Six Rules for Presidents

In recognition of our new president, I will take a short break from the book notes.

In 1993, Peter Drucker wrote an interesting article titled, “Six Rules for Presidents.” Not only is it fun to hear predictions, I think most of the six rules apply to each of our lives.

In four or eight years we will know if President Trump (or Professor Drucker) got anything wrong. Here is the article in its entirety:

It's hard to imagine a more diverse group than Bill Clinton's predecessors in the American presidency – in abilities, personalities, values, styles, and achievements. But even the weakest of them had considerable effectiveness as long as they observed six management rules. And even the most powerful lost effectiveness as soon as they violated these rules.

What needs to be done? is the first thing the president must ask. He must not stubbornly do what he wants to do, even if it was the focus of his campaign.

Harry Truman came to the presidency in April 1945 convinced – as were most Americans – that with the end of the war in sight, the country could and should focus again on domestic problems. He was passionately committed to reviving the New Deal. What made him an effective president was his accepting within a few weeks that international affairs, especially the containment of Stalin's worldwide aggression, had to be given priority whether he liked it or not (and he didn't). There seems to be a law of American politics that the world always changes between Election Day and Inauguration Day. To refuse to accept this – as Jimmy Carter tried to do – is not to be “principled.” It is to deny reality and condemn oneself to being ineffectual.

Concentrate, don't splinter yourself is the second rule. There usually are a half a dozen right answers to “What needs to be done?” Yet unless a president makes the risky and controversial choice of only one, he will achieve nothing.

Franklin Roosevelt snubbed the outside world during his first five years in office, despite the rise of Hitler in Europe and the Japanese invasion of China. By early 1938 we were still in deepest Depression, and the country was highly isolationist in mood. But practically overnight, FDR switched his priority to international affairs, all but neglecting domestic issues. Lyndon Johnson, thirty years later, tried to fight the war in Vietnam and the War on Poverty simultaneously. We lost both.

The president's top priority has to be something that truly needs to be done. If it is not highly controversial, it is likely to be the wrong priority. It has to be doable – and doable fairly fast – which means that it has to be a limited objective. But it also has to be important enough to make a difference if done successfully.

Ronald Reagan applied these guidelines when he decided in 1981 to make stopping inflation his first priority and to do so by raising interest rates sky-high. Any second-year economics student could have told Mr. Reagan that this would cause a massive recession – and indeed unemployment jumped within a few months from an already high 7 ½ percent to 10 percent, a rate not seen since the Depression. Yet stopping inflation was surely something that needed to be done. It was quickly doable, and it did make a difference.

Mr. Reagan's action laid the foundation for the subsequent expansion in employment – the greatest in U.S. history. And it earned Mr. Reagan the public's trust, which he enjoyed to the end of his tenure. Mr. Clinton might have gained similar success if he had made insuring the 37 million Americans who lack health coverage his first priority. Instead he shrank from the likely political battle, miring this limited (and doable) objective in the morass of comprehensive health-care reform.

Don't ever bet on a sure thing is rule three. It always misfires. If any president since George Washington ever had a popular mandate it was FDR at his second inauguration in 1937 – reelected with the largest majority in U.S. history and in full control of Congress.

President Roosevelt had every reason to believe that his plan to “pack” the Supreme Court and thereby to remove the last obstacle to the New Deal reforms would be a sure thing. He never even tested the plan before announcing it. It immediately blew up in his face – so much so that he never regained control of Congress. Mr. Clinton too must have thought that removing the ban on gays in the military would be a sure thing – he too never tested the proposal before announcing it. It immediately led to the sharpest drop in public opinion ratings ever suffered by a new president.

Packing the Supreme Court was not perceived by the American public as a way to promote the highly popular New Deal but as a subversion of the Founders' America. President Clinton's proposal was perceived to have far less to do with gay rights than with the combat readiness of the armed forces. Such differences in perception are always “obvious” in retrospect, but only in retrospect. An effective president knows, therefore, that there is no risk-free politics.

An effective president does not micromanage is rule four. The tasks that a U.S. President must do himself are already well beyond what any but the best-organized and most energetic person can possibly accomplish. Whatever the president does not have to do he therefore must not do.

Presidents are much too far away from the scene of action, much too dependent on what other people tell them or choose not to tell them, and much too busy to study the fine print to micromanage successfully – and in carrying out the work of government, “God is in the details.” As Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter have proved, there is no quicker way for a president to discredit himself than to be his own chief operation officer.

