Why You Need This Book

This book explores the ‘whys’ behind nineteen of the most common “behavitudes” – behaviors that stem from wrong attitudes – and helps you evaluate your own life to identify and change any self-defeating behaviors. With this book’s helpful insight, you can achieve your goals and live the successful life you long for.

1 – Spilled Milk

In an ideal world, guilt serves as a healthy indicator to remind us when we have erred ethically, morally, or socially. Just as pain receptors tell us when our skin is being cut by a knife or when our finger is on a hot stove, guilt is designed to warn us of impending danger.

Because we’re moral beings, we sense guilt. But just as a malfunctioning gauge can indicate more gas than is present, an overly active conscience creates inordinate guilt feelings that hinder our well-being.

Why do we cry over spilled milk if it is self-defeating?

1. Crying over spilled milk provides us with a sense of penance. It is a way that we try to forgive ourselves and/or earn another chance.
2. The past, even if bad, is more secure than an unknown future. The effort to move ahead is often painful.
3. We are socially conditioned to feel shame. We shame ourselves before others do in an attempt to save face.
4. We fail to understand a healthy spiritual response to guilt and remorse. Our emotional responses are often created by faulty thought processes.

2 – I Can’t Say Yes

Why do we fear to commit ourselves to worthy endeavors if our fear is self-defeating?

1. We fear failure. While we need to listen to healthy fears and apprehensions that are designed to preserve us, fearful living inhibits good decision-making.
2. We exaggerate the costs and underestimate the benefits. The best things in life are usually free but cost dearly.
3. We don’t know what deserves our commitment. No one wants to waste time, energy, and ego by making the wrong decisions, so a part of making right decisions is putting in the effort to find the facts.
4. We’ve not seen commitment modelled. Living in a disposable society means that many of us have never learned the art of persevering and the power of commitment.

3 – Show and Tell

Why do we buy into the lies of “show-and-tell”?

1. We confuse applause with self-esteem. In a society that associates net worth with self-worth, we are motivated to achieve all we can to win the applause of others.
2. We replace inner contents with outer contents. These possessions don’t plug the holes for long, however, because our real needs have to do with acceptance, love, and contentment, and these require time and effort to develop. Outer contents do not create inner contentment.
3. We confuse who we are with what we do. Often out identity is wrapped up in our work, career, and accomplishments.
4. Society rewards us for what it gets from us rather than for who we are. Most of our society rewards us for what we do for it. We are not valued for who we are as individuals.

4 – Puppet People

Why do we let people pull our strings when it is self-defeating?

1. We’re unwilling to take responsibility for our own actions. Living with the ramification of our responses and accepting the results of our decisions can be hefty undertakings.
2. We rent versus own our core values. When we have not predetermined our basic value system, we are vulnerable to the influence of those around us.
3. We overestimate what we’ll get from complying. The allure of nearly all temptations is the payoff.
4. Too much of our identity is based on social relationships. Self-image is key when it comes to bucking the influence of others and taking responsibility for our own behavitudes.

5 – He’ll/She’ll Make Me Happy

Why do we focus on other people as the source of our fulfillment?

1. We confuse the desire for affirmation with the need for affirmation. One significant step toward maturing is being able to discern between a want and a need.
2. We’re stuck in child-oriented imprinting. Because humans are born with a capacity for inner love but not a developed sense of it, we must learn that we are valuable for who we are, not for what we do – and we must do this either consciously, subconsciously, or both.
3. People often blame others for their lack of happiness. Listen to practically any group of people for a length of time and you are apt to hear them blaming their woes in life on the actions or inactions of others.
4. We perceive happiness as an outside versus an inside job. Our society does a good job of teaching that happiness comes from external happenings.

6 – Investing in Junk Bonds

Why do we misprioritize when it is self-defeating?

1. Ignorance. When we are ignorant of better value systems or even unaware of the value system we’re living in, we run the risk of developing significant regrets.
2. We let the media and culture influence us. We are significantly influenced by our surroundings.
3. We assume people in our sphere of influence know best. Significant people in our lives, because of their influence and credibility, give us value cues.
4. We are nearsighted. By nature, people tend to look at life from a nearsighted perspective. We base our reality system on what we experience, what is familiar.

