Embracing the Tension

Hundreds of years ago, long before the Google mapping of the planet that we have access to at the tap of a finger, the spirit of exploration was strong within mankind driven by a desire to see what else was out there to discover.

Ancient cartographers played a significant role, documenting lands as they sailed forth with adventurers and recorded continents and topography as best they could in a multitude of mediums like stone, metal and parchment. They created a vital resource to those individuals that still looked towards distant horizons with a sense of wonder and a need to look upon previously undiscovered territories, while possibly finding treasures yet to be unearthed.

As these map makers of old did their best to depict an accurate representation of a world slowly being uncovered, there were areas that they only had a vague idea about, guessing at the lay of the lands and what may exist there undisturbed. Many times, there were wide swaths of land or sea that remained a mystery, but still needed to be documented, and so to mark these spaces they sometimes drew animals, both mundane and/or fantastical, and in a couple of instances they wrote the words:

Hic Sunt Dragones

Which translated to “Here Are Dragons,” or as you may have heard it translated before, “Here There Be Dragons”. One of the earliest documentations of this warning occurs on what is known as the Hunt-Lenox Globe, an illustration of which is at the top of this very memo. This globe is thought to have been created in the very early 1500s, and the phrase appears in a place that would have been the east coast of what we know as Asia. In other such geographic charts, such as the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (considered to be the first known atlas of the earth), instead of the actual words there are merely illustrations of mythological creatures in the unexplored sections of the then known world.

According to Thomas Sander, editor of the journal of the Washington Map Society, these words and associated drawings simply meant to imply, “there’s bad stuff out there.”

Isn’t it fascinating that those map makers from long ago would exhibit the tendency to peg the unknown corners of the world as places to fear, as areas where bad things happen? Their warnings, in drawings and words, belied an innate characteristic that many people still carry with them to this very day: xenophobia, the fear of the unknown.

Most human beings feel much more at ease in situations that are familiar, that they have experience with, and that stick to rules that are well defined and understood. The minute you remove all of these factors, when situations, people and places become simply a dark or completely undefined space, our safety blanket is removed and our steps become tentative, or we simply refuse to move in that direction in the first place.

I am certain that a good portion of navigators, when utilizing the maps of the day starting back around the 1500s, took one look at the topography, land masses and legends and made sure their course gave a wide berth away from those sections described as infested with dragons. Why take a chance of being swallowed whole by such unpleasantness? Even if the route suddenly became much longer, or even more arduous, at least there might be some sense of past experience…an awareness of the perils you already know, rather than the dangers you have never seen before. How do you prepare for something you have no past knowledge of?

Now, just as then, the average person tends to more readily embrace well-worn paths, preferring a future that doesn’t vary too greatly from the past…it might not be particularly adventurous or exhilarating, but it seems safe. We opt most often for the dragon-free routes.

This really becomes an issue only when you consider that there wasn’t really any fire breathing, lightning spitting dragons swimming, crawling or flying around these undiscovered areas. The words and drawings were simply an admission of our penchant for assuming that bad things happen when you sail into unrecognized waters.

Why is that? 

Why do we still resemble those map makers hundreds of years ago?

Prolific Neuropsychologist, Dr. Rick Hanson, once made the statement that our brain “is like Velcro to negative experiences, and Teflon to positive ones.” What he is articulating in easily digestible terms is our human propensity towards what is known as a negative bias, and it’s no small reason why we fear the unknown, and why our minds tend to place dragons in unfamiliar futures.

Essentially, a negative bias means that even when of equal intensity, things of a more negative nature (unpleasant thoughts, emotions, social interactions or harmful/traumatic events) have a greater effect on our psychological state and processes than neutral or positive things. In other words, something very positive will generally have less of an impact on a person’s behavior and cognition than something equally emotional but negative.

Indulge me for a moment and let’s look slightly deeper into this mental predisposition, it has three main elements or components, perhaps you might even identify with one of more them as you think about how you process things in your own mind.

