Discovery

The Last Half of Life

Ron Johnson appreciation, Development, Discovery, Feelings, grief, happiness, men's issues, mindfulness, Opportunity, Self-Awareness, social esteem, Spiritual

I’m in the last half of life. Perhaps, I should put quotes around that statement because I am not speaking concretely and practically but abstractly and metaphorically. I just flew by my 77th birthday a bit ago and now I’m well into my 78th year of life. Who knows how long I will live: a day, a year, 10 years, or 30 years? Yes, I suppose I could live to 107 but that seems quite likely. I am actually at the average age where Americans people die, and actually a couple years beyond the average lifespan of men, which is 75, so it behooves me to examine such things. Let me get to the point of this “last half of life” business.

The last half of life

I have come to use the phrase, the last half of life, metaphorically, not as a chronological measure. Half of the typical life of an American is about 38 years. But many people never see their 38th birthday and many see years well beyond 76. I am using the last half of life to mean the period in a person’s life that s/he might make a lasting contribution to life, perhaps something substantially different from the “first half of life,” whatever that period of time might be. I am presently seeing many men who are in “the last half” of their lives, but their ages range from 35 to 78. I will be gathering some of these men together for a day of reflection, encounter, and forward-looking even though the challenges and dilemmas of these men are substantially different. What remains the same for them is finding meaning in the rest of their lives. These men are quite seriously looking at what the past, the present, and the future in order to go forward with self-confidence:

  • They are looking at what they have done right, what they have done wrong, what they could have done, what they should have done, and what they shouldn’t have done. These men are looking at the past with what we might call “the wisdom of age” or “the 20-20 vision of hindsight.”
  • They are looking at the present with a certain perspective, namely what they are now doing including what they should be doing, what they shouldn’t be doing, and what they want to be doing.
  • They are looking at the future as to what they could do, what they should do, and even what they feel they have to

Who is looking at the last half of life?

Let me tell you about some of these men. (And permit me to use the masculine pronoun from here on because I am just talking about men. There may be some great similarities with women or perhaps some profound differences, but that is another piece of literature that I am not qualified to write.). Of course, all the names are fictional as are some of the professions and situations in life so as to protect the privacy of these men. Nevertheless, the thoughts, feelings, and actions of these men are wholly factual.

  • Jack is the 78-year old, and my only patient who is actually older than I am. He has been a very successful person in his trade, which has been social work. He has continued to work until just recently when outlived his usefulness at the agency he worked for. Previous to that work he has had some very responsible and successful people and is a person deeply committed to his work, and also to his faith. Unfortunately, over the years, including the 50-some year of marriage, he has not managed his money very well and is in an almost dire financial situation. He is looking to the “last half” of his life free of this financial burden but also have a life with genuine meaning.
  • Sam is a 35-year old very successful businessman who owns a trade-based company. He has been quite disturbed by the recent election and the many changes in the culture and politics and wants to “make a difference” in the world in some way. He has considered selling his business and moving on but has no idea where, when, and how he would “move on.”
  • Peter has been successful in human resources for many years. He has made a significant amount of money, but now has been “downsized” as many companies now do. But he has taken the huge step of working on a master’s degree in psychology and hopes to enter the field. By the way, he is in a very unsatisfying marriage, has three adolescent kids one of whom is going to college this fall. So not only is he changing professions, he is also changing his parental role and possibly his marriage situation.
  • Tom of 63 but you wouldn’t know it because he so spy and active. He has had a couple of professions over the years, including a good stint in ministry, but he has been quite successful in sales. He, too, like Peter (and another man as well) is looking into the field of psychology or counseling. By the way, his marriage is also on the rocks to his great dismay because his wife left him having discovered that 33 years ago she shouldn’t have married him.
  • A man who may soon be inheriting a very successful professional business from his father, a business for which he is trained but not interested. His interests seem to lie more in teaching and coaching.
  • There are several others in situations not unlike these, where men have been making tons of money but not happy, have been in difficult marriages, and other challenges.

