How other people perceive youFundamentals: Rights, Responsibilities, Choice, and Control in a Superhero World
So we’ve gotten to know ourselves a bit, and we’ve figured out what we want to change in our lives—this is great news. Now let’s take a step backward and talk about some of the fundamentals of good emotional health—the fundamentals of being a Super You. Let me tell you a story.
I once knew this girl who was yelled at by a stranger in a restaurant for something she did not do. She listened to the stranger quietly, almost politely, and then apologized for upsetting her. She spent the rest of the day feeling guilty about upsetting someone. Guilty! When asked later why she didn’t tell the stranger that grown-ups shouldn’t yell at other grown-ups because it’s disrespectful and creepy, she said, “I didn’t realize I had that option.”
Of course this girl was me, and of course I didn’t realize, back then, that I had the option of not accepting being yelled at by a stranger for something I didn’t do. The stranger in question was a woman at a buffet restaurant who thought I had broken in line in front of her kid and wanted to let me know how she felt about it. (Note: I am not a line breaker. It feels important to let you know that.) But because I was young, because she was older than I was, and because I didn’t have a sense of what was okay and not okay concerning my own personal boundaries and sense of well-being, I not only allowed it to happen, but also felt guilty about an infraction I did not commit. This wasn’t the first time I didn’t understand my rights in a situation, and it certainly wasn’t the last. When I think about how much of the ickiness in my life can be chalked up to not understanding the differences among four interrelated and yet completely disparate concepts—rights, responsibilities, choice, and control—well, all I can say is, “Yikes.” I have let angry people have their way, I have gone further sexually than I intended to out of “not wanting to be weird,” I have stayed in miserable situations because it felt easier than changing, I have taken on the responsibility of someone else’s happiness and felt guilty and terrible when I failed, I have been saddled with responsibilities I didn’t want because I didn’t want to say no—I have been in all of these boats, and I imagine some of them are familiar to you too. So let’s go through these terms now and define them as they relate to Super You.
Control is one of those weird concepts that can be positive or negative depending on the connotation, the person saying it, or whether or not you are referencing panty hose. Control-top panty hose are a blight on humanity. Plus, it can be tricky to fully comprehend what we can control in this life and what we cannot. A lot of inner turmoil comes from people either giving up all control and wondering why they feel terrible, or attempting to control everything around them and wondering why they feel terrible. What a Super You understands, even if she forgets now and then, is that you cannot control anyone other than yourself. Period. You can influence how other people behave, sure, or you can force people to do what you want for a little bit, perhaps—but really, the only control you have in this life is over yourself.
You cannot control:
How other people perceive you
Whether a car plows into you on the way home from work
Whether aliens come and kidnap you
Whether anyone celebrates a holiday the way you celebrate
Whether your boyfriend acts like an asshole in front of your work friends
Whether your children turn out artistic
Whether your friends want to hang out with you
Whether your romantic partner cheats on you
Other people’s feelings toward you
What fashion trends will be happening next year
Literally anything other than your own behavior
SUPERHEROES WITH MIND-CONTROL ABILITIES THAT CONTRADICT WHAT I’M SAYING HERE
Professor X of the X-Men (for good)
Emma Frost of the X-Men (for evil)
Jean Grey of the X-Men (mostly for good)
Psylocke of the X-Men (for good)
Mandarin of the Avengers Universe (for way evil)
I think the idea of control is scary to all of us. Not being in control can leave us feeling weak and vulnerable to the millions of things that can go wrong in the universe. Plus, understanding that we can control only ourselves means that, when it comes to how we operate, the buck stops with us. We can make changes, we can influence people, we can be a cog in the machine, but we can only do any of that so far as controlling our own actions allows us. Bill Gates, the manager of your closest fast food chain, Malala Yousafzai, and that guy from your high school who is still living at home and clearly depressed but covering it up with binge drinking—all of these people can control only themselves. But how they choose to conduct themselves and influence others varies widely. To me, the difference between the people who are successful and fulfilled and those who are frustrated and freaked-out has always had to do with accepting what we can and cannot control, and then doing our best to enact changes within that.