Yet in the American system the president, and no one else, is ultimately accountable for the government's performance. An effective president has to say no to the temptation to micromanage but make sure operations are being taken care of. A president needs a small team of highly disciplined people, each with clear operating responsibility for one area.

The model might be FDR's cabinet. Nine of its ten members (all but the secretary of state) were what we now would call technocrats – competent specialists in one area. “I make the decision,” Roosevelt said, “and then turn the job over to a cabinet member and leave him or her alone.” That the operating team delivered an exceptional performance – not one financial scandal, for instance, despite unprecedented governmental spending – explains in large measure Roosevelt's own unprecedented hold on power and office.

Later presidents tried to get the same effectiveness by having one chief of staff, a chief operating officer. It has never worked. But the alternative, the one Mr. Clinton has chosen – to have dozens and dozens of deputy secretaries, undersecretaries, assistant secretaries, special assistants and so on – only converts government into a perpetual mass meeting.

A president has no friends in the administration was Lincoln's maxim and rule five. Any president who has disregarded it has lived to regret it.

No one can trust “friends of the president.” Whom do they work for? Whom do they speak for? To whom do they really report? At best, they are suspected of running around their official superiors and to the Great Friend; at worst, they are known as the president's spies. Above all, they are always tempted to abuse their position as a friend and the power that goes with it. If they do so by taking a bribe or otherwise enriching themselves or their families, the resulting “financial scandal” makes the headlines. Nonfinancial abuses (e.g., obtaining special treatment for this or that interest group) are usually hushed up. Yet such abuses can do even more damage than the financial misdeeds to the president's effectiveness, his policies, his reputation.

Presidents are human beings, and their job is a lonely one. Being politicians, they tend to be gregarious people who crave company, companionship, sympathy. This explains both why presidents are so prone to bring friends into their administrations and why they are usually extremely reluctant to get rid of a friend who has proved incompetent or betrayed their trust. But effective presidents should emulate the most gregarious man to ever occupy the White House: Teddy Roosevelt. Even as president he led a hectic social life, but not one of his half-dozen “intimates” worked in his administration.

Many presidents' wives, the prime example being Bess Truman, were their husbands' main advisers and confidantes. But prior to Hillary Rodham Clinton not one held a position in an administration.

And the sixth rule? It is the advice Harry Truman gave the newly elected John F. Kennedy: “Once you're elected you stop campaigning.”

The 10 Dumbest Mistakes - Part Seven

Chapter Twelve – Activating Your Smarts

This chapter focuses on eighteen cognitive techniques. The next chapter will describe seven behavioral techniques.

Determining Meaning … a technique to simply ask yourself: “What does a particular word or specific event mean to me?” … The problem is that we tend to talk, and think, in a form of verbal shorthand. We use euphemisms that obscure rather than clarify meaning … It causes problems in communicating with others because we so often simply assume that whatever we are thinking, the other person is thinking, too … On top of all the problems caused by the failure to convey exactly what we mean to others are the problems that are caused by our failure to convey exactly what we mean to ourselves.

Questioning the Evidence … It's fair to say that jumping to conclusions is just about everybody's favorite exercise … Feelings have a way of being wrong at least as often, probably even more often, than they are right … Maybe someone is a jerk. But on the other hand, if you have no evidence to prove that one way or the other – if another explanation is also possible – than it's just as reasonable to err on the side of the positive as the negative. Erring on the side of the positive is more likely to lead to questioning the evidence than erring on the side of the negative.

Assigning Responsibility … Rarely is fault all one way or the other. And it is important in sorting out one's thoughts to assign responsibility carefully … Your parents may well have made your life difficult. It is fair to blame them for being erratic or irrational or whatever they were or are. But once you are an adult, you also bear responsibility for your life … Even if you cannot fix everything in your life, you can fix a piece of it.

De-Catastrophisizing … To de-catastrophize, you must stop and ask yourself: “What is the worst thing that can happen?” … Just by naming the worst very specifically, you can often calm yourself down … Checking the evidence is also helpful here … People who live in fear of making a mistake sometimes find actually making a mistake is the best thing that ever happened to them, because they learn that many people don't notice and many of those who do notice don't care.

Developing Alternatives in Thought, Feeling, and Action … Nothing is more paralyzing than the thought that you can do something or think about something in only one way … Sometimes it is necessary to generate alternative views or explanations for a given situation. You don't have to accept those views to think of them. But thinking of alternative views sometimes provides a way out that you did not see before … If you have no proof that one explanation is more accurate than another, you don't need to stick with the most negative one … Your feelings shift as your thoughts shift.