1.)  Negative Potency

A study done at the University of Ohio that demonstrated the negative potency aspect of negative bias showed people pictures meant to cause positive feelings (A Ferrari, a pizza, etc.), those meant to stir up negative feelings (A mutilated face, a dead kitten, etc.) and those known to produce neutral feelings (A plate, a hair dryer, etc.), and then recorded the electrical activity of the brains cerebral cortex.

They found that brains always acted more strongly, showing a much greater surge of electrical activity that also lasted much longer, when shown the negative photos.

Negative potency says that while items, and or events, might be of equal magnitude emotionally (positive or negative), they do not strike us as equally salient. In other words, negative thoughts, sights, and circumstances tend to hit us harder and resound longer in our brains than happier, more positive ones. 

From a practical standpoint, someone could sit in a single employee appraisal meeting and hear both positive and negative things about their performance and walk away holding on to the negative portion much deeper and longer than the comments made that were complimentary.

2.)  Negativity Dominance

This is the tendency for our heads to take the combination of all the good and bad things that can happen throughout our lives, whether measured in days, weeks, months or years, and internally skew our perspective or interpretation of the sum total towards the negative overall.

Our minds simply view things, generally speaking, through a more negative filter when we average out our total life experiences. 

Scientists have theorized that this negativity dominance stems way back to a more primitive time when a lack of scientific understanding of the world around us caused our brains to stimulate a “fear first” reaction to keep us alive. In other words, we learned to be skeptical/negative as a means to keep ourselves alert and cautious so we didn’t end up hurting ourselves, becoming another animal’s meal, or participating in activities that could end in devastation to ourselves or those around us in our tribe.

The main point here is, it’s easy, and apparently natural, for us to view things and situations around us or ahead of us negatively, which means staying positive on a consistent basis takes hard work.

3.)  Negative Differentiation

The scientific description of this component says that the conceptualization of negativity is more elaborate and complex than that of positivity.

Research indicated that negative terms, descriptions and words are more plentiful, varied, and richer in definition in our language, than those for positive thoughts and concepts. Therefore, negative events require greater mobilization of cognitive resources to deal with them…we have to strain and stress a lot harder to deal with, describe, or release negative emotions and thoughts, and so they impact our lives much more deeply.

When we are in a foul mood, when circumstances have negatively affected us, we have a habit of being able to vent out those thoughts in a much more expressive, forceful, dynamic way with our words and expressions, than we do when we are feeling hopeful, positive and happy. In other words, we can feel happy inside and not gush, but we have a hard time holding negative feelings or thoughts in!

So, other than perhaps being an interesting study on mankind’s mental proclivities, what might this have to do with you and I, and how we go about our everyday lives?

Great question!

Consider this section of Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning:

“Thus, it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already accomplished and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

Frankl, a revered psychoanalyst, created the practice of what he termed Logotherapy, which stood in contrast to other contemporaries in his field. Where Freud spoke of the “Will to Pleasure” being the central driving force in man’s life, and Adler spoke of the “Will to Power” being the prime mover for human beings, Frankl, within Logotherapy, espoused that, at man’s core, what truly motivates him is a “Will to Purpose”.

In this particular passage, Frankl speaks of experiencing a sense of wholeness, and overall well-being, through embracing the tension that occurs between two constant moments occurring within each and every one of our lives:

1.)  What you have already been able to become or accomplish.

2.)  The further future striving for what you can still be or do.

Pursuing and tapping into true purpose in life, the kind that fills us with passion, direction and power, according to Frankl, is found in embracing the tension between appreciating where you are right now and the push to keep striving to become even more who were meant to be, and fulfilling even more of what you are capable of. We NEED to keep looking towards new future horizons, new challenges, undiscovered areas to conquer and untapped potential to realize.

The challenge is twofold, as I see it, and perhaps you have struggled in one or both of these points.

First you have to assess, accept and appreciate where you are right now in life.