Perhaps one of the reasons this “last half” of life has interested me is the fact that I have seen many deaths over the past year, including many deaths of young people, who might not have found a way to truly engage the “last half” of their lives. These people include the children of several friends, my own daughter, the children of several men that are current patients, three cousins, three in-laws, and one patient who wrote three blogs about his life with me as his amanuensis. This man, 75 when he died, often said to me, “I don’t know what I’m going to do when I grow up.” Now he doesn’t have to worry, but I think he really wanted to find some meaning to the “last half” of his life but never did. These many deaths have only been aggravated by the “war” that I spoke of in a previous blog (biological, political, and cultural war) in the world together with the 550,000 people who have died of Covid and the millions who have been damaged in some way by the war. All of this has given me the opportunity to look at the “last half” of the lives of these men as well as the last half of my own life.  Truly looking at this last half takes an honest look at what has happened, what is happening, and what might happen in life.

Honestly looking at the future

The theme with all these men is this: what can I do in the future that will be meaningful? Perhaps, what can I do that will be of lasting value? Perhaps also, what can I do that will be of value to the world? Unfortunately, but understandably, these men want to bring all the past into the future. They want to bring along all the good of the past, leave all the bad, and have more good in the future. You can’t have all three, and this fact is difficult for every one of these men. Simply put, you can’t bring all the past into the future.

Examples:

  • One man wants to stay married even though his wife says that she doesn’t like him, never has, and she is seemingly very happy without him
  • One man wants to continue to make $100,000 but in a new profession that will barely give him half of that amount
  • One man wants to find a way to continue to love his former wife in the same way he always has even though his current female relationship is far superior to his former marriage
  • One man wants to stay living with his wife primarily so he can have an “intact family” even though he doesn’t love her, and possibly never has
  • One man wants to have some kind of magic that will eliminate the debt that he has acquired over many years
  • One man wants to get back with the woman who just might have the most important woman in his life even though she says that is impossible
  • One man wants to continue to engage in ideational figuring out new ways of looking at life although he never seems to be able to put anything to real practice.
  • One man wants to be able to drink as much as he always had even though his drinking has certainly damaged his marriage and possibly his life
  • Another man wants to continue to smoke pot as a primary means of coping with life
  • Many men want the people in their lives to understand the psychological principles that they have learned without these people going through the rigors of years of therapy that they have gone through

Slowly and painfully, men often have to learn to let go of much of the past, many sad and challenging things like mistakes of relationships, school, and work. Just as often men have to let go of the good things that were a part of the “first half of their lives” because these good things are no longer available. The poem Desiderata said it this way: take kindly the counsel of years gracefully surrendering the things of youth.” But what do we need to surrender? And what can I expect positively out of a good perspective of the second half of life?

Surrendering and expecting

If I am to truly face the future and seek to find meaning and make meaning in life, I have to give up so much of what “the first half” of life has been. Then I need to focus on what I can do, how I do it, and why I do it.

Primarily, what has to be surrendered is fear, namely:

  • Fear of mistakes
  • Fear of failure
  • Fear of rejection
  • Fear of correction
  • Fear of being alone
  • Fear of being ill or dying
  • Any other fear

Secondly, you have to surrender some expectations:

  • Of visible success
  • Of appreciation
  • Of recognition
  • Of money

But you can expect

  • An increasing realization that you are doing something for you, for other people, and for the world all at the same time
  • Being more truthful, first to yourself, and then to others
  • Continuing to get better at thinking, feeling, and doing
  • Finding people who share your interest in doing something meaningful
  • The freedom that a fear-free life gives you
  • Success in doing something meaningful
  • A lasting purpose in the days, years, or decades you have to live
  • Recognition of your work by some people

There are many people, at least so it seems, that do not need to look at the “last half” of life.

A good life in the past leading to a good life in the future

I know of several men who are quite pleased to be retired. One of them spends a good deal of time golfing, another a good deal of time water-skiing, with both of these activities being spent with other people. I can only surmise that there are many people who are snow birds in order to live their remaining lives in parts south, at least one in Costa Rica and many in Florida. I see Facebook posts by some of these men who are very content to philosophize, share pictures, tell stories, tell jokes, remind me of things in the 50’s, enjoy the spring flowers, and spend time with their grandchildren. I am happy for these men. Most of them have lived honorable, productive, and honest lives and now are using the fruits of their labor. While I appreciate their pleasant retirement, such is not my lot in life, so it seems. I look favorably at the past but look even more favorably at the present and the future.

