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On Reasonable Efforts - The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal

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February 25th, 2011
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On Reasonable Efforts
As a child, I was a furious slacker - so intently dedicated to laziness that I'd spend hours merrily devising excuses as to why these multiplication tables were too hard to learn. I'd run twenty feet and then collapse with an imagined side-stitch, heaving pathetically, explaining that I'd given it my best.

Then they sent me to est. And overnight, the bar was raised on what a reasonable effort was. Which may have been the most valuable lesson in my life.

The est Seminar has degenerated into a bad 1970s joke for those who remember it - a stew of self-help therapy and cultish practices so maligned that they've had to change their name not once, but twice in the past three decades. Those who do remember it do so mainly because they wouldn't let go to the bathroom except during the official breaks in the schedule, marking them eternally as control freaks.*

The thing about est - or, as it's called these days, "The Forum" - is that you have to separate what it's intended to do from what it actually does. What it's supposed to be is a high-pressure, no-bullshit, weekend-long course designed to get you to take responsibility for all the things in your life you can change - which is a lot more than you'd think. By the time you emerge on Sunday after thirty-six hours of psychoanalysis and lectures and trust exercises, you should emerge as a strong, independent person making good choices in life - someone who's unscrupulously honest about the bad choices you choose to make.

Which, honestly, I did. As a teenager, est was good for me, giving me the willpower I needed in order to survive against the onslaught of bullies and loneliness I was going through. I'll defend 'em on that front.

The problem is, as with all transformative cultures, that if you really emerge strong and independent, then you walk away from est and never give them any money again. (This is, incidentally, why there are very few popular religions that tell you that you don't need a priest of some sort to commune with God.) So intertwined with all of the exhortations to TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE and YOU CONTROL MORE THAN YOU THINK are also YOU NEED TO COME BACK HERE TO STAY HONEST and HEY GIVE US MONEY.

What emerges is a bizarre meld of building up and breaking down. They tell you that you can transform your relationships with your parents and children into healthy, loving ones, you can chase the dream job you so badly desire, you can do anything - but you can't walk away from us, no, you need us, what are you, crazy?

Yet it was that tawdry intersection of commerce and salesmanship which was where I had my definition of "a reasonable effort" redefined.

If you're in the "adult" course, which I was the second time around, the sales pitches start on Sunday. est courses aren't free, so they want you to sign up for the follow-up courses before you leave - and they aren't cheap, costing hundreds of dollars. But if est has been good for you at all, you want to attend, because you've learned a lot of valuable lessons now, and why not sign up?

So you have a bunch of people who want to go, the same way they want to go to DragonCon or PAX or any other convention - it's going to be useful and worthwhile and even fun in its own way, but they're just not sure they can afford it. And then the seminar leader starts going around the room, asking, "Okay - why haven't you signed up? Do you want to go?" He cornered a balding guy in a bad suit, the kind of outfit that, even to me at sixteen, screamed "Salesman, down on his luck."

"Yeah," the salesman replied. "I wanna go. I just can't afford it."

"Really?" the seminar leader asked, skeptical. "Are you sure you really want to? Because let's be honest here, we're teaching you to be honest. If you don't want to fucking go, then tell me to fuck off. Don't let me pressure you. Just tell me, 'No, I don't want to go,' and it's over."

"No," he stammered, looking heartbroken that he couldn't join the festivities next month. "I mean, yes. I want to go. It's just that, you know, my quotas are down, and my rent is really high here in New York, and I'm not sure I can afford it."

"That's an excuse. It's bullshit, as we say. If you wanted to go, you'd make it happen. Right now."

"I do want to go, but I can't make it happen now. I have to see what my quotas are..."

The seminar leader sighed, disappointed. "You got family?"

"Yeah."

"Could you call them up and ask for cash, if it was really want you wanted?"

"I - well, I mean, I could, but that'd be a stretch..."

"Could you get a bank loan?"

"Probably. But..."

