How to Grow the Fuck Up: A Guide to Humans
An adult will be honest for the simple sake that honesty is more important than pleasure or pain. Honesty is more important than getting what you want or achieving a goal.1!
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A young child who is abused also does not develop beyond their pain/pleasure-driven values because their punishment follows no logical pattern and doesnât reinforce deeper, more thoughtful values. Itâs just random and cruel. Stealing ice cream sometimes results in harsh pain. Other times it results in nothing. Therefore, no lesson is learned. No higher values are produced. And the child never learns to control her own behavior. This is why children who are abused and children who are neglected often end up with the same problems as adults: they remain stuck in their childhood value system.1!
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Some people are incredibly good at playing the bargaining game. They are charming and charismatic. They are naturally able to sense what other people want of them and they are adept at filling that role. Put bluntly: theyâre too good at manipulating people to get what they want. And because their manipulation rarely fails them in any meaningful way, they come to believe that this is simply how the whole world operates. Everyone is like this. Everyone is manipulative and controlling. Love is bullshit. Trust is a sign of weakness.1!
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On top of that, these high-level, adult values are the definition of what we consider to be noble and virtuous. Itâs the CEO who takes the blame for an employeeâs fuck up. Itâs the teacher who sacrifices her vacation days to help tutor a struggling student. Itâs a friend who risks the friendship by telling you that your partying has gotten out of control.1!
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Thereâs a difference between telling someone youâre interested in them because thatâs what you think they want to hear, and simply telling someone youâre interested in them because youâre freely expressing yourself. The latter is honesty, the former is manipulation. And the line between the two is blurry for a lot of people.81!
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Any time you sit down with a therapist or coach or friend, this is the process that is happening. You are describing your actions and your interpretation of those actions. With the guided assistance of the therapist/coach/friend person, you then sit there and pick apart whether or not your interpretations of your actions actually make sense. Or are you just deluding yourself? Do your actions reflect what you think is important? If not, where is the disconnect?1!
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Adulthood occurs when one realizes that itâs better to love and lose than to never love at all.1!
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