In another blog I dealt with dispelling the popular myths and “tips” you see in tabloids about how to improve your life. But now let’s focus on one big misleading belief that concerns the way one should conceptualize life on a global scale.
Many of my clients come in believing they are not thinking positively enough, or that their life has gone awry because they are making the wrong “choices”. They feel their life, and those of their loved ones, could be so much better if they could only be more upbeat, learn to decide correctly or be more determined to pursue their goals. They’ve been led to believe that the lives of some people are so much better because they made the right decisions and choices, were somehow better able to master their problems, and therefore must be “happy“. These thoughts are fixed in their heads by happiness psychology, positive psychology, and psychologies whose solution is to relax through your problems by meditating, mindfulness, relaxing with audio tapes or soothing music, doing more physical exercise, yoga, etc. These are all excellent measures to add to your daily routine and enhance your life, many taken from ancient religious practices. But they fail to address the core problems. They essentially target Anxiety by offering Anxiety-reducing techniques. But it ends there and anyone with more pressing problems knows it’s not enough. In DOLF we know we must make allowance for universal Anxiety as part of the three negative Emotions that are central in human experience and never go away: Anger, Depression and Anxiety. These three Emotions are quantified and dealt with in three blogs titled: Emotions As Percentages.
So following is the advice I give my clients, since I feel their hopes are built up unrealistically about the potential perfection of life and that they have failed to achieve what others have. I say: “Yes indeed, life is beautiful and it can be good. But LIFE IS ONLY HALF GOOD! One should think that only about half or 50% of a GOOD, BLISSFUL, FULFILLING LIFE is possible, and this is all that you or anyone else can, or should, expect! And if you feel your life is more than 50% good, consider yourself lucky because human life is by nature designed to be filled with conflict and problems!
In other words, there will be bad events in everyone’s life. Realistically, besides the potential for accidents, illness, poverty and death, there are natural events over which we have no control, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, drought or famine. There is always conflict among humans such as opposing political or religious beliefs and alliances, discord among nations and war. There is interpersonal conflict, hatred among family members, neighbors, friends, and spouses who divorce. There are people with bad intentions who try to cheat, dupe, steal from or hurt others, either for their own gain, or just for thrills. There are even petty ones who phone us daily to take up our time and money, make phony offers, or fill computers with viruses just for kicks. And the prisons house our worst criminals – robbers, murderers and rapists who specifically intend to harm others, and for whom the only solution is locking them away to protect society!
DOLF focuses on yet another problem that is unrecognized, but is the most noxious source of personal and social distress and disruption possible for humanity. I refer here to the normal competition among normal people, in which each person struggles to surpass those near them and achieve a higher and more prestigious status for themselves than the others. DOLF psychology is built around this universal agenda – the stark admission that every person is born with the natural urge to compete with their neighbor in an effort to upstage their competitors and get to the front of the line!
This competitive urge is fixed, unchangeable and immutable because it is instinctual and inborn in every human being. It starts within the framework of the first family with parents and siblings as INTRA-FAMILIAL CONFLICT: parent vs. parent, parent vs. child and child vs. child. It is universal and overtakes the behavior of every human regardless of race, color, ability/disability, age, sex or any other differentiating factor among people. Everybody, bar none, participates in the family conflicts spurred by competition, whether or not they recognize or care to admit it. Therefore, as students of psychology, we must confront not only the presence of such conflictual urges, but the profound effect that the competitive urge to be better than the person immediately next to us has on human behavior. So prevalent and powerful is this drive to compete with our neighboring human beings that it is nearly impossible for any person to stop or prevent it, or for any scientific approach to ignore it.
If we look around us, we find that competition is everywhere. It is not just limited to business and school, but also a rampant force in politics, religion and war. And now DOLF makes us aware that this bitterly competitive underpinning is to be found in abundance inside the fabric of every family, like the worm or enemy from within. Compete, you ask? Who me? With my own family? Fortunately or unfortunately yes, this is the state of humanity: mother vs father, child vs. child, and parent vs. child. It is by far the most destructive conflict of all that shakes every person to their core. But like it or not, this is the true nature of our human condition. It means that we were meant to live in conflict by virtue of the competitive nature that is built into the psyche of every human being.
The prime motivation behind the bitterness is the overwhelming drive to WIN. But what exactly are humans programmed to seek the most? They are first and foremost programmed to seek out ALL of that most precious commodity: HUMAN LOVE. Like it or not, we are ALL programmed to cherish, seek out and procure this PARENTAL LOVE for ourselves alone! And of course, as in any competition, there are “winners” and “losers”, which I will discuss later as a central part of DOLF theory. In its most stark and primitive form, the compelling nature of this struggle against others is most vividly observed in children through their daily behavior, and in their SIBLING RIVALRY. The rivalry occurs because of the competition for the LOVE of their Prime Love Providing parent, coloring, tainting and actually determining their personalities and lives, and affecting the future of humanity forever.
So to return to our initial discussion about tips on how to live a better life, how much “happiness”, or reduction of Anxiety can you, or should you, expect in your lifetime? As I described in my three blogs titled Emotions As Percentages, imagine a scale of Anxiety that goes from 0 to 100. Nobody can exist with no Anxiety because in order to function and be aware of the world around us we must have a base of Anxiety that must be a level of at least 50%. Under 3, a person would be virtually lifeless, and even at level 3 or 4 the person would still be extremely placid. One might aim for a moderate Anxiety level 5 or 6, but this would probably be rare if one is an adult living in a city. It is fair to say that an alert, mentally healthy or normally active person probably requires around 60-70% to maintain all their faculties and a normal level of interest in life. But an Anxiety level that approaches 80% is rather high, and a chronic level approaching 90% would become difficult to tolerate. A level over 90% indicates a person who is under a great deal of stress or pressure, and a condition that can lead to any manner of mental or physical breakdown in the Anxiety range, such as OCD, ADHD or phobia.
Knowing now the number of people who endure high levels of Anxiety and who must seek help in the form of medication or other forms of treatment, our conclusion then is that little can be accomplished without coming to terms with the real causes behind the Anxiety. We should remember too the strong tendency for Anxiety to be associated with Depression. Treatments such as mindfulness, meditation or relaxation then, can only be classified as superficial fixes and may work for a while and work best for those who fall in the middle range of the normal curve or those with mildly elevated levels of these two negative Emotions. But since the cause of most deeply-rooted Anxiety is conflict that occurred inside the first family, the Family of Origin, these are the issues that need to be unearthed and addressed before a more relaxed stage of functioning can be attained.
