Building A Life Worth Living

Imagine this… Our 18-year-old hero-in-training is admitted to an institution to help address her suicidal tendencies. She spends an AGONIZING TWO YEARS there. As we briefly discussed in the intro, she made a vow, that, if she was able to escape hell, she’d do everything in her power to help others escape hell as well. Fast forward FIFTY years (literally)—from 1961 to 2011.

Our hero has transformed her life and fulfilled her vow. She is one of THE most respected therapists in her field—creating THE FIRST, most effective treatment for suicidal individuals.

But… Except for a few close friends, NO ONE knows her personal story. So… Where does she tell her origin story and the origin story of her therapy that has saved countless lives? At the same institution where she spent her years in hell.

Note: I got goosebumps typing that. Feel into the power of that for a moment.

There’s SO MUCH we can discuss there. I want to highlight a couple of things.

First, Abraham Maslow made a similar vow (albeit without the terrible suffering) as a young man. Learn more about his vow in our Notes on Future Visions.

Second, when I think of making a vow, I always think of wisdom from Daisaku Ikeda. In Buddhism Day by Day, he says: “In any field of endeavor, making a vow is the foundation for achieving something great. If for whatever reason a person gives up halfway or backslides, his or her commitment hasn’t been based on a vow. Halfhearted desire doesn’t amount to a vow.”

And, finally, I think of the hero’s journey. The foreword to the book is written by Dr. Allen Frances of Duke University. It’s wonderful. He tells us: “Many people come up with good ideas but don’t have what it takes to get them into the world. Marsha had the charisma, energy, commitment, and organizational skills to turn dream into reality.”

Then he says: “In myths the world over, heroes must first descend into the underworld, where they are faced with a series of epic challenges to be overcome before they can prevail in their heroic life journey. Once they succeed, they return to their country bearing some special new secret of life. Marsha has plunged into an unbelievably challenging journey of self-discovery, far away from family support, and returned bearing precious insights to help turn abject misery into lives worth living.”

Back to you… How have YOU suffered? And… How can you continue to do the hard work to reduce your own suffering SO THAT you can help *others* do the same. That’s one of the most powerful ways to be Heroic. The Buddhists call this being a bodhisattva—we strive for our own “enlightenment” such that we can help OTHERS achieve their own joy in life.

Let’s make a vow to do that. Together. TODAY.

DBT is short for “Dialectical Behavior Therapy.”

Marsha tells us that the word dialectic can be defined as “a method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth.”

She says: “I like to think of it as ‘the tension, or synthesis, between opposites.’”

And: “Dialectical Behavior Therapy seemed an appropriate name, reflecting as it does the tension between seeking change in a person and encouraging them to embrace acceptance.”

So, to repeat: the dialectic of DBT is between SEEKING CHANGE *and* ACCEPTANCE.

Marsha also says: “Dialectics allows opposites to coexist: you can be weak and you can be strong, you can be happy and you can be sad. In the dialectical worldview, everything is in a constant state of change. There is no absolute truth, and no relative truth, either; no absolute right or wrong. Truth evolves over time. Values that were held in the past might not be held in the present. Dialectics is the process of seeking the truth in the moment, drawing on a synthesis of opposites.”

Marsha walks us through how important mindfulness is to DBT. She was inspired by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh and his great book The Miracle of Mindfulness but wasn’t ready to make mindfulness a central part of her work until she saw how another Heroic psychologist Ellen Langer described it in her book Mindfulness.

For the record, Marsha defines mindfulness as “the act of consciously focusing the mind in the present moment, without judgment and without attachment to the moment.”

She says: “Mindfulness practice is the repeated effort of bringing the mind back to awareness of the present moment; it includes the repeated effort of letting go of judgments and letting go of attachment to current thoughts, emotions, sensations, activities, events, or life situations.”

DBT “skills” fall into those four categories: mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotional regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness.

Marsha reminds me quite a bit of my Yoda, Phil Stutz. They have a LOT in common. They both revolutionized their respective fields and both of their philosophies are super-practical. What Phil calls “Tools,” Marsha calls “skills.”

Marsha discusses this in the context of “distress tolerance.”

And, she says: “The goal of DBT is to help people find the path to getting out of hell. I know it works, because I’ve seen it happen for clients countless times. More important, that’s what research studies—mine and other people’s—demonstrates. But it is not an easy journey, going on that path. This is what I tell my clients:

If you want to get out of hell, you have to get through the fire to the other side. It’s like you are in a house, and it’s on fire. There are flames all around, especially at the front of the house, surrounding the door that is the only way out. Your impulse is to retreat into the house, try to find someplace safe. But, of course, you will just die there. You’ve got to find the courage to go through the flames at the front of the house, the flames around the door. Then you can get to the other side. You have to go through your anger, open up to your therapist, keep going through the pain. It isn’t overnight that you are going to feel better. But you will.”

When I read that passage, I thought of Winston Churchill’s wisdom: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

“Opposite action.”

THIS was the idea that Peter Attia talked about in Outlive that got me to get the book.

For him, the context was getting himself to spend time with his family when he KNEW that was the right thing to do but he didn’t *feel* like doing it. He would have rather worked. But… He practiced taking the “opposite action” and it significantly changed his life.

Phil has a Tool for this as well. In fact, it’s the first Tool he discusses in his first book: The Tools. He calls it “Reversal of Desire.”

He tells us that we need to know that our infinite potential exists outside of our comfort zone AND we need to know that, by definition, when we exit our comfort zones we feel uncomfortable.

Then, when we feel life’s inevitable discomfort, we need to say: “BRING IT ON!”

Or, as Marsha would say: take “opposite action.”

Let’s do that. TODAY.

When I read that, I thought of some parallel wisdom from Jim Collins and his great book, Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0.

He tells us: “You can look at life as a search for that one big winning hand, or you can look at life as a series of hands well played. If you believe life comes down to a single hand, of course, you can easily lose. But if you see life as a series of hands, and if you play each hand the best you can, there’s a huge compounding effect. Bad luck can kill you, but good luck cannot make you great. As long as you don’t get a catastrophic stroke of bad luck that flat-out ends the game, what really matters is how well you play each hand over the long haul. How will you play this hand and the next—and every hand you’re dealt?”

Here’s to radically accepting all the cards we’ve been dealt and playing our next hand with as much joyful wisdom, discipline, love, courage, gratitude, hope, curiosity and zest as we can as we build a life worth living and help others do the same.

It’s Day 1. We’re ALL IN.

Let’s go!