"If it was really absolutely critical to you, you would move heaven and earth to make it happen. You know that if this was the most important thing in the world to you, you'd make it happen. So it's not that you can't afford it - you won't. And that's what we do, all the time; we make reasonable efforts, telling ourself that we've done everything we can. And I'm telling you that it's time to make an unreasonable effort. Do you want to go?"

"I do! But..."

"Stand up. Make this happen. Ask."

He stood up, looking profoundly uncomfortable, as you'd expect. He looked around the ballroom full of other students, each staring at him, prickles of sweat on his forehead. He made eye contact, not sure what to do. The seminar leader put his hand on salesman's shoulder.

"You have, here, a room full of people committed to your well being. You've worked with them all weekend, you've shared secrets, you've listened to theirs. So here. You want to go? Ask them for money."

"Oh, I can't - I - "

"Don't tell me what you can't do. You don't want to. That's understandable; it's crazy, asking strangers you've only just met for money. But don't confuse what you're unwilling to do with what's impossible to do. If you want to go, raise your voice and ask them, 'Who's willing to give me money to go to the next seminar?' Or sit down."

He swallowed, thinking it over. I don't know what would have happened if he'd sat down; I'd like to say that the seminar leader would have said, "You made an honest choice" and walked away, but probably not. It was, after all, about the money. But no, Salesman Guy said, in a wavering voice, "Will anyone give me money to go to the next seminar?"

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Then someone reached for his wallet. "I'll give you $10 towards it."

That broke the ice. Next, a woman got her purse open and said, "I've got $20 to spare." And lo, once asked, the entire room started pulling out cash until he had enough to go, all fully donated, and wham, he was in. And then the next person who wanted to go but was even broker than Salesman Guy stood up and asked, and the next person had to go out into the hall and ask est employees and volunteers for cash, which was even more embarrassing, but they got it.

Everyone who wanted to go got their cash that day. (And a lot of people remained seated, or just said "no.")

I was both squicked and enlightened. Because the cash clearly went towards est's benefits - but the guy was also absolutely right about reasonable efforts. We live in a culture so bound by what most people are willing to do that we often take them as hard limits - "I can't do more than that," we say. "I've done the best I can." But it really isn't. It's just the best we're willing to do for right then.

When I was running and got my side-stitch, I really thought that I'd put 100% into it. But the truth was that I hated running, and I hated exercise, and I was putting maybe 20% of myself into it. If I was being chased by a bear, suddenly I'd find new reserves within me. And though I hated math homework, and thought that the grudging half an hour I did was really balls-out for math homework, I'd forget how many hours I'd spend memorizing PAC-Man patterns.

After that, I realized where my real limits were - they were way up there. And maybe I could stop telling myself and others that I did my best. I didn't. Not even close. I did what I thought was reasonable.

Sometimes you don't want reasonable.

The thing about it is that you don't have to feel guilty about not giving it your all, all the time. That'd be crazy. If you started panning your friends to see the latest Rush concert, you'd be a mooch. But what's important is not to conflate "a reasonable effort" as the top end. Be honest. Know what percentage you're actually willing to give, and acknowledge that if it was that critical, you could do a lot of other, very creative, things to solve this problem. I don't ask you guys for money because I find it distasteful - but when my sister-in-law's life was at stake and I didn't have the cash, you bet your ass I begged.

To this day, that lesson is the reason I know I'm out of shape. If I was really driven, I'd exercise like I write - every day without fail. But I've got a gut, and that's because of a choice that I made. Likewise, I probably could have better relationships with my cousins, which I lament at times, but it comes down to time - it's not that I can't do it, it's that I'm not willing to.

Which is an empowering choice. I mean, I'm not thrilled I don't have a manly six-pack, but it's my choice not to have it. I've made other priorities - some of them good, like writing and spending time with Gini, and others bad, like playing Rock Band and farting around with StumbleUpon. If I really want it, well, I just need to prioritize it. My life is within my control to the extent that I can make it.

And there are some things I can't necessarily guarantee - you know, I'd like to win the Nebula award for my writing some day. Maybe I don't have that talent. But I can make an unreasonable effort to get it, writing every day, keeping my skills finely honed, so if I have even the slightest chance of developing that kind of writing talent, that chance has the best opportunity.

