People often ask me how to get into the cartoon business. Usually they show me samples of their comics. About 90 percent of the time my advice is rejected for pure ego reasons. The word ego never comes up, but some form of “artistic integrity” is almost always implied, and that’s the same thing for our purposes here. People who want to create “art” for a living do not want to hear what the public wants. They want to hear that their ideas are amazing, even when they aren’t. That’s ego. And when your ego makes your decisions for you, that’s loserthink. #101 | | |
Some years ago, one young cartoonist who had not achieved much commercial success invited me to lunch to pick my brain. I talked with him for two hours, dispensing my best advice on the topic. He took notes, followed up several times for clarifications, and then implemented much of what I suggested. His name is Stephan Pastis. His comic strip, Pearls Before Swine, is now one of the top comic strips in the world, and he’s a multimillionaire. #102 | | |
You might think Stephan Pastis has no ego because he so seamlessly incorporated my commercial suggestions into his art. That would be far from true. He can dial up his ego like few people you have ever seen. But I observe him doing so when it has some obvious utility, and dialing it down when it would be a problem. For Pastis, ego is a tool. And that mindset plus an impressive talent stack made him rich. I’ve seen lots of wannabe cartoonists with sufficient talent to succeed. But rarely do you find one who understands how to get out of ego jail. #103 | | |
When my comic strip, Dilbert, first appeared in newspapers back in 1989, the topics I addressed were the ones I personally thought were funny. It was mostly generic humor on any topic that caught my attention. But the audience informed me via thousands of email messages that they preferred comics in which Dilbert was at the office. Had I thought of my ego as a reflection of who I am at some core level, as opposed to a tool, my “artistic integrity” probably would have prevented me from taking advice from the audience. But my work experience and education at the time were in the realm of business. In that domain, the customer is the boss, and you do what customers ask whenever it is practical to do so. And that’s how I played it. I ignored my own preferences about what was funny and retooled the Dilbert comic to be a workplace comic strip. In other words, my ego was a tool, not a prison. And that was the key that unlocked the value I had to offer the world. #104 | | |
In the past few years, I have been building an audience on Periscope, a video streaming app. When I started out, I knew I had what the entertainment industry calls “a face for radio.” My voice quality is iffy and I clear my throat and sniff a lot. I’m too old for this sort of thing, and I wasn’t qualified to talk about most of the topics I covered. If I had a normal ego, I would have never attempted such a career move. But I wanted to add that skill to my talent stack, and I didn’t have a special goal beyond that. My first several months on Periscope were awkward, unfocused, and unpopular. The most common comments were about my ugliness. Young people tried to shame me off the platform by pointing out that it was designed for people younger than a hundred years old. #105 | | |
When you are in an environment that is so casually cruel, people who see ego as a reflection of self are tempted to retreat. But I see ego as a tool, which in this case allowed me to gain experience in a new medium, get a lot of exposure, and build my talent stack. Today, most of the major news media companies follow me on Periscope, and so do a lot of political players at all levels. How important is that? In today’s world, influence is determined by a combination of communication skills and reach. I’m a trained hypnotist who writes about persuasion, and now I have a direct communication channel to an enormously important audience. That was possible only because I defied the prison guards of my ego jail who told me I was too ugly and ignorant for Periscope. They weren’t entirely wrong, but they were certainly irrelevant, and I treated them as such. #106 | | |
I often observe people who desperately want to win political arguments but can’t escape from their own ego jails. People want to be 100 percent right while painting their debate opponent as 100 percent wrong. Sometimes that leads to absurd positions that defy both reason and facts. The need to be right (driven by ego) crowds out the opportunity to be persuasive, which is the whole point of debate. Choosing ego over effectiveness is classic loserthink. #107 | | |
Effectiveness is more important than ego. #108 | | |
