rethink PERFECT

“It is a very recent disease to mistake the unobservable
for the nonexistent; but some are plagued with the
the worse disease of mistaking the unobserved for the
unobservable” Nassim Nicholas Taleb

How many Positive Psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?

None. You just have to accept that it’s dark.

The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life by Tal Ben-Shahar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ex-perfectionist, Positive Psychologist and now converted Optimalist, Tal Ben-Shahar’s dissertation is about the “positive”s of his new status, as an optimiser of his time, energy and emotions and the “negatives” of being a Perfectionist. To me, his theory is simplistic, to say the least, using oodles of dichotomies like:
Positive or Negative, Good or Bad, Success or Failure, Appreciate or Depreciate, Mindful or Mindless
Happiness or Sadness, Acceptance or Rejection, Perfectionist or Optimalist.
I guess that comes with the territory of being a “Positive” psychologist as opposed to being a “Negative” one. That is: a world of simplistic, black and white concepts.

From the labelling of Plato as a Perfectionist and Aristotle an Optimalist, he paints what I think is a biased picture to try convert me into his way of thinking and life-balance choices.
Blaming the worlds woes on Perfectionist thinking, from Pol Pot to Stalin, and failed communist states, he seems to concludes that his dissertation on the Perfectionist and Optimalism is basically flawed as both poles, do not actually exist in reality as each one is more of an ideal to be aspired to.

Having excellent references to interesting philosophical and psychology theories to prove his point, he actually opens up the debate to reveal what I consider are the flaws in his theory.

Although, at times frustrating for me to read because of his obvious biases he has put a lot of effort into this book and that alone makes it worth reading and appreciated.

Thanks for your book, flaws and our recent discussion Tal.

My verdict? Not perfect!

View all my reviews

Hi Tal,

I am just going through your book The Persuit of Perfect and I think I get what you are saying only it is so easy to get caught by the dichotomies that we use to explain the difference between the Perfectionist and the Optimalist. As you do mention no one seems to be either of the two extremes. ie the perfect perfectionist or perfect optimalist.
In fact, I think that it is this approach in thinking, using dichotomies that gets us into a bind. “Reality” and “fantasy” for example, when life is more a nuance in between these two concepts.

“Accept” and “reject” is another dichotomy I have difficulty with. I have written a self published book/manual called Rethink Perfect: The Upside of Uncertainty and in it I emphasise that I don’t think that we need to accept anything, only what we find to be acceptable to us.

I find that anger, falls into this category of not being acceptable from me or from others. Understandable, yes, but not acceptable. I don’t think that I can justify anger in any circumstance but I can understand how and why it occurs.

In this area of thinking, I find I am not in agreement with you on Acceptance on page 44, especially the acceptance of the emotion of anger. Anger is understandable but simply not acceptable to me.

If anger is acceptable to me, to some degree and in certain circumstances, then why would I need reduce it? I am sure you can see that by saying anger is acceptable, that I can justify my behaviour and the losing of my cool because of external forces.

In your chapter “Accepting Emotions” you mention “…fully accepting reality”.  When someone or myself loses our cool, this may be “a reality” but, to me it certainly does not  have to be “the reality”. I have spent the last 26 years learning to understand where anger comes from, all because I have not accepted such behaviour. I suspect it may take the rest of my life to further understand this and other unacceptable behaviour.

I actually think that, like creativity, anger, starts with a spark, but in this case it needs to be extinguished as soon as possible before it becomes a full blown bushfire.

Any feedback appreciated.

You know how someone says that they told a “white lie” in order to justify their deceptive behaviour. I wonder if the same can apply to anger and the way we seem to want to justify our “white anger”? I recently wrote a post on why I think relationships fail, that is because couples have not gotten an agreement  on Anger. I think that anger is understandable but not acceptable (on any level).

It seem to me that most people that have heard this so far, think that some anger is acceptable, i.e. the “white anger” rears its ugly head.

You see, I think that once “some” anger is acceptable then it means we get to decide how much and when it is acceptable. We become a “God” amongst mere mortals. But of course if anyone else has this view point then we get two separate “Gods” wielding their powers and anger as much as they deem necessary and whenever they deem it appropriate, to them.

I think this type of thinking is the root cause of relationship failure and is also dangerous when groups, organisations, political parties and countries apply it. The result being pre-emptive invasions such as in Iraq for example.

Imagine a world where we where accountable for all our lies and anger. Its easy with just one agreement. Lies and anger, to me, are not “white” or acceptable. Understandable, but not acceptable. Any takers?

From NY Times article:
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/why-does-anyone-have-children-2/

My Answer: I think that a good reason to have a kid/s is to test the strength of a relationship. I notice that Bailey mentioned that she is in a “committed relationship” as opposed to a mere “relationship”. Is there a difference? Maybe she should start by answering this question for herself.

I have been working on the definition of a “committed relationship” for some 26 years and written a book/manual called Rethink Perfect: The Upside of Uncertainty, that explains this question first (to me, so far). Then once she has a good concept on this first, she could test her theory and her relationship by asking herself does she think that a child would overly complicate and compromise her relationship or enhance it?

If she thinks the latter, then I think that it is time to put her answer to the test and have a child. It will also give her a chance to see if her idea of love and a committed relationship is transferable to her relationship with her child, which I think it should. Time to see if this is true also.

I think that the number one reason that relationships fail is that we have not gotten a fundamental agreement on how we treat each other. One single agreement that can change everything. And that is that:

“Anger is understandable but not acceptable.”

