The Lies We Believe

by Dr. Chris Thurman

  I remember one of those moments as if it were yesterday. I was in Michigan giving one of my “Thinking Straight” seminars before an audience of about three hundred people. I was covering some important material using an overhead projector. Thinking I was writing on a transparency, I actually wrote all over the clear glass plate that the light is projected through instead. I can’t tell you how humiliated I felt when I realized my mistake. There I was in front of three hundred people staring at an overhead projector with my scribblings all over the glass plate and no way to erase them. If there had been an exit door nearby, I would have slithered out as quickly as possible and never returned to the beautiful state of Michigan again. I felt like Vinko Bogataj sailing off the side of the ski jump. Talk about feeling like you have been walking around in public with toilet paper hanging out of your pants! Fortunately, the people in attendance found my plight extremely funny, and a member of the audience got me some wet paper towels to clean off the glass plate so that I could continue the seminar.

  Maybe you have had a Vinko Bogataj moment or two in your life. Maybe you have found yourself gliding down the ski jump of life ready to take glorious flight, thinking to yourself, What a piece of cake! Only you lose your balance and go careening off in some disastrous direction. As you lay there emotionally bruised and bleeding from your mistake, you probably felt the complete loss of self-worth and confidence that goes with such moments. You might also have felt the cold stare of people who were there to observe that not-so-grand moment in your life.

  Why all this fuss about our friend Vinko and his famous fall off some ski jump in Germany? Well, I want to use his experience, and our own like it, to suggest another important truth that we need to fully understand as we head down the ski jump that each day represents: life is difficult. Vinko found that out as he tried to keep his balance as an athlete. We find this out each day as we try to keep our balance as human beings.

  It’s a Difficult Life

  Almost everyone on the planet seems to have a personal “life is difficult” story to tell. These stories are sometimes amusing, sometimes heartbreaking, often somewhere in between. But listen closely to how these stories are told. You’ll notice that the storytellers are often surprised, even insulted, that life had proven to be difficult. It is as if they had been operating under the assumption that life should be easy and smooth. They often tell their stories with great resentment and anger as if life had chosen only them on which to inflict misery. In a very real sense, they have not come to grips with the great truth that life is difficult. Instead, they are still living in a childlike world where life is all peaches and cream and every challenge is easily navigated.

  A number of years ago, I started to realize that I was one of those people. My realization began when I read Dr. M. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled. He opens the book with the simple statement, “Life is difficult,” and proceeds to call it one of the greatest truths and one that few people come to grips with. I remember thinking I had wasted my money on the book if that was all it had to say to me. “Tell me something new!” was my initial (and arrogant) thought.

  As I thought more about it, though, I could see I hadn’t really come to grips with this truth. I saw more deeply than ever before that I had spent all of my life believing that life should be easy and that something was horribly wrong when difficulty dared to rear its ugly head. I saw how much I resented problems coming my way and how I responded to them with a “How dare you do this to me!” attitude. I often found myself whining and moaning whenever difficulty happened to me.

  Essentially, I had not grown up! I was looking at life much as a child does—through rose-colored glasses that made life look prettier and easier than it really is. When life wasn’t pretty or easy, I would throw an internal, and sometimes external, temper tantrum that would match any five-year-old’s best. Sound familiar? Maybe you can identify with my struggle to accept that life is, indeed, difficult. Maybe you also want to keep seeing life in rosier shades than it really is. Maybe you, like me, do your fair share of whining and moaning when life is tough. If so, I don’t think we are alone.

  Life Shouldn’t Be Difficult?

  With the evidence all around us that life is difficult, I am amazed at how many of us still refuse to accept it. I guess what we know intellectually and what we really believe down in our guts are two different things. We all intellectually know that problems are part of life, but many of us believe that they shouldn’t be. From my twenty years of clinical experience, the typical client in counseling seems to think that life should be fairly easy and often blows a gasket when life proves otherwise. Let me give you an example.

  Becky came to counseling with enough anger to fill an ocean. Because she often lost her temper, her boss told her that either she go to counseling or she go out the company door. She wasn’t exactly what you might call a “happy camper” kind of client. The following exchange took place during one of our sessions:

  “I don’t know why I’m here,” Becky said glumly. “My boss pretty much forced me to come because I lost my cool a few times with some customers at work.”

  “So you don’t think you need to be here?”

  “I’m sure I don’t need to be here!” she adamantly replied. “I may lose my temper every so often, but the people I get angry at usually deserve it. They put me through so much unnecessary hassle, I just can’t help getting furious with them!”

  “You don’t feel you have much control over your anger at those times.”

  “It feels like a wave coming over me. I can’t stop it. I speak before I think and end up getting myself in trouble,” she stated, as if she were confessing to a priest.

