Chapter 8

Purpose and Plan

Remember the first time a grade school teacher or classmate looked at your lovingly crafted crayon drawing and said, “That doesn’t look like a horse!”? Or the first time a friend or sibling overheard you singing to yourself and made a face? In those tender moments we first realized that the joys of self-expression come at a cost. The price of creativity is the judgment of others.

If we cannot tolerate the primordial fear that others’ judgments trigger—that of being kicked out of the tribe—we learn to anticipate those judgments and internalize them. We put the crayons down. We stop singing. We proclaim that we don’t have any talent. “Every child is an artist,” Pablo Picasso famously said. “The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”

We are not all meant to be visual artists, of course, but what about the art of living? Are we so bound by the necessity of survival that none of our higher values can be indulged? Perpetually prompted by the monkey’s Woo-woo-woo! and hijacked by negative feelings, we are caught in a game with impossibly strict rules. We try to be certain, to be perfect, to please others, but these are poor substitutes for the real purpose of being alive. If we continue to devote our lives to mere survival, while sacrificing values like creativity and spontaneity—and the personal goals that living according to those values will help us accomplish—sooner or later we are bound to feel regret.

Whether you are an artist or an accountant, this is your challenge. Will you live according to the monkey’s value—safety at all costs—or according to your own? I don’t know for certain our purpose on this planet, but I’m sure we are meant to do more than merely survive.

The child humming along as she crayons her personal masterpiece, and the artist in his studio, boldly creating genres of painting that didn’t exist before, are living according to their own personal values: self-expression, authenticity, curiosity, independence, communication, courage, and pleasure, to name a few. We are all artists, practicing the art of living. What are the values that will inspire your practice?

To help you answer that question, here is a list of some expansive human values. Any one, or combination of them, will give your practice purpose and direction. Circle those that most appeal to you, or better yet, write down your own short list and keep it somewhere it will be handy to refer to in the future. You can also download a Values List at http://www.newharbinger.com/35067.

Values at Work

Values out of context are only words with little meaning. To see how they work as inspiration and direction in expansion practice, let’s revisit Maria, Eric, and Samantha.

Maria wanted to move beyond her hypochondriasis and she was willing to feel more anxiety in the short run by dropping some of her safety strategies of checking and seeking reassurance. She’d identified a more expansive mind-set to cultivate, one that allowed for uncertainty about her physical sensations. It was a good, sound plan. Tired of hugging the shore, Maria was ready to push off for uncharted waters. But what about when the water got rough? What were the values that would inspire Maria and help her stay on course?

When I asked Maria what values were more important to her than feeling safe and certain, she was surprised at how hard it was to identify them. But when I showed her the values chart she had no trouble naming them.

I suggested Maria enter them in her smartphone, so when she felt lost and needed to get her bearings, they would serve to remind her of what inspired her practice. And that’s exactly what they did.

Eric’s expansion practice was to restrict the time he allowed himself to making decisions, and to accept invitations to social events. Both intentions threatened his monkey mind-set—that if he made mistakes he’d be judged and rejected by others. I asked Eric why he was willing to do this. What was more important to him than safety? Here are the values that he came up with:

Self-Acceptance, Commitment, Authenticity, Growth, Resilience, Courage

Eric kept a list of these values on the back of his business card in his wallet where they’d always be in reach. And over the course of his practice he reached for them often.

The only value Samantha had been honoring was safety for her son. While it sounded noble, Samantha knew it wasn’t leading her in the direction she wanted—usually just to her phone or her checkbook. When she looked over the Values List she was able to find some worthy replacements. And for clarity’s sake, she refined them a bit.

Health (my own), Trust (in my son), and Responsibility (to myself)

To remind herself of her values, she changed the home screen on her phone from a photo of her son to a photo of herself. When she was tempted to dial him to check up on him, she was reminded to whom her real responsibility was. She planned to change the photo back someday but only after she had her values straight.

Is your I must be certain, I cannot make mistakes, I am responsible for everybody mind-set leading you away from your values? What is the toll this is taking in your life? What are the values you want to be directed by?

Just for practice, imagine yourself in the following situations, choosing directions based on different values.

You are walking in a city that is new to you, you’re hungry, and you have an hour to kill.

  • Value: Safety Direction: Consult Yelp for a five-star restaurant.
  • Value: Adventure Direction: Ask a local for a recommendation and follow it regardless.

Your boss is leading a meeting that is going in a direction you don’t agree with.

  • Value: Safety Direction: Don’t say anything and allow the meeting to run its course.
  • Value: Authenticity Direction: Inform the group of your objection and suggest an alternate course of action.

Your partner is unhappy with the untidiness of your shared living space.

  • Value: Safety Direction: Surprise partner by cleaning up while he or she is away.
  • Value: Fun Direction: Begin “Tidy Friday” tradition, where you both houseclean together while you play your favorite music.

