A Better Way, Not A Better Place: overcoming Utopian Fallacy

Today we’re jumping straight in

(Hi good morning nice to see you):

You have probably been thinking of success all wrong.

Whether you’re after

Enlightenment
Financial freedom,
Living your best life,
Or “finally having your shit together,”

You basically want to be

In a good place, am I right?

You expect that someday you are going to arrive. Arrive in a better body, a better career, a better disposition, and an overall better life. At some point along the way, things are going to come together and you’re going to be on top of it.

The high level

Today I’m going to show you why this isn’t what you’re really after, and why the real goal is psychological maturity, rather than “success.” I’m going to talk about:

the misguided ideas that produce unattainable and counterproductive ideas of success,

the price you are probably paying for these incorrect beliefs,

what you can hope to find along the yellow brick road to the much higher, and actually much more attainable goal of maturity,

and what you can begin doing right now, today, to shift course.

I can talk about this process and share it with you because I’ve done it.

I was once deeply confused about the very things I’ll be illuminating today. My confusion caused me a degree of suffering, which in turn caused me to seek, and be truly open to, real solutions.

I say this because, as a side note, you ought not to shut out your own feelings of suffering: they are trying to draw your attention to what needs fixing in your life, and are meant to keep you in pursuit of solutions. The solutions are there, but only someone present to this suffering can bring him or herself to actually reach out and sieze them.

Okay, back to our topic.

The first concept I need to introduce is

Utopian Fallacy.

The belief that life can be perfected once and for all. The world’s problems can be totally solved, and if they haven’t been solved yet, it only means we haven’t

Tried hard enough
Sacrificed enough,
Cared enough, or
Found the right method.

People who think this way tend to be very frustrated. Frustrated with themselves, their jobs, “society,” their relatives, and so on. “Why can’t I/you/we/they just ____?” In short, it’s the refusal to accept one’s current reality because things should be different, and they could be, if only XYZ thing could finally happen.

I had my version of this, and while it wasn’t restricted to this area of my life, it was most clearly seen in my practice of yoga and meditation. In many ways, the yoga world gave me the mind virus of Utopianism in the form of spiritual enlightenment.

I could become totally nonreactive. I could, and was expected to, go beyond my ego (whatever that actually means). I should think, speak, and act in a spiritually elevated way. I shouldn’t ever become angry, or judgmental, or horny, or self interested.

These fundamentally human characteristics were problems to eradicate, and they could be eradicated through spiritual practices.

The answer was always more: more advanced techniques, practiced for longer durations. If you missed a day, or started after dawn, or had impurities in your diet, lifestyle, etc, and you were, pardon me, fucked.

It’s unlikely that you had the same experience, but you may have had similar ones.

Dieting? Exercise routines? Therapy? Working on yourself? Professional development? Striving for a perfectly happy relationship?

Despite your sustained and laudable efforts, you haven’t gotten that magical feeling you were hoping for. Even worse, you have felt it at times, making you think that it’s possible to grasp and hold onto it permanently, and that its continued ephemerality reveals some flaw in your methods or perhaps even in you as a person.

This has eventually discouraged you, and you find it harder and harder to summon the same levels of enthusiastic effort that you once had. Maybe you feel “old” as a result. When people don’t know what to do about something, they tend to shut down around that topic, no matter how important it is.

Essentially, Utopian Fallacy has got you feeling stuck, and dreaming of a better place.

Don’t search for a better place wherein to arrive someday, but live today in a better way.

When you’re stuck in a bad place, you have stuck thinking. Your only concept of a better life is to be stuck in a good place.

Can you see why this is doomed to failure? When you have prison thinking, rigid thinking, you dream of a beautiful prison cell with plenty of food, space, furniture, and conjugal visits (yes you do; don’t lie).

In other words, you have to think about things in a different way. Give up on the current goals you have, because they are the goals of a person you do not truly wish to be.

A stuck-thinking person thinks that

getting everything right is the solution.

That problems have to be solved once and for all.