  “Becky, I believe it’s just the opposite. I believe you think before you speak. Play along with that thought for a minute. Let’s assume you think before you speak. What do you think you might be telling yourself prior to getting angry at these people?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” she answered, as if I were one of her customers hassling her, not wanting to be much help.

  “Come on, give it a try. What do you think is going through your mind about these people who put you through so much unnecessary hassle?”

  “That they are jerks and shouldn’t be making my life so difficult!”

  “You think they are making your life more difficult than it should be, is that it?”

  “Yes. I don’t need them to make my life any more difficult than it already is.”

  “Becky, let me ask you what may seem to be an insane question. How difficult do you think your life should be?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you said that these customers make your life more difficult than it should be. That seems to imply that you have some sense of how difficult life ought to be. So let me ask you again, how difficult should your life be?”

  “I don’t think my life ought to be that difficult! I shouldn’t have to put up with people who have nothing better to do than irritate me!”

  “Let me ask you an equally insane question. Why not?”

  “What do you mean, ‘Why not’? Why should anyone have to put up with people like that?”

  “Because life is full of people like that.”

  “You gotta be kidding me. I’m supposed to accept that life is full of jerks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dr. Thurman, with all due respect, I can’t believe you’re saying that to me. Why would I want to accept that?”

  “Look at the price you are paying for not accepting it! You walk around ready to explode at a moment’s notice, and you are close to losing a job you told me you like pretty much. The price you are paying for thinking life ought to be easy and ‘jerk-free’ is already pretty high and could go even higher if you lose your job.”

  “I just can’t accept that my job should have hassles in it like that!” she fought back, refusing to budge.

  “Becky, let me play a little rougher with you. Why do you think your life shoul
d be any different from anyone else’s? Why should you have the only job on the planet where you don’t have to deal with less-than-wonderful people? Are you royalty? Do you deserve a hassle-free life and the rest of us don’t?”

  “No, I don’t think anyone should have to put up with difficulties that aren’t necessary.”

  “Well, that doesn’t really solve the problem, does it? Whether any of us should have to put up with irritating people and unnecessary problems or not, they show up on our doorstep anyway. There are lots of difficulties in life. You seem to be saying that rather than face that and accept it, you are just going to stay mad at it, no matter how much you lose in the process.”

  “When you put it that way, it doesn’t really sound too good,” she sheepishly responded.

  “Maybe the truth of the matter is, that attitude isn’t too good. Maybe that attitude is keeping you from handling life more maturely than you do.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right,” she conceded, without really sounding convinced.

  “Becky, let me be bold with you. I am right on this. You are telling yourself that your life ought to be free from certain kinds of difficulties, and you get furious when it isn’t. The truth is that your life is just like mine and everyone else’s—it has problems in it that aren’t a lot of fun to deal with. And these problems are, in a sense, testing how mature you are. Your boss is trying to tell you that you are not doing too well on the ‘maturity test’ at work and that you need to do better or you will lose your job. For you to do better, you are going to need to come more fully to grips with the truth that life is difficult, both in tolerable and in not so tolerable ways, whether you like it or not. You can choose to squeal like a stuck pig when life is difficult or do the mature thing and accept the difficulty and handle it to the best of your ability.”

  “I think I’m getting your point. You’re saying my anger toward the customers is tied to wrongly believing that they shouldn’t be making my life difficult when the truth of the matter is that life is difficult and they are just proving that to me. I’m at odds with the fact that life is difficult rather than accepting it and dealing with it.”

  “That is exactly what I am trying to get across.”

  “I gotta tell you that your being right about this isn’t much comfort. I still don’t think I will be able to handle jerks at work any better. I will still tend to speak before I think.”

  “Isn’t that why you are in counseling? Aren’t you here to work on that problem? Don’t you think your boss will keep you as long as you work on the problem and show some improvement over time?”

  “Yes, she will keep me if I get better. She likes my work in general, and she seems pretty invested in helping me improve myself as an employee. And now that you mention it, maybe I am in counseling because I need to handle people better than I do. And not just at work but in my personal life as well. I get pretty angry there also.”

  “Becky, a lot of different issues figure into your anger outbursts at work, and we can use our sessions to explore what they are. So far, I am just suggesting that one of the more core issues is a basic unwillingness to accept the truth that life is difficult. Your work life was just pointing that out to you through the ‘jerks’ you were being asked to help. Life is a pretty good teacher at times if we will let it be. In this case, it was trying to teach you that you hadn’t learned an important truth that you need to know in order to have a successful life. I’m confident you can learn to accept that life is difficult and not be so at odds with it.”

  “I sure hope so. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life blowing up at people and things that bother me.”

  My sessions with Becky often came back to the “life is difficult” truth. Time and time again, she would bring into my office complaints about this hassle and that hassle, angry and resentful that life had dared to be difficult again. We kept trying to look at what life was telling her and kept trying to break past her unwillingness to listen. She did make progress, though it was slow at times. Bit by bit, she started to accept that life is full of problems and that staying at odds with that truth was only hurting her.