7 – Hung by the Tongue

Why are we careless about what we say when our words can hurt others and cause us pain and embarrassment?

1. Talk is control. Inherently people want control.
2. We have low self-esteem. When people have low self-esteem, they are conditioned to see the negative in themselves.
3. We’ve never potty trained our mouths. Discipline is a pretty significant part of doing nearly everything in life that matters. We need to have the same kind of discipline for our mouth.
4. We fail to consider the impact of our words. Who can measure the weight of a word? Sometimes we are perplexed when people get offended, relationships go awry, and perceptions are skewed, but it’s usually because we underestimated the weight of our words.

8 – I Can’t Say No

Why don’t we say no to things that will be bad for us?

1. Our self-esteem is based on being liked and accepted by another person. When we are secure apart from others, we are freer to do what we think is right.
2. We confuse saying yes to a person with accepting and affirming him or her. You can accept another person without necessarily agreeing with everything he or she says.
3. We’ve failed to exercise a strong self-discipline muscle or practice delayed gratification. When we learn how to delay gratification, we are apt to be more disciplined.
4. We have not adopted an internal set of standards, which provides a moral and ethical decision track. Although you can adopt someone else’s standards, it would be much better to take ownership of your own.

9 – Have Bags, Will Travel

Why do we move around so much when it’s self-defeating?

1. We buy into the greener grass myth, confusing roots with ruts. We give up what we have to pursue the new thing. More times than not, we are discouraged to discover that the greener grass still needs to be mowed, watered, fertilized, and weeded.
2. We are afraid of succeeding. While we seem to yearn for it with all our heart, we are also leery of it because of what it will require of us.
3. We don’t want to develop lasting relationships when we would have to work through significant life issues. We cut off those who remind us of where we’re weak. By hitting the road, however, we hurt ourselves. We never work through growth issues and this retards our maturity.
4. We’ve been hurt in the past and we want to avoid future pain. Past hurts come back to haunt us in many ways. If we have been injured by someone who left us, or were betrayed by a confidant, we are prone to avoid similar situations.

10 – Look, Mom, No Hands

Why are we so concerned with pleasing others when it is self-defeating?

1. We confuse pleasing people with loving people. Sometimes love is pleasing, but sometimes it is not. Sometimes pleasing is loving, but sometimes it is not.
2. We expect people to please us in return. Trading love is perhaps the most common form of love. Giving love expects nothing in return.
3. We’ve not outgrown the need for the affirmation and approval of others, what some call external love.
4. We are unaware of our emotional limits. When we are out of touch with our boundaries and we pursue the making-others-happy idea, we tend to go beyond our capacity.

11 – Stone-Throwing, Gnat-Straining, Camel-Swallowing, Speck-Picking, Plank-Avoiding Behavitudes

Why do we so often indulge in finding fault with others and talking about them behind their back?

1. We are familiar with our own failures and recognize them in others. We transfer to others what we see in ourselves.
2. Peer pressure. The desire to be accepted and to fit in is never more evident than when we chime in on a verbal lynching.
3. We have seen stone-throwing modelled all our lives. We learn by watching, listening, and experiencing significant others in our lives.
4. Regarding faults, our natural perspective looks outward, not inward. We are much better able to evaluate someone else’s behavior than our own.

12 – Run and Hide

Why do we run and hide from the truth when doing so can be our ruin?

1. We’re too busy. Busyness is often a smoke screen for a messy inner life.
2. We know we’re not where we need to be, so outta sight, outta mind.
3. Deceiving ourselves, we think we can hide, and the truth and/or its consequences won’t find us.
4. We don’t like pain. No one likes pain, but it comes in all sizes, shapes, and forms to all of us. Sometimes the pain produces something extremely good.
5. As creatures of habit, we don’t want to change. Confronting the truth often requires us to do something different, which means adding or deleting behavior.

13 – Buried Treasure

Why do we bury our dreams when it is self-defeating?