Personal

So, what, you may ask, is my second half of life? The answer, quite simply, is teaching, namely teaching people what I have learned over these 77 years of life, and more specifically what I have learned over the 55 years of my professional career. The forms that this “teaching” seem to be taking is in writing, conducting seminars, and doing meaningful therapy. I have finished with several elements of therapy that constituted as much as half of my working years, namely psychotherapy with children, seeing people who are chronically ill, whether with mental illness or physical illness, doing evaluations to determine if someone is “disabled,” and very possibly severely limiting evaluations in general. My focus now, aside from reading, writing, and teaching, is to work with people in therapy who are truly ready to enter the second half of their lives. There are many people who think about such things, feel about such things, and dream about such things, but I think I can be of more value to the world helping people who are willing to step out of the past, into the present, and towards the future. This is somewhat of a painful change that I have been making in my own “second half” of life, but it yet seems right to do.

Good for Me; Bad for Me IV: Discernment of “Bad for Me”

Ron Johnson Discovery, emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness

This is the fourth in a series of “Good for Me; Bad for me”, which is a study of how things, people, and situations can, quite simply, good for you or bad for you. In previous blogs I have proposed a system of discernment about things that are good for you or bad for you; in other words, a way to quantify just how good or bad something is on a spectrum:

_____________________________________/________________________________________

Bad for me                                                                   Good for me

(very bad)                                (not so bad)          (pretty good)                                      (very good)

 

I further suggested that the “bad for me” and the “good for me” sides of the spectrum could be sub-categorized as follows:

  • The bad for me spectrum ranges from mild to profound:

Uninteresting      Unpleasant      Aversive                                      Dangerous      Toxic      Lethal

(mild)                                                                      to                                                     (profound)

  • The good for me spectrum also ranges from mild to profound:

Interesting      Pleasant      Exciting                       Enlivening     Life-enhancing     Life-sustaining

(mild)                                                        to                                                                    (profound)

In this blog we will discuss the range of things that can be bad for me exclusively leaving the examination of things that are good for me for the next blog. There are other complexities and possibilities of the good for me and bad for discussion that will become more obvious as we go along. Let’s begin the present discussion with the challenge of discerning the degree something is good for me or bad for me.

Discernment of the degrees of “good for me” or “bad for me”

I must grant the obvious: this is a challenge and the words I have chosen are all murky at best. It may not be terribly important for you to make a distinction between these words. I offer them as examples of how you can discern just how good or bad something is. While I admit to this challenge, I still find it valuable to have an approximate awareness of the intensity of the things that are good for you or bad for you. If you understand how good something is or how bad it is, you have a lot more power in your life. You empower your life with more good things and fewer bad things. But you can’t make appropriate decisions about adding or subtracting things in your life without a good understanding of just how good something is or how bad it is for you.

Once you have determined how good something is, you can then find ways to enhance it in your life or perhaps find other things that are similarly good to enhance your life. Similarly, if you find something that is bad for you, you can find ways of reducing such things in your life and preventing similar bad things from entering your life. Let’s start by looking at things that might be mildly bad for you and move on to things that are more profoundly bad for you. We will discuss degrees of “good for you” in our next blog. As we discuss the range of things that can be bad for you, you might find it profitable to consider a similar range in your own life.

Things that are on the “bad for me” side of the spectrum:

Recall that I have suggested three terms that describe the intensity of something that could be mildly or moderately bad for you and three terms that could be more profoundly bad for you. Thus, something could be:

Uninteresting: I have always liked sports. I currently play basketball three times a week and occasionally play golf, waterski, and cross-country ski. While I very much enjoy engaging in these sports, I am not particularly interested in talking about sports. Much of what I hear from my sports-minded friends talk about is uninteresting to me, like what some NBA player did in last night’s game, current statistics of some quarterback, or who might win the next NCAA basketball title in. I might attend to wins and losses of the Wisconsin Badgers because I went to Wisconsin and currently live in the state, but I care little about who did what in some game in Los Angeles. While sports talk is uninteresting to me for the most part, I don’t think it has ever been even unpleasant for me to hear a friend talk about his favorite team or player, or his hopes for his team’s success in the next season.