After that - well, I'm not going to tell you I became a math superstar. I never even finished college, to be honest. But I did realize that if I really want something, I have to make unreasonable efforts - things like quitting my (then-lucrative) job and moving cross-country to marry a woman I met on the Internet. Or going to Clarion, even though I wasn't sure I was really a writer. Or any number of other crazy things I've done in my life.

I make a lot of reasonable efforts that fail. But on that day, despite the icky salesman nature of it, I learned the power of unreasonability.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/77193.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.

(107 shouts of denial | Tell me I'm full of it)

Comments
 
[User Picture]
From:lea724
Date:February 25th, 2011 03:46 pm (UTC)
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marking them eternally as control freaks.*

It's killing me. What was the asterisk for?
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From:theferrett
Date:February 25th, 2011 03:50 pm (UTC)
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Oh, yeah, that.

Anyway, the thing about it was that people went, "OH MY GOD, YOU CAN'T GO TO THE BATHROOM? THAT'S CRAZY."

But what they told us was that they found people would use the bathroom as an excuse whenever they heard anything uncomfortable, whether they perceived it as such or not. Later on, they removed this restriction - and I saw a lot of people who suddenly had to pee when shit got very intense. Like, in waves. So though it sounded nuts, in the end I actually agreed with it.
From:friendlyquark
Date:February 25th, 2011 03:49 pm (UTC)
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I suspect that despite the shame in it, the salesman learned something as well. Maybe his quotas were so low because of the very shame he felt in asking for money.

There is a certain sort of pride in America that fosters a sense that we have to be utterly self-reliant and never ask for anything. It's what I see as the root cause for why so many people seem to hate social security, or unemployment insurance. The idea that no matter what, you should do everything all on your own. Its not a very healthy or compassionate ideal. Sometimes people need help, there shouldn't be any shame in that.

Yet we shame the poor, the homeless, the unemployed, all the time. We make them feel like their lack of advantages, their lack of health, their lack of a job, is some personal failing on their part. It's ridiculous, yet we do it anyway. We set an artificial boundary on what people can accomplish by necessitating that they do it all alone. Seems a little counter-productive to me.
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From:apel
Date:February 25th, 2011 05:34 pm (UTC)
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We even cast recessions as personal failures. Being laid off because your employer went bust is not a moral failing. It might have been a good idea to find other work before being laid off but in many cases there just weren't any jobs to apply for, or the employer pulled the loyalty card, or the layoff came out of the blue, or jobs in your industry are only as safe as your seniority in the company or moving would have meant not being able to see your kids regularly or you were hoping it would get better or...

There are so many perfectly valid reasons for having been laid off.
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From:gows
Date:February 25th, 2011 03:52 pm (UTC)
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*nod* As a massage therapist, it used to bug me when clients would tell me about the symptoms they were having (that I could help fix), say "I can't afford to come see you right now," then turn around and talk about their upcoming yearly for-fun vacation halfway across the country. Even more so when, say, we went without hot water for six weeks because we couldn't afford propane.

Once I shifted that paradigm to "it's not a priority for me right now," it became a lot less irritating.
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From:arashinomoui
Date:February 25th, 2011 03:52 pm (UTC)
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I've said that the most important class that I took as part of my MBA was my Leadership and Vision class. Not because of what it taught directly, but the teacher was a life coach/business advisor type, so also taught about "How to figure out what you want, and what you need to do to get it."

And that lesson has stuck with me. I'd been grasping around it for a while, but it hit me like a bolt of lightning "This, this is why it is okay to say 'Sure that's fun, but it isn't as fun as this other thing I can do with my time.'"

Or making other choices which were simple, but not easy (to tie into a post of your's from the other day.).

There are lots of things I want - to be healthier, to play more video games, to see friends, to have spare/down time, to be productive and useful at work; but I also know which of those wants I need to shelve and put on the shelf because I'm not ready to follow through on them - that I'd make a "reasonable" effort and then fail.