Comparing Advantages and Disadvantages … Life presents many choices, and unfortunately many of them are not easy ones. You are not asked whether you would prefer a million dollars or a bucket of mud. The choice is between terrible and possibly worse, between one mixture of good and bad and another mixture of good and bad, or between a big risk and a different big risk. In other words, tough choices. In such choices, the correct answer is not obvious. The best way to weigh such choices to to do it in writing … Once you have written your lists, go back and assign a number value to each advantage and disadvantage … It is easier to live with a decision when you make a conscious choice.

Labeling Your Mistakes … When you can out a name to what is happening, it becomes easier to challenge. When you recognize you are making a mistake, it is easier to stop making it.

Then What? … This is a useful technique for examining those imaginary scenarios that stop you from moving ahead … We tend to leap directly to the end of the story, and it's bad news. To use this technique requires you start at the very beginning of the story – and thereafter unfold it s-l-o-w-l-y by answering the question: “Then what?” … Sometimes the imaginary scenario still ends in disaster, yet the effect is not the same as the panic that strikes when the mind compiles disaster in mere seconds.

Superexaggeration … We tend to exaggerate negative consequences, which, of course, makes us feel worse than necessary. A good technique for dealing with this is to exaggerate even more … Superexaggeration can help you look at things more realistically.

Scaling From 1 to 10 … Where would you place your current problem on a scale of 1 to 10? … You need a point of reference when assessing the difficulty you are in. To develop these points of reference, first think about the most upsetting event of your life. Now think about events of periods that were pleasing, hopeful, enjoyable, or at least less stressful … People often see every single crisis at the same level, when this is not truly the case. It can sometimes be very helpful, then, to put your problems in perspective.

Turning Adversity Into Advantage … (Turning lemons into lemonade) … Viewed from a longer perspective, adversity often turns to advantage. Life experience is rarely wasted. And it can help you to keep this in mind … Just by surviving adversity, you gain the advantage of knowing it can be done … Many people are motivated by adversity. Being turned down only spurs then on to try harder, determined to prove that the person who turned them down was wrong.

Developing Replacement Images … Research tells us clearly that we can practice behavior in our imagination and translate it into actual performance … Imagining images of success helps you become more successful. Yet most people seem to insist on practicing images of failure … Images if failure have a way of popping up with no practice at all … Why not imagine success and coping images rather than failure and disaster images?

Rehearsing Positive Images … This technique, sometimes called cognitive rehearsal, is an extension of the replacement of negative images with positive ones. It calls for practicing that image a couple of times a day, not just once before you go out, but over and over and over again … Practice clearly enhances performance.

Self-Instruction … Self-instruction involves giving yourself very specific directions. It's easy enough to say something like: “I'll do better.” But you can't depend on something that vague … You can help yourself by making a detailed list of instructions … Try to break down your instructions into the smallest possible steps, because the smaller the step, the less intimidating it is to take it. You may find it helpful to write a script for an upcoming situation … The trick is to anticipate what instructions are needed for any given situation.

Self-Distraction … When a particular line of thought is upsetting you, it helps to interrupt that line of thought. And one way to do this is simply to distract yourself by introducing a different thought … You can distract yourself by consciously conjuring up a success image to make you feel better when you face a challenge … You can distract yourself with a relaxation technique.

Playing Defense Attorney … This technique might also be called arguing with yourself. Sometimes that is necessary because we tend to be harder on ourselves than we are on other people. Behavior you would find a way to forgive in a friend, you don't forgive in yourself. Other people can make a mistake, and you forget it. You make a mistake and remember it for the next eighty years … (As the names suggests this technique is where you argue on your own behalf)

The 10 Dumbest Mistakes - Part Six

Chapter Ten – The Imperative Should

We use the word should as shorthand for the difference between right and wrong.

So how could saying should possibly be a mistake? Amazing but true, this common, everyday word has an enormous potential for stirring up trouble. To be precise, it isn't the mere saying of the word that is the problem, is is the meaning that most of us associate with it.

Should is action without thinking.

As we grow up, even after we are able to handle abstractions intellectually, it's common to maintain a certain core of shoulds.

When we say should, we usually mean: “Don't think about it, don't question it, just do it. This is right. Anything else is wrong.”

Shoulds differ by culture. Americans value individualism.

Today it seems quaint to recall a time when good girls did not display an ankle.

Most of us don't want to have to think about, investigate, and question every single thing we do.

