Quiet Desperation, the Deadly Opponent

by Terry Rich Hartley, Ph.D.

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Millions come to accept a negative self-concept as their personal reality. Psychologists' offices are packed with them. But so are bars, business offices, and homes. The problem is so entrenched that it was noted long ago by the naturalist philosopher Henry David Thoreau when he ventured that most people "lead lives of quiet desperation". With so many people living this way the question becomes, is this the way I have to live? Fortunately, the answer is not unless you want to.

And