And that's made a lot of difference, I'm okay with 1) not doing something because I realize I don't have the drive to do it; and 2) realizing that I can be mistaken about having the drive to do something.
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From:rowena742
Date:February 25th, 2011 05:06 pm (UTC)
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I loved my Negotiations class for pretty much the same reason. They had us do an exercise like the asking for money thing, without the creepy cultish overtones: you had to go around for two weeks asking people for things and get ten of them to say "no." The requests had to be reasonable in that they had to be within people's power to fulfill, but the goal was to make requests that you'd normally be uncomfortable making. Additionally, with a couple of the requests, you were supposed to ask three times before giving up, or ask the person what it would take to get them to do what you wanted.

The end result is that it's much, much harder to get people to give a flat-out "no" than you'd think - and once you start, it's easier than you'd think to keep going.
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From:angela_n_hunt
Date:February 25th, 2011 04:13 pm (UTC)
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I could just hug you to bits.

YES.

This. THIS. All of this. Though I learned it in a different forum. And how it was pitched to me was, "How bad do you want it?"

There absolutely is a time for unreasonable efforts. Thank you.
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From:mightydoll
Date:February 25th, 2011 04:33 pm (UTC)
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My son is a "furious slacker". I think in part it comes from perfectionism - if he can't do something perfectly, he decides it's not worth doing. Since noone is perfect at anything their first tries, thus has, over the years, really limited what he's willing to try.

This post is oddly well-timed, in that he and I had a serious talk about his level of engagement with his own life and it's outcomes.

Short of sending him to EST, do you have any advice for convincing a 12 year old who furiously makes excuses the way you describe (seriously, your self-description was uncanny in its similarity) that he holds all the cards he needs (I mean for goodness sake, he's a middle class white male - he won the birth lottery, here) to accomplish his goals and have a kickass life?
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From:mightydoll
Date:February 25th, 2011 04:34 pm (UTC)
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Fscking auto-correct: its outcomes.
(Deleted comment)
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From:theprincesjewel
Date:February 25th, 2011 04:42 pm (UTC)
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I like this. I suddenly feel a lot less... lazy and underproductive, and a lot more "not inclined to deal with this crap right now".

Also, unsurprised that I do so very little to get and get and get, because I'm fairly well satisfied with the majority of my current condition. For example, though I will still dream of living in the back of beyond on a farm, I am learning that it's possible to do some of the stuff I dream of in that oversized backyard of mine, and that with a few (major) whining sessions with the city, I will most likely be able to get my chickens back, therefore making a full-sized farm undernecessary. :P
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From:coppervale
Date:February 25th, 2011 04:45 pm (UTC)
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"When I was running and got my side-stitch, I really thought that I'd put 100% into it. But the truth was that I hated running, and I hated exercise, and I was putting maybe 20% of myself into it. If I was being chased by a bear, suddenly I'd find new reserves within me."

Awesome.

You make interesting posts quite often, but every once in a while you really slam-dunk something. Nicely done.
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From:lots42
Date:February 25th, 2011 06:03 pm (UTC)
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-Part- of why I disliked exercise was the unpleasent gym teachers I had (they actively ignored injuries). Of course, bears are bears.
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From:smartlikeatruck
Date:February 25th, 2011 05:17 pm (UTC)
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Thank you. This really resonates with me, as I am looking at my own life, my career, and my love, and wondering where my priorities are.
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From:theferrett
Date:February 25th, 2011 11:39 pm (UTC)
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Good luck. Weigh 'em well.
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From:lots42
Date:February 25th, 2011 05:47 pm (UTC)
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Please tell me someone went and arrested all these EST freaks.
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From:theferrett
Date:February 25th, 2011 05:54 pm (UTC)
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For what? Telling people to do something voluntarily?
(Deleted comment)
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From:theferrett
Date:February 25th, 2011 11:33 pm (UTC)
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Hopefully it'll work for you!
From:magnificentminimalist.wordpress.com
Date:February 25th, 2011 05:57 pm (UTC)
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YES! I agree with the power of unreasonable. My best work is the stuff I've done intensely and excellently and passionately, not the stuff I've done when I'm comfortable.