Recently I found myself in a loserthink trap in which I imagined my performance was a reflection of self-worth. As a result of that imagined reality, I became irrationally worried about embarrassing myself using a self-service car wash. The nearest full-service car wash involves a long wait and a bit of a drive. So my car was filthy, and I had no solution that was okay with both my schedule and my ego. I didn’t want to confess my weird fear of self-service car wash systems to anyone and appear a fool. And I didn’t want to give it a try on my own and be the only idiot in the Tri-Valley area who couldn’t master the car wash instructions. In my imagined future, I would somehow end up sideways in the car wash, and they would have to dismantle the building to free me. The headlines would read “Idiot Cartoonist Destroys Car Wash.” #109 | | |
You might be wondering how I can be smart enough to write books and generally navigate life’s complexities and yet be thwarted by a car wash that people of all types seem to master without any special effort. My problem is that I’m too literal to understand directions that are apparently obvious to others. If a sign says Wait Here and the cashier waves me up for service, I’m momentarily frozen by the ambiguity of the situation. I might be able to work my way out of that dilemma, but not until I first ask for clarification: “Excuse me. Do you have the authority to override this sign?” #110 | | |
If you think I am underestimating my ability to figure out the car wash system, consider this recent story. My gym, at which I have been a member for about thirty years, recently changed how its lockers work. This upgrade did not go well for me. The old system required members to insert their membership cards inside a slot behind the open door and leave it there in order to remove the key. As you might imagine, lots of members would forget to remove their cards after their workouts, and that was a hassle for the gym and the members. Recently, after having this bad system for decades, they realized there was no reason to require members to put their membership cards in the locker. The gym placed blank cards in all the locker slots so we didn’t need to use our membership cards at all. The new system had the same functionality as before, but no risk of people leaving their membership cards in the slots. The gym management even wrote Do Not Remove on the blank cards so you knew you didn’t need to use your membership card. Good upgrade, right? #111 | | |
Not for this member. I had used the old locker system approximately seven thousand times, I calculated (literally). I stood and stared at that blank card that said Do Not Remove and I was stumped. “If I don’t remove the card, how will I insert my membership card?” I wondered. So first I tried wedging my card in the same slot with the blank card already in it. It didn’t fit. I was so stumped that I left the locker room and asked an employee how the new system works. She explained that all I needed to do was remove the key because the blank card was doing the work my membership card used to do. But she was not succinct, and I lost interest about halfway through her explanation. I gave up on asking for help and returned to see if I could conquer this new system on my own with a little more effort. #112 | | |
In the end—and I don’t like to admit this degree of rule breaking—I realized that if no one was looking, I could remove that blank card, insert my member card in its place, and no one would be the wiser. That’s what I did. Worked like a charm, but I felt like a criminal all afternoon. #113 | | |
This method continued to work on other visits until I noticed the gym started cutting the blank cards in half so there was not enough showing above its slot to grab and remove it. Then, and only then, did I realize the point of the new system: I didn’t need to use my membership card at all. I was so programmed after decades of the old system that I was cognitively blind to the obvious benefits of the improved system. And based on the half-size cards they now use, apparently I was not alone. We gym members had been programmed by years of habit and we were stuck in our mental prisons. #114 | | |
I also have a bad history with the self-checkout stations at my local Safeway grocery store. In my defense, the instructions for those things were obviously written by Russian spies as part of their plan to rip apart the fabric of our society. Based on my history of bad experiences, I have good reason to believe public instructions in any context are a surefire way for me to invite embarrassment and public loathing for being “that guy” who holds up the line. This is clearly an area I needed to work on to reduce my own loserthink. #115 | | |
If you think ego is who you are, as opposed to a tool you can dial up and down as needed, you might be experiencing loserthink. #116 | | |
Our egos control us through fear, and often that fear is an illusion. Consider public speaking, for example. If you are like most people, you are afraid of making a fool of yourself by talking in public. But that is a false fear. If I asked you to make a list of all the people who looked like fools while doing public speaking, your list would probably be empty. Part of the reason is that most people are not great at public speaking and you wouldn’t necessarily notice if someone was extra bad at it. More importantly, five minutes after you finish listening to a public presentation, you’ve already forgotten it. Strangers are not that interested in people they don’t know. Here are the two key exercises you can use over your lifetime to keep your ego from being your jailer. #117 | | |
