[Second of a two part series looking at SH clichés that  f*** people up.]

You Can Be Anything You Want

I have two children-a boy and a girl. As you might imagine, I want my children to grow up with healthy self-esteem, a feeling of worthiness and the knowledge that their father, despite being a bona fide moron, loves them endlessly and unconditionally. Ok, so we’ve established that nothing is more important to me than my children, the two people whose imagination and self-belief I want bound by nothing.

You’d think, for that very reason, that I would encourage my kid’s dreams to be limitless, right? I’ll answer that question a little later (spoiler alert: NO!) but in order to do so, we need to take a slight detour into Pysch 101 and revisit what psychologists call the confirmation bias. 

The confirmation bias works kind of like this: Buy a Honda Accord (brilliant idea!)→ see Honda Accord’s everywhere on the road, confirming your brilliant(!) purchase. Or, call up your friend who you suspect has been sleeping with your wife→ every innocuous comment he makes and minutiae he omits sounds to you like ironclad proof of the affair. 

That, in a nutshell, is the confirmation bias-the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of your pre-existing belief. Everyday examples include:

• Discover someone is left-handed, immediately look for evidence of creativity (Oh, you played the triangle in pre-school–I knew it!)
• I always think everyone hates me-it’s part of dealing with high anxiety. Much as I try not to, every time I give a talk, I “see” evidence of that hatred in the audience.
• Fox News (does this one really even require an explanation)

The fascinating thing about the confirmation bias is that, like stupidity itself,  none of us are immune to it but all of us believe we’re above it. This kinda makes sense when you consider that most of us are vain, self-obsessed shitheads, right? So, let’s trace it back full circle now: Given your naturally high regard for your potential happiness and personal greatness, it’s understandable that you would find the phrase You can be anything you want! so seductive. It just feels so…affirming, so…intoxicating, so…limitless. 

Ok. Fine. But what if we add another letter to the phrase–just one–a ‘t’ right there between the words ‘can’ and ‘be’. Go on. Ok, now read it:

You can’t be anything you want. 

Feels a little different, doesn’t it? Not as seductive, right? Kind of a downer, actually. Of course it is-your confirmation bias, ma’am/sir, has just been assaulted. What do you mean I can’t be anything I want? I’ll show you! Maybe. But research shows that when people believe they are capable of anything and they deserve expensive blenders because of the Williams Sonoma cutout on their vision board, they tend to engage in risky behavior to justify that vision for themselves. This includes gambling, stealing and posting doctored images of themselves on Instagram baking lemon bars with their new (questionably acquired) Cuisinart blender. 

Having your confirmation bias punctured, in other words, can lead to some pretty bad decisions, primarily those of the I’ll show you! variety.

Besides encouraging risky behavior, SH drivel like You can be anything you want! also perpetuates self-delusion, another central tenet of positive psychology–optimism at any cost. For one thing, studies show that pursuing overly ambitious goals that are out of step with one’s ability can be harmful, often backfiring by undermining the motivation they purport to fire up. I’ve experienced this first hand in my own life-maybe you have, too-buying into the Positivity Posse’s social mandate that I be up at 4 am and log 20,000 steps before my 5:30 breakfast of Paleo granola, a Keto shake and mounting rage that I don’t yet fully understand. Dissatisfied and malnourished, I then head off to work, but not before firing up a podcast on efficiency or goal setting that my carb-deprived brain can no longer adequately process. After logging a lunch-less 12 hours at work, I head off to the 8 pm Aspiring Tech Titan mixer to network with other future candidates for early heart attack death and workplace suicide. 

Instead, Do This: You Can Be Try Anything You Want.

That’s what I teach my kids. The other day, my 9-year old daughter was watching election coverage with my wife while I was in the kitchen cooking dinner, trying to talk myself into believing that I was in fact still a man. Sensing it was futile, I instead turned my attention to the living room, where I overheard my daughter ask, “Mommy can I be president?” I winced as my well-meaning wife assured her, “Of course honey,” then…”You can be anything you want.”