My dear wife has a true passion for things green. She has several gardens around our home, reads garden books and magazines voraciously, and has a small green house on our property. Among other things she loves the greenhouse planting and seeding that she does in the winter, and thoroughly enjoys watching the fruits of her labor in the spring, both with vegetables and flowers. Since we have been together for 40-odd years, I have learned to appreciate her passion for such things, much because I have grown in my love for her and enjoy her while she is talking about her gardens. I enjoy her but I do not always enjoy hearing what she is talking about. I must admit that I am largely uninterested in gardens, growing and green. While I am occasionally interested in such things, most of the time I am not. I can patiently listen while she tells me about the various kinds of coreopsis but I am not really interested. My disinterest in gardening used to be quite hurtful to Deb partly because I didn’t know how to listen and she didn’t know how to talk to me as well as we do these days. We will deal with the “good for you but not good for me” in a future blog.

While I might not be interested in what people talk about, like gardens and sports, I am never actually uninterested in people themselves. Due to my natural personality and to my profession I can listen to things that are uninteresting to me without being uninterested in the person talking. This can be a challenge when someone is talking about actors and recent TV comedy shows for which I have no interest and no knowledge, but I am always fascinated by people’s interests because they say so much about the person.

Consider things that are simply uninteresting to you, things that you tend to bore you, or things that you just don’t care about. You will find that the people are not boring even if what they talk about is. Boring or uninteresting is generally a short-lived experience, but a step beyond uninteresting is when something is unpleasant.

Unpleasant. When something is just uninteresting, you do not have any significant physical or emotional reaction to it. you are just uninterested. However, when something becomes unpleasant, you begin to feel a kind of agitation that can come as a mild feeling of being unsettled, a desire to change the situation or the subject, or even a mild irritation.

It is often unpleasant to hear about people talk about their physical and medical problems. I admit that Deb and I are outliers on the use of medicine and medical professionals. We came into the field of psychology through what we might call the back door, namely from “existential therapy,” which roughly means that everything is psychological and most everything is personal. Hence, we think many physical anomalies are psychogenic and all of them are aggravated by psychological factors. So, when people talk about their aches and pains, the cocktails of medicines there on or the myriad of surgeries they have had, I tolerate such conversation but I am never interested and often feel a kind of agitation that I call unpleasant. I know that medical matters are dreadfully interesting to some people, including people who suffer physical maladies and the medical professionals who seek to help them, so I would never challenge someone who speaks about such things. I just experience such conversation as unpleasant, and not terribly “bad for me.” Sports talk and garden talk is uninteresting to me for the most part and it is relatively easy for me to listen with only a mild interest in such things. But when people talk about their medical procedures, I have a visceral reaction to such talk and often an emotional or cognitive reaction as well.

Even though I might not be interested in surgeries and medications, you might think that I would be interested in psychiatric diagnoses given that I am a professional healthcare as a psychologist. Yet, I often find such talk to be beyond uninteresting and into the unpleasant category of “bad for me.” There are professional, ethical, and personal reasons for my antipathy to psychiatric diagnoses, but these reasons are not so important in this discussion as are my visceral reaction to such things. Interestingly, I rather enjoy identifying various personality characteristics that people might have because such an analysis might help me understand a person rather than finding a diagnosis that might tell me what is wrong with him.

It is not only people’s conversation that can be unpleasant. There are places and situations, and sometimes even property that can be unpleasant. Consider a time when you walked into a room, a house, a store, or an office and had a “bad feeling” about this place. I would call such experiences unpleasant, and certainly beyond uninteresting. Likewise, you may have been in some town, countryside, city, state, or country that made you feel uncomfortable when you were there. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but there “was something about the place that didn’t feel right.” You may also have had the experience of not feeling right about a car or a sweater that you had considered buying. Even more interesting are times when an experience is less than good for you for some unknown reason. I don’t particularly like riding on Ferris wheels, much less a tilt-a-whirl that might be exhilarating to someone else. You might have the same reaction to reading, doing homework, riding in a car, or swimming. To note something is unpleasant is to note that the person, place, property, or experience is not to your liking and leaves a residue of unpleasantness when you are around such things. Beyond uninteresting and unpleasant but yet in the mild/moderate range of “bad for me” could be someone or something that is actually aversive.

