Self Matters - Dr. Phil (McGraw)

Chapter 1

Note: the author's stream-of-consciousness style, massive paragraphs without line breaks, and constant presumption concerning "you" made this chapter hard for me to read.

"There's nothing wrong with trying to fly, unless you happen to be a beagle instead of an eagle."
-- bahaha, great neg

"Your life, behind closed doors, can totally suck. It can be a major train wreck, yet you will get up in the morning and instead of working on your mind and your heart for even five minutes, you will obsess around for hours."

"I see tons of couples getting married every year. I bet over 90% of them spend months, even years, planning the wedding, and almost no time planning the marriage."

"If you have no purpose, you have no passion. If you have no passion, you have sold yourself out. . . superficiality becomes the substitute for the things that ought to matter"

"Ask yourself how long it has been since you were really excited about some meaningful aspect of your life."
-- ONE DAY. OWNED.

Man stuck in the past: "Hey Phil, remember the fourth quarter of that football game?"
I say, "Yeah, that was really something.", but what I'm really thinking is: Hell no, I don't remember that, I've done about nine million things since then and apparently you haven't.
-- Ahahaha

"When we sell out, the things we abandon first are the things that matter only to ourselves. Why? Because that way we don't disappoint anyone else and God forbid we do that."
-- Hell yeah, sell other people's interests out first.


Chapter 2: Defining the Authentic Self

Note: This book is written for people who're doing worse than I am. I don't suffer from most of the afflictions he mentions - being bogged down, locked into meaningless responsibilites, etc. Therefore, my notes won't really dwell much on how to get out of these dilemnas, even though that's probably the most valuable part of the book.

"The authentic self is the you that can be found at your absolute core. . . it is the composite of all your unique skills, gifts, abilities, interests, talents, insights, and wisdom."
-- way ahead of you, Phil - I did my own search for my own "core values" a while back.

Questionnaire:
Do you know, in vivid detail, who that authentic you is? -- if no, go find it, you're wasting your time.
Did you at one time listen carefully to that voice? Do you suspect that somehow you've lost contact with it? -- if so, go find it, and listen to it above others.
Is your public persona at odds with the things that define your authentic self? -- if so, you're living a life defined from the outside in.

Without that self you have a void.

It takes more energy to work against your nature than with it.

"Suppose I came to you on your deathbed and said, 'Here are 14 years longer for you to live, to enjoy watching your grandchildren grow, to experience life in any way you wish - do you want those extra years?' How would you respond?"
-- My inclination is to say, "Nah, I'm ready to die." I'm not sure what this indicates about me.
-- After some thought, the "Nah, I'm ready to die" assumes I'm on my deathbed after a long life that's run its course. If I'm on my deathbed early for some stupid reason, such as injury or disease, I'd say "Yes. Give me that shit right now."

"At some time or another, all of us have encountered people who seemed to be larger than life, people whose experience of life was filled with color and excitement. . . it is through them that we catch a glimpse of what the authentic life is like."
-- Do these people the courtesy of not looking at them under a microscope, and do yourself the courtesy of understanding that their lives are not always filled with color and excitement.

A lie unchallenged becomes the truth.

Once you know the facts about yourself, you'll stop thinking, I have to earn the right to be here by being clever, rich, funny, pretty, etc. Instead, you'll communicate to the world, I have the right to be here because I know from the inside out I have qualities worthy of acceptance.

Be skeptical of familiar patterns and information.

Man-task interface: Match the job to the person.

Internalized reactions to external events which aren't harmonious with your core values create a fictional self with different motivators. This self will lead you wrong.

"If you go ten miles left when you needed to go ten miles right, that's a thirty-mile mistake. Ten miles left, ten miles back to where you started from, and then ten miles right to get where you were going."
-- Technically, it's a twenty-mile mistake, because you would've had to travel those last 10 miles anyway... but I see his point, which is that a 10-mile commitment can turn into a 30-mile odyssey in your mind if you get off to a bad start.

Don't let your reasons for not doing something turn into excuses.

-- Goddamnit, I can't speedread this book. It's like drifting in and out of consciousness as I listen to a lecture the speaker has decided to give out of order.
-- Just have to take it one line at a time...

-- I've never liked someone talking to me from a book. No, that's not true. I've never liked them having an "I" identity of their own that isn't affiliated with the story. It's like, I'm already reading a book by you, about your thoughts; you don't need to interject your ego in there to get your message across.


Chapter 3: Your Self-Concept

Style of engagement: How you act to invite responses from other people.