I am often very comfortable.
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From:ewin
Date:February 25th, 2011 07:31 pm (UTC)
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It's so interesting to me to see this perspective, because I actually had the opposite experience in my mid-twenties, and it has colored every aspect of my life since then, in as restorative a way as yours has been to you.

I actually had to learn how not to do my best at everything.

There's a lot that went into how the practice of doing my best led me to achieve, well, just about nothing in the end; perfectionism hampered me, even the smallest of tasks became absolutely overwhelming, to the point where I couldn't face anything without the paralysis of terror. My potential became my enemy. I knew I was bright and capable and a fast learner, I knew I tended to be good at things the first time I tried them, and every subsequent try, with its inevitable revelation that becoming good at something requires a lot of failure along the way, defeated me. Trying to do my best only hastened the crash, because I overextended, unable to accept the concept of a limitation.

I still remember going to Taido class and practicing until I nearly fainted and had to sit down, and the instructor sitting beside me and, instead of urging me to try harder and "do one more" like he had been saying to the entire class the whole time, he said, "You seem really hard on yourself. Could you maybe take it easy?" I was too shocked to speak.

I sat with my therapist a few years later, in tears, and said, "I've never understood why anybody says to 'do your best'. The only possible way to do your best is to literally kill yourself at what you are doing; unless you're dead, there was more you could have done."

And she said, simply, "What you need to understand is that not every job or task deserves your best. There is an appropriate level of effort."

Reasonable effort saved my life. I didn't actually know what it was, or that it could be considered acceptable, until well into adulthood. And I have to re-learn the lesson, over and over again like an Achilles heel I'll never quite be free of: "Do it, it won't be perfect, do it anyway. Get it out there, let people see. They'll be kinder to your efforts than you are. Take the risk of saying, 'Done'. Let it go. Save some energy, because you're going to need it, this isn't the only thing you'll have to do, it's not even the only thing you'll have to do today. Pull back, pull back, pull back." Like a racer, learning to save the sprint for the right moment.

I forget sometimes that other people don't have this... uh... whatever-the-hell-it-is that seems to push me from behind like a rocket. It's like some of us are born not knowing how to throttle, and others of us not knowing how to brake.
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From:theferrett
Date:February 25th, 2011 07:34 pm (UTC)
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It's like some of us are born not knowing how to throttle, and others of us not knowing how to brake.

I rather like that quote.
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From:jemyl
Date:February 25th, 2011 08:36 pm (UTC)
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I went to est training out in California in the late 1970s.
I did "get it" from est. I also took a couple of more of their seminars, particularly the one on money. From all of them I learned how to look at my actions and to take personal responsibility for my life, and all of my choices, good and bad as MY choices.

One of my most prominent memories from all of my est experiences is the night Werner Erhardt, himself, talked about a heckling he received. The heckler called Werner a Mother F&cking son of a B*tch. Werner said of this, Well, I am married and my wife and I have children together and we also enjoy a healthy sexual relationship, so I am definitely a happy mother f*cker. As to the second part of that, it implies that my mother is a canine instead of a human and, since I stand before you as a human, that cannot be true. Therefore you, Sir, are proven to be a liar about me. Werner said this, and I didn't put it in quotes because I know I paraphrased part of it since he talked on it for over five minutes. It stuck with me because I was dealing with some people who used cuss words to bully others at the time. I learned to analyze the meaning behind strong language instead of reacting to it because it was words I didn't think applied to me. This helped me to deal fairly and constructively with my detractors and to be able to accept or deny their control efforts.

est also has helped me to be able to tell people no when I don't want to do something for whatever reason. Realizing that we choose whatever we do and that we are never really forced to do anything in our lives may seem harsh and a heavy burden to some. Actually it is very, very freeing. Once one gets that one chooses what one does, then it becomes much easier to choose to be happy with one's life. The alternative is to choose to change it. Then, like the proverbial light bulb changed by the psychologist, one has to want to change. In the midst of one's whining about a choice, there then comes that little realization of the fact that it was one's choice and one doesn't dislike it enough to change it, or that would happen and the little smile of realization comes. It seems to be kind of unavoidable once one really, truly gets it.

