Also, I’ve heard that people experience these things differently. Some people hear a voice. Some see an image. What I write here is how I experience these things. Your mileage may vary.

With that said, let’s get on to the terms.

Heart of Hearts: This is the part of yourself that can’t be fooled. It communicates in feelings. When you ask yourself a question it’s the flash of feeling you get before you can verbalize your answer.

Sometimes you won’t be able to hear your heart of hearts, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t have anything to say. If you’re out of practice, for instance, it will probably be very quiet and you need to listen harder in order to hear it. It could also be that you can’t handle the truth.

In general your Heart of Hearts has something to say about everything, even something as mundane as brushing your teeth in the morning. Mine says “Yes, this is the right thing to be doing. Why are you asking me?” Of course, I’m translating from a feeling, I don’t actually have a little voice in my head.

Intuition: You may have wondered, how do you know when your heart of hearts has something to say? The answer is Intuition. Intuition, like your Heart of Hears communicates nonverbally, but to call that communication a feeling would be a bit strong. It’s the “something is not quite right here” “feeling”. It’s the part that tells you something you spelled doesn’t “look right”. Or says that 2 * 254 = 502 doesn’t look right.

When your Heart of Hearts has something to say, but doesn’t feel comfortable talking to you, your intuition will let you know.

Like the bunny in this picture, your Inner Bunny can be quite destructive if left to its own devices.

Inner Bunny: I haven’t actually used this term before, but I probably will in the future so here’s the definition. Your inner bunny is old old programming. It’s the part that tells you food is good, sex is good, sleep is good. It’s the part that really believes in fear. It’s the part that craves security.

Your inner bunny will have an immense amount of power over you if you don’t pay attention to it. And even if you do try to pay attention to it, more often than not it’ll run away because is it just got caught. Being found out about is scary! Like a cute little bunny, when it’s scared it needs to be petted and feel it’s secure. When Bunny feels secure Bunny will help you.

If you’re a fan of Seth Godin, you may recognize this term as “The Lizard Brain“. It’s the same thing, but has a more heartwarming connotation. And even if you want some ruthless visualization, you can always think of the Killer Bunny.

Intuition lets you know if you’re talking to your inner bunny. The big cues that you’re dealing with your inner bunny is irrational fear.

I sometimes confuse Heart of Hearts and Inner Bunny because they can answer your question at the same time. To illustrate, let’s say you’re going to give a presentation and you’re scared. You ask yourself “why am I scared”? Part of you says SCARED! FEAR! THIS IS THE WOST THING EVAR! That’s Inner Bunny. At the same time if you’re listening you’ll hear, “You’re scared because Inner Bunny says you’re scared”, and if you pay attention you’ll hear the implication that there’s no reason to be scared.

The two things aren’t the same thing. Your Heart of Hearts speaks from a place of calm. Your Inner Bunny is usually not very calm. But they do talk at the same time, and often your Heart of Hearts will point out that Inner Bunny is the one causing you trouble. Once you get used to listening to Bunny you won’t need to listen for Heart of Hearts because you’ll know what it has to say.

Subconscious: All of these things are part of your subconscious. Any part of your brain that speaks in feelings, I say is part of the subconscious. The part that controls how your limbs move or your automatic breathing function…. yeah not so much. Those things probably should have their own name, and for the time being “subconscious” isn’t one of them.

Of course, I’ve been using “subconscious” all willy-nilly like on the site, and I will fix that in the future. These parts really are different, and I intend to refer to them by name in the future.

If you want to take up running, but believe that if you do you’ll ruin your knees, you won’t run.

If you want to get out of debt but believe that your life won’t be fun anymore, you won’t get out of debt.

If you want to work on your blog daily, but believe your voice isn’t worth being heard, you won’t write.

Of course there are ways to combat each of these mental blocks. If you’re the runner afraid of bad knees you can run barefoot and take up Chi Running. If you’re afraid of deprivation but want to get out of debt you can work on paring down the stuff you don’t care about. (Is it possible to feel loss over something you don’t care about?) If you’re the insecure blogger you can practice writing in your journal or educated yourself so that you are worthy of being heard. The real problem is not the blocks themselves, it’s that we often don’t know when we are mentally misaligned.

So, how can you know when you’re mentally misaligned?

