Heroes Not Zombies

This is rule number three in Daniel Pink’s “Johnny Bunko” book which I mentioned a wee while back. There are two reasons why both the Johnny Bunko rules and this particular rule came to my mind this week.

Firstly, I’ve just been finding that in recent times this little phrase has often popped into my mind. “It’s not about you”. The value of this phrase is its power to re-orientate you. It’s only natural that our inner subjective experience is dominant. So when we feel certain strong emotions – anger, frustration, sadness, and, yes, even happiness – our default understanding of what is going on tends to emerge from the emotions themselves. It’s only a short (unconscious) step from there to “Why is he (or she) treating me this way?” or “Why is he (or she) upsetting me?” or some such similar question. The assumption is that the other person is behaving the way they are with the intention of having an effect on us. Not just an intention, but, a primary intention. We find ourselves thinking that the person is behaving this way because they want us to have a certain emotion. In other words, if it wasn’t for me, he (or she) wouldn’t be behaving this way. Well, you know, maybe in some instances, it’s true. But in many more instances it isn’t! Whether it’s true or not, however, this train of thought gives away our personal power to the other person. We give them the ability and the will to effect the emotions that we are experiencing. An easy, and a quick, way to undermine this whole reaction is to say to yourself “It’s not about you”. Just considering this as a possibility can be liberating. It allows you to shift your conscious focus from yourself to others. At best, it opens the doors to the possibility of a more empathic and more understanding interpretation of the other person’s behaviour.

“It’s not about you” also came into my mind recently when considering the advice a French philosopher, Hadot, who writes in his book “N’oubliez pas de Vivre”, about the almost spiritual exercise of taking a view from on high. When you climb a mountain and survey the world from the mountain’s heights you have an intense shift of perspective. Take this a little further and consider the viewpoint of one of the astronauts looking back at the Earth from the Moon. (Whenever I think that thought, I can hear Nanci Griffiths singing “From a Distance” inside my head!) Whether you physically climb or fly high above your daily world, or whether you take a journey in your mind using your imagination, this experience of looking down on life from on high also has the potential to give you an “It’s not about you” moment. You can become aware of your smallness and of the brevity of your own life in the grand scheme of things.

There’s another sense too in this “It’s not about you” perspective. Time and time again I hear patients tell stories of great suffering which shrinks or even, at least temporarily, disappears, when they connect to others, when they feel, express and act their love for others and in doing so feel a surge of love and meaning in their own lives. Managing to focus on others is not easy when your suffering is so great that it is overwhelming all aspects of your life, but those who manage it, even for short periods, often report feeling transformed.

There was a second reason why Johnny Bunko came to mind this week and that was the post by Daniel Pink on the Johnny Bunko blog where he related Barack Obama‘s Presidency bid to the six Bunko lessons. Go read it for yourself. It’s a good introduction to Johnny Bunko!