I’m a bit of a control freak, but (I like to think) in the loveliest way—I am just the person most likely to organize an outing to the movies, to set up flights for travel, or to drive if there’s a car full of people to be driven around. It’s not that I think my way is the best way, it’s just that I don’t love hanging out in the “in between” spaces between decisions. I want things to be done so I don’t have to think about doing them—my control freakness is more about eliminating my anxiety than anything else. I frequently say, “Okay, so what information are we waiting on to make this decision?” when my husband and I are discussing things like vacations, or house repairs, or switching cat foods. (I’m a real handful.)
That anxiety about school projects or dinners with friends or house parties used to be all-encompassing for me—I would never enjoy myself, because I was constantly running around, making sure everyone else was taken care of, wanting to make sure things were happening. Then I would end up kinda martyring myself, sacrificing my fun for other people’s, when they would have been fine either way. It took years of watching plans fall apart without destroying people’s psyches for me to realize that, not only is it not my job to make sure every plan is executed well, but it’s okay if plans aren’t executed well. The only thing I can control is how much fun I’m having—independent of how many snacks are at the party.
I had to come to this realization in my romantic life too. I used to think that every relationship required a certain amount of love. If I wasn’t getting the amount of love equal to what I was giving out, my control freakness meant the solution was to love the guy hard enough that it was enough for both of us. Instead of: “You complete me” it was: “I will complete the gap in adoration you are showing me by adoring you twice as hard.” This will never be seen in a romcom. This attitude not only kept the wool pulled over my eyes about the kinds of guys I was dating, but I guess I thought if everything was under my control in a relationship, I could protect myself from feeling hurt or sad or rejected.
The most hilarious part about trying to control everything is that it always seems to work for brief periods of time, which just reinforces the idea that you’re right and the way that you’re doing things is effective. But people are still people, and will never act exactly the way you want them to act. Ultimately, wanting to control anything other than yourself leaves you feeling even more hurt and sad and rejected, because when stuff goes differently from how you thought it would, as stuff tends to do, you have the added benefit of feeling at fault. So many of us ambitious and anxious people fall into the trap of wanting to micromanage all situations and lives around us. Why? Because it’s comfortable and miserable and brain-occupying.
If you’re a parent, this notion of control is slightly different, because you actually do have a human being relying on you for safety and sustenance and life lessons. To be a parent is to be a control freak of sorts, but that should only be to keep your kids from hurling themselves off a picnic table onto concrete. You still cannot control them. Those human beings you created will not take on all the qualities and lessons you want to impart—they may take on some of them, if you’re lucky. And they certainly won’t do flawless things with the stuff they do take. Those little human beings are human beings, just like you. They’ll make mistakes you’ve never dreamed of, and they’ll surprise you, and get hurt, and hurt others, and sometimes you’ll spend weeks or months wondering what you did wrong. Remember the process of building a recipe, which starts with a protein base and then goes anywhere it wants to from there: your job as a parent is to give kids their protein base and then sit back as they do something completely nuts with it, like make Jell-O Beef Soufflé. You cannot stop them from making Jell-O Beef Soufflé. Your children will not be perfect, but they will be perfectly yours.
If you’re a control freak in any regard, let’s let today be the day we take a deep breath and accept this home truth: you can only control yourself. I personally need this either tattooed on my forehead or cross-stitched and framed on my wall. Let that information swim around in your head and let it be the relief that it is. You no longer have to concern yourself with what your roommates or friends or significant others are doing. You can leave all of that mess alone. It’s exhausting to try to control the actions and emotions of others—and besides, aren’t you tired of it? I can hear you saying, “Well, if other people would do their jobs I wouldn’t have to control everything!” And I totally get that, because I’ve screamed it at the skies myself. But it doesn’t matter. Trying to will people to love you, to clean up after themselves, to understand and adopt your views on feminism, or to enjoy themselves more just isn’t going to happen, because you are not magical. You may be on your way to your Super You, but you will never be Supernatural You.
