Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World (14 page)

To do any or all of that, you need to consciously acknowledge that you want more because you cannot change what you do not acknowledge. The first step is getting to know yourself on an intimate level; I mean really, honestly come to know your strengths, weaknesses, and proclivities. Empowerment starts with you. Remember, what you are trying the hardest to hide is exactly what you broadcast about yourself the most. If, for example, you secretly feel superficial, ashamed, insecure, or pride-driven, those self-beliefs will “bleed” through, and sometimes the harder you try to hide them, the more obvious they become. There is wisdom in the words of Shakespeare, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” But imagine the possibilities if you would just try as hard to
change
as you do to
hide
.

The question is: Do you know your own guilt, shame, fears, doubts, rage triggers, false personas, and insecurities? It is one thing to try to hide things from others, but if you hide the conscious truth from yourself, if you’re in denial, you’re just sabotaging yourself, because those traits and characteristics you most want to hide and deny will pop up or as I said, bleed through, at the most inopportune times. When the pressure is on, when you need to be at your best, is precisely when denied realities come to bear.

I want you to list the ten things that you would most dread for someone to find out about you. This is for your eyes only, so you can be totally candid. These are the ten things that you’d be most ashamed of and hate the most if someone were to find them out. And if someone were to find them out, they might gain incredible leverage over you. You might think of things that make up a shameful past or a painful present. Maybe you’re a volunteer for a pro-life organization, but you’re ashamed of the fact that you had an abortion many years ago. Or perhaps you’re currently hiding debilitating anxieties from your friends and colleagues. Hiding a bankruptcy, a family member who is in prison, or a nervous breakdown are all examples of things that, if found out, BAITERs could use to their advantage and your demise. But if you know these things about yourself, then you can’t be shocked and surprised if they’re brought to light, because you’ve already come to grips with them.

The upside is this: If you have the guts and willingness to get totally real with yourself about yourself, you will have a huge advantage over everybody still stuck playing head games with themselves. More importantly, you can’t be ambushed. You’ve dealt with the issue already. Your ultimate goal is to accept yourself, flaws, fallacies, and all, and then forgive your failures and start fresh. That’s what this list gives you the power to do. Don’t you feel better having acknowledged these things, having gotten them out and said them, even if only to yourself? Think about it: Even if you have a serious illness like cancer, aren’t you better off once you know—I mean really know—the diagnosis, prognosis, and challenges of treatment? Don’t you feel better once you’ve accepted the truth and all it entails?

The same is true about who you are and are not. If you have a hole in your boat and you’re pretending like you don’t, you’re still going to sink. So now you’ve gotten real with yourself about yourself. No social mask, no spin, no defensiveness—just straight-up truth. The truth is a powerful thing; it really will set you free from emotionally distorted fantasies that paralyze you and make you so easy to exploit

Now that you’ve been honest about who you are, you’ve discovered what you’re capable of, and you more clearly see where you’re vulnerable. You might not be able to change all of those realities, but if you acknowledge them, you won’t panic when they come into play. I believe that half the solution to any problem lies in defining it first and then getting all of your resources on the table so you know what you’re working with. Now that your resources are on the table, you can understand whether or not you’re dialed into the real world.

Maybe you were nodding your head as you read the previous chapters and recognized someone you know, some BAITER who’s been in your life or in the life of someone you love. But have you been nodding your head as you’ve been reading
this
chapter? Are you brave enough to look in the mirror and truly see yourself as someone who is vulnerable to self-sabotage? That is the heart of the challenge here because, as I said, it is not only the BAITERs who can get in your way; you can get in your own way.

The hardest part of really getting to know yourself is facing your fears, the ones that keep you awake at night, tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling as the anxiety grips you and brings you to a cold sweat. Anxiety is one of the biggest obstacles to success in anyone’s life. If you so much as admit to yourself that you want more than you currently have, you can experience a tremendous amount of anxiety. Why? Because once you’ve admitted that what you have now is not what you want, how can you ever be satisfied staying where you are? Just admitting it to yourself puts pressure on you to try for something more. And in almost every situation, for you to have more, for you to have a greater degree of success, the world and, more specifically, the people in it have to accept and value what you have to offer. And when you put yourself out there, you’re risking something. If you’re like most people, your number-one fear is rejection, and your number-one need is acceptance.