We find comfort in having stability and structure built into life. And we are talking about stability and structure when we use the word should. Flexibility can be scary. Too much flexibility is chaos. The more choices you have to make, the more opportunities you have for choosing “wrong.”

The belief that there is only one path can also bring you unnecessary misery.

You can identify the particular should that make your life more difficult. The first step in dealing in a constructive way with the shoulds that make you feel guilty, angry, anxious, regretful, or stressed is to make a list of them:

– What should you be doing that you are not?

– What should you have done that you didn't do?

– What are others doing wrong where you are concerned?

– What duty are you fulfilling that makes you angry?

– What act are you contemplating that you know violates you values?

In a way, shoulds are very much like shoes. You need a certain amount of structure in shoes to give your feet proper support, but if your shoes have no give at all or if they are laced too tightly, they'll begin to pinch.

To widen the bridge that you walk on requires thinking anew about each and every should you have listed.

Should also plays a role in the power we hand over to our perceived critics. We translate what we assume they are thinking into a command.

Psychologist Albert Ellis believes we would be better off if we simply banished the word should from our vocabularies.

Gordon cannot forgive himself for not doing something to prevent his brother from committing suicide.

When you stop, write them down, and analyze them, you may well find you are enforcing shoulds that don't even exist. Sound strange? It's really quite common.

All actions have consequences. But those consequences may not be the ones that you automatically assume.

Think in terms of the best, rather than the only, solution.

Ruminating about a mistake that you cannot now undo, or bitterly remembering how another person hurt or failed you, can – to borrow a metaphor – stop the clock of your life … The past cannot be changed.

Devoting all your thoughts to what might have been will not move you an inch toward what might still be.

The best way to deal with a should of the past is to learn from it (you may resolve to be more careful in your choice of martial partner or job in the future) and then push it to the back of your mind. How do you do that? You replace one set of thoughts with another.

Even if it's true that you cannot be as happy as you would have been if things had gone as they should have in the past, it may still be possible for you to be happier in the future than you are now.

What you do know is that you have the choice of either trying to make the future better or continuing to bemoan the past.

When dealing with guilt, remember, here is more than one way to amend for past offenses. To do no more than feel miserable will never change the past nor improve the future.

Shoulds can literally cause a couple to fight over how dishes should be washed.

You do not have to accept that the other person is right when you agree to do things their way.

If might be better if members of a family stick together, but you may decide that the price is sticking together is not one you wish to pay.

Avoiding the should mistake is simply a matter of giving yourself permission to consider, weigh evidence, and to decide among alternatives rather than just reacting automatically. As you consider the shoulds in your life, you will undoubtedly decide to hang on to some because they make you feel comfortable. You may well decide to accommodate some of the shoulds of others because it makes them comfortable. And there may be shoulds that you decide to modify or give up. The critical word here is decide. In each case, you make the decision. You decide what's better. You decide what's possible. You have the power to loosen those shoulds that pinch so tightly that they impede your progress through life.

Chapter Eleven – Yes-Butism

Yes, that was wonderful. But, not wonderful enough … A negative that cancels out all satisfaction … It snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. It surrounds every silver lining with a cloud.

When used properly, the kitchen knife is innocent, helpful, and quite necessary. But if used thoughtlessly, emotionally, angrily, or maliciously, that same kitchen knife can do a lot of damage. The same knife that peels the potatoes can become a lethal weapon. Yes-but thinking has that same potential for destruction.

There is almost no limit to how far a yes-but thinking will search to find a negative.

Generally, yes-but arises from a perception of powerlessness … Saying yes-but enables you to avoid a direct confrontation … In short, in one way or another, when you use yes-but, you are admitting that you don't have the power to change anything.

It doesn't give an outsider a chance to reject you. It's always easier to accept rejection at your own hands than at the hands of another.

Yes-but people tend to be procrastinators.

Many people have trouble saying no. It may arise from a feeling of guilt … A problem in saying no may also arise from an ardent desire to be accepted … Often people with a yes-but habit developed it as children. Usually they had to deal with a parent who was never willing to take no for an answer.

Yes-but is frequently used to shift responsibility.

This is the domestic version of guerrilla warfare. Stephen fears he can never earn the respect of others for his achievements, so he resorts to building himself up (at least in his own eyes) by knocking others down.

Yes-but is a bust as a power tool.

Todd may be right that Melissa is hiding her true anger, but he cannot know that unless he tests the evidence … Here Todd makes the mistake of perfectionism. If he can't solve all the problems at once, he will not attempt to solve any of them.

