Your Own Two Hands
In my view, self-health is not self-help. Yet self-help has merit in the process of self-health. I’ve spent over 20 years intricately helping close friends of mine as individuals with everything from food and diet to understanding engineering concepts in school to fashion and music to ethics and compliance in business (ranging from local businesses to Fortune 50 companies in corporate America). While there are many patterns to take note of in my track record of helping others, the most important one to recognize is that I’ve always been against being the person to give that level of assistance because of my core beliefs (which I’ll expound upon below). But I was young and inexperienced in terms of experience. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things in my life. So much so that I lost count long ago. On top of being wrong about many things in my life, I am equally a walking contradiction so I could never run far from myself. A second important pattern is that there is not one situation in which I was not just asked but begged for help. I never offered or even implied that I would want to give any of this help. I believe this is an important distinction between my situation and approach to providing help versus persons who decide that it is their goal in life to help others.
The arduous, taxing, problematic, imperfect, and (in my case) failed process of helping others has taught me many things life has taught long before I was born. In my unique case, I acknowledge that at most turns in my life I am learning something that already exists. It is rare in life to learn something new. The exception to this rule is getting the opportunity to be alive in the 21st century when we are all learning new things that haven’t existed in humanity before.
This new era has many things to offer. But in the beginning stages — which is most of the information made available in the past 20 years and the next 20 — most of that will be lacking guidance and detail for the individual rather than being accurate and utilitarian. I’ve, therefore, never agreed with the traditional adage of, “knowledge is power.” I believe something new: that experience yields the knowledge that is power.
I believe something new: that experience yields the knowledge that is power.
This new statement I’ve coined is not based on over-intellectualized justification or what I believe to be objective. Rather, it is based on spending 36 years in the most revealing, powerful, ego-based business (next to religion) that humanity has ever known: the music business. As compared to many other industries and music itself which has been around as long as people have, the music business is a relatively new one. Its pioneers have suffered at the hands of ineptitude, ego, lack of goal setting, and, most importantly, lack of experience. While experience may teach wisdom in general terms, its wisdom is extracted from the power gained as a byproduct of experience. This order of operations is most important when calculating one’s intrinsic value in order to access the foundation of self.
Understanding self has more than one quadrant. It exists in 3: internal, external forces, and reaction to external forces. Personality is derived from these three quadrants. One could argue personality is a fourth quadrant dependent on the lens of analysis. But I would personally argue a fourth quadrant is inconsequential to a foundational starting point in terms of directionalizing individual personality.
As an individual in this life, one must acknowledge at some point in this life that making points will always be inferior to observation. Observation shows that the ride in this life is alone. Do not misinterpret a family or friends’ deep and love-based support for taking the place of being alone in this journey of life.
When I was just three years old I remember my father gently and very clearly expressing that when I choose to do something I do it to myself and only myself. He would express this in several different ways as I got older but the message always remained the same. I deduced that no matter how much my parents love and support me, they are not me. This is very simple conceptually but when executed in the journey of life, things become a bit more complex in terms of processing and accepting the outcomes of that simple statement.
From my view everything in life is context. I personally believe that context is the chords of life and the individual is the lead instrument that has to learn how to play the changes in order to attain melodic adaptability. Melodic adaptability is a term that I created to explain modulation needed to coexist in terms of living one’s life as an individual in parallel with life’s traditional requirements. I’ve had a long time to process these thoughts as there aren’t many differences in me now versus when I was 3 years old (with exceptions to my weight, height, and response to life’s unknowns).
I clearly remember (as well as confirmed with both my mother and father) that at 4 years old I went upstairs quietly and wrote down the license plate of my babysitter’s male visitor. This man who was a stranger to me was over at my house without my parents’ permission while they were out. I knew that the babysitter didn’t have my dad’s permission because I sensed her nerves, change in speed in terms of her baseline speech, and irritability towards me when I wasn’t doing anything. Any of these in isolation would not be an accurate assessment to conclude trouble, but when combined I knew something was off.