Sometimes it’s tough to give yourself an honest appraisal…to be truthful with yourself, accepting where you are right now, this very moment in your life. In order to do that you have to see your own shortcomings, the places of growth that still exist, but also genuinely appreciate all that you have come through and the traits you have already grown in. You have to look back at what you have overcome, and don’t get caught up in unrealistic ideas of perfection, while also not letting vanity, or ego, go to your head with an overblown sense of self-importance or mislead arrogance. This balance is where a healthy view of your own self-worth/value comes from.

All too many times we can easily fall into two extremes when it comes to assessing where we are as people of inherent worth.

There are those that beat themselves up relentlessly feeling like no matter what they do, no matter how hard they work, they can’t ever really become a paragon of excellence in the ways that seem to matter the most to them. They go through employee appraisals looking at the floor, figuratively and sometimes literally, preparing to hear a liturgy of all the things they got wrong read to them, which would only confirm that the idea of faultlessness is somehow attainable, and yet all at once completely out of reach from their grasp. When standing next to their mentally conceived complete ideal, they only see where they still lack, not all they have attained, and places they have improved…which is, of course, the very deadly danger of thinking that anyone can ever really be perfect.

Then there are those who don’t fear the comparison to a perfect ideal because they already see themselves through the lens of having brushed up against it anyway. These folks can’t receive any kind of constructive direction in areas to keep pushing forward in because in their mind, there is no longer any new worlds to explore…they have all they need, they are as good as the best in the field, so what is the point? They walk into employee appraisal meetings having marked five stars across every goal, every metric, with no room left to learn and take offense to any suggestion to the contrary.

Neither of these extremes is the place to start embracing the tension of where you are currently and where there is still left to go, with regards to the critical pursuit of purpose. The first one already puts you in an unrealistic deficit with no way to ever catch up, and the other places you impossibly too far ahead, with a self-blinded eye towards what still needs work in your life.  The tension to keep striving, to be and do more, from either vantage point is unbearable, frustrating and counterproductive to actually finding a true “Will to Purpose”.

If you find yourself in-between these two excesses, with a genuinely healthy view of yourself, then congratulations, you are ready for the next challenge to embracing the tension that leads to purpose and fulfillment.

On the other hand, if you identify too much with either of these polar extremes, I implore you, for your own mental and emotional well-being, for the sake of all that you CAN be and do, you must let go of the idea of perfection…both feeling the need to try to BECOME it, and the narcissism that tells you already ARE it. You can’t do yourself, or anyone else, any good keeping your growth stunted in those dead-end places.

Learn to honestly assess, accept and appreciate where you are right now.

Secondly, you must learn to slay the dragons in your future.

Okay, you have come to grips with where you are, now you face where it is you still need to go. You’re looking at the great unknowns, the places you’ve yet to visit, the changes you have still to make, and the tension gets ratcheted up.

The future is routinely taking us into uncharted waters, challenging us with unrecognized paths that look fraught with dangers, stresses and pressures. In our minds, with our negativity bias working in us, it can appear as though there are dragons waiting to devour our peace of mind no matter which road we take forward. We can’t pin the future down because we have never been there before, and if we are not careful, we can fill in the voids with fearful thoughts and frustrating obstacles.

And yet, here is Frankl telling us that we NEED this tension to be whole, to find purpose. We NEED to face the struggles of dodging dragons and mastering monsters to keep exploring our pursuit of purpose.

What do our typical dragons look like in our unfamiliar futures?

·     Risk aversion

·     Questions of capabilities

·     Feelings of inferiority

·     Memories of past mistakes

·     Fallout from incorrect decisions

·     Dangers to security

·     Fears of potential pain, stress of frustration

·     Worries about workloads

·     Concerns about accountability

·     Weariness from past struggles

You know your own list of personal dragons better than anyone, you could likely fill in several more blanks that I didn’t even think of.

The dragons are all of those events, situations, circumstances and unknown possibilities that keep us up at night, restrain us from diving into unfamiliar waters, and keep us confused, stressed and consternated. They all count on the manipulation of our natural negative bias to keep us rooted to where we are, afraid to keep pushing ourselves into further foreign territories of life, where more growth through experience really happens.

These are the dragons…the “bad stuff” we anticipate will be waiting for us.