Instead of facing her fears and dealing with them, she shields herself with yes-but.

Listen to yourself. Make yourself aware of what you are thinking.

Changing Yes-But to Yes-And … This is the assertiveness equivalent of the difference between seeing a glass as half full rather than half empty. It is a mindset that adds rather than subtracts.

To get out of the nothing-can-be-done mode requires focusing on one single piece of the project – a starting point, a thread that leads to other threads.

Mao Tse-tung is quoted as saying, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

I'm going to keep on doing these until I reach my goal.

Yes-and stops you from procrastinating.

A technique that may be helpful in getting you started is role playing … You have probably already played many different roles in your life.

Another useful technique in dealing with some forms of yes-but is a reversal of though that deliberately seeks out a positive rather than a negative … You must first surface what you are thinking. Then try your thought again in reverse order.

Do you find you always have something to add? “Yes, that's nice, but the margins could be wider.”

The advice “Just say no” (to drugs, to people, etc) makes it sound easy, but saying no is, in many cases, very difficult. It calls for asserting yourself, and just the thought of that can bring on an attack of what-if thinking combined with the Chicken Little Syndrome.

Remember, being more assertive does not necessarily mean you have to get into a fight.

It may be possible this person might be reasonable enough to welcome some suggested alternatives.

Becoming aware of the yes-but mistake can help you deal with those who are determined to yes-but you. This is not criticism that you must accept without question.

The 10 Dumbest Mistakes - Part Five

As a reminder, we are going through my notes from the book The 10 Dumbest Mistakes Smart People Make and How to Avoid Them. The reason for doing this is very simple. If we want to increase our effectiveness, we need to reduce our mistakes 😊

Chapter Eight – Comparisonitis

There comes a day when the queen asks the mirror: “Who is the fairest of them all?” and the mirror has to inform the queen that she has been displaced.

The suffix -itis means “inflammation.”

Comparisons function as a point of reference, as a means of bringing order out of chaos … Comparing allows us to put things in a context.

By and large, negative comparisons cause the most grief

More often than not, you probably compare yourself to those who seem to have more.

You might wish to be “as thin as Jane Fonda.” Or, you might compare status and awards.

Death is a drastic solution to the problem, of course, but it is often difficult to come to terms with changes in your life that make you feel less than you were before.

Comparisons provides the plot for the movie classic It's a Wonderful Life.

We have already talked about dealing with the criticisms of others in an earlier chapter. Negative comparing is just another form of criticism. The critical issue is whether you internalize their comparison and make it your own.

It's only natural to prefer to be compared favorably to others. Advertisers take advantage of this desire.

You can often turn a disadvantage to an advantage. Psychiatrist Alfred Adler argued that the human striving for superiority is one of the prime motivating forces in life.

Adler stressed the importance of role models, people you believe are superior. He felt that the desire to be more like those people motivates you to grow and learn.

Many accomplished people tell of being motivated to succeed in order to show people who said: “You don't have what it takes.”

Yes, comparisons can be useful tools to prod, motivate, move, and inspire. But they can also be used with great effectiveness to destroy … Depending on how you take them, negative comparisons can damage your self-confidence and warp your judgment.

You know how you are affected. When you compare yourself to some specific other person, or to your past, or to your dream, does it make you more determined to succeed, or does it seem only to discourage you? … Do you say to yourself, “If he can do it, I can do it too,” or does it bring on a bout of jealousy.

One of the most common results of companionitis is giving up.

Alfred Adler contended that people who have a need to diminish others in order to look good themselves suffer from an overinflated inferiority complex.

The urge to keep up with the Joneses, to be seen by others as equally prosperous or brave or smart or whatever, gets a great many people into trouble.

The first step to curing the pain of companionitis is to weed out companions that are simply wrong. To do this, you must ask yourself a series of question:

– What are you comparing?

– How accurate is your companion?

– Are you drawing conclusions about all of that person's life based on the one fact you are sure of?

– When you make your companion, do you chalk up every positive that exists on the other side but ignore any positive on your own side? Do you fairly tote up the negatives on both sides of your companion?

– Do you confuse “getting there” with “being there”?

There are pluses and minuses to every choice and, to make a fair companion, you need to include all of them?

What meaningful difference does your companion make?

Oprah Winfrey has said that she realized she was not as pretty as many of her classmates, and getting by on looks was not going to be a good plan for her.

Superexaggeration is a good technique to use in companionitis. That means deliberately exaggerating your comparison.

You can go one step at a time.

A lot of us define ourselves by our work. Be careful. You can go too far.