Put yourself in potentially embarrassing situations on a regular basis for practice. If you get embarrassed as planned, watch how one year later you are still alive. Maybe you even have a funny story because of it. #118 | | |
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Note how other people’s embarrassments mean little to you when you are an observer. That’s how much your embarrassments mean to them: nothing. #120 | | |
Using those two techniques, I have evolved from being embarrassed about just about everything to having almost no sense of shame whatsoever. Like most things in life, practice matters. If you practice controlling your ego, you can learn to do it effectively over time. It doesn’t happen overnight, but if you work at it, you’ll see big gains in a year. And the gains will accumulate. #121 | | |
FOCUSING ON WHAT IS WRONG #122 | | |
Human nature forces us to focus most of our energy and attention on whatever is going wrong in our world. You wouldn’t want to change that human trait because it is a big part of what allows us to survive and improve. When I pick up my mobile phone, I no longer see a modern miracle of technology and human ingenuity. I see a device that keeps interrupting me. Sometimes I wish it had a longer battery life so there would be one less thing to interrupt its job of interrupting me. That sort of flaw-first way of looking at the world is what leads to change. We humans see problems and we automatically wonder how we can fix them. Then we try. #123 | | |
As I write this chapter, I find myself looking past my computer screen, on which everything is going great, as you can plainly see, to notice the tablecloth doesn’t reach the edge of the table. That imperfection bothers me even though it is one of the least important variables in my environment. But I can’t help obsessing over it, because my brain is a flaw-finder by nature. #124 | | |
On the plus side, my view of the city is terrific, I’m in a great mood, and I’m enjoying some delicious coffee. My experience right now is better than that of 99 percent of humanity. I should be focusing on that. #125 | | |
And I would. But that darned tablecloth. #126 | | |
Give me a minute to fix that. #127 | | |
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Our semi-evolved brains can’t handle all the things that are going right in our world because that would involve consciously processing far more information than we can handle. It makes sense that we evolved this way. If your cave-dwelling ancestors were enamored with the beauty of the scenery instead of, let’s say, the herd of carnivorous dinosaurs stampeding their way, they would not have survived to create the miracle that is you. #129 | | |
Are you wondering why the author of this book is so dumb he thinks humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time? I’ll bet many of you noticed that flaw and it captured your attention for a moment. See what I mean? Flaws are sticky. We can’t look away. #130 | | |
The obvious downside of our obsession with life’s imperfections is that we can too easily make ourselves crazy. Perhaps that wasn’t such a big problem before the age of smartphones and click-bait media. In olden times, the problems that intruded on people’s thoughts were hyperlocal. Today, we see problems everywhere in the world. Many of them aren’t even real. #131 | | |
As a demonstration, I will pick up my smartphone right now and tell you what problems I see. #132 | | |
My home screen has an emergency warning of dust storms approaching. (I’m in Las Vegas at the moment.) I didn’t even know that was a risk in Las Vegas until this minute. #133 | | |
I just learned via text message that my driver’s license is expired, which matters because I don’t know how I’m going to get onto a flight home without identification. #134 | | |
My Top Stories app informs me of various political crises, a deadly disaster in another state, a huge demographic problem approaching, and a dozen other tales of woe. #135 | | |
That’s just a sample. I haven’t even opened my email or Twitter, and you can imagine what horrors they hold for me. Thanks to the miracle of technology, I can feel angst about every problem in the known universe, so long as those problems can be described in words or pictures. The negativity can be overwhelming. I’m sure you’ve noticed. #136 | | |
On top of our instinct to notice problems, the business model of the press involves making you think about everything that is going wrong in the world. It isn’t news if someone does a good job and gets a good outcome. Or at least it isn’t the exciting kind of news that gets clicks. #137 | | |
