrinkles. Curl hair that’s straight. Straighten hair that’s curly. Color grays. Cover imperfections. Whiten teeth. Wax and pluck. Diet pills. Body wraps. Brow lifts. Botox. Boob jobs. Some women get fat sucked out of their butts and injected into their boobs. Others have had a toe on each foot amputated to make uncomfortable shoes bearable.

We aren’t satisfied. Ever. What a way to live. It is sad and unhealthy. It is a disaster for women and men alike. And frankly, it pisses me off.

But it makes sense.

Why would we be satisfied when men exist who tell their girlfriends and wives what to wear and what body parts to augment?

Why would we be satisfied when we are bombarded by ads that imply that teeth should be perfectly white, you can’t be attractive with cellulite or stretch marks, hair should always be shiny, hair shouldn’t be gray, boobs should be big, boobs shouldn’t sag, eyelashes should be thick, wrinkled skin should be avoided, it’s gross if you sweat and people who aren’t skinny aren’t happy?

Since I hate to be a bearer of bad news, let me give you some good news: Teeth don’t stay white when you use them. Cellulite and stretch marks happen. Hair turns gray and frizzes. People sweat. Boobs are hangy blobs of fat that come in various sizes and are good for feeding babies. The girls in the mascara ads are wearing false lashes. Skin gets wrinkly. There is something wrong with you if you don’t sweat. There is nothing wrong with you if you have curves. So, stop “shoulding” on us. And if you do it, stop “shoulding” on yourself. There is no good reason to make your body do what our culture says it should when our culture says “God forbid your body functions normally.”

In the words of a producer of the fabulous documentary America the Beautiful, these industries of so-called beauty “bring women down in order to sell products to bring them up.” They fabricate a problem and sell you a solution. In the process, what both men and women expect of women morphs until it is unattainable. We are taught to deplore what occurs naturally so when it happens — and it will — we hate ourselves and will do anything (i.e. spend everything) to “fix” it.

You don’t have to do that anymore. You are not defined by what other people think of you. You are not defined by how you look compared to someone else. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

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Pull yourself together!

Five years ago, my friend Sarah and I did something we called the Legend of 75.

I was 20 and depressed and in effort to forget all the nonsense in my head, we went to a town an hour and a half’s drive south of Tampa as loudly as we could.

Really.

Windows rolled down, we yelled nonsense heading south on I-75. There is something so freeing about yelling “I definitely consistently prefer peanut butter and honey over peanut butter and jelly when it comes to sandwiches!” at 80 miles per hour. I let go of something so I could start to pull myself back together.

Being free requires letting go. (Which, luckily for other drivers, doesn’t always require yelling out the windows of moving vehicles.)

I think to some extent everybody wants and likes to be free. We feel freed from overweightness when we’re in good physical shape. A significant other makes us feel freed from loneliness. We feel freed from stress when, whatever the method, we reduce it. When we don’t have what we want or need, there’s always a little something that keeps us bound to some other thing. A need to think a lot about how to get out of a rut, if not just about the fact that we’re in one.

How does our culture respond? Certainly not by letting go.

Not in shape? Get diet pills.

No significant other? Join eHarmony.

Stressed? Buy self help books.

What a lot of us end up with is our original lack of freedom — a few extra pounds, loneliness, stress — plus another thing. And then another. And another.

We want to be free from whatever it is, and instead of letting go of what causes it, we cling to something else that we hope will negate the effects of it. I remember once, I spent a day — a whole day — cleaning out my closet because I finally couldn’t take the clutter. I had too much stuff so I sorted through it for hours. In my sorting, I found multiple self-help books, all on attaining simplicity. Not only did I have a lot of clutter, but a collection of things I thought would help me rid me of my clutter was, in fact, part of my problem.

How typical it is, with good intentions, to commit to things that, lo and behold, distract us from doing what we actually need to do.

Maybe we don’t need diet pills, but to let go of an old way of taking care of the body. Maybe there are behaviors or beliefs in our lives that need to be let go before we can successfully be a significant other to someone. Maybe we’re stressed because we’ve committed to do too many things, like read multiple self help books. Maybe we need to let go of something.

Then we can pull ourselves back together.

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“It’s not me. It’s you.”

On my way to school last night, I got annoyed at a few other drivers.

When don’t I?

But last night, while I headed to school for a test in psychopathology, a couple cars ahead drove too slowly. A couple other cars hit the brakes too hard in front of me. All the way through the hour-long drive, I tried not to let it bother me. Instead, I tried to think about all the things that might be on my test.

In the class, we’re studying the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. So, personality disorders and anxiety disorders and psychotic disorders. (And I could actually go on for awhile — it’s a long list.) Here and there, we also get into theories, like attachment theory — the styles of connection between an infant and his or her mother and how they affect the grown up person the baby becomes, and attribution theory — whoa.

While I drove, attribution pushed me into a little more self awareness*. Simply, the theory says that a person attributes his or her own behavior to his or her circumstances and that a person attributes other people’s behavior to their personalities.

In other words, “It’s not me. It’s you.”

It’s why when I drive slowly, it’s not my fault but when you are a driver in front of me and you drive slowly, it’s because you are inept.

Clearly, that belief is false (most of the time) (don’t lie — some people can’t drive.). But how few among us don’t think it all the time? If I forget something, it’s because other people are pulling me in too many different directions. You forget something, and I ask, “What is wrong with you?”

What’s wrong with all of us? We want to believe that when I drop the ball, it’s your fault and when you drop the ball, it’s your fault.

And I must say. When “you” drop the ball that much, it’s really hard to love you. But it takes the blame off the one around whom the world revolves (ha! We humans. So funny.)

How different a day would be if only we’d admit that maybe, sometimes, it’s actually not you. What if I choose to believe the slow drivers are slow because of their circumstances — they’re lost, for instance — and not because their number one goal in life is to make me late?

I can empathize with being lost; I cannot empathize with rudeness. Why assume the worse when there’s no way to know which is the case?

Going with the one that doesn’t make my blood pressure go up might make my hour-long drives might be more pleasant. And if we all do it, it might make the world a better place.

*Getting a degree in mental health will do that to you. I highly recommend it!