U2.2 (You 2.2)
Have you ever 'reinvented' yourself? Have you ever wished to? Is it even something we could do if we wanted to? Today, we'll look at the dynamics of dramatic change in our lives.
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U2.2 (You 2.2)
Is it advisable to reinvent ourselves? What does that even mean? If we're talking about as sweeping a change as the word reinvent implies, is it even possible to achieve such a result? In this episode, we'll explore these questions. In the 1991 film City Slickers, three friends, Mitch portrayed by Billy Crystal, Ed portrayed by Bruno Kirby, and Phil portrayed by Daniel Stern, all face midlife crises in their individual but also archetypical ways. Ace screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel successfully based the rather farcical comedy upon psychological truth, which is why I mentioned the film now over 30 years after its release.
Ed suffers from Peter Pan syndrome. His deepest fear is the loss of his youth. For him, aside from the desperate attempts to cling to youth and the exotic annual getaways that drive the friends into one misadventure after another meant the refusal to sacrifice unending future romantic possibilities for a primary intimate permanent partnership. Mitch's problem is apathy. He has lost enthusiasm for his work, and his performance and satisfaction have suffered. He feels adrift that he's wasting his life.
Phil's crisis is self-inflicted, the result of a series of important but poorly considered decisions. He married an overbearing nasty woman and worked slavishly for her tyrannical father. He unconsciously sabotages the hell he had created by having an affair with a coworker half his age. His decision was yet another poor one, but it did produce dramatic effects for him. He loses his family, job, and home. In one of many poignant scenes, the weight of his new reality threatens to crush him. His pals crowd around him as he sobs uncontrollably. Mitch encourages him by reminding him what they used to do as kids playing kickball. If you make a bad kick, you shout out, “Do over,” and you get to kick again. Ed and Mitch suggest that Phil gets the same leeway at this crucial nexus in his life. He can start over and essentially reinvent himself.
Ganz and Mandel support the idea, at least in the story before the sequel, giving Phil the relatively happy ending of going home with the gorgeous Bonnie played by Helen Slater. Mitch and Ed also face their midlife demons. They go through the crucible of life-threatening crises and emerge with new perspectives. They learn that it isn't what we don't have that matters. It's what we do have that counts most. Mitch resolves to bring the best of himself, not only to his work but to his family. Ed decides to settle down and marry his beautiful loving girlfriend. We might say they reinvent themselves, though maybe not so profoundly as does Phil.
The story is powerful because it deals with the core of life issues with which we all must contend. We can all benefit when we take inventory of what we have and gain joy and satisfaction through the power of improved perspective. We tend to do much better in life when we bring the best of ourselves to the world. When we don't, the world has a way of providing feedback. That feedback is typically some form of pain. It prompts us to make changes, maybe even reinvent ourselves. That was Phil's story. He was utterly shattered. His prior decision-making in life left him feeling like he had hit bottom and like he had nothing.
We tend to do much better in life when we bring the best of ourselves to the world.
The three friends faced real danger and triumphed together. The experience restored, to some degree, Phil's self-worth. He knew he had to reinvent himself, otherwise, he would end up right back in the place from which he had acted so desperately to escape. That aspect of his character is beyond the scope of the action comedy film, but it's worth our time to consider.
Have you ever been in a place where you think your life is a dead end? Perhaps you felt trapped when you followed a path that no longer presents appealing options. At such times, the questions I posed at the beginning may come to mind. Can we and should we reinvent ourselves? How about when we're more like Ed and Mitch? Not at a crisis per se but we do have something that can keep us up at night. At times when we're frustrated and sufficiently dissatisfied, we lose peace of mind. What about ourselves could we consider reinventing? How would we go about doing such a thing? What can we reinvent about ourselves?
We can't change our DNA, at least at current levels of technology, much of the composition of our personalities, and the functions of our genetic structure. That's not everything, but unlike what many in the postmodernist movement have suggested, we are not 100% creations of our social experience. There are limits to what we may adjust. Our dispositions and capacities are, to an alarming degree, functions of our genetics.
Self Reinvention: Unlike what many in the postmodernist movement have suggested, we are not 100% creations of our social experience. There are limits to what we can adjust.
That said, we all have more power over ourselves than we perceive. We can do and make important adjustments in our lives. When I'm working with people to help them develop, I call them knobs. We all have knobs we can turn one way or another to better match the situation and produce more desirable outcomes.
In my experience, most people don't pay attention to most of their knobs. Many of our knobs are dusty and cobwebbed. They've never even been touched. When we neglect these knobs, we forfeit a large proportion of our personal power. In those opportunities when we learn the existence of such knobs and the possibility that we have the power to turn them one way or the other to make important changes, there are some universal elements that describe the process.