After waiting for her to complain to my dad of my unruly behavior I calmly explained to my father with confidence that she had someone over in his absence. I got lucky in my life because my parents always had the confidence in me to believe in my feelings and what I was saying based on my simply saying it. They never diminished my thoughts and feelings no matter how I felt. I never had to prove anything outside of being outside of my comfort zone. This gave me tremendous confidence in my instincts, feelings, and observations with the consistent understanding that all three don’t equal reality but rather my reality. As long as I can remember remembering, my parents went out of their way to make that distinction clear no matter how confident I felt about something.
This gave me tremendous confidence in my instincts, feelings, and observations with the consistent understanding that all three don’t equal reality but rather my reality.
This allowed me to continuously observe a duality growing up that was lacking from most adults I dealt with as a child and to this day. As a young child, this caused much frustration in terms of understanding and acceptance of the irrational analysis predicated on confidence alone that I saw in my peers and adults I encountered. My judgment toward this was not based on others’ lack of understanding. Rather, my judgment came as a result of others projecting onto me that their irrational, boastful confidence that was never proportionally backed by capability was something they should nevertheless be given a level of credit for that I wasn’t giving. I was never able to wrap my head around this entitled attitude. I was also unable to understand the position of someone implying that I was somehow incorrect for my point of view.
To be fair, I’m not exempt from projecting. I’ve done so many times in my life. It was always based on inexperience. My pattern of projection, whether subjective or objective, has never been rooted in a disproportionate ratio of skill to capability. My particular habit of projection was based on a personal disdain for mediocrity, seeing the maximum potential in people, and wanting that level of excellence for my friends. I projected onto them that they should be the best that they could be. That is until I came to terms with the reality that most people aren’t necessarily seeking to achieve good, much less their best. Most have a mentality of aiming for “at least” and being OK with that overall. In contrast, my mentality is to aim for “at most”. Both approaches are valid and have their respective pros and cons. I do not and have never considered any personal attribute in terms of “better” or “worse”. That applies here as well. While neither is better or worse, the two approaches have points of conflict and incompatibility that make projection of one on the other problematic. While I consider my projected pursuit to be noble, I’ve learned with age that it’s definitely misguided because — per the two realities — my ideas for others diverge from their ideas for themselves. Outside of the best intent, projection therefore still falls under “misguided” and “wrong” on my part.
As a child, I observed the two realities/perspectives but other adults did not. This confounded me and caused tension when adults were faced with a child who challenged their assumptions not out of defiance but out of logic.
When I saw this in my babysitter, I waited until she left. I then handed my dad the piece of paper on which I had written the man’s license plate. With help from his close friend (the head of the police department at the time) my dad traced the car and learned I was telling the truth.
This story set the stage for my life as it made me confident in my ability to observe with accuracy while paying attention to the duality that what I may be observing may not always be. This along with many lessons had to be digested and constructed with my own two hands. My mother and father can only guide, just like I, as the child, can only construct and therefore yield the result of my construction.
The notion that there is going to be a person (a parent, teacher, boss, mentor, spouse, etc) who’s going to say something and you’re doing to do it and everything is going to work out for you is flawed. That whole notion needs to be let go. Since no parent has the capability to do that, no other person — no matter how smart or well-intentioned — is going to be able to do that.
People indeed say helpful things every day. You’re going to get amazing, incredible information every day that can offer guidance. But in the absence of action taken with your own two hands, nothing will change in your life. Your own two hands are the only things that can construct anything. No one else can construct anything for you.
In the absence of action taken with your own two hands, nothing will change in your life.
This is why I personally believe there is a fundamental flaw in the self-help industry. While I think the intentions of most people in the space are very positive in general terms, the industry does not have tangible metrics. If you don’t have something measurable, then how can one calculate? If one does not have measurable results to calculate, then how can one optimize?
Without acceptance of acceptance, there is no acceptance for the things one cannot change. If there is no acceptance for the things one cannot change a byproduct will be a lack of acceptance for the things that can be.
In my assessment, change and direction in life are predicated on the acceptance that the only thing one can get from an external force is guidance. Everything else must be done with your own two hands.
What kind of life have you built with your own two hands?