One way is to align your environment, try to achieve your goal, and see how you do. If you fail after aligning yourself with success, there’s a good chance your subconscious is working against you. Ask yourself why you think you failed. “I’m not disciplined enough” is not a good answer. Look deeper. Ask yourself why you don’t want to succeed. If you really can’t think of any reason why you aren’t able to achieve your goal, work more on aligning your environment. Then try again. If you fail again, and there’s still no physical reason why you’re failing, your subconscious is involved. Some part of you doesn’t want you to succeed.

Some good ways I’ve found to get my subconscious to reveal what it’s saying.

Thinking: Just plain old sitting around and thinking about it. I ask myself, “why am I failing at running” and I hear back “because I don’t feel good when I do it”, “because I’m afraid I’m doing it wrong and will injure myself”, “because if I go through the whole ritual (warm-ups and stretching) it eats my day”, … These are my mental blocks. This can be the fastest way to get answers from your subconscious, but in many situations it doesn’t work. For instance, if you feel embarrassed by a certain belief you need a lot of practice to be able to hear it. Thus, while this tool is very powerful, it won’t always work, especially if you don’t have much practice with it.

Writing: Writing acts as assisted thinking. Sometimes I have a lot of ideas floating in my head and I just need to get them all down somewhere. On paper, on the computer, doesn’t matter, just as long as I’m not thinking in circles. And once in a while I’ll get lucky. I’ll see something I’ve written down and a lightbulb will go off in my head. Maybe that embarrassing belief is now so painfully obvious I can’t miss it… or something.

Talking: As useful as thinking and writing are, they’re both solo activities. They work only as well as you know how to use them. Other people have the advantage of being able to see your subconscious at work. They can tell you you’re yelling when you don’t realize your are. They can tell you when you’re using negative language when you don’t realize it. They can tell you why they think  you’re having trouble completing a task. Sometimes they’ll even be right, but even when they aren’t, you’ll learn something.

Reading: When I’m really stuck, I turn to books. I’ll pick something related to solving my problem, and usually I’ll get some kind of insight while reading it. The book may not directly solve my problem, but, solely by virtue of being on the same topic, I’ll usually get at least one lightbulb moment. Going back to the running example, I know I want to run so I might read a book on running. While reading the chapter on “treating injuries” I might finally hear the little voice in my head complaining about ruining my body. In spite of the book not addressing that particular problem, I still would have had a realization about the problem.

In short, you can’t bust your mental blocks until you know what they are. Taking some time to think, write, talk, and read about the areas where you haven’t been successful can help you figure out what those blocks are. Once you know, the solution to your problem is usually straightforward.

So what do you do if you have parents who are making your life miserable? Here are a few suggestions:

Act Like You’re Self Sufficient
Start doing the things you would be doing if you were living on your own. Do your own laundry. Fix your own breakfast. Wash the dishes. Clean the bathroom. Do these things independent of whether or not your parents ask you to. If you have a co-dependent relationship with your parents (i.e. you make your decisions based on how your parents will react), this is an excellent practice tool for working toward acting independently of them.

In addition you’ll get several other benefits from doing this:

• A feeling of power Honestly, as much doing household chores is a pain, doing them freely really does make you feel like you’re an adult. You are using your ability to take care of yourself. When someone tells you you’re incapable of taking care of yourself, you’ll know that in fundamental way you indeed are capable.
• You improve your quality of life a bit. A cleaner room is a nicer room. The food you cook is of as high a quality as you can make it.
• Your parental units may start seeing you as more of an adult. And not just any kind of adult: a responsible adult. The more responsible you are in their eyes the more privileges you get. (Usually) All parents are different, so I can’t guarantee this will be the outcome for you, but I can say that there’s virtually no chance that taking care of the house will hurt your credibility.

Even if you’re planning to leave your room a mess, never do your own laundry, and leave the dishes in the sink for weeks when you actually do get to live on your own, I’d highly advise you to consider becoming the kind of person who’s tidy all the time. Ask yourself if part of the reason you’re a slob is just to piss off your parents. If that’s the case, you’re being co-dependent. You’re better than that.

Follow Your Conscience
Adults are perfectly capable of giving you advice and then going about acting irresponsibly. Sometimes ideas you know are right will be shot down by people who are older than you. They’ll tell you you haven’t lived, that there’s no way for you to understand until you’re older. If you’re getting this response, it’s unreasonable.

I’m 24 now. I’ve had a fair amount of life experience compared to my high school self. There’s only a handful of things I don’t think I’d have understood prior to experiencing them, and those weren’t the things I got into arguments about.