1. Past influencers. Significant people in our past may have lived out their frustrations by spreading to us their bitterness, among other things.
2. We have not paid the price to uncover our gifts. When we are not aware of our gifts, we tend to wander.
3. Past failures. We confuse past failures with predictions of future success. But there is really no relationship between the two. They are different commodities.
4. Fear of failure. As Mark Twain wrote, we fear many things, most of which never happen.

14 – Looking Back

Why do we focus on the past when to do so is self-defeating?

1. The past is familiar and thus causes less stress. The things of the past are familiar and seem less threatening than the untried and unfamiliar.
2. We are controlled by our guilt and remorse. We think by clinging to the past we can somehow go back and change things.
3. We convince ourselves that we can avoid future shock by hanging on to yesterday. It’s comforting when we can retreat to what’s familiar.
4. We haven’t accomplished anything recently so we try to rest on past laurels. If our self-image has been inordinately constructed around past highlights, we’re tempted to revisit them and find in them our identity.

15 – Quick and Easy

Why do we make quick and easy decisions when it’s self-defeating?

1. We get caught in the sucker syndrome. Other people who are prone to the sucker syndrome are the lazy or overly busy. When life is a blur, we can’t discern what is and is not a good deal.
2. We suffer from insecurity. When we need the affection of other people, we are apt to do whatever it takes to get that attention.
3. We have bad brakes. The inability to put our hormones, wants, or needs on hold creates big problems.
4. We want to keep up with the Joneses and we settle for nearsighted living. Nearsighted people have a hard time seeing things in the distance.

16 – Bump Signs

Why do we put up bump signs that work against us and hurt others?

1. Pop psychology has taught us in part to become aware of our faults, often without showing us how to fix them. Partial knowledge can be a detriment.
2. By acknowledging that our shortcomings exist, we appear to be well-informed, enlightened, and even self-actualized.
3. We fail to understand that confession carries with it the responsibility to make changes. We lack knowledge of how to change; also, declaring our weaknesses seems the enlightened thing to do.
4. We learn to prejudge from early conditioning. Most of us learn our prejudices from parents, early influences, friends, and social circles.

17 – Scab-Picking

Why do we ‘pick our scabs’ when it is self-defeating?

1. We are love-deprived and find sympathy through telling our sad story. Love empathizes with people in need, but empathy is not necessarily healthy love.
2. We confuse receiving sympathy with self-worth. When our sense of worth is externally based, we are forever searching for affirmation and attention from others.
3. It’s easier to walk with a cane than to go through physical therapy. The main reason we indulge in self-defeating behavior is because it is less work for us in the short run.
4. We’re afraid that people will forget the hurts we’ve endured and/or those who have hurt us.

18 – Navel-Gazing

Why are we self-centered when it is self-defeating?

1. We’ve been taken advantage of by others. When people take advantage of us, it makes us want to pull into ourselves and not trust others.
2. Nothing gets our attention like our inner pain. Self-centeredness is not just a by-product of insecurities. Pain gets our attention.
3. We underestimate the rewards of getting outside of ourselves. Self-indulgence never produces real joy and often leads to disaster over the long haul.
4. We’ve been taught that the answers lie within us. The difference between motor vehicles and humans is that the humans are under the impression that they can fix what ails them, that the answer lies within them.

19 – That’s Just the Way Things Are

Why do we limit our reality and our lives to only what is observable?

1. We’ve never been taught to believe, to exercise faith.
2. We have been conditioned by the scientific notion that reality is only what can be proved in a laboratory.
3. We confuse fiction with nonfiction yet to be.
4. Our self-image is based on the opinions of others who don’t believe what they don’t see.

Last but Not Least Thoughts

If you have not found any of these nineteen self-defeating behavitudes familiar, perhaps it is that your behavitudes lie among the potentially hundreds of hybrids not discussed. Of course, it could also be that you have some blind spots, closets where you have tucked away your private stash of excuses.

After all, that’s the underlying danger of these self-sabotaging conditions – it’s difficult to see our role in them.