If we peel back the control freak in us, we may see a few of the mysteries behind those inner workings. We may see an emotional life that feels out of control, and where controlling external factors is a way of coping with that inability to control internal emotions. Or we may see a fear of being vulnerable to others, which can lead to thinking that, if we can control all the factors of our lives, no one will ever see us as weak or sad or weird. Or maybe we’ll see a person whose attempts to control others are just a way to avoid dealing with herself. But regardless of the reasons behind our control freakish actions, understanding the limits of our control in the world is our first lesson of the Super You Basic Credo. We are all captains of our own ships, and we have enough to worry about just keeping ourselves afloat. The minute you take on, as your duty, others’ joy/career/well-being, you have entered into an unhealthy alliance with them. I’ve worked with many parents who tried to force their children to be more “normal,” and I’ve worked with many jilted lovers desperate to win back their ex. In both cases, by trying to convince yourself you can somehow control the other person’s choices, you are only setting yourself up for frustration and disappointment. One of the scariest things in life is realizing how little control you have in this world. All you can really control, ever, are your own actions. That’s it. It is your job to focus on you, because that’s all you can focus on.
Locus of control. Though it sounds like some sort of evil insect, it’s actually incredibly relevant to becoming a Super You. The idea behind locus of control is simple: how much do you believe that you can control your own life? People with an external locus of control believe that their lives are controlled by external factors that don’t involve them, like other people, the environment, or destiny. They believe that they cannot influence or change these factors. People with an internal locus of control believe that their lives are in their own hands—and in their abilities and reactions to things. We should all strive for a more internal locus of control. One, that goes with the idea that you can only control yourself. Two, it’s mentally and emotionally more beneficial for you to believe your life is under your own control and not determined by teachers/coworkers/the haters. It’s a bit of responsibility too, because if your life is under your control, then you can’t sit back and relax as things go wrong, blaming everything on others. If things go wrong, even if it’s because of outside factors, it’s still your job to make them right again. Quite frankly, it can be exhausting to have an internal locus of control—but it’s also empowering, and necessary for a Super You.
Rights
If you’re reading this and you’re American, you’ve definitely read the Bill of Rights in school, right? The first “right,” or the First Amendment, is the oft-invoked one about freedom of speech.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The forefathers loved run-on sentences, huh? Is there any version of this very cranky-sounding set of dry, flowery words that our government put forth centuries ago that applies to us? When I was in graduate school I found a Personal Bill of Rights in a book called The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook by Edmund J. Bourne, PhD; it resonated so much with me that I photocopied it and kept it in my bag for years. I connected with some of the rights because I absolutely agreed with them; with some others, I suppose they resonated with my Super Me, someone who liked herself more than I did. I made truly believing in these rights one of my missions, and from time to time I’d check in to see where I was with each of them.
Now I’d like you to do the same. And note, by no means is this list exhaustive, but it’s a good starting point. For each of the twenty-five rights, I ask you to rate how much you believe it is true for yourself, on a scale of 1 (I don’t believe this at all) to 5 (I believe it 100 percent).
WEIRD COMIC BOOK FACT
In 1954, the Comics Code Authority was formed to allow the comic book world to regulate its own content. It included such gems as:
Crimes shall never be presented in such a way as to create sympathy for the criminal.
Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.
In every instance good shall triumph over evil.
Great code, but it made for some boring comic books.
How was this for you? How many fives did you get? How many hovered in the ones and twos? Did any rights in particular resonate with you? When I first read these, Right 19, “I have the right to be healthier than those around me,” punched me in the gut. I think I audibly gasped—it seemed so foreign to me that I would have the luxury, let alone the right, to be healthier than anyone else. I’m hoping you’ll make these rights your own, periodically checking in with them as I did. (You can find these rights online.)
Now for a bigger question: do you have any personal rights of your own to add? There’s always room to personalize a Personal Bill of Rights—it’s in the title, really. I’ve added a couple of rights over the years myself. One is “No is a complete sentence,” because I still struggle with feeling guilty about saying no, believing I must have a litany of understandable excuses. Another important addition is “I have a right to not want to be in a relationship,” which for me applied to romantic relationships as well as friendships. Being in an intense, consuming relationship (or desperately seeking one) was the factory-setting default of how I operated. I was amazed to learn that I could live without this drama. Another one I’ve recently added is “I have the right to hold my own beliefs without having to explain or justify them to strangers,” which I feel is pretty important if you exist on social media to any degree.