Aversive. Uninteresting lasts for seconds, or minutes at most and then dissipates, usually because things or people who are uninteresting are easy to endure for a short time. Unpleasant tends to leave the figurative aftertaste in your mouth, or the churning in your stomach that stays with you even after you have left the things that has caused the unpleasant experience. Aversive things, while still in the mild/moderate range of things that are bad for you, are beyond unpleasant; they are things, people, places, or experiences that require you to endure beyond your desire to do so. The verb from which the word aversive derives is avert, which means to avoid or to get away from. Avert derives from the Latin word that means move. So, when something is aversive, you feel the need to move away from something. When something is uninteresting or unpleasant, you might want to find something more interesting or pleasant, but for the most part you are able to endure such things without you inner spirit saying that you have to move away from this aversive thing. When you’re around something aversive, it is hard to endure and takes a certain amount of energy for you to endure it. Aversive, as a “bad for you” element of life, is not as bad as something that is dangerous, which is the next level of “bad for you” things. When something is aversive, you can feel the possibility of some kind of potential danger but not in the present.

You have been in many situations in life where you felt the feeling that you needed to get away from something. More than likely, you had a feeling in the pit of your stomach that felt like “yuck,” or you have had another physical symptom that is more natural to you when you encounter something that is aversive. Things that affect one or more of our physical senses can be aversive, like an odor that begins as simply unpleasant and then becomes aversive the longer you remain in the vicinity. In addition to smells that may be aversive, you might find aversive loud sounds or silence, bright lights or darkness, physical touch or the absence of physical touch, unfamiliar taste or no taste at all.

Aversive reactions to things affect our physical senses are easier to understand, but you can also have aversive reactions to people, places, or experiences. Consider the times when you’ve had an aversive reaction to an individual, perhaps a person you have seen many times or one you have seen only once. You felt like you wanted to get away from this person. The experience of sports, art, music, reading, writing, or talking can all be aversive to people for reasons that may not be clear. When I was teaching my grandson Algebra not long ago, I noticed a distinct aversive reaction that he had to Algebra, which then might have bled into his having an aversive reaction to me. It is notable that I began to have an aversive reaction to my grandson due to his aversive reaction, but this is a discussion that we will delay at this time. It is very likely that certain places cause an aversive reaction to you, like any blue room or any room with a wood floor because your dad used to use his whip on you when you were young, always in your wood floor blue bedroom. However such things might be unpleasant to you, however aversive, such things are not felt to be dangerous. But anything can be dangerous, and the definition of “danger” is largely personal.

Dangerous. Dangerous, along with toxic and lethal are terms I have chosen to describe things that are more profoundly bad for you. These three levels of “bad for you” things in life cause some kind of damage, may cause damage, or nearly cause damage to you. Thus, there is a distinct difference between things that are mildly or moderately bad for you and something that leaves some kind of permanent effect on you. It is also important to note that there tends to be a slippery slope from dangerous through toxic to lethal, a slope that is not always obvious except for the deleterious effects this “bad for you” thing has had on you. As we speak of things that are dangerous, be reminded that we have moved from something that is aversive that you want to get away from to a place where you realize that you can easily or quickly be damaged by something and need to get away from.