I spent a fair amount of time in high school angsting about my lack of experience. Looking back, it was wasted time and energy. I’d have done a lot better to trust myself and fall once in a while than feel bad that I could convince the authority figures (and myself) that I was right. Alas.

Get your advice from people with real experience
Related to the last point, many adults will have no problem giving you advice which they’d never consider giving their peers. They’ll tell you about investing when they’re buried in debt. They’ll tell you about how to deal with your significant other when they’ve been divorced three times and had two affairs. It’s unwise to take advice from someone when the subject of the advice is an area in which the person continues to fail. Don’t call them on this though. More likely than not they’ll attack you for it.

Instead get your advice from people who have reached the goals you want to reach. Ask someone who appears to have a good relationship about how to deal with your significant other. Ask someone who owns a business about what it’s like to start one. Etc.

Don’t complain
This will get you a lot of the way toward a good experience in high school. Whining doesn’t win you anything, and even when it does it comes at a price. You aren’t respected. You’re seen for the dependent child that you are.

Instead, acknowledge your situation, and try to find ways to work within it. If there’s injustice, accept it. It’s really hard to convince parents that they’re favoring one of your siblings, no matter how obvious it is to an outside observer. Same thing with a parenting decision. It’s not worth fighting since you do not have real power. The faster you accept it, the less hurt gets into your heart. Take heart that the situation is temporary.

Acting independently will help you in this endeavor.

Be Judicious in Your Openness
This is entirely dependent on who your parents are. There are some that will actually help you be your own person, who will reward openness with helping you think through the problem. If you have one of those, feel free to be fairly open with them. Let them know what you’re doing, what your beliefs are, what you aspire to do. They’ll help you get there.

If your parents are still believe they can “mold” you into their version of the ideal you, your openness will not be greeted with happy things. The best advice here is to give them only what they can handle hearing. If every time you talk about your dreams of traveling you’re dreams are shot down, don’t talk about it. They haven’t earned the right to your openness. Find other people to share it with. Lots of people, less attached than your parents, will be able to support what you want to do.

In short, they aren’t entitled to your openness just because they’re your parents.

Like the post on getting through high school, if I’d done these things while I was a teenager my life would have been a lot more pleasant. Such is life. Don’t repeat my mistakes.

So really what you need is a compass. You need a way to tell if you’re moving in the right direction. Here’s one way to develop your own.

Step 1: Brainstorm Places You Might Want to Go I’m using places in the broadest sense possible. One place could be the parent of 3 children. Another could be travel the world. Another could be to grow your favorite club into a powerful organization. Another could be to have a very musical family.

Don’t be picky here. It’s brainstorming after all. Everything you can think of is worth writing down.

Step 2: Reread your list or your mind-map and note your reaction to each item When you read “Big family” do you feel good? Disgusted? Scared? What about being at the top of the career ladder? Excited? Anxious? Put an emoticon by each of them.

Step 3: Try to find a pattern Do you notice a lot of smiley faces by the family options? By the work options? Do you notice you have a lot of work and wealth options but they all have unhappy faces. What about your hobbies? Is there a giant smiley by music or dance or writing?

Group the items that can be grouped together. All the family in one. All the work in another. Each hobby in its own.

Step 4: Figure out what subsets to spend your time on If you had to cut one out of your life, or spend only a little time on it, how would you feel about it? If it’s highly important, is it something you’re making progress on right now?

Step 5: Use your compass When presented with something to spend your time on, figure out if it feels intuitively like a good thing to do. Visualize the list you evaluated in Step 4. Will this action get you closer to the things that are important to you? You don’t have to limit yourself to just tasks that get you closer to your goal, but you should be making some steps in those directions.

Step 6: If you think your compass is broken or out of date go back to Step 1 This is an iterative process. As you grow and learn, you may find that things that used to be important to you just aren’t any more. Or maybe you’ve found something that actually is Really important. Update your compass. You’ll be much happier for it!

Does this sound familiar? Are you afraid of what people will think of you if you actually lose weight? Or more importantly, what you will think of you? Does that mean you’re the kind of person that’s focused more on physical appearance than inner beauty? Does that mean you’ll have to sacrifice something that’s important to you in order to make the time to eat well and exercise? Does that mean you’ll be the kind of person that sacrifices spiritual things for the physical?

