ARE YOU MUDDLED[146] OR PERFECT?

I remember reading an intricate[147] story in Gregory Bateson's book 5teps to an Ecology of Mind. It was a transcript of a conversation he'd had with his daughter years ago, and I'll paraphrase it for you here. One day she approached him and asked an interesting question: " Daddy, how come things get muddled so easily? "

He asked her, " What do you mean by 'muddled, ' honey? "

She said, " You know. Daddy. When things aren't perfect. Look at my desk right now. Stuff is all over the place. It's muddled. And just last night I worked so hard to make it perfect. But things don't stay perfect. They get muddled so easily! "

Bateson asked his daughter, " Show me what it's like when things are perfect." She responded by moving everything on her shelf into individually assigned positions and said, " There, Daddy, now it's perfect. But it won't stay that way."

Bateson asked her, " What if I move your paint box over here twelve inches? Then what happens? "

She said, " No, Daddy, now it's muddled. Anyway, it would have to be straight, not all crooked the way you put it down."

Then he asked her, " What if I moved your pencil from this spot to the next one? "

" Now you're making it muddled again, " she responded.

" What if this book were left partially open? " he continued.

" That's muddled, too! " she replied.

Bateson turned to his daughter and said, " Honey, it's not that things get muddled so easily. It's that you have more ways for things to get muddled. You have only one way for things to be perfect."

Most of us have created numerous ways to feel bad, and only a few ways to truly feel good. I never fail to be amazed at the overwhelming number of people whose rules wire them for pain. It's as if they have a vast and intricate network of neural pathways leading to the very states they're trying to avoid, and yet they have only a handful of neural pathways that they've connected to pleasure.

A classic example of this is a man who attended one of my Date With Destiny seminars. He was a well-known Fortune 500 executive, beloved by his community for his contributions, a father of five who was very close to his children and wife, and a man who was physically fit—a marathon runner. I asked him, " Are you successful? " To the astonishment of all present, he quite seriously answered, " No." I asked him, " What has to happen in order for you to feel successful? " (Remember, this is the key question you'll always ask to discover your rules or anyone else's.)

What followed was a litany of rigid rules and requirements that he felt he must meet in order to be successful in his life. He had to earn $3 million a year in salary (he was currently earning only $1.5 million in straight salary, but an additional $2 million in bonuses—this didn't count, though), he had to have 8 percent body fat (he was at 9 percent), and he had to never get frustrated with his kids (remember that he had five of them, all going in different directions in life). What do you think are this man's chances of feeling successful, when he has to meet all of these intense and arguably unreasonable criteria simultaneously? Will he ever feel successful?

By contrast, there was another gentleman who we had all noticed was practically bouncing off the walls because he had so much energy. He seemed to be enjoying the seminar and life to the utmost. I turned to him and asked the same question: " Are you successful? " He beamed back at me and said, " Absolutely! " So I asked him, " What has to happen in order for you to feel successful? " With a huge grin he explained, " It's so easy. All I have to do is get up, look down, and see that I am above ground! "

The crowd roared. He continued, " Every day above ground is a great day! " This rule has become a favorite of the Date With Destiny staff, and now at every program we display it to remind each of us how successful we are the moment we pull back the covers each morning.

Like the CEO who wasn't meeting his own rules, you could be winning and feel like you're losing because the scorecard you're using is unfair. Not only is it unfair to you, it's also unfair to your spouse and children, the people you work with every day, and all the others whose lives you touch. If you've set up a system of rules that causes you to feel frustrated, angry, hurt, or unsuccessful—or you have no clear rules for knowing when you're happy, successful, and so on—those emotions affect the way you treat the people around you as well as how they feel when they're near you. Also, whether you are aware of it or not, often you are judging other people through a set of rules that you may never have expressed—but we all expect others to comply with our rules, don't we? If you're being hard on yourself, you're likely to be hard on others as well.

Why would anyone impose such strict regulations on themselves and the people they love most? A lot of it has to do with cultural conditioning. Many of us are afraid that if we don't have very intense rules, then we won't be driven to succeed, we won't be motivated to work hard and achieve. The truth is that you don't have to have ridiculously difficult rules to keep your drive! If a person makes their rules too intense, too painful, pretty soon they'll begin to realize that no matter what they do, they can't win, and they begin to experience learned helplessness. We certainly want to use the power of goals, the allure of a compelling future, to pull ourselves forward, but we must make sure that at the bottom of it all we have rules to allow us to be happy anytime we want.

DO YOUR RULES EMPOWER OR DISEMPOWER YOU?

We want to develop rules that move us to take action, that cause us to feel joy, that cause us to follow through—not rules that stop us short. I've found that there are an amazing number of men and women who set up rules for relationships that make it absolutely impossible for them to succeed in this area of their lives. For example, some people's rule for love is, " If you love me, then you'll do whatever I want you to do." Or " If you love me, then I can whine and complain and nag, and you should just accept it." Are these appropriate rules? Hardly! They'd be unfair to anyone you were sharing a relationship with.

One woman who attended Date With Destiny told me that she really wanted to have a close relationship with a man, but just hadn't seemed able to maintain a relationship with one past the initial " thrill of the chase" phase. As I began to ask her, " What has to happen for you to be attracted to a man? " her rules helped us both instantly understand what her challenge was. For her to feel attracted to a man, he had to pursue her constantly, even though she continued to reject him. If he kept working hard, trying to break down the barrier, that made her feel incredibly attracted to him; to her this meant he was a very powerful man. But what's interesting was her second rule. If he kept on for more than a month, she lost her respect and therefore her attraction to him. So guess what normally would happen? A few men would take her rejection and keep on pursuing her, but of course most would give up after a short period of time. Thus she would never have a relationship with them. Then,

the few who persisted would secretly have her favor for a while, but after an arbitrary period of about a month, she'd completely lose interest. She found herself unable to stay attracted to any man for more than a month because no man was able to anticipate her complex timetable.

What rules do you have that are equally unwinnable? For some people, in order to feel like they're in control in any context, they have to know what's going to happen in advance of its occurrence. For others, in order to feel like they're confident in some area, they have to have experience in doing it. If this were my rule for confidence, I couldn't accomplish most of what I've done in my life! Most of my success has come from my ability to get myself to feel certain I could achieve something, even though I had no references for it. My rule for confidence is, " If I decide to be confident, then I'll feel that way toward anything, and my confidence will help me succeed."

Competence is another interesting rule. Some people's rule for competence is, " If I've done something perfectly over a period of years, then I'm competent." Other people's rule is, " If I've done it effectively once, then I'm competent." And for others, competence is, " If I've done anything like it, then I know I can master this as well, and therefore I'm competent." Do you see the impact these kinds of rules would have on your confidence, your happiness, your sense of control, the quality of your actions, and your life?