Understandable because we are human and are fallible, but unacceptable because I don’t have to accept such behaviour and neither do you.

How do we solve a problem like Maria

If you like someone else’s anger then I guess this agreement will not be for you, but for those that find people being angry with them or with others then this could be the key to dealing with such unacceptable behaviour.

*Warning: Those that do not want to be held to account for their anger will not like this idea, me thinks. Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin, for starters need not apply.

If we can agree to this simple premise that anger is understandable but not acceptable then we will have set up a simple accountable system or process that starts to allow us to monitor each other’s behaviour.
ie Keep tabs from our lowest levels of rhetoric, or anger, or aggression and finally violence.
I do believe that aggression and then violence starts out from the first signs of rhetoric and then anger. Learning to spot the signs of unacceptable rhetoric, is the key after our initial agreement.

Each level of anger can be monitored by each other and because of our agreement we can call the other to account at any point that we feel appropriate for us. If we allow our conversation to go too far then we have no one else to blame but ourselves after making such an agreement.

Rhetorical questions are the first indicators of this anger, I think.
“What makes you think…”
“Who do you think you are…”
“Why do you think you can say that…”
“When are you going to do that…”
“How do we solve the problem of Maria (or you)…”
“Where do you think you are going…”
Are just a few examples of these impressive but really unacceptable questions for me.
I would much rather hear what you think and why and then offer my response to your thoughts. So much more efficient in the scheme of things.  Especially when we have two kids screaming, the grass needing to be mowed and the dinner needing to be prepared.
Less rhetoric and more getting to the point and solving the problem so that life can go on in one smooth motion. Worth a thought.

If you have ever watched Judge Judy you would witness the multitude of disputes that
are happening between couples. These disputes are usually petty but are ongoing,
with both having not gotten over their issues, and holding deep seated resentment for
each other.

I have a simple solution, that I believe will allow people to “get over” these disputes
and move forward with their lives.

I think that you will find that these disputes occur because both people did not
nut-out appropriate rules of engagement or behaviour before they embarked on
their relationship. If they had of, then they would not have this unresolved dispute.

If there were any agreements, they were either assumed to exist or were broken because
they obviously were not strong enough to withstand the behaviour within the relationship.

Therefore, it’s as simple as you both agreeing that whatever preparation you did before hand simply was not good enough. This could be because of being overly optimistic, laziness, or you did not realise that appropriate preparation and achieving agreements on how you will behave before and after a dispute, is the best way to approach a relationship.

If you both can admit this error, then what ever issues that occurred during the relationship are now considered null and void, as no appropriate rules of engagement were explicitly agreed to before the dispute and more importantly, before even the relationship began.

There are no victims, we are all adults, we just failed to prepare appropriately.

Agreeing to this now, will allow you both to get over the past dispute and more importantly allow you to prepare your future and separate relationships, so that you do not repeat your lack of preparations next time.

Who knows, you may even be able to rekindle, at least a friendship, between you and your ex, based on some basic appropriate rules of engagement this time around.

So what type of rules of engagement would be useful to get agreements on before having a relationship (before the sex)? Ask me and I will let you know what I think.

As the state, reduces its punishment or mistreatment of its so-called criminals
or crime breakers, so too does the violence and criminal activiety rates reduce in society. This seems to be the finding in one of Stephen Pinker’s latest book, The Myth of Violence.

Too thick for me to read it (some 4 inches), I browsed through its many graphs and tables that showed the steady decline of violence and the reduction of punishment from the state, such as ending the death penalty, over the years.

AKA, the better one treats someone the bette they treat us.

I think that institutions should not think so much about being “fairer”, ie “an eye for an eye”, but more so, think about being less fair, erring on the side of the individual ie. “turn the other cheek”, or what I call quality equality.

So it is not so much that crime doesen’t pay as much as punishment doesn’t pay!

This could also be something parents could take note of with any sort of physical or psychological punishment they see fit to use on their chlidren.

“What makes you think that I haven’t done this already??”

This is a fine example of a rhetorical question and it is also unacceptable in my view.
So why is it so unacceptable to me? Simple. I think it is a very clever way to cloak
our thoughts, expectations and aggression so that we do not have to be accountable for them. Worst of all is that there will be a lot of people unaware of the dangers of such rhetoric and how their aggression is hidden even from themselves.

What he is really saying is:
“Why are you prejudging me?”
The irony here is that by thinking and saying this he is doing the same thing that he is accusing the other person of.

For example, if we agreed to be accountable and not to use rhetorical questions,
then instead of saying “What makes you think…??”, you would simply say:
“It seems to me that you think I haven’t done (this) because of (that)”.
This allows me to see what and why you think and to respond accordingly.

“Why don’t you do it this way instead of that?? Would also be changed to
“I think you should do it that way because of this reason”. Then we can have a simple debate and compare of your reasoning verses mine.

“Don’t you think…??” Yet again more rhetoric that tries to bypass accountability.

I think that people that endorse the use of rhetorical questions feel no need to share their reasoning with anyone else or even themselves, and can have a tendency to act as a despot
when they feel threatened.

Now, of course I believe that the people that will scoff at this post will be the endorsers of such rhetorical questions and other rhetorical devices. But those that know the tone associated with: “What makes you think….?”, “Why don’t you…?” and “Don’t you think…?” will be aware of the angst and confusion it causes them and will appreciate the peace of mind that an agreement to hold each other to account, will bring.

Its my view that what starts out as a spark of aggression, unless extinguished, can quickly be fanned into a raging bushfire.