Think about asking the one you love to take your relationship to the next level. Marriage? Exclusivity? Living together? This is anxiety-producing because your special someone might look at you and say, “Gee, I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to say no.” Ouch! After admitting you wanted more, after putting yourself out there and asking to be accepted and validated, you are told that you are just not enough, and the sting of rejection and failure can last a long, long time.

Because you know that is a possible outcome, you can be paralyzed by anxiety and fear of rejection. You can be stuck in a very uncomfortable “comfort zone.” And what do we all do when we are faced with potential rejection or failure? We begin to play the “what if?” game.

You’ve done it a million times—you know you have.

I could go on and on, because there are an infinite number of examples. I’m not so grandiose as to think that I can get you to stop playing the “what if?” game. But it is this mind-set that probably constitutes the single biggest obstacle to your making a significant change. It’s probably part of our “emotional DNA.” What I can do instead is teach you
how
to play the “what if?” game so you don’t wind up paralyzed in your life.

Think of it as a schematic. If A happens, it leads to B. If B happens, it leads to C. If C happens, then D, and so on. But here’s the trick: If you’re going to play the “what if?” game, then you have to play it all the way to the end. Answer every question until you reach the absolute bottom line. Let’s say it takes you from A all the way to E. So what you really have to decide from the outset is whether you can deal with E. I’ll apply this schematic to an example. A few years back, I had a delightful woman on my show who was a classically trained pianist. She had experienced a debilitating panic attack during a performance and, as a result, had been unable to sit down and play the piano for years. Here is a paraphrase of our dialogue as I recall it:

My point to her was pretty simple. Monsters live in the dark. When you turn on the bright lights, what you fear is not nearly as horrible as you made it out to be in the dark, anxiety-riddled fantasy of your mind. If the worst that can happen is that you’re right back where you were before you started, you really haven’t lost any ground. And maybe you can do an autopsy on why things didn’t work, which will prepare you to make a better run at your goal the next time. And of course, you at least have a chance of overcoming the problem and being free of it. There’s not much downside, but a huge upside. That is a risk-to-reward ratio that works every time. So if you play the “what if?” game, play it all the way to the end. And when you do, I’m going to bet that once you identify the
real
threat, the real downside, you will decide, “Hey, I can handle that; I’m sure not getting any better sitting on the sidelines.” I will confess that although I am in the public eye daily, I am not one of those people who has a need to be loved by strangers. So, if you can adopt the same attitude, the prospect of embarrassing yourself in public won’t loom quite so large. Works for me,
every day!

(By the way, for the first time in years, she played and played just fine. There was a little hiccup in the second verse, but nobody knew it but her. She was absolutely inspiring!)

Okay, you’ve committed to acknowledging what your personal obstacles are and identifying your strengths so you build on them, and you have now figured out how to play the “what if?” game to its conclusion. You’ve learned that facing your fears will probably leave you no worse off than you are already—and maybe even a lot better off. So where do you go from here?

Winners deal with the truth, with reality, and they do not “blow smoke” at themselves. If you truly get real with yourself at every level, then you should have very realistic expectations about what is going to happen as you undertake a challenge. This is critical, because it is not what happens in life that upsets people; it is the violation of their expectations for what is going to happen that upsets them. This is a critical awareness, because while you may not be able to control everything that happens, you can certainly control what expectations you allow yourself to have. If you are completely honest with yourself, then your expectations will not be violated.

We see this all the time in marriages. Merging two lives is a big, big challenge. You have to learn to share lives, routines, money, possessions, and space. No marriage is trouble-free. There are going to be ups and downs, sacrifices to be made, and frustrations that can be very unsettling. If you go into that marriage expecting love notes and flowers every single day when, in fact, your new hubby is a bit of a caveman who communicates with grunts and gestures, you are going to be disappointed. Similarly, if he expects you to meet him at the back door at the end of every day naked with a martini, I’m
guessing
he is going to be sadly disappointed…maybe not, but I’m guessing! If, on the other hand, you both understand that there will be challenges and that that is just the natural, normal progression of combining two lives, then you will each be thinking that things are going pretty much the way they should be. A couple with the first expectancy set might be looking for a good divorce attorney, while a couple with the second, more realistic expectancy might be looking forward to a long and healthy marriage.