You see someone at an event whose name you cannot remember.

  • Value: Safety Direction: Avoid the person until you remember or find it out.
  • Value: Spontaneity Direction: Approach the person, hand proffered, and remind him or her what your name is.

These are only a few examples of situations we commonly find ourselves in, where our values are easily forgotten. Most of us face dozens of them in a typical day, some formidable enough to make us wonder, How will I remember my values when the monkey sounds the alarm?

Charting the Course

The entrepreneur has a business plan, schools have charters, politicians have platforms, organizations have mission statements, and countries have constitutions. You, too, will benefit greatly by planning and documenting the purpose of your practice, as well as how you intend to exercise your values.

I’ve put together an Expansion Chart for my clients that helps them keep their practices on course. It embodies all the components of an expansion practice: the situation you’ve chosen as an opportunity for growth, the personal values that will guide you, your old monkey mind-set and strategies, your new expansive mind-set and strategies, and finally, the necessary feelings you’ll face. When my clients are beginning any practice, we fill it out together and I encourage them to read it every day.

Expansion Charts helped my clients so much that I use them regularly in my own personal practice. I’d like to share one of them with you. You’ll remember how my fear of making mistakes was getting in the way of my writing. Below is an Expansion Chart I completed to help me practice disrupting my perfectionist monkey mind-set.

The power of the Expansion Chart derives from the fact that before you complete each field, you have to think. Expansion practice deserves, in fact requires, thoughtful preparation. To approach any practice situation without a plan invites a monkey hijacking. It would be like trying to quarterback a football team without a playbook.

I don’t normally walk into situations thinking, I want to be authentic, creative, and forgiving toward myself. By actually writing down those values, I made them more real and an integral part of my overall goal. Similarly, documenting both my monkey mind-set and safety strategies and their expansive alternatives illuminated them in high relief, making the choices that awaited me clearly apparent. Anticipating my necessary feelings and committing them to paper helped prepare me for the job of welcoming and tolerating those feelings. Note that I reminded myself that welcoming anxiety with my breath is an expansion strategy. It’s a great reminder that processing anxiety is as normal as breathing.

I’d like you to take a few minutes to practice filling out an Expansion Chart of your own. Download the Expansion Chart worksheet at http://www.newharbinger.com/35067 and follow the steps below to fill it out. With the insight this exercise gives you, you’ll have a huge advantage over what you’ve had in the past. When the monkey sounds the alarm, you’ll be prepared!

Expansion Chart

  1. Think of a difficult situation. This could be a task or activity that you have been procrastinating on, a decision you are having trouble making, an upcoming event that is making you nervous, a situation where saying “no” or standing up for yourself is hard, or a chronic worry that has been troubling you. Write this situation in the first box labeled “Opportunity.”
  2. Identify the values that are truly important to you in this situation. They represent the direction that you want to be moving in and what you want to strengthen or cultivate by working on this problem. I find it very helpful to use the list of values you saw earlier in this chapter as a reference.
  3. Identify the monkey mind-sets that are activated in this situation. This is a good time to review the examples of monkey mind-sets that are found in chapter 5. (They are labeled Beyond Certainty, Beyond Perfect, and Beyond Over-Responsibility. You can also download them at http://www.newharbinger.com/35067.)
  4. Identify the expansive mind-set that can counter the monkey mind-set. You can consult the same passages in chapter 5 or downloads cited in step 3.
  5. List the safety strategies that you’ve used in the past. A good question to ask yourself is, What do I do to keep the worst from happening? You can also consult the list of common safety strategies found in chapter 4, or download them at http://www.newharbinger.com/35067.
  6. List the expansive strategies you intend to use instead. (They are often exactly the opposite of your safety strategies.)
  7. Finally, write down the necessary feelings that you will need to experience and welcome in order to grow. This includes both fight-or-flight sensations and negative emotions. Here is a short list of necessary emotions to help you anticipate what they might be.

    Anxiety Embarrassment

    Anger Guilt

    Panic Hopelessness

Frustration Shame

Filling out an Expansion Chart is the beginning of mastery over a situation you’ve previously been overwhelmed by. You reclaim the values you’ve been sacrificing for safety. You acknowledge your old mind-set and strategies, and define your new ones. You choose the necessary feelings you’re willing to welcome in order to meet your goal.

What is perhaps most empowering about completing an Expansion Chart is that when you are fully prepared for what is coming, you take away a crucial advantage of the monkey—the element of surprise. The monkey commands a neural alarm system that travels at speeds up to 200 miles per hour. Without warning, it can hijack you before you can draw a breath—unless you are expecting it. When you are fully prepared, it will be you who will be doing the surprising.

When you have a plan and a purpose, even the smallest situation that makes you anxious is an opportunity to expand your life. In the next chapter we’ll learn how to create these opportunities to practice with rather than wait for the monkey to surprise us.