Or what if you’ve always wanted to be an artist or an actor or a comedian? That culture has a reputation for promiscuity, ungodliness, and other not so wonderful traits. Does that mean you’ll have to develop those traits? Do you want to be that kind of person? Do you want to be thought of being that kind of person?

Or what about money? What if you were rich? How would you feel about being a wealthy person? What would that say about you? Is it something you want to be? Is it something you’re OK with being?

All of these things are fears of success, or more accurately fear of the kind of person you’ll become if you succeed.

There are a few ways you can tackle the problem depending on both your faith in your decision and your faith in your ability to deal with problems if it was the wrong decision.

Superman You have strong faith in your ability to fix problems associated with your change if they arise.

If you’re in this category, it doesn’t really matter how much you believe in your decision. Just dive in and see what happens. No matter how much of a hole you dig you’ll learn a lot, and you can climb your way out afterward if it’s not really where you want to go.

If you’re in this category, you probably don’t really have this fear of success thing either.

“Compass say that’s the right direction, but the clouds are ominous” You’re fairly certain this is the right direction for you, but you’re a bit scared about what it means to be that kind of person. An example is the would-be artist who’s afraid of being the sinful person he envisions all artists to be.

There’s a few things you can do to ease this block:

• Identifiy what scares you Is it that you’ll be a bad person? That you won’t have time for what’s important? That you’ll have to drop all of your friends and family?
• Visualize yourself having your cake and eating it too Figure out how you can do the new thing, be the new person and still do what’s important to you.If you’re trying to stay your pious self, maybe while you’re pursing your art and getting to know artist type people you also spend extra time at Church or with people who keep you honest and good. Maybe find someone to talk to about the challenges you’re facing, someone who can honestly assure you when you’re still on the right track or who can warn you when you start veering off.
• Do it When your safeties are in place, start taking action to achieve your goal. If you’ve thought of everything, you should be able to make progress without your subconscious nagging you. And if you notice you still have the nagging feeling, figure out what it is and tackle it. Eventually you’ll weed all these issues out.

“My compass is broken” You aren’t even sure why you’re considering this goal.

This is deserving of its own post, but the short answer is:

1. Figure out what’s important to you and where you want to go with your life
2. Figure out what appeals to you about this goal
3. Do those thing fit together?

If you can answer “yes” to question 3, then your compass isn’t the issue. Move on to the “Ominous Clouds” section.

Chances are you fall into one of these three categories. Hopefully this advice will give you some insight on how to deal what you’re facing.

At some point I’ll expand on the “broken compass” category, since a functioning inner compass is useful and not all that trivial to set up.

I’ve seen this in other people too.

I’d always thought this worked differently. If you’re not actively working on something then criticism should just bounce right off of you. It’s simply not something you’re interested in improving right now. And when I consciously decide that I’m not going to work on something, I do indeed react much more aloof to criticism. In most cases, though, my unconscious reaction is to get offended at advice.

How do you use this info? Depends. Are you receiving advice or giving it?

For receiving advice, be conscious of your reaction. If you get offended advice ask yourself if it’s because you think you’re competent enough and aren’t in improvement mode. Then make your decision. Do you want to improve or do you want to put your energy elsewhere? Once you’ve decided, advice won’t negatively affect you anymore.

For giving advice things get a bit tricky. If you notice someone isn’t open to advice, now at least you know why. But what do you do with that info? It depends on your relationship. With people I don’t know very well, I’d just assume that they aren’t actually trying to improve and leave it at that. If the relationship is close I’d probably forward them this post and see if it resonated with them. Then take it from there. Ultimately you have to use your best judgment.

Know Thyself

The most important thing you need to do is know who you are and what you want out of life. If you know what’s important to you, then you can wisely filter out advice that just doesn’t make sense for you. For instance, let’s say that freedom is important to you. You don’t want any part of your life to be too constraining. Moreover you want some excitement in your life. So, when you tell someone you’re starting your own business and they explode all over you about how unsafe it is and how you’re likely to fail, you can (no pun intended) safely disregard that advice. They’re talking about safety. You’re talking about freedom. Plus the fact that it’s not what most people do is exciting to you.

The more you know and trust yourself the easier it gets to effectively evaluate advice.

Know Others

The primary thing is to know yourself. If you really have no idea what you want out of life then knowing what others want out of life is of little use in determining whether their advice is valid. But lets say you do think you know yourself, but your subconscious is giving you mixed messages about the advice. Does that necessarily mean that you don’t actually know yourself?