That human frailties are something to be ashamed of, something to hide, and a basis for unworthiness.

This has gotta go, and let me show you how.

Instead of thinking of life in terms of a map, being in one place and trying to get to another, think of it like a solid, rigid, cold ice cube that wants to turn to soft, yielding, and flowing water.

The ice cube is a block, which you can only engage on the surface. Water is something in which you can swim, something you can engage with at levels of true depth, something with which you can become fluent.

The journey you want is not the journey from one place to another, but the journey from fixity to fluidity.

When I was trying to be the perfect yogi, I was closer to the icecube: my emotions and behaviors were objects that I had to control, and the locus of control was external:

in techniques,
mantras,
pretty beaded necklaces,
impressive morning routines,
and a long list of dos and don’ts.

While this might look, to the outside world, like someone taking charge of his life, I was still totally unable to engage with my self directly.

When did this change?

Not until years later, when I read On Becoming A Person by the pioneering psychotherapist Carl Rogers.

In the pages of this book, he explained, from numerous angles, and illustrated, with countless examples from therapy sessions, what the journey from a bad life to a good life looks like in practice.

How real people experience and talk about it. What generalities emerge from decades spent working with real individuals.

It truly enabled me to see my past, my present, and my future, inasmuch as I could see where it was that I seemed to be headed, in light of the similarities between myself and the examples he gave.

Essentially, people improve their lives by becoming less rigid, distant, and impersonal in their thinking.

They go from holding things at an arm’s length, dealing mostly with inflexible constructs and concepts, mostly with the past, and other people, to dealing with the ever flowing process of feeling within themselves here and now:

“It seems that gradually, painfully, the individual explores what is behind the masks he presents to the world, and even behind the masks with which he has been deceiving himself. Deeply and often vividly he experiences the various elements of himself which have been hidden within. Thus to an increasing degree he becomes himself-not a façade of conformity to others, not a cynical denial of all feeling, nor a front of intellectual rationality, but a living, breathing, feeling, fluctuating process-in short, he becomes a person.” (Rogers, On Becoming A Person, p.114).

What happens when you make this change?

Little by little, as I moved in the direction described above, I came to accept myself. I came to admit to the thoughts, feelings, ideas, and actions that I was unable to face in the past. Instead of feeling threatened by them, threatened by anything that contradicted the story I wanted to tell about myself, I could acknowledge the contradictions.

I could allow myself the feeling of shock, disappointment, surprise, self admonition, and occasional wry humor at the sight of my imperfections, mistakes, immaturity, arrogance, insecurities, and so on. For the first time in my life, I was simply owning them, rather than deflecting, blaming, self flagellating, or running away.

I wanted to know myself. I wanted to actually be myself. Meaning, I wanted an ongoing flow of contact and communication with the experience of being me. I wanted the real thing, and “real” became more important than “comfortable.”

Perhaps paradoxically, the problems gradually melted away in the face of my own self acceptance. You might say that the more I wanted to really know myself, the more I became someone you’d want to know.

The inner atmosphere of acceptance allowed something in my inner person to relax, and I thereby released many negative patterns, self defeating attitudes, harsh mannerisms, and cowardly, escapist tendencies.

And, what took their place?

The same openness that allowed me to embrace my flaws also allowed me to move toward my ideals. I started responding openly and receptively to feedback. I would incorporate it, and abide by it. I became more proactive in facing my problems, seeing them as solvable. I learned to persist in the face of skepticism, resistance, delayed gratification, and the initial clunkiness of a new endeavor. More and more often, I hung in there until the job was done, overcoming a lifelong pattern of drooping effort when I was only halfway there.

Over time, all these behaviors compounded on themselves. I gradually became very connected to an inner drive to do good, to be a creative positive force in the world, and to connect with things outside myself as an agent of positive change. Not in a forced way, but in the sense of let’s see what happens to this thing/person/situation if I give it my very best. Only good things have come from that, including the courage and self respect to deal with the not so good things that inevitably happen.