Most obviously dangerous, at least for people who tend to be acrophobic, is a cliff or an otherwise unprotected precipice. Such a place is well beyond aversive because it speaks of your impending death. Any of the elements noted under aversive could become dangerous. An aversive smell, like the smell of gas in a house, could be dangerous. A loud sound could be the thunder that accompanies a broken tree in your yard, and a bad taste could suggest poison. These sense-based times of felt danger are easier to deal with because they require immediate action, but places, people, and experiences present a more difficult challenge. You may be “stuck” in a relationship that is dangerous…or worse…and you are looking for a way to get out. You may actually be in the midst of a wedding ceremony and have an important feeling that this impending marriage is dangerous. You may be in a work setting that is more than uninteresting, unpleasant, or aversive because you feel the deleterious effects in your body that speak of danger. You may be under the influence of another authority figure, parent, superior, or political figure whom you sense is putting you in danger. You can tolerate danger or potential danger for a period of time, but you have to keep your eyes and ears open because the potentially dangerous thing could some suddenly or slowly resulting in damage to you in some way, whether physically, relationally, or physically.

As I write these words the world experiencing the Covid-19 pandemic, which suggests that anyone, anything, and any experience can be potentially toxic, but for 99% of people, at least at this writing, the situation that we have is dangerous, not toxic. Toxic is substantially different.

Toxic. Dangerous is potential; toxic is real. Dangerous is something that might come in a minute, a year, or somewhere in between. Toxic is something very much in the present and causing you damage. While you may feel something in your gut that tells you that something (or someone) is aversive or dangerous, the physical feeling that you feel and the emotional feeling that you feel suggests that you are being damaged. When the feeling is physical, you have more than a churning in your stomach: you have an upset stomach. Live long in a toxic environment and could very easily develop ulcers as your body tries to compensate for the toxic thing in your life by creating acid. Your stomach does this in a highly stressful or toxic environment because your brain tells your stomach that you have ingested something dangerous. Neither your brain nor your stomach, however, realizes that the toxicity is probably not poison per se, but something poisonous in another way. You have “ingested” a person, place, experience, or thing that is causing you real damage. Beyond the physical damage that something toxic can bring is emotional, cognitive, and relational damage.

There are no people, places, experiences, or things that are toxic for all people. Too often people describe something or someone as “toxic” believing that that person or thing is, itself toxic. Not so. What is true, however, is that anything can be toxic to anyone depending on the individual’s experiences. We will discuss the “good for you; bad for me” and “bad for me; good for you” in a later blog. A person can be toxic who is a very kind, perhaps intelligent, perhaps well-meaning person who engages you in a way that is toxic. Introverts often find extraverts toxic after a period of time because extraverts tend to talk a lot, often about themselves. Likewise, extraverts can find introverts toxic because they don’t talk or they don’t talk about themselves. I recently had an experience of some duration with an introverted individual who was seemingly unable to express his thoughts or feelings in any way whatsoever. After a period of time with this woman, I felt a certain toxicity in my physical/emotional system, while my introverted wife did not have that serious a reaction, probably due to Deb’s introverted nature. More importantly, people can be toxic who are in your regular environment for a period of time, like years of an unsatisfactory marriage, job, or other relationship. We will defer comments about how to deal with things toxic, as well as dangerous and lethal, to a later blog.

Beyond people who are toxic there exist places, experiences, and physical things that cause damage to your physical/emotional, relational existence. The Covid-19 pandemic is dangerous for all people, but it is toxic for a very small part of the population. There are places for all people, however, that are toxic by their very nature, and this toxicity may not have to do with the physical place but the history an individual has with the situation. I suggested above, that an individual could have an aversive reaction to a blue room. It is also possible for a person to become toxified by living in a blue room for a period of time. Sports can be toxic for someone physically, but it can also be toxic emotionally. Consider the person who is not a natural athlete and feels “dumb” when she is on the basketball court, the person who can’t read well who feels “stupid” because she can’t read out loud in class, or even the farmer’s son who would rather read or play basketball than milk cows and drive a tractor. Forced into situations that are this “bad for you” can easily become toxic and take the physical and emotional blood out of you.