Maybe, maybe not. It could be that you’re just afraid to face your true self and that’s why you’re tempted to ignore the good advice. Or it could be that you’re getting bad advice but you’ve been socially conditioned to trust that person. The advice from elders piece specifically talks about this case.

That post gives some good questions to ask, but there’s an even more general rule you can apply to determine how good the advice is likely to be: good advice comes from good people. Meaning, if the person is coming from the same set of beliefs as you, the advice will be more applicable to you. If you’re getting fear-based advice, and you’re trying to rid fear from your life the fear-based advice simply won’t be right for you.

I’ve found that it’s a lot easier for me to soothe my subconscious, when I tell it that the advice is rooted in beliefs I don’t resonate positively with. It’s also easier for me to consider uncomfortable advice when I trust the giver of the advice.

Still Confused? Seek Help

If you’re still struggling with the advice you’ve been given, talk about the advice to someone who shares your basic beliefs. Many time’s they’ll be able to give you some guidance that makes more sense or tips the scale toward one side. Distance gives clarity, so it’s very likely they won’t be affected by the confusion you feel.

And that’s all there is to it. Knowing yourself and knowing others helps you know if someone else’s advice actually applies to you. And if you’re still confused talk to someone who shares your fundamental beliefs, since they may be able to shed some light on the issue since they’re more detached than you are.

A simple solution is to just listen to my creative side, but then I run into the risk of becoming obsessed with my career, which is definitely not something I want. It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t intend to have kids, but when Aaron and I do one day have kids, splitting attention between creativity and needy little ones is not something I want to have to struggle with. So right now, whenever the urge to write strikes at an inconvenient moment I feel a tremendous surge of negative feelings like guilt and fear no matter what I choose to do. Not exactly stuff I want to be experiencing.

This morning I came up with a solution that I’ll be experimenting with: find a purpose that encompasses all essential aspects of your life. Then the different parts of your life will work in synergy instead of against each other.

How to Use Purpose for Balance: An Example

If I could only use one word to describe my purpose it would be “clarity”. LVC is a pretty obvious expression of this. But what about other parts of my life? The more I think about it, the more I find that clarity applies to more than just my blog. It applies to my relationship, it will apply to raising children, and It even applies to my early music endeavors. How can you clearly appreciate the beauty of life if you’ve never been exposed to something as wonderful as Monteverdi’s Lamento D’Arriana? Practically everything I do is in the service of developing greater clarity for myself and inspiring greater clarity in others.

So how does this help me with balance? Basically everything I do is toward the same end, so there’s no guilt if I follow my inspiration. Nothing is inconvenient. If I get strongly inspired to write whilst I’m spending time with someone I care about, both options, staying with the person or disengaging and taking the time to write, are aligned with my purpose. It doesn’t matter which I choose, I’m still serving my purpose.

I have a sneaking suspicion that purpose driven creativity can be tamed as long as whatever it is you’re doing instead of acting on your creativity is in service of your purpose. It certainly works in interpersonal relationships. If a friend has to cancel a get-together, I don’t mind if she has a good excuse, but if there isn’t an excuse (or a bad excuse) I feel less happy about it.

How to use Purpose for Balance: Things to Think About

The first step, of course, is to find a guiding purpose… which is easier said than done… and deserves its own post.

As a way to test if the purpose you’ve come up with is to try applying it to important aspects of your life. Does it genuinely fit into your career, your family, your hobbies? If something you do isn’t in service of your purpose, do you mind choosing your purpose inspired creativity over it? If you have negative feelings about choosing your purpose over it, explore the feeling more. It may signal that your purpose isn’t quite right or it may signal an unhealthy attachment to whatever it is you’d have to say no to or it may be something else entirely. Whatever it is, it’s something you need to consider.

Once you have a purpose that you think fits well actually apply it to your life. When you’re about to spend a chunk of your day on something, ask yourself “Is this in service of my purpose?”. Let that guide your actions. That doesn’t mean that everything you do must be directly aligned with purpose (eating, sleeping, and getting dressed in the morning are only indirectly supporting my purpose) but it does mean that we should be aware of what is and what isn’t. After a while, if the purpose you’ve come up with is actually your purpose, you’ll naturally start to align with it. It’s you, after all.

Methinks that when we’re living in alignment with our values and purpose, the idea of “balance” changes. It’s no longer about choosing between mutually exclusive actions, but about making sure your life has enough variety to make it interesting. For the next couple weeks I’m going to very consciously apply this idea to my life. Expect a report from me in around the new year.