Here are three of them. Step one is courage. We must be brave whenever we embrace change. Like the force that kept Ed stuck in perpetual youth in City Slickers, we must face the fact that when we choose one path, we forego all others. This reality often produces a fear of loss. Courage is required in these cases because courage is being afraid and acting anyway. We have an innate fear of the unknown. We also fear rejection, being judged at heart, and being an outcast. This fear is as deep as the fear of death because evolutionarily speaking, they're the same. Aristotle called courage the mother of all virtues. This is a big reason why. It's the key that unlocks the doors of power and possibility.
Step two is resolution. It's safe to say in most endeavors that there's only one way to fail. That's to quit. That may be an oversimplification, but there is wisdom there. There's tremendous power and resolution. In another film from the ‘90s Apollo 13, flight director Gene Kranz portrayed by Ed Harris exemplified this in his leadership role when he declared to his team that failure is not an option.
In the classic book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill shares his observation about the traits that were common among the twenty most successful businessmen of his time a century ago. An unshakeable will was chief among them. It doesn't matter how that determination is generated. Spanish Explorer Cortez, as has numerous other military leaders throughout history, famously sank his ships upon arrival in South America so that his troops had no choice but to prevail in the new world. Much of our power stems from the force of our wills. When we leave alternatives out of a chosen future, we bleed that power away. The strategy worked for Phil, although he didn't choose it. He just left himself no option.
Step three is the ladder of competence. Any process of skill acquisition or positive change features the following phases. Each phase may be short or long, depending. First, we don't know what we don't know. That's called unconscious incompetence. We have no power in this dimension because we're ignorant of the possibility and potential. When we discover the possibility and try our hands, we immediately move to phase two, conscious incompetence.
Our initial attempts are typically feeble. This phase is a barrier where many give up, thinking that they simply can't do it. If our wills are strong and we keep at it, sooner or later, we gain sufficient skill to move to the third phase, conscious competence. That means we can do it, but we have to think about it. Recall learning to drive a car or ride a bike. It seemed so complicated. There's all this stuff to pay attention to. Most of us keep at it because we desperately wish to drive or ride, and the task gets simplified to us. It becomes second nature. The components become muscle memory.
This fourth phase is called unconscious competence. To master anything, we need to persist long enough to reach this last phase of competence. Sometimes life takes away our choices. Mitch was risking his job and his marriage with his apathy. Ed was facing a life spent alone, or at least without intimacy in a healthy family. Had they not resolved to reinvent themselves, they may have found themselves in positions not unlike Phil's who forced his way out of his trap at great cost and harm to himself and those around him.
In this world, it seems like people experience a wide spectrum of such outcomes. Some people go their entire lives never knowing they have knobs that if they decided to invest the required time and effort to master would dramatically impact their fate. Others who are adept at such adjustments have become powerful authors of the story of their lives. Most of us fall somewhere in between.
There’s one more thought I'd like to share with you. Should we reinvent ourselves? Is there wisdom in simply playing the cards we're dealt and directing our energy to whatever situation may be in front of us? Is it better to build the habit of stepping back, examining ourselves, finding areas we'd like to improve, and dedicating ourselves to those adjustments? My answer won't surprise you. It's my life's work to help people do just that. I know people can do it because I've seen it many times. That doesn't mean it's easy. It’s quite the contrary. There's one major reason why. We can't see our blind spots.
Remember that unconscious incompetence phase. We have no power in the areas of which we remain ignorant. Because the world is inconveniently complex, that area is always considerable and will always exist for us no matter how much we develop. What does this mean? It means we need help. We can't do it ourselves. Phil was fortunate to have friends like Mitch and Ed. They gave him strength and guidance when he needed it. We may or may not have such people in our lives, and this is the reason I've developed the Eye of Power. It's a model that helps us see what otherwise might remain hidden within ourselves. Using it reveals our knobs.
We have no power in the areas of which we remain ignorant.
The other component is we need other people. That's the reason we work together, using the model to help ourselves as we also help one another. It's a beautiful thing supporting the growth and health of other people. It's the feeling that drives me into my life. My hope is the same as true for you. I titled this episode U2.2. Aside from it sounding good to my ear, it implies that you've already reinvented yourself in some way, fashion, or form.
Today, we're not looking at starting from scratch with some total redo like Phil in City Slickers, a U3.0. We just want to make some slight but important adjustments in a handful of pretentious ways. Let me ask you, what does your U2.2 look like? What would you change if you could? When will the time be right to muster the courage, make the resolution, and take the steps to mastery so that you maximize your agency and your power over yourself? Let's go.