Is est a cult? No, I think not. It is just a group of people who understand the power they have over their choices and their reactions to the speech and demands of others. I learned a lot from the seminars I took, especially since I took them at the same time as I was studying for my Master's degree in Marriage, Family and Child Counseling at a Jesuit University. It rounded out my education and was a great help to me as I learned to facilitate groups and psychodrama open sessions in Berkeley.

There are still those who fight the very idea that they are totally responsible for the lives they lead. One friend of mine told me that couldn't be because she certainly didn't choose to have bronchitis. Ah, but she did choose to go to the grocery, not sanitize the cart, not wash her hands after pushing it all over and then to touch her mouth, nose and eyes before she washed her hands. She also chose to not have her children wash their hands immediately when then came home from school and she chose to greet everyone she met with a big hug. That is, she put herself into situations where she could come into contact with the virus or germ that carried bronchitis and she also chose to ignore the early symptoms, not get enough rest, and get soaked fighting a fire two days before the bronchitis got really bad.

I could give you alternatives for each of those choices, but I think you see the point. It is all about choices we make for ourselves, some of which we realize and do consciously and some we do just because that's what we have always done and now do without thinking about it. Nevertheless, it is a choice we make.

I'm glad you get it, Ferrett. As for lots42, well, he or she may not be an idiot, but is one who refuses to see what could be plain as day should he or she allow i.e. choose to recognize and affirm it.
[User Picture]
From:lots42
Date:February 26th, 2011 04:23 pm (UTC)

Now I am (hopefully) politely curious.

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Well, explain away. What am I missing here? The only thing about this whole discussion I disagree with Ferrett about is that 'The Forum' is a dangerous cult. I think it is, he does not.

And like I tried to convey in another comment, even dangerous cults can benefit some.

Heck I don't like any religion (but I do not think all are cults) but I recognize that they help some get better.

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From:anotherjen
Date:February 25th, 2011 08:57 pm (UTC)
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Posting before I read the other comments.

That was awesome.

When I've confronted people who habitually show up late, they say, "I can't help it; I'm always running late," and I say, "If someone offered you a million dollars to show up on time, you'd be early." And they agree. It's a matter of motivation.

When people tell me they can't afford to hire me for organizing, yet I hear about them going on trips and seeing shows and doing all kinds of optional things that cost money, I know that it's not that they can't afford it; it's that they've set different priorities. That's fine with me, but I think it would be better for them if they could own that choice.

Of course, in my own experience, the flip side of the "can do" attitude is that when you don't manage to have everything you want, you wind up taking on too much responsibility for every bad thing in your life: blaming yourself for choosing badly, or not trying hard enough. At least that's what I do. I need to remind myself that there are real limitations out there, and that it's not all up to me.
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From:theferrett
Date:February 25th, 2011 11:32 pm (UTC)
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Yeah, I think the evil side of est is basically Ayn Rand, wherein pretty much EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS to people is THEIR FAULT and POOR PEOPLE ARE BAD BECAUSE THEY ARE LAZY, and all that other crap.

I think there really has to be an in-between balance between "There's a fuck of a lot you can do to control your life" and "That control means you can break the laws of physics."
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From:kibbles
Date:February 25th, 2011 10:27 pm (UTC)
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Ted taught me to be unreasonable. Suing the school district? Demanding testing and doctors and interventions and accommodations and this and that and the other thing? I don't have a choice. I hate it. But yeah. Have to be that way.

Console myself, sometimes, that if I do it, later on, some other mom won't have to.
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From:theferrett
Date:February 25th, 2011 11:40 pm (UTC)
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Children will do that. Good on you for being unreasonable, though. You do have a choice; you just choose not to be, and that's a point in your favor.
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From:black_rider
Date:February 25th, 2011 11:23 pm (UTC)
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I had a couple of friends who were involved with the Forum. Just on the spirit of "I'll do anything once, and it seems to really matter to these people I call friends" I went to one of their mixers.