Lethal. There are not many situations, places, experiences, people, and things that are truly lethal, at least for most of us who live in western society. Many people are seriously damaged or permanently damaged because they are somehow compelled to live in a truly lethal situation. We will delay a more in depth discussion of such circumstances because we must deal with real abuse, alleged abuse, felt abuse, or other lethal situations in life. I will defer this discussion at this time because

Next to come:

  • Discernment of the levels of “good for me”
  • Good for me; bad for you, bad for me; good for you, and other possibilities
  • Things that are truly lethal: people, places, experiences, and things
  • Complexities: there are many possibilities
  • How to discern your feelings about something that is good for or bad for you
  • How to think about such things
  • What to do and when to do it

See you soon

Good for Me; Bad for Me: Part 1 (corrected)

Ron Johnson Discovery, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, mindfulness, Positive psychology, Self-Awareness

This is the first of three blogs regarding the phenomenon of “good for me” and “bad for me” that I have used for many years as I have attempted to help people know when something is, quite simply good for them or bad for them. In this blog I will propose the basic concept of how to know when something is either good or bad for you as well as the variations of “good” and “bad.” Like many other significant psychological terms, these expressions do not lend themselves to exact definitions, which is to suggest that we cannot fully define “good” or “bad.”

Undefinable

The fact that we cannot exactly define “good” or “bad” does not take away from the value of using these terms. It is noteworthy that several other very significant psychological terms do not have exact definitions, like love, truth, feelings, and understanding. Nor do we have exact definitions for the three basic ingredients of the known universe: time, space, and mass. We understand these important aspects of the universe, as well as the elements of psychology by seeing the effects of such things. Furthermore, we can quantify such things as time, space, and mass even though we do not define them. Likewise, we can quantify love by noting how much we love something, and we can quantify truth as well from somewhat true to entirely true. Feelings do not lend themselves to quantification but we can see the effects of feelings as we have discussed at length in previous blogs and in our recently published book, I Need to Tell You How I Feel. In the present discussion we will study the quantification of “good for me” and “bad for me.” We will discuss the effects of good or bad in the forthcoming blogs.

Quantification of “good for me” and “bad for me”

Allow me to first discuss the quantification of “good for me/bad for me” by suggesting a continuum, or spectrum, with “good for me” on one side and “bad for me””

__________________________________/________________________________________

Bad for me                                                                   Good for me

(very bad)                                (not so bad)          (pretty good)                                      (very good)

My suggestion with this proposal is that there is a spectrum that ranges from very bad for me to very good for me. Before I elaborate more about this spectrum, I should explain what can be good for me or bad for me. Pretty much anything can be good for me or bad for me. For instance, some foods may be good for me or bad for me. Likewise, some life situations can be good or bad for me, like work, relationships, geographical locations, or insertions into my life. Insertions include the finding of $10 bill on the street to a dog barking loudly while you walk by a house, but the more significant and lasting the “insertion,” the more significant the effect on you. If you find a $100 bill, it would be really good for you, or if the dog bit you on the leg, it would be really bad for you. Additionally, something that someone says too you might be good for you or bad for you, or in more extreme circumstances, a person him/herself at tone time might be good for you or bad for you. So, as we continue to discuss this “good for me” and “bad for me,” consider that anything, human or otherwise, living or nonliving, real or imaginary could be good for me or bad for me.

Having proposed that there is a spectrum of “good for me” and “bad for me,” allow me to elaborate about this continuum and suggest a number of terms that might serve as indicators of the strength of “good” or “bad” for me. We might have relatively mild experiences of “good for me” or “bad for me”, i.e.:

Aversive     Unpleasant    Uninteresting                   /                   Interesting    Pleasant    Exciting

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We might also have things that are more extremely good or bad for me, and find the use of stronger terms valuable, i.e.:

Lethal    Toxic    Dangerous               /                   Enlivening    Life-enhancing    Life-sustaining

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Putting these terms together we have a continuum on the “bad for me” side ranging from something that is mildly “not good”, i.e. uninteresting, to something that is lethal, meaning something might kill me. Likewise, on the “good” side of the continuum the range is from interesting to life-sustaining, meaning that I can’t do without it.

I have found it helpful to assist people to know how to quantify things and people in their lives using this continuum starting with the simple “good for me” things be asking them what people, places, ideas, and situations are good for them, and then to help people note relatively good these things are. Then I follow by assisting people to similarly identify things that are bad for them along the negative side of the continuum. I have found that while it is hard for people to describe exactly how good or bad something is for them, they can approximate the good or bad somewhere on the continuum. The idea of a continuum, or spectrum, of good or bad rather than an absolute good or bad is helpful for people to see how things adversely affect them or enhance them in life.