The greatest barrier to solving problems is not failing to come up with a solution, it is coming up with a single solution and stopping there.

Here's a helpful hint when doing comparison: Don't just compare two ways (alternative A vs. alternative B), compare four ways. Here's how that works: Take two pieces of paper and draw a line down the middle of each. The heading of one will be the advantages and disadvantages of alternative A. The heading of the second will be the advantages and disadvantages of alternative B.

You will never stop making comparisons, and of course you don't want to give up those comparisons that are helpful. But you may find that your life becomes more comfortable if you simply start comparing less – and less often.

Chapter Nine – What-If Thinking

The what-if person is similar to Chicken Little in that both can clearly see a catastrophe that hasn't happened … The what-if person doesn't claim anything terrible has happened, but focuses attention on the fact that it could happen.

What-if questions make you feel vulnerable and exposed.

What-if thinking is paralyzing.

What-if people find it difficult to take risks because the potential dangers of failure loom so much larger than the potential gains of success.

Although bad things do happen, it is demonstrably, statistically true that they do not happen as often as we worry about them happening. And the things we worry about often turn out to be nowhere near as serious as we feared, or we can handle the problem more easily than we thought.

Here is an example of how emotional thoughts can runaway and snowball. One married man felt tremendous guilt and fear after kissing and fondling his secretary. He worried, “What if she becomes pregnant?” Here's the thing, the man knew full-well his secretary had had a hysterectomy. What's more, the two had not engaged in intercourse. So goes emotionality. When the mind starts to race, it can take on a mind of its own. Here's the big kicker, the man was a biology professor! There's the thing, knowing better will not necessarily prevent a mistake in thinking.

What-if thinking can work like this. A tree branch, moved by the wind, raps against a window in your home. Your mind starts racing, “What if it is a burglar?” And, you become terrified.

To be flawed, a premise does not have to be impossible, but simply not very likely.

Let's say you apply for a job at a TV station. And, your minds starts to race, “What if the station manager thinks I am foolish for daring to apply for this job? And what if he jokes about me to others at the station? What if he tells my present boss that I applied? What if my boss then gets angry and fires me? What if....?”

What-if behavior is simply another means we use for focusing on the negative rather than the positive, for talking ourselves into being more miserable rather than talking ourselves out of being miserable and into feeling more confident.

Pretty soon it is hard to tell where what-if leaves off and the Chicken Little syndrome with its accompanying all-is-lost feeling begins.

Many people put off seeing the doctor about some symptom that concerns them because they are worried that their worst fears will be confirmed.

What-if thinking clearly is not a mistake when it is used to spur the imagination toward envisioning options or preparing for a challenge.

Worry is a very individual matter. Some people are scared to fly. As it happens, there are more deaths more automobile crashes than from airplane crashes.

Tom is undeniably brave. Yet he becomes tongue-tied at the thought of confronting his wife with his anger about her methods of disciplining the children. “What if she leaves me? What if I never see our children again? What if....?”

Just as you can talk yourself into worrying more, you can talk yourself into worrying less.

If you are determined to worry as long as there is even one chance in a zillion that what you fear will happen, you are building a prison cell in which to confine yourself.

The most important question you must ask about what-if thinking is whether it helps you or hurts you … Ask yourself whether by avoiding certain risks you are actually creating greater risks to your health, your career potential, or your future happiness in general.

Questioning your evidence is important in dealing with all mistakes in thinking.

The very act of questioning a what-if scenario slows down the automatic process that escalates tension, builds fear, deepens worry, and immobilizes the thinker.

You can go from one physician to the next, never believing anyone who gives you a diagnosis that you are fine – if, that is, you combine perfectionism with what-if thinking and demand a statistical certainty of zero.

If questioning the evidence doesn't resolve your worries, you can try to interrupt your what-if thoughts by means of a diversion (This is the Distraction I have previously discussed on this blog)

Instead of simply repeating these thoughts over and over in your mind, get the answers … If you are worried about whether there is a hospital to treat a condition you have, find out, and put your mind at rest.

You could also divert your mind with a relaxation technique.

Another very useful technique when your thoughts are making you miserable is to schedule a specific time to let those miserable thoughts out, and then refuse to allow them to intrude at any other time of the day or night. This is much easier to do than most people think.

You can treat your need to worry the same way you treat your need to do the laundry, mow the lawn, or see your dentist. You make time for it.

If you have too many things to do, worrying around the clock cannot help you get those things done, because worrying makes everything harder to do.