Don't base your self-concept on the way others see you. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Why give your power away to random "beholders"?

"Nobody died and left [him/her] in charge"
-- good saying
-- "Oh, did I miss the funeral?"
-- "What funeral?"
-- "The one for the PERSON WHO DIED AND LEFT YOU IN CHARGE?"

The Popeye theory of life management: "I am what I am"

An explanation for a thing is not a course of action that will fix it.

In addition to "labels", people also have "tapes" - the behavior they roll out whenever the "tape" seems applicable. These can be positive or negative, but are always preconceived.

Honesty and truth are not synonomous. You can be perfectly honest and wrong at the same time.



Introduction to External Factors

"Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself." -- Charles de Gaulle

Flea story: Put fleas in a jar for long enough and they'll jump half an inch below the lid - wait a while, take the lid off, and they'll never jump out.



Chapter 4: Ten Defining Moments

Oh goodness. Not going to do the exercises, considering how many there are, though they looked helpful when I started.

The short version of this chapter is, examine your life for your strongest memories from ages 1-5, 6-12, 13-20, 21-39, 40-55, 56+, then choose ten out of all of these as the most defining moments that helped make you you. Describe them, list how you were and how you changed, write a bit about how they've affected you, write about whether they've clarified/distorted your core values, review how you saw and reacted to the moment, then write down "keep" or "reject" based on how you feel about the moment & explain why. There's a step 7, explain the bottom-line effect on your self-concept, but that seems rife for created answers.

Chapter 5: Seven Critical Choices

By making successive choices along a path, one grows and gains power.

"Working the night shift at the local 'stop and rob'"
"She has to do pullups because she lacks the physiological prerequisite for chinups." (not from this, but still hilarious)

Chapter 6: Five Pivotal People

"The fear-induced, self-destructive determination that so many people demonstrate in suppressing who they authentically are is a never-ending source of amazement to me. When you think about how much life energy people devote to denying who they are and living who they aren't, you can't help being awed by the tragic enormity of it. What a waste of talent and energy!"

-- idea - keyboard with a 3/4 size space bar on the left side, then a backspace key on the right side

"Successful people - meaning people whose lives are peaceful, well balanced, and satisfying - tend to identify more heroes or role models among their five pivotal people."
-- Mine were Roland, Andrew, my mom, Athena, and Eravaci, though Mr. Headlee deserves a spot in there somewhere.

Exercise for 5 Pivotal People: list name, write description of actions, then write influence on you

"Time now for a critical question: were YOU on the list of pivotal people in your life? If not, why not?"
-- because I assumed "five pivotal people" meant "five people OTHER THAN YOURSELF"


Introduction to Internal Factors

The "tapes" one has allow one to rattle off preconceived notions at high speed. Anyone you see doing this, yourself included, is probably playing a "tape" rather than giving appropriate thought to the issue.

Chapters 7-8: Locus of Control, ???

"The best place to find a helping hand is at the end of your arm." - Swedish proverb

"At his first appointment, Steve described for me his bouts with intense pain and his deep, reactive depression. . . ten days into his therapy, Steve told me he'd reached two conclusions: first, that his pain emanated from a chronic imbalance in his muscles; and second, that this muscle problem was in turn being kept alive by his emotional stress and imbalances. . . he decided that he, himself, could reverse his condition by improving the behavioral and emotional balance in his life and consequently his muscle tension. . . one year later, he said the pain no longer disrupted his life."
-- I don't think psychosomatizing an actual medical condition is healthy, but the "strong mind, strong body" approach is a powerful one.
-- Thank you, Calvin and Hobbes, for teaching me the meaning of words like psychosomatic.

Bus driving is one of the most stressful jobs out there - you have a lot of responsibility, yet virtually no control over the situation.

Internalizers: operate from a self-concept that says, "Anything bad that happens is my fault. Anything good that happens, I made happen."
Externalizers: operate from a self-concept that doesn't take ownership of anything, bad or good.
-- when I first read this, I couldn't believe there were Externalizers.

Internalizers: will fix things themselves
Externalizers: will fix things when told to by someone in an appropriate position
Chance people: may or may not fix things

To turn an externalizer into an internalizer:
Externalizer: "This test was so easy."
"You mean because you listened carefully and studied hard for it?"
Externalizer: "Oh yeah, forgot about that."

Vice versa:
Internalizer: "Whew, all my hard work paid off. I aced that test."
"You too? Yeah, that test was so easy. I goofed off the entire time and still aced it, and I can barely tie my shoes!"