This Personal Bill of Rights is an essential part of your Super You Credo; it helps you create personal boundaries, which are your best tool for keeping yourself safe and healthy as you function in the world. Beautifully, the Personal Bill of Rights also functions as a pretty badass set of daily affirmations. Daily affirmations, for the uninitiated, are specifically constructed self-statements designed to encourage positive thinking and healthy self-esteem. I’ve often found them quite cheesy, but that was before I became a Super Me and saw the value beneath the cheese. Now I just imagine they’re the montage in the opening credits of my Super Me adventures TV show. These days I tie a long-sleeved T-shirt around my neck like a cape, I put a tiara on my head and my hands on my hips in a superhero stance, and I say to myself in the mirror: “I have the right to ask for what I want.” “I have the right to say no to requests or demands I can’t meet.” Try it. It’s pretty fun, and it can help on dark days.
Responsibilities Versus Choices
Most of you have probably seen at least one Spiderman movie, right? Fifteen of them have been released in my adult lifetime. In almost every Spiderman movie, Peter Parker (that’s Spiderman) will have a conversation with his uncle Ben wherein old Ben tells Peter, not knowing that Peter’s a superhero, that “with great power comes great responsibility.” This line is a hat tip to the 1962 comic called Amazing Fantasy #15, which is known as the first Spiderman story. The quote is a version of a line from a U.K. Parliamentary speech, and a similar-sounding version is in the Bible too. My point is that it’s a badass line, but with dubious beginnings.
Regardless of who said it first, that line has become a Spiderman line. When you’re a superhero, and you task yourself with dealing with ne’er-do-wells, you do it with the understanding that your work will never be done. No matter what exciting, life-threatening coup you just successfully thwarted, someone will always be getting mugged somewhere. So really the line should be: “With great power comes great responsibility, but we all understand that you can’t take on every single thing that happens, and no one expects you to.” Luckily we’re not tasking ourselves with anything so huge, but as a Super You the concern is still there—we know that we can control only ourselves, but beyond that, how do we decide what belongs on our plate, and what doesn’t? Buffy Summers found out in high school that she was The Chosen One, foresworn to be the Slayer of evil. She didn’t have to become the Slayer—she could have ignored it and kept being a high school student, but she made the choice to make it her responsibility. While she had a greater impetus than most of us will ever face, the question remains the same: how should we differentiate between the things we feel responsible for and the things we choose to take on in life?
For our Super You purposes, responsibility is something that is the required behavior of functioning, healthy human beings. And when you really break down what those required behaviors might be, there are frighteningly few responsibilities—at least in our social interactions. A choice, however, is something we take on on our own steam, whether willingly or unwillingly—a decision based on the information available at the time. So saying something like, “I didn’t have a choice, I had to invite Farting Jonathan to the party—he made it so awkward by asking me about it so much!,” while funny, would be a misrepresentation. You had no responsibility to invite Farting Jonathan to a party; you merely wanted to avoid awkwardness, so you made a choice to alleviate awkwardness by inviting him. A choice is a choice is a choice. A choice to do nothing—like not leaving a relationship that you know is unhealthy for you—is still a choice.
We are responsible for our own happiness—that is 100 percent an inside job, and no one else’s. However, we are absolutely not responsible for anyone else’s happiness. You can, if you like, choose to bring joy and happiness into another person’s life, but at no point is that your burden to carry. I wasted much of my time and energy for years thinking it was my job to entertain the people around me, to keep them laughing so they’d see I had worth. If they stopped laughing, I feared, they’d see I was lame and would stop hanging out with me. I mistook my choice to make people laugh as a responsibility, and therefore hated doing it. These days, when I choose to make people laugh, it feels like a fun expression rather than a grim chore.
Understanding the distinction between responsibilities and choices became particularly important to me when I started writing full-time, and it became essential when I started doing a podcast about video games a few years ago. Podcast listeners become incredibly invested in the podcasts they listen to, as they spend at least an hour each week listening to your voice, and sometimes, as a result, they start believing they should have a say in the podcast content. My co-host and I were getting bombarded with emails saying: “You did this wrong!” or “I don’t like how you said this, you should fix this!” or “How dare you not talk about ______!”
We got pretty stressed-out trying to satisfy all these people, and started making all these changes to how we structured the podcasts and the types of things we talked about—until we reminded ourselves of a few important things: we choose to make a podcast because we like doing it; it is our responsibility to make the best podcast we can; and it is not our responsibility to make the podcast that (all) our listeners want, because it is the listener’s choice to listen or not.