You are at your mother-in-law’s house for Thanksgiving dinner, and what a sumptuous spread she has put on the table for you! The turkey is roasted to a golden brown; the stuffing is homemade and exactly the way you like it. Your kids are delighted: the sweet potatoes are crowned with marshmallows. And your wife is flattered: her favorite recipe for pumpkin pie has been chosen for dessert.

The festivities continue into the late afternoon. You loosen your belt and sip a glass of wine. Gazing fondly across the table at your mother-in-law, you rise to your feet and pull out your wallet. “Mom, for all the love you’ve put into this, how much do I owe you?” you say sincerely. As silence descends on the gathering, you have a handful of bills. “Do you think three hundred dollars will do it? No, wait, I should give you four hundred!”

This is not a picture that Norman Rockwell would have painted. A glass of wine falls over, your mother-in-law stands up red-faced; your sister-in-law shoots you an angry look; and your niece bursts into tears. Next year’s Thanksgiving celebration, it seems, may be a frozen dinner in front of the television set.

During the rest of the chapter he describes how “market forces”, meaning using money to pay for the value of something, and “social norms” like acting out of love or honor don’t mix. In this case attempting to pay for the socially priceless home-cooked Thanksgiving meal is a very bad idea.

I resonated (but not positively!) with the story because that’s exactly how my family would react, and this sort of situation usually makes me pretty angry. What is inherently wrong with putting a price on things? Is it because it’s actually priceless? Or is it because we’re just uncomfortable thinking about it? And more importantly why can’t we even talk about it without people getting defensive?

The origin of this tendency, methinks, may date back further in humanity’s history than we think. And because of that, “social norms” may feel more right than they really ought to.

Our Distant Relative the Chimpanzee

A few months ago I read Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal. It’s an excellent book that shows how a lot of things we think of as being peculiar to modern humans may have originated long before we started playing with fire. In particular he discusses reciprocity–I scratch your back; you scratch mine–in chimpanzees. According to de Waal, chimps that are emotionally close to each other have a fluid relationship. No score is kept and it’s assumed that since they’re both working at the relationship both sides will ultimately be satisfied. Chimps that aren’t close to each other, though, expect payback for favors. If chimp A extends himself for chimp B whom he is not close to, A expects B to help out when he needs it. If B doesn’t there will be problems.

Sound familiar? If you help an acquaintance move his couch you expect that, barring extenuating circumstances, when you need to move your couch he’ll help out. But if it’s your best friend or sibling it feels like a different situation. When you help them out, you aren’t thinking of it as insurance that you’ll get help later. You’re doing it because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

The degrees of friendship between chimps are very similar to the degrees of friendship between humans. It’s pretty safe to assume then that this “social norm” (fluid relationships with kin and strict give and take with outsiders) has been around for a while and is deeply embedded in human society.

What does Money Have to Do With it?

Money is the ultimate expression that we’re dealing with strangers. It is the way we deal with strangers. When you go to a restaurant, you pay for the meal. The restaurant staff has metaphorically scratched your back by giving you food and a pleasant atmosphere, and you scratch theirs by paying for it with money. It’s not surprising then that we explicitly don’t want payment for hosting Thanksgiving. It effectively says that every member of your family is a stranger, which ends up being not only not true, but hurtful. Also, we want the opportunity to do favors for others without having to think about getting payment in return. If we reward family members and close friends with money we don’t get that opportunity.

So it’s that simple, right? Never let money change hands between close friends and family, at least not when it’s as a payment of services, because it sends the wrong message. But what about the cousin that never contributes? And what about the Uncle who believes that everyone should be paid for the value she creates?

The Freeloader and the Capitalist

As natural as it feels to have fluid relationships between family members and close friends, there’s a problem if we can’t talk to them when we’re feeling used. And when you’re strictly adhering to the unwritten rule that says that in these kind of relationships you don’t think about what you’ll get in return you’re kind of stuck. On the one hand you’re not supposed to keep score. On the other hand you feel as though you’re the only one contributing to the relationship. What do you do? Chances are the relationship will just deteriorate. After all, you can’t really defend yourself because any evidence you present will show that you’re keeping score, which is against the rules. Going along with “social norms” without acknowledging them as social norms will just lead misery for all parties in that relationship.