  When I began writing this chapter, I was tempted to take the “life is difficult” truth and give you some more dramatic versions of it to prove the point. I was tempted to tell you stories like that of a client who was chased around her house as a child by her father with a knife in his hand threatening to kill her, or that of a client who was forced by her father to have sex when the mother was out of the house, or that of my client who lost all of his hard-earned money and a business he had devoted his life to because his business partner swindled him and put the business in bankruptcy. These are the stories that break your heart. Instead, I opted for one that involved a patient facing the difficulty of dealing with “jerks” at work.

  The point is this: whether in small ways, large ways, or in-between ways, life is difficult. That is a vitally important truth. Stepping out on the planet thinking otherwise is inviting emotional trouble on a scale that none of us can ultimately survive. Becky came to see that. I hope you already have. If not, I hope this chapter has reminded you of it.

  Before I send you into the next section, I want to bring some needed balance to what I am saying here. The truth that “life is difficult” doesn’t mean that “life stinks” or that “everything in life is awful” or the like. The fact that all of us will face difficulty in life is not a reason for cynicism or pessimism. Either extreme in thinking—that life should be nothing but roses or that life is nothing but thorns—will lead you to emotional ruin. Life has its thorns and it has its roses and everything in between. That is the proper balance of thinking we need to have here.

  Growthwork

  I hope that you are a little more clear-minded about the fact that as long as you draw breath, you are going to have problems and they will make your life difficult. Knowing you are going to have problems and truly accepting that are two different things, though.

  In light of that fact, I want you to do the following assignment. I want you to make a list of the problems you have had in your life so far that have made your life difficult. Don’t worry if some of them sound small or petty; just write them down. Your list can encompass problems others caused you, problems you caused yourself, or problems no one caused (or all three). I’ll lead the way and give you a few items from my list.

  Problems I Have Had That Made My Life More Difficult

  1. Moved around a lot as an Air Force “brat.” Made relationships with friends less stable and long-lasting.

  2. Seriously injured my knee as a college freshman. Has kept me from playing certain sports that I love since then.

  3. Had acne as a high school and college student. Felt like I was a “walking zit” most of the time and felt a lot of shame and embarrassment. Didn’t date much as a consequence.

  4. Mom suddenly passed away at the age of fifty-seven from a brain aneurysm. Didn’t get to share with her the joy of receiving my Ph.D., getting married, or having kids.

  5. Didn’t get accepted into the doctoral program I graduated from the first time I applied. Delayed getting my career started and meant laying out a year.

  The problems I have had in my life are not likely to be turned into a big-budget motion picture. Chris’s Big Zit starring Robert Redford (of course) isn’t going to be coming to your neighborhood theaters anytime soon. My problems so far have been relatively minor compared to what some people have faced. Many of my clients, for example, have had much worse problems than mine. Yet they are still some of the problems that made my life difficult to some degree.

  How about your list? Lots of major problems? Mostly minor ones with a big one or two thrown in for good measure? No major problems at all yet? How has life been to you so far?

  More important, have you accepted the problems you have had yet? Have you come to grips with the fact that they happened and you have been able to move on from them, or are you still struggling with bittern
ess and resentment that these problems came along at all?

  Now, the hard part. For each problem on your list, ask yourself, Have I accepted that I had this problem yet? For any problem that the answer is no, I want you to write in your journal why you think that is the case.

  A quick word of caution before you do the assignment. Accepting a problem doesn’t mean liking that it happened or that it doesn’t still hurt. You can accept that something happened in your life and not be glad it did and still hurt over it when you think about it. Accepting it means that you have faced the fact that it happened (versus refusing to), understand why it occurred (versus being in the dark about why it did), have let it hurt (versus feel numb about it), and have come to a place of peace about it (versus still in turmoil over it).

  Once you have written in your journal about the problems that you haven’t accepted yet, I want to encourage you to let yourself finally do so. Along these lines, I want to give you a script:

  I accept that __________________________________________ happened to me. First, I admit that it did happen. I am no longer going to say that it didn’t or it shouldn’t have. The fact of the matter is, it took place.

  Second, I admit that I don’t like that it happened—that it made my life difficult to some degree. Specifically, the problem made my life difficult in the following way: ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________

  Third, I acknowledge that the problem was painful emotionally in that I felt ____________, _____________, and _____________ during that time. It still hurts to this day in the following ways: ______________, _______________, _____________.

  Fourth, I acknowledge that having had the problem led to some growth in my life as a result. Specifically, I have grown in the following ways as result of this problem: ___________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________

  Fifth, I understand why this problem occurred. It occurred because ____________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________