Schedule things that you like, that you might have put off. Why? Because your what-if thinking can create a feeling that there is nothing you can enjoy now, or ever.

You can schedule time to prepare for the problem you fear, just in case it does arrive.

Scheduled activities can get you moving when what-if thinking has stopped you cold.

The 10 Dumbest Mistakes - Part Four

Chapter Six – Believing Your Critics

Most people have a problem opposite to believing their own press agent. They feel themselves surrounded by critics who sum up their performance in a single word: loser. Even the experience of success may not keep these critics away. They lurk in what is sometimes called “the impostor phenomenon.” That is, the successful person doubts that the success is justified.

Most of us learn to screen out some criticism and are able to ignore it.

Most people do not react the same to all criticism. They begin to “vibrate” only if the criticism relates to an area where they feel particularly sensitive.

Children are taught to believe that authority figures are always right.

In this effort to help children learn the ways of the world adults, usually with the best of intentions, often pass along a lot of wrong information.

Children receive the message over and over again that getting along means accepting, absorbing, and heeding criticism without questioning it.

The more heavily criticized you are as a child, the harder it is to develop the ability to evaluate criticism.

Your parents may still see you as a child they continue to have both the right and the responsibility to command.

Avoiding that beaten-down feeling means filtering and grading all criticism and all critics. And that requires conscious thought. Here, again, you must pause, reflect, and ask yourself a series of questions to give your own common sense a chance to help you.

Psychiatrist Victor Frankl, who lived in a Nazi internment camp, suggests that the people who survived were those who refuse to be humiliated, neither by their situation nor by the German soldiers.

Not all opinions are equally credible … Stephen King was routinely rejected by publishers

There is rarely a way to be sure that this single opinion is expert, or right, or unbiased.

Mothers sometimes feel like they have failed if one of their children become an addict. This subject becomes the “turning fork” which makes the mother emotionally “vibrate.”

It's hard not to accept the verdict that “everybody” has pronounced. But the truth is that “everybody” does not exist.

Some people are so wound up in their own thoughts and activities that they don't notice much of anything … Some people notice and don't care.

You can deal with specific critics rather than the imagined “everybody.”

The internal critic is the harshest of all. The belief was immortalized in Groucho Marx's famous line: “I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me for a member.”

To say that internal critics tend to judge on very little evidence is an understatement.

You may well find you are biased against yourself.

It is common for people with harsh internal critics to believe that they are alone … Discovering that others share your problem is often very helpful.

Praise is obviously always more welcome than criticism, but some criticism is helpful.

With any remark a person may make, there is no limit to the negative interpretations that are possible.

It is not always necessary to react immediately to criticism … Give yourself a chance to think about precisely what was said … Delay helps because it enables you to get your automatic responses under control.

If the critic is not worth listening to, if the content is not helpful, if accepting the criticism in no way improves you or improves your life – forget it.

Some people seem determined to go fishing for trouble. They want to catch you on a hook and play you on the line the way a sports fisherman reels in a trout. When the trout puts up a fight, it's more fun for the fisherman … Learn to keep your mouth shut when that tempting bait is dangled in front of you.

He may well think the boss is an idiot and yet still accept the practical necessity to do things the boss's way.

No law says you must act on all criticism or correct all unfair criticism. As discussed in Chapter Four, you can pick your battles. Pursue some. Ignore some.

You can reduce the impact of rough criticism by surrounding yourself with like-minded people (aka a support group)

Criticism is essential in a democracy … You may find you sometimes benefit from seeking criticism.

Listening to criticism is not a mistake. The mistake is to believe all criticism, or to reject all criticism, without pausing to think about it, without ever questioning the expertise of the critic, the motivation of the critic, the content of the criticism, or the value of the criticism.

You can ask yourself, “How likely is it that everybody will have the same opinion?” You can play defense attorney. That's only fair.

Chapter Seven – Perfectionism

From early childhood, we are taught to strive for perfection.

But whoever invented the phrase: “Nobody's perfect” really put it perfectly. Sure, some occasions seem perfect. Some specific efforts, like that spelling test in fifth grade, are judged to be perfect. But as a general rule of life, there is good, there is great, there is nearly perfect – but perfection does not exist … You can get very, very close, yet still not achieve 100 percent.

Quite often, what we call perfection is simply a matter of opinion … How many times have you read two movie reviews that made you wonder if the critics had really seen the same movie?

Perfection is sometimes simply a matter of timing.

Perfection can involve imperfection. It is often a matter of perspective. In baseball, what one team might call the perfect pitch the other team considers out of the strike zone.