Frankly it struck me as only slightly more sane than Scientology. The speeches were purposefully manipulative, and I saw nothing but bullying and lies while I was there, along with a hefty dose of "give us your money NOW."

I politely declined, etc, and after two weeks of being constantly badgered to see the light by these people who I'd been friends with for about a year before they'd joined up with the Forum, I had to just start deleting their emails. Even five years later, I still got the occasional "come to the Forum" email.

So, I've just really got to point out that this organization, as far as I've seen firsthand, does a lot more harm than good.
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From:theferrett
Date:February 25th, 2011 11:31 pm (UTC)
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You can. In my experience, it's about 55/45.

I'm not sure whether my experience of actually going through it counts for more or less.
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From:miintikwa
Date:February 26th, 2011 12:51 am (UTC)
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Oddly, I learned this same lesson from an equally "derogatory" place. I went to an Amway seminar once.

Other than the pushy stuff ("SIGN UP NOW! MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS!"), I found the premise-- help others to help yourself-- kind of cool. But the thing that really opened my eyes was when they started pushing for the sign ups. The cash.

There was a very similar moment in my class, where the guy leading the class was picking out people to ask them why they hadn't signed up. They didn't do the crowdfunding thing, but they did really get to the nitty gritty of why you were not coughing up the bucks. And I realized, then, that I could prioritize, I could dig deep when it mattered to me and say "no" when it didn't.

I started prioritizing. I made mistakes and put bad things ahead of good, sometimes, but it's been a huge eye opener.
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From:petemosq
Date:February 26th, 2011 01:13 am (UTC)
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Three friends already pointed me to this. Now I know why. :) Awesome dude. :)
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From:elissa_carey
Date:February 26th, 2011 03:38 am (UTC)
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And that's why I'm at SCAD. SCAD is my unreasonable effort. I'm just glad to be succeeding at it thus far.
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From:ilgreven
Date:February 26th, 2011 04:04 am (UTC)
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This essay evokes a question: Have you ever read anything of Dr. William Glasser?
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From:donsimpson
Date:February 26th, 2011 07:12 am (UTC)
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Many years ago, a fellow I knew, the late Jerry Jacks, took an EST seminar. He came out of it amazingly energized. He radiated confidence. He exchanged his self-deprecating identity for a heroic one. And he successfully sued EST to get his money back. I was confused. Why was he suing the organization that had made him this dynamic new person? It did not occur to me to ask him, which in retrospect seems pretty silly. But you have given me some clues.
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From:lots42
Date:February 26th, 2011 11:53 am (UTC)
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Maybe he was just a crook. Plenty of stories about someone paying for a good product then trying to get their cash back.

Of course the 'he was then empowered enough to pull the ballsy move' possibillity is much funnier.
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From:xuenay
Date:February 26th, 2011 12:15 pm (UTC)
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But the truth was that I hated running, and I hated exercise, and I was putting maybe 20% of myself into it. If I was being chased by a bear, suddenly I'd find new reserves within me.

When I shared this post on Facebook, I got linked to an article about a biker who quite literally drives himself crazy in order to win races.

Around Day 2 of a typical weeklong race, his speech goes staccato. By Day 3, he is belligerent and sometimes paranoid. His short-term memory vanishes, and he weeps uncontrollably. The last days are marked by hallucinations: bears, wolves and aliens prowl the roadside; asphalt cracks rearrange themselves into coded messages. Occasionally, Robic leaps from his bike to square off with shadowy figures that turn out to be mailboxes. In a 2004 race, he turned to see himself pursued by a howling band of black-bearded men on horseback.

‘‘Mujahedeen, shooting at me,’’ he explains. ‘‘So I ride faster.’’

I guess you can't say you're putting in your best effort if you still remain sane during the race.

(Of course, trying to truly put in your best effort may sometimes be counterproductive, if you don't know the right way to do it. I'm reminded of the times when I figured I needed to study a lot, so I'd stay at home to do it for days on end. The end result was that I felt miserable and didn't get much studying done. If I'd allowed myself to go out and see people once every two days or so, I'd probably have been more productive than when trying to work full time.)
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