This brings me back to my original question, the one I promised I’d answer way back in the third paragraph about whether or not I should encourage a belief in a limitless reality to my kids. Uh…yeah…sure…I guess…but yeah, no…not really, no.

Look, I wanted to get paid millions for shredding like Slash and writing like Faulkner but instead I’m stuck proofreading this blog for stray commas while my wife yells at me from the other room to wipe my 7-year old’s butt. Shit didn’t turn out the way I wanted, no, but that didn’t stop me–nor will it in the future–from trying.

My daughter can try to be anything she wants, and I will encourage that till the end of days. But to believe you can be anything you want is to believe that life itself–and therefore, success–is a meritocracy–like grades in school, where talent and reward are directly correlated. Anyone with an even passing familiarity of American pop and celebrity culture (see: Bravo Channel) knows that ain’t true.

If I Can Do It, YOU Can Do It!

Maybe. Maybe not.

The story of overcoming enormous obstacles to become successful is the story of the American Dream, right? But it’s also the story–fabricated at times, exaggerated always–of SH authors and the outsized Horatio Alger stories they spin to sell books. Someone is always either on the brink of homelessness or at risk of “losing it all” but winds up founding a bizarrely-named internet company consisting mostly of repeat vowels. With Richard Branson now on speed dial, next up, of course-a SH book (and condescending TED talk). Hell, if I did it, so can you, b’yatch!

(Ok, ok, the ‘b’yatch’ wasn’t necessary, I’ll give you that. Happy now?)

In many ways, these stories form the fundamental premise on which most of the self-help canon is built–the idea that success is somehow replicable. Simply by applying the same principles and executing the same steps as the slimy, shifty-eyed SH guru, you too can Make It Happen! 

Only, there’s one problem–if overcoming enormous obstacles to reach extraordinary levels of success can be achieved by just about anyone, then the obstacles aren’t really that enormous and the success isn’t all that extraordinary, now is it? The premise that “I did it, so you can too” is undermined by its own logic. 

In order to buy into this logic, you must assume two things:

1. You’re exactly like them
2. They’re exactly like you

If both of these things are true, then yes, the one-size-fits all prescription for everlasting fulfillment and wealth might work. If so, great, I’m happy for you. Keep reading SH books till your heart’s content and your pocket’s empty. For the rest of us…

Instead, Do This: If I can make it, maybe you can, too.  But maybe not. I don’t know, I’m not sure.

I know, not as catchy, right? But at least it’s accurate. Not only that, but thinking about performance and growth in this balanced sane way provides the added benefit of moderating your expectations. As a result, you don’t have to feel like an underachieving turdsapien if, shortly after reading Four-Hour Workweek, you’re not on the cover of Inc. magazine.

As I’ve gotten more sophisticated in my understanding of how SH books are written, packaged, marketed and sold, I have gotten better at evaluating them based on inherent quality and value. I’ve written before about how those of us with mental health, OCD, perfectionism and self-esteem issues are more given to self-blame and guilt than others. For that reason, it is especially vital that you be more discerning about what SH material you consume. (In the coming weeks, I’ll be starting a series on how to identify and screen for valuable SH material vs. the attention-grabbing titles whose substantive appeal ends there.)

In my book, Self-Helpless, I talk about the three elements that most SH books use to draw readers in–The Challenge, The Lie and The Promise. All three tap into our desire for an instant fix–the get-well quick scheme or mentality. Hell, it’s better than working, right?

Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know, I’m not sure. 

What I do know is that if 2020 taught us anything, it’s that life is unpredictable and fucken crazy. Making it crazier still is the deranged belief that life is a) replicable and b) customizable: a) If I Can Do It You Can Do It  b) You Can Be Whatever You Want.

Did anyone really have X-ray images of respiratory infections, clippings of ventilators, pictures of stockpiled toilet paper and sad images of empty cruise ships on their 2019 vision boards? I doubt it.

Then again, maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. I’m not sure.