When you combine a human brain that is wired to notice problems with a press that is incentivized to present stories involving huge problems, you can easily start imagining that the world is falling apart in a variety of fatal ways. And that worldview might limit your ability to appreciate all the things going right. #138 | | |
We live in a world in which lots of things do go wrong. But if all you see are the flaws in a given situation, you might be cognitively blind to the bigger picture. You have probably seen people who are locked into a belief that everything is going wrong and the future looks bleak. In reality, rarely does everything go wrong, and humans are quite handy at avoiding the worst-case scenarios when they see them developing. Persistent negativity is a harsh mental prison. Humans need optimism and hope to fuel progress. If all you see is the negative, while those around you seem to be experiencing optimism, that’s a signal you might be in a mental prison. #139 | | |
If you can’t think of anything good about a situation, and yet you observe that others can, you might be experiencing loserthink. #140 | | |
Your best defense against the negativity served up by your own filters on the world is to intentionally seek out positive thoughts and stories, which I sometimes call managing your mental shelf space. For instance, I toggle back and forth between CNN and Fox News to get a more balanced approach to the news, and my trigger to switch is any pharmaceutical commercial I see. This system has the advantage of preventing me from hearing a laundry list of the side effects associated with each drug. If you allow yourself to listen to unnecessary lists of horrible health issues, the experience will depress your mood, create unnecessary stress, wreck your energy and optimism, and probably weaken your immune system. If that seems like an exaggeration, it is not meant to be one. Viewing one commercial isn’t much of a danger, but if you watch an hour of cable news, you will hear so many scary references to debilitating health problems in the advertisements that over time it will start to gnaw away at your mind and your body. #141 | | |
It is helpful to think of your mind as having limited shelf space. If you fill that space with negative thoughts, it will set your mental filters to negativity and poor health, and there will be no space left for healthy, productive, and uplifting thoughts. You can control your mental shelf space—to a degree—by manipulating your physical surroundings. In the case of pharmaceutical commercials, it means changing the channel so you are not bombarded with unhealthy thoughts that can wreck your mind and body over time. #142 | | |
I will pause here to note that science is solidly on my side.4 So is nearly every self-help guru. The thoughts you allow into your head are the code that programs your mind and body. If you watch sad movies, you can become sad. If you hear inspirational stories, you can feel inspired. And your mental state has a huge impact on your health. Exposure to horrible and frightening thoughts can elevate your stress, which releases cortisol. The Mayo Clinic website explains that cortisol “curbs functions that would be nonessential or detrimental in a fight-or-flight situation. It alters immune system responses and suppresses the digestive system, the reproductive system and growth processes. This complex natural alarm system also communicates with regions of your brain that control mood, motivation and fear.”5 #143 | | |
That’s what you do to yourself when you expose your mind to unnecessary negativity, such as pharmaceutical commercials, sad movies, sad music, and sad news. It is nearly impossible to avoid all of those sources of negativity, but you can limit their impact by filling your mental shelf space with healthier and more productive thoughts. Every minute you spend with a positive thought is a minute that you keep negative thoughts at bay. #144 | | |
If you are having trouble keeping negative thoughts from your mind, don’t try to “not think” about them. That just makes you think about them more. Instead, find the most positive and “sticky” thoughts you can imagine, and focus on them until your mental shelf space is filled. #145 | | |
If you allow your mental shelf space to fill up with negative thoughts, you are punishing yourself with an unhealthy form of loserthink. #146 | | |
Later in this book, I present my case for why we are entering a Golden Age. You might quibble with the details of my optimism, but note how it makes you feel, and let that feeling be your reward as you train yourself to seek good news and positive interpretations of reality. Your natural instinct is to notice problems, but you can train yourself to think more positively and to notice the good in things. All it takes is intention and practice. Try it for a week and you will notice a difference in yourself. You’ll probably feel happier and less anxious, but—equally important—you will discover a more accurate filter on reality. #147 | | |