Quantification: a sign of emotional maturity

While many people find it valuable to see a continuum from extremely good to extremely bad for them, some people are not willing or able to make these distinctions. Such people often use the extreme terms for everything, namely “dangerous” or “lethal” on the bad side or somehow necessary on the good side. People who regularly use such extreme terms often talk more than do, by which I mean they complain a lot about things but do nothing to get out of situations that are not good for them, or they dream about things that they think would be good for them but do nothing to fulfill those dreams. I find that such people have simply not matured in life sufficiently to see that very few things are truly life-sustaining or lethal, but many things are simply interesting or uninteresting. These people are stuck in their helplessness or stuck in their dreams. They have not matured beyond a childlike view of life that they should have everything they want without work or that they are helpless to do anything to enhance their lives. Extremes of any sort are the natural stuff of childhood but not of maturity. As people mature in their understanding of life, they tend to use less extreme terms leaving such terminology for very few cases. When people mature in this way, they are better able to make adjustments in life.

There are at least three elements of maturing in the business of enhancing life with what is good and reducing elements that are dangerous: (1) thinking and feeling to yourself about such things, (2) speaking to someone else, and (3) doing something. People tend to skip item (1), thinking and feeling, and go right to item (2), talking to someone or item (3), doing something. But it is important to first think and feel before talking or doing. If I talk to someone right away or take action right away without first truly knowing how I feel and think, I will not find it profitable and productive because my personal thoughts and feelings will not be the foundation of what I might ultimately do.

You might consider the many other situations that occur in life, like an intimate relationship that is good for you, and then think of how you might enhance the relationship rather than taking the good person in your life for granted. Likewise, you might consider how you might make an adjustment to a relationship that is less than good for you rather than taking leave of the person who might just be uninteresting to you in some way. You could also examine what you eat or drink, what you do for recreation, or what color you would like to see on your house. In fact, if you can examine the less important things in your life, like what you eat or what color you have on your house, you might be better able to honestly examine the more important things in your life, like your relationships, your work, your geographical location, or something that is truly sacred in your life.

You might consider talking to someone about your “good for you” feelings and “bad for you” feelings once you have studied your feelings for yourself. There are equal dangers of keeping your feelings entirely to yourself, which tends to be a tendency of introverted-thinking people, or constantly talking about your feelings that frequently occurs with extraverted-feeling people. If you can be honest with yourself about what is good for you and what is bad for you, you will be in a better position to profit from talking to someone else. After thoughtful self-examination of the goods and the bads of something in your life, and then talking to someone about those feelings, mature people do something.

Sometimes the “doing” doesn’t actually look like doing because the person decides that the best course of action is to stay the course. Equally possible, is the need to actually do something about your life, particularly when you find yourself on the “bad for me” side of the spectrum. People tend to jump to action too soon or avoid any kind of action for fear of loss. In the long run, when a mature person has come to a decision to take action or not, there is always sadness involved in the action. For instance, it might be sad to give up alcohol if you decide that it is largely bad for you, or you might be sad if you decide to keep drinking because the loss of alcohol in your life is worse than then ill effects of alcohol. You will be sad staying with someone who is not always good for you and you will be sad leaving such a person.

Sadness

The universal experience of feeling sad when you have actually done something is important to understand as we have written in The Positive Power of Sadness. People often avoid doing something because they simply don’t want to experience the sadness of losing something. They would rather live in the fantasy that they can have it both ways, like living happily with a person who you find “not good for you” occasionally and simultaneously leaving such a person without any regret of having lost an intimate partner. You can only do this in fantasy, not reality. To honestly stay or leave, and then profit from the staying or leaving, you have to look at the effects of staying or leaving.

In the next two blogs, where I will discuss the effects of something that is good for you or bad for you and how to take action with such things. Consider what might be in each category:

  • Good for you could be person, place, property, experience, or idea
  • Bad for you could be person, place, property, experience or idea