The relief we felt upon these realizations was immense. We had been taking on responsibility for other people’s choices, which was too much responsibility. And that’s always going to be stress-inducing because, as we discussed before, we don’t have control over anyone but ourselves. By taking on responsibility for others, we set up internal conflicts that couldn’t be resolved. We also weren’t focused on creating anymore; we were focused on making other people happy. I think women specifically struggle with this—at least from what I’ve seen in my own life: this issue of realizing that not every single thing is our responsibility.
I realize you may not have a podcast—although you probably do, given that most everyone does—but regardless of how relatable that example is, the idea of stress coming from the confusion between choice and responsibility has far-reaching implications in many areas of life. Let’s go through the various roles we might play to try to suss out the differences between choices and responsibilities in each. Note that some of the choices listed below are healthier choices and some less healthy. I’ve included those because you, as we all will, sometimes make less healthy choices in your life. This isn’t about making only positive choices; it’s about understanding that, even when you’re making less healthy choices, you’re doing so of your own volition, for reasons that only need to make sense to you. If you choose to invite Farting Jonathan to a party because you would prefer his gassy company to feeling awkward, that is your choice, and it’s an understandable choice. This is that “living with intentionality” horn I keep honking. This is about the agency you have in your own lives—agency to make amazing decisions, and agency to fuck up royally sometimes. Let’s dig in.
You have a choice to be a friend to someone. It is not your responsibility to be someone’s friend because “he needs a friend” or because you’re a nice person.
If you decide to be someone’s friend, you have a responsibility to put as much into the relationship as you would like to receive. If you are consistently giving 100 percent to friends who barely have the time for you, it is then your choice to change that situation—rather than waiting for the other person to be a better friend.
You are not responsible for your friend’s well-being. It is your choice to try to cheer up or otherwise help her when she seems to be struggling.
You have a choice to end a relationship if it feels unhealthy for you.
Romantic Partner
I personally don’t agree with the sentiment: “I just fell in love, I couldn’t help it.” You have a choice to act on your romantic feelings toward someone. Everyone has romantic feelings—sometimes at inappropriate times, or toward inappropriate people. But it is always your choice to act on them, not a “biological responsibility.” (So said a boyfriend when I caught him making out with a girl from my Spanish class.)
When it comes to dating, you have a choice, not a responsibility. Just because someone likes you, pursues you, and seems like a nice person, you are still under no obligation to date him. In fact, you are under no obligation to have a romantic life at all.
If you are in a romantic relationship, you have a responsibility to communicate your needs and desires. Otherwise that person will have no idea of how best to be a romantic partner to you. (We’ll talk about that a bit more later.)
You have a responsibility to directly express to your romantic partner when he’s hurt you. You may choose also to scream at him—whether or not that would be a good idea.
You are not responsible for your romantic partner’s well-being. It is your choice to offer support to him during difficult times, but you should not be his sole means of support.
You have a choice to leave a relationship that isn’t meeting your needs. I would love to call this a responsibility, but the truth is that some situations are too complicated for this to be so cut-and-dried. If you are unhappy with a relationship, you do have choices: you can leave, or you can stay and adapt.
You do not have the responsibility to change yourself in order to meet your partner’s needs. You can make a choice to change if you are able and would like to. And note: this goes both ways. The person you are dating is not the perfected version you see in your head; the person you are dating is the person in front of you.
You have a responsibility to do the best work that you are compensated for. (You also have a choice to do the bare minimum at work, but that’s a separate issue.)
You have a choice to take on more work, or to work toward a promotion. It is not your responsibility to become a workaholic.
You are not responsible for your coworkers’ quality of work. If a coworker you really like is not pulling his weight, let that be his choice.
You have a responsibility to advocate for yourself at work. No one else will do it for you.
You have a choice, if you are miserable in your job, to seek out other employment. I would prefer this to be a responsibility, but the reality is that jobs can be hard to come by, and sometimes we have to suck it up and do the best we can to support ourselves.
Daughter
You have a responsibility to your parents to live as healthily as possible. Not their version of healthy, but your own.