I know you want some version of that in your life, because this is fundamentally what life is about: being a real person, living a real life.

You kinda just automatically get your shit together and start moving in the direction of living out your higher aspirations once you get that down: once you can embrace yourself as a flow rather than an object, and allow the unconscious processes within you to resolve problems, rather than treating yourself like an object that can only be engaged by other objects.

Essentially, when you change from fixity to fluidity, nothing else in your life has to change, because you become aware, adaptive, responsive, realistic, and comfortable with reality. You don’t become perfect, but you become capable, engaged, earnest, and proactive.

So what do you do?

I’ve made this into four steps for you.

STEP ONE: stop assaulting your senses.

You need an inner environment of calm, open, understanding and acceptance for this to work. You can achieve this by

Getting more sleep
Eating better food
As little added salt and sugar as possible
Working out hard in the gym a few times a week
Taking long walks alone
Generally choosing to soothe rather than stimulate yourself.
Reading books rather than scrolling through your phone.


STEP TWO: choose activities that promote self awareness.

This is where I tell you that you simply need to read books. My thinking and behaviors changed because I became aware of them. I became aware of them because I introduced myself to new concepts that allowed me to see myself with a constructive framework.

The conceptual framework of “move from fixity to fluidity” allowed me to see things in that way. It clarified what to aim at, what to discontinue, what to choose, where to place my effort, and so on. This came from reading.

This is not to say that YouTube is off the table. Watch videos on psychology, communication, attachment theory, relationships, and therapy related content.

Be careful not to overwhelm yourself, and allow plenty of time to process information.

When you begin to feel like you’re only learning how screwed up you are, recognize it as a phase that will pass. But you simply have to invest in your fluency and literacy in this topic. You never get anywhere by winging it.

STEP THREE: practice stoic indifference toward your subjective moods.

The ultimate Stoic is Epictetus. His short work The Enchiridion, can be read in an afternoon. You may or may not like it, but it will teach you how to be less of a flailing victim and more of a rock of stability.

Stop viewing your life as the life of a drug addict, always chasing a high, always viewing your quality of life as nothing more than the quality of your mood right now, and learn to persist at difficult things regardless of your mood.

All talk of motivation, inspiration, and even discipline, is shown to be the self congratulatory fluff that it is in the sober light of Epictetus’ enduring words and ideas. Embrace them and become an adult at last.

This is how you develop the courage to face your subjective reality: it may be happening within you, but, if you can observe it, on a deep level, it is not you. It is information which you cannot afford to ignore. There’s a difference. Live in that difference.

STEP FOUR: consciously reframe your goals.

You are not looking for something outside of you: you are looking to become someone with whom life can do business. That is to say, a mature person.

There is no shortage of opportunities, collaborators, resources, or desirable romantic partners. The limiting factor is you and your relationship to yourself.

View your self as the thing into which you must invest. Reorganize your life around the cultivation of noble virtues.

Once you have learned to stop harming yourself (step one),

to use that newfound self trust to delve more deeply into your mind (step two),

and then learned to not be ruled by what you find in your own depths (step three),

what naturally follows is constructive action: now that all of you is truly on the same team, make it a winning team by investing in your strength and your skills. You will then be fit for the journey your life was always meant to be.

IN SUMMARY

Utopian Fallacy is what turns success into a fixed state of paradise located outside of you in the future, and burdens you with impossible demands and an unreasonable view of yourself and the world.

Wishing to finally arrive at a good place is an example of Utopian Fallacy.

You overcome it by moving your focus inward, toward a more fluid, immediate, personal and unflinchingly intimate engagement with yourself.
You do that by establishing the frameworks that support this process, which you get from reading Carl Rogers.

You don’t magically cease to have problems, but what you now have is the maturity to deal with them. That might not sound sexy, but it really is the secret sauce.

Good luck. I am building a consulting practice around the kind of work discussed here. If you’ve read this article and know you’d like to get a bit more hands on, and get more into real specifics, simply contact me on whatever platform you found this.

Thanks for your time, talk to you soon

Jas