Too much perfection can be a bad thing. This is a most important point. Just as you can overdo over-confidence, you can also overdo perfection.

It's true that in some professions perfection is more sought after than others (think airplane pilot) But even these professions can run into problems with perfectionism. If the pilot works too many long, hard hours, making sure everything is just perfect s/he may be exhausted during the actual flight.

Because we are taught from childhood to aspire to an ideal that is illusive, we are frequently caught in a tug of war between what we feel we should do and what we can actually do … A law of diminishing returns applies to the quest for perfection … It is dangerous because, all too often, we insist upon perfection, we end up with nothing at all. Therapists call this the all-or-nothing syndrome.

Perfectionism is not just a work-related issue, it applies to social situations too.

If you feel that unless you have the mate who meets your specifications down to the last detail, you would rather be alone, you had better get used to your own company.

If you put off contemplating a project, hosting a party, taking a trip, or making a decision until the perfect time and the perfect plan is in place, you will probably be waiting forever.

If you feel you must be perfect in every single thing you do, you may be wasting time on something very minor when your energies could be more wisely invested.

Why is a perfectionist so determined to do it right? Partly out of fear, partly our of fantasy.

Perfectionism manifests itself as a desire to avoid embarrassment.

Doing nothing makes it possible to cling to the comforting fantasy: “It would have been perfect, if I had done it.”

If sticking to your standards is causing you to fail, to delay, to miss deadlines, or to be lonely, you may want to adjust your perfection settings.

When you label what is going on, you open the way to doing something about it, just as a physician must first diagnose a condition before determining what course of treatment would do the most good.

To accept the fact that sometimes you may do work that is less than your best, because you don't have sufficient time or resources or background to do better at this time, is not the same thing as having low standards.

Other people seem to accomplish difficult things easily and effortlessly. But that's rarely true, and certainly not of everything they do.

Far from being the end of the world, many people delight in recounting their Great Moments in Humiliation History – now that they are history, of course.

What people who reach goals do best is not let setbacks get them down … Rather than viewing an imperfection as a character flaw, they see it as a learning experience.

Parents put pressure on their children to be perfect for many reasons in addition to the quite natural desire to see them succeed.

There is a line between pressure that motivates and pressure that crushes and, unfortunately, teachers and school counselors as well as parents sometimes cross it.

To counter perfectionism, you might ask yourself, “What do I have to sacrifice to do it right? Is it worth it?” … Take the time to write down the pros and cons, and make a reasoned decision … Perfectionists find to difficult to compromise.

Maybe what you deem less than your best is seen by others as fantastic … What one person rejects, another may welcome.

How can you find out how others judge you? Only by doing your best and taking a chance. Yes, that creates anxiety. Yes, that creates some discomfort. But sometimes, as they say in the Nike ads, you have to “just do it.”

It isn't easy to learn by trial and error. But learning something is better than simply wishing you knew.

The trick is to think past possible initial embarrassment to the future – to long-range goals like learning, improving, keeping the job, finding true love.

Perfectionists tend to see the glass as half empty, rather than half full.

If you never relax, never allow the less-perfect you to be seen, you never allow that other person to know you – and you never allow yourself to really get to know that other person.

Perfectionists admire the philosophy Frank Sinatra made famous: “I did it my way.”

There is no one single “right” way to experience sexual satisfaction.

If you never question whether “my way” is the only way, you may never discover better ways, much less the “best” way.

One perfectionist reporter never wanted to turn in a story until it was perfect in every aspect. But timeliness is important on a daily newspaper.

Sometimes you do yourself a favor if you do someone else a favor.

You may think that failing to be perfect is the equivalent of failing to do your best (It's not true) Sometimes the best policy is to go for the middle. Not all the time, just sometimes.

You may have to take it in steps. Start by deliberating doing some small thing imperfectly. Make the bed and don't tuck the corner in. Or wash all the dishes but one. Or wash the car but don't wipe the bumpers … Prove to yourself that imperfection is not the end of the world.

It's easier to get something small right. And then that small piece can be used to build something bigger.

We are often told that the “best” and “fastest” way to get from one place to the other is the direct route. But that is not always the case. If you were to try to run straight up a steep, icy slope, you might find yourself sliding back.

If you think in terms of improvement, of discovery, of adjusting your sights to the more important goal – which could be completion as opposed to perfection – you are more likely to make progress. Everything becomes easier if you think in terms of moving closer to your goal rather than of finally accomplishing it.