You have a choice of how you would like to relate to your parents. If you are still living under their roof, this is a little bit tougher. If you live at home and do not like how you relate to your parents, then your choice is to move out when you are of age to do so, and until then, adapt.
You have a responsibility to communicate to your parents how you would like to relate to them. They can choose to either accept that or not, but at least you will have fulfilled your responsibility.
You have a choice to decide whether the level of dysfunction/annoyance in your family is something you can tolerate out of respect for your family relationships. Some dysfunction—critical comments about your hair, for example—are par for the course in dealing with parents. Other dysfunction, like refusing to accept aspects of your life, or berating you emotionally, may be more than you’re willing to put up with to remain healthy.
You may choose to live a life that pleases your parents, but that is your choice. You are not responsible for living up to your parents’ expectations of you.
You have a responsibility to end any financial reliance on your parents. This is essential to giving you the ability to make choices. While you aren’t their slave just because they pay your phone bill, as long as you financially depend on them, you are limited in some of the choices you can make about your emotional independence.
Mother
You have a responsibility to make sure that your child’s needs are taken care of.
You have a responsibility to educate yourself on parenting skills.
You have a choice to decide what role your child will play in your life. Will your child become the thing that defines you, your entire world then revolving around that role? Will your child become part of your family in a way that allows you to take dance classes and read a book sometimes? Both choices are valid—just know that they are choices.
It is not your responsibility to be everything to your child.
You are not responsible for being a “perfect mother.” It is your choice to attempt such a feat—though please be aware that no one yet has achieved this.
It is your choice, not your responsibility, to eschew your own needs in favor of your child’s. Sometimes this choice is the best one to make, but it is not your responsibility as a mother to do this.
Woman
You have a responsibility to be the version of woman that is most comfortable for you, and you have a choice in whether doing so is important to you.
You have a choice to dress however you want.
You have a choice to procreate. This is not a responsibility.
You have a responsibility to keep yourself physically safe, to the best of your abilities, in a world that is sometimes unsafe for women. Unfortunately we cannot expect the world to keep us safe. You have a choice to determine what that level of safety is.
You have a choice in how to express your sexuality (if you choose to express it at all), and whether you express your sexuality with a partner. You have a responsibility to make your sexuality choices just for yourself.
Creative Person
You have a responsibility to find outlets to release your creativity.
You have a responsibility to make the best version of whatever you choose to create.
You have a choice to release your creative efforts into the world.
You have a choice in what your creative effort actually is—it is your choice to define it. Some people think we’re supposed to have a hobby, a true passion in life, that should ideally be our career as well. This may or may not be true. There can be creative expression in any job, no matter how menial; there can be satisfaction in every job.
Consumer
You have a choice to consume the things you want—food/movies/TV/books/comic books.
You have a choice to stop consuming something that displeases you.
You have a responsibility to be mindful of the things you consume. This doesn’t mean you should always or only consume high-quality stuff; it means that ideally you will consume, not blindly, but with intentionality.
Yourself
You have a responsibility to keep your body as healthy as you can.
You have a responsibility to provide for yourself so that you may live as comfortably as possible.
You have a choice to try to be skinny/muscular or to get a fat booty.
You have a responsibility to keep yourself as emotionally healthy as you are able.
Changes will come to your personality and your life whether you like it or not. You have a choice of whether to continually evolve to keep up with them or not.
With each new day, you have a choice either to stagnate or to push yourself to be better. Both options are necessary, and both options are valid.
This is by no means an exhaustive collection; there are a ton more roles that could be added. This list merely serves to get us to start thinking about the distinction between responsibility and choice—and to see the difference between them. This is especially important because sometimes our behaviors can become so ingrained that we automatically approach some choices as if they were responsibilities. For the next few days, as you go about your day, keep your Super You notebook handy. I urge you to start keeping tabs on the specific actions you take throughout the day. For each action, ask yourself two things: (1) whether it’s a responsibility or a choice, and (2) whether it’s something your Super You would do. Becoming aware of internal processes that are currently on autopilot is incredibly important, both in getting to know yourself and in making specific changes for yourself.
The Super You Credo is complete! It’s a fourfecta (that’s a trifecta made of four things) of control, rights, choices, and responsibilities. They are the basics of being a healthy, functional person. If you don’t believe that now, keep coming back to it; my hope is that someday you will.