The capitalist is, I think, a rarer character in most families, but I’ll bring him up anyway because he’s in the Thanksgiving story. He’s the one who whips out his wallet and tries to quantify with cold, hard cash what a lovingly made home-cooked meal costs. Technically he isn’t actually doing anything wrong. In fact he’s quite generous, since an individual serving of Turkey and fixings at the local diner wouldn’t cost $400. But because he’s unwittingly calling his mother-in-law a stranger all hell breaks loose. He’s labeled a bad person and that’s the end of it. If this happened to my mother I know for a fact she’d never forget it.

So, clearly there are some negative consequences that come with following these unwritten social rules. Maybe the problem is with the social rules themselves. We’re a lot smarter than apes, right? Wouldn’t it just be better if we put away our apish past and embraces the simplicity that comes with being capitalists? You ought to know by know that the answer isn’t that simple.

How Do You Pay For Something That’s Priceless?

Paying for Thanksgiving is a problem because it’s supposed to be priceless. You’re not supposed to put a price on love, care, and affection and yet by attempting to pay for the meal you are indeed assigning a value to the meal if you give anything more than the cost of the materials. You’re saying that your mother-in-law’s time, love, care, and affection is worth $x to you. No matter how you cut it, that feels awful. It’s like paying for sex from your spouse or paying your kids to tell you they love you. It feels very very wrong.

But let’s just say that we got over the discomfort of assigning numerical values to “priceless” things. With enough practice we could distance ourselves such that numbers didn’t bother us anymore. It’s a stretch, but we could do it. What would happen? Maybe we’d all excitedly come up with how much money Thanksgiving was worth to us and each of us would pay the host. We could even have contests to improve the quality of the feast. Maybe we’d let our spouse know just how satisfying sex last night was by leaving a little extra money under his pillow. Maybe stay-at-home moms could actually get paid for the value they provided. Assuming we had enough of it to fully appreciate everyone, money could be a great way to let others know exactly what we think of them without having to use words.

Would we have altruism though? Would we have forgotten the wonderful feeling of having done something for someone without expecting payment? Would we have forgotten what it’s like to feel grateful and unable to express that feeling materially? Would we have lost something worth having?

To be honest I’m not sure how much we’d actually lose. I don’t know if getting over our attachment to money would necessarily mean that we wouldn’t be able to feel love and appreciation. Maybe it’s possible to assign prices to everything that we find valuable without unnecessarily hurting others. It could force us to come to terms with how valued we feel or don’t feel in a way that not assigning a price to such things doesn’t.

In any case, it’s unlikely that “social norms” are going to yield to the simplicity of capitalism any time soon. As mentioned already, these particular norms have been around for thousands of years. They’re hard to budge. And while getting used to applying prices to all aspects of our relationships with others may be useful in unwittingly getting us to talk about our issues, we don’t need that in order to talk about our issues.

The Ultimate Solution: Awareness and Patience

The problem with the freeloader is that you, the maligned family member, aren’t feeling satisfied with your relationship with him. Because of that the relationship has in effect temporarily downgraded from family–be it a close blood relative or a close friend–to acquaintance. In theory each member of a family should contribute to the relationship. The contribution won’t necessarily be equal since not all members are equal. For instance a child can’t do the same thing for an adult that another adult can for an adult, but that doesn’t mean that the child isn’t able to contribute. The important thing is that nobody feels like he’s being used. Once someone starts feeling that way he don’t feel like he’s part of a family anymore, thus effectively he isn’t part of a family anymore.

As an aside, I get that “as soon as someone within a family feels used he isn’t really part of a family anymore” is a strong statement. So think about this, what kind of person defines a family as a group of people in which some members use other members? No one. Usually the definition is something more like, “a group of people that help each other out.” There are probably more qualifiers than that, but in essence that’s the definition. As soon as someone feels used something is very very wrong.

So how do you deal with the freeloader? You make him aware that you’re feeling used and that you want to work with him so that you can feel positively about the relationship again. Applying “market forces” won’t fix the problem in the same way that contracts between spouses don’t fix the underlying problem. (See Harville Hendrix’s Keeping the Love You Find for more on that particular subject.) To truly feel like a family again there’s no way around talking through the issue. It doesn’t matter if your family’s aligned more with social norms than with capitalist ideals or vice versa. If there are problems in how you perceive each other they can’t really be fixed unless you can talk it out and make actual changes in the relationship.