Internalizers: Don't blame yourself for things out of your control.
Externalizers: Take responsibility for things within your control.
Chance people: Are lazy and not worth helping until they can make, and stick with, decisions.

Test your perception of things whenever the opportunity arises, but don't feel you have to come to a conclusion.
You respond to your perception of things.

When faced with a gun, people will look at the gun instead of checking for escape routes.
-- overcome this instinct.

"If you were to step up to someone, look her in the eyes, and say 'You are a stupid, worthless bitch,' she would recoil in horror and pain. Yet that is exactly the kind of thing that people say to themselves all day, every day, by way of their internal dialogue."
-- Who does that? My internal dialogue's usually a positive force, and it always treats me with respect. I've called myself an idiot when regarding mistakes I've made, but I've never meant it that way.

Negative internal dialogue is started by other people, then echoed by you when the opportunity arises.

You may downplay something you really care about by generating a false sense of apathy.

Phrase the last few words in your internal dialogues so that they accentuate the positive.



Chapter 9: Labels

He mentions the positive-reinforcement story: tell a kid he's a good student, and he'll be one.

"'Who are you?' Many people answer that question in terms of their jobs and their function."
-- I answer that with "I'm Evan", "My name is Evan", or "This is Evan", followed by whatever information I want the other guy to hear.

Without doubt, you have a set of labels you retreat to when meeting someone or presenting yourself to the world.
-- this is customary, I imagine the only people without these labels are people without titles or accomplishments to speak of

Abstract criticisms, such as "loser" or "ugly", are hard to challenge due to their nature.

Our emotional sensitivity means that the labels we assume in high school may penetrate deeply into our self-concept.
-- mine did. On some level I justify my weakness in certain areas by thinking I'm doing well for a "geek", when in actuality, I should be competing alongside the best in every field.

The world loves labels. Labels are convenient. Refusing to live by a label makes you inconvenient.

iatrogenic: harm induced by a healer.

You only live to labels as long as they're working for you on some level.

If your label is that you're the cutest girl in the class, you'll either discard it or start avoiding mirrors as you age.

Most people would rather be right than happy.
-- count me in, though I don't see these as exclusive.


Chapter 10: Life Scripts

Tapes:
- look backward
- express judgement about you, now
- predict your outcome

Live life unscripted. Do your planning beforehand, and when the moment comes, plan to wing it.

When you're living from a script, you will resist any change to that script.
When you stop living from a script, anyone who expected you to live that way will become uneasy.


Chapter 11: Intro to the five-step action plan:

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
As soon as you behave differently for even one day, your life goes on alert: "Hey, what's this, a new deal?"
You can't change what you won't acknowledge. You can change what you do acknowledge.
You can't blame others for the choices you make.

Five points:
- Your core values
- Your learning history
- External factors
- Internal factors
- The fake self you've become

"Do we change feelings first and let behavioral change follow? Or do we change behaviors first, hoping that when people do different, they'll feel different? Why not do both at once?"

Five steps:
- Isolate an event
- Audit your responses
- Test your responses
- Come up with an authentic response
- Find the least costly effective action to take, then take it

Authenticity test:
- Is it a fact?
- Does holding onto it serve your best interests?
- Are your thoughts advancing your health?
- Does it get you more of what you want?

-- A solution you create can work for you, even if it's wrong, because your ego has a vested interest in it.
-- Get other people to come up with their own solutions, then agree.
-- A strange sense of power has descended upon me. The idea that people have common subconscious patterns which can be played to has officially made the transition from "background knowledge" to "foreground, exploitable knowledge" in my mind.

Many people are reluctant to forgive because they believe it dishonors them and trivializes what they've been through. That's not the case with true forgiveness.

People who carry around the burden of anger invariably say they do so because they never got closure on the treatment they received at the hands of another person.
-- very true: once the treatment stops, I suspect forgiveness is more effective than catharisis


Chapter 12: Sabotage

"Speaking ill of others is a dishonest way of praising yourself."

In the minds of others, you have a role you're expected to know. Deviations incur criticism.

Criticism types:
- Overprotection - keeping you down because "it's for your own good".
- Power manipulation - keeping you down to keep the old dynamic alive
- Leveling - keeping you down because they'd be on a lower level
- Status quo - keeping you down to feel that things are normal

Trust, then verify.


I will do my best in everything I try. I remember saying that as I was leaving the Navy, then forgetting that pledge.