In order to embrace the tension between appreciating where we are, and that drive that keeps pushing us to where we can be, these scaly scoundrels are going to have to be slain…and that can be no small task, to be sure.

As much as I wish there was a simple 3 step process that universally applies to everyone when it comes to taking down those negative, fear induced thoughts that stand in the way of continuing the sometimes difficult process of becoming all we were meant to be…it’s just not, quite that easy.

What I can tell you about is a solid way to start the personal process that each of us can dedicate ourselves to.

Psychologists speak of a 5:1 ratio being necessary to combat our own inclination towards a negative bias. What I mean by that is, knowing that negative thoughts and feelings have more psychological and even physiological deep seeded effects on us, it is not enough to say that you will try to balance the scales by aiming for a 50-50 split of positive to negative thoughts and actions in your life. You are actually going to have to work harder than that to take down the monsters standing in your way.

It takes 5 positive thoughts or actions to push away 1 negative one, according to researchers in the field of psychology.

One such study on the subject stated:

“It is the frequency of small positive acts that matters most, in a ratio of five to one. Occasional big positive experiences are nice. But they don’t make the necessary impact on our brain to override the tilt to negativity. It takes frequent small positive experiences to tip the scales toward happiness.”

As you can see, can see our work is cut out for us.

In order to maintain an equilibrium in life, wellness, wholeness…if we are going to embrace the tension and accept the challenge that pursuing purpose offers us…it means that for every negative thought, for every fear or frustration, stress or stumbling block, we NEED to counter by proactively engaging in FIVE purposefully, positive thoughts, actions and experiences.

Think of it in this easy to remember way, YOU NEED “FIVE TO THRIVE”.

In order to keep growing, to appreciate all that you are and have already done, and slay the dragons that keep you from pushing forward to all that you have yet to become and do…in order to keep on the path of pursuing meaning and purpose in your life…you need to join the FIVE TO THRIVE campaign.

You have to adopt an attitude, and the accompanying behaviors, that keep you working towards purposefully and proactively looking for, internalizing and expressing at least 5 positive things that occur in your life EVERY SINGLE DAY. They don’t have to be earth shattering, wholly life altering moments to start armoring you up and preparing you for battle with your dragons…just a steady stream of small, consistent, inherently GOOD, undeniably POSITIVE occurrences. 

May I also suggest, some of these 5 things that can help us thrive, help us beat back the monsters of negativity daily, can be positive things that don’t just happen TO us, but instead are positive things offered FROM us to others who are fighting their own battles and mindsets. In other words, how can you make sure that one of the ways you are mentally working on staying positive, fearless and passionate, is by making someone else receive a gift of words or actions of life from you? 

What if, at the end of every day, before you left work, you wrote down something, ANYTHING,  good that happened, no matter how small, in a journal, or typed it into a note on your phone, or notated it on your calendar, or simply kept an old fashioned list? If you created a habit to think back through your entire day and really find every instance of affirmation (both given and received), every situation that turned to the good, every time things worked out, or someone simply smiled because of something you said or did…how might that remind you that you are engaged in a life well lived, and bolster your confidence that you can keep walking your path no matter where it takes you?

What if you filled your mind with inspirational, encouraging voices by reading daily quotes, finding a motivational author, listening to an uplifting podcast, or watching a video that makes you desire to reach deeper and push farther?

What if you kept people around you focused on what you see in them, what they are capable of becoming and telling them not only that you believe in them…but WHY you believe in them?

How might that all collectively change your outlook, and redraw your own personal map, erasing the scary beasts and filling in the areas that our minds imagine as ominous? Where could you then go without fear? What new trails could you blaze, what new territories could you discover personally…who could you be, if you were able to live assessing, accepting and appreciating all you have already come through and then slayed the dragons that are keeping you from continually revealing and living your true purpose, your best self?

Perhaps it is time even today to embrace the tension between those things, look for your “Five to Thrive” every single day, and create the map to your new and brighter future in all aspects of life.

It’s worth exploring the possibility, I promise you.