Similarly if you come across a Capitalist in your family you have to be aware that her offering money for things you do freely doesn’t necessarily mean she thinks of you as a stranger. Better to look for other evidence to back up this claim before calling her out on it. Look for things like her not trusting you to do favors or her being very cautious about talking to you. And if you do call her out on it, have compassion because her not being trusting probably doesn’t have to do at all with you.

When we get into an argument with someone we need to be aware of what the situation really is. That in particular is what this post was really all about: two different situations (social norms and capitalism) that tend to get confused when put together causing explosive results. Neither thing is either good or bad. Mixing them doesn’t have to be bad thing. We just need to realize what that we need to take extra care when putting them together. Some people don’t realize what’s going on, and that just needs to be taken into account.

After having a roommate for several months and doing a four month co-op in Texas I moved into Aaron’s apartment. I soon found that things felt different. The apartment didn’t feel like mine even though I was paying half the rent and some of my stuff was there. What was different? I attributed it to the fact that Aaron had already laid claim to the place. He’d lived in it for almost two years already, and virtually all of the furniture (tables, chairs, couch, futon, bookcases, etc.) were his. There wasn’t enough room for me to bring all of my stuff, so that simply wasn’t going to happen. Also, he’d picked out this apartment himself. That should have had something to do with the feeling of ownership, right? When we moved into a place of our own things would surely feel different.

At the end of August we moved into our current house. Because it’s much bigger than our old apartment I got to help supplying furnishings for it. All of the paintings of mine that were still at my parents’ house are now up on the walls. The kitchen table is the one that I’d used every day growing up. Even the desk that was in my old room at my parents’ house now has a place. And, of course, we picked out the house together. You’d think that now, finally, this house would feel like it was mine.

Except that I’d still catch myself thinking that one day I’d have a place of my own. o.O That’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, this IS my own place. I’m paying a good portion of the rent. I’ve helped furnish this place. Yet it feels like I’m living with my parents except I’ve traded my parents for Aaron. That can’t be good. What’s wrong here?

Ownership and Upkeep are Correlated

The reason I didn’t feel like the house was mine was because I hadn’t needed to take initiative to upkeep it. Aaron will do the vacumming, nag at me to help to help him clean up the clutter, and put up the wall hangings that I didn’t feel like putting up. Ultimately he’d been in charge of keeping the house nice and clean, and I’d been mostly along for the ride. On the surface this would seem like a pretty good arrangement for me, except that the arrangement has a steep price: the house is more his than mine.

So a couple of days ago decided to take some initiative and finally clean out the music room. Since I did this independant of Aaron’s prodding something very interesting happened. My feelings about the music room started changing. Instead of it being like my bedroom at my parents’ house or like a hotel room which I used but didn’t upkeep, I felt responsible for it and effectively was responsible for it. That responsibility changes everything.

Roommates Can Mess Up Ownership Relationships

When I was living by myself I didn’t have to work at feeling like I owned the place. Even if the place was a mess, I was still the one who had to ultimately clean it. As I mentioned earlier, Aaron tends to take the intiative. It’s nice because I get to live in a cleaner house, but it’s bad because I have to do more to make it feel like mine. Luckily I really want to feel like I own the house, so I have a strong incentive to improve my behavior. After all, the only other option would be to ask him to lower his standards, and that would be incredibly stupid. Living in a clean house is nice!

Are there any areas of your life where other people are messing with your feelings of ownership and responsibility? What can you do raise your own expectations?

What about Housekeepers?

What’s most important is that you’re responsible for whether or not the upkeep gets done. If you’re hiring someone to clean the house then you aren’t shirking responsibility, you’re merely delegating it. If your housekeeper doesn’t do a good job cleaning the house, it’s your responsibility to deal.

The situation with me and Aaron didn’t work that way. Aaron wasn’t the housekeep I hired to take care of the house. If the house wasn’t clean it was more Aaron’s responsibility than mine. So he was in charge and therefore he had the ownership.

Do you feel disconnected from certain areas of your life? Where can you take more responibility? Where would taking more responsibility feel good and right and powerful?

As a side note, we’re renting the house, so it may seem strange to talk about it in terms of ownership. Ownership is more a feeling than a physical reality. Someone who owns a house on paper can feel less ownership of the house than the gardener does of the yard he’s been hired to take care of. Who the owner is really a subjective thing. Similarly, if a child is adopted right after being born who’s the mother: the woman who adopted and took care of the child for 18 years or the one who gave birth to the child?