Workout #3
Strengthening the Soul
In this third and last installment of my Soul Workout, I address the two remaining questions derived from my reading of Eric Hoffer’s book The Passionate State of Mind:
How can I strengthen my soul by facing unpleasant truths about myself?
What don’t I want to know about myself?
I soon discovered that the exercise of trying to answer these two closely-related questions can be quite a challenge; after all, one of the trickiest aspects of self-deception is simultaneously knowing something about oneself yet not wanting to know it to the depth of actually spelling it out.
Thinking it through, I did more squarely face one somewhat unpleasant truth that’s been pointed out to me in the past: I can be too nice, sweet, adaptable, accommodating, acquiescent, and what the personality psychologists call agreeable. That might sound like false modesty or humble bragging, but the behavior has produced negative consequences; for instance, in my career days it sometimes prevented me from obtaining salary increases, plum assignments, promotions, recognition for my contributions, and the like. My attitude was always that I would do whatever my employer needed me to do, even if it didn’t obviously or immediately advance my career. I happen to have been comfortable with this approach because I accepted the tradeoffs, and in the end I did well enough financially that I was able to retire at age 55; yet I’m also aware that a few of my employers and managers took advantage of this trait to their own benefit. So be it.
Because this exercise is so difficult, I’ll likely add it to my soul workout routine and revisit it from time to time. Hopefully no deep, dark secrets will come to the surface...
Very interesting…. Perhaps along similar lines a friend of mine, in a social context, recently said to me “I want to see you get madder!” She said I was a little too nice and neutral about everything. In my case I think I’ve been hedging against pomposity for a while, which I believe was a problem when I was younger. But I guess you can lose some authenticity that way….
As a relatively disagreeable person, let me say (not to you specifically, Peter, but generally), that agreeable people sometimes make work that they then want disagreeable people to come in and fix because they think we don't mind being a jerk and they themselves do not want to be a jerk.
But they are fine with *us* being the jerk. It's very unpleasant work, and the situation is often preventable by people being more precise and up front about expectations. Or blunt.
Clearly I have very different soul work to do related to being disagreeable, which I have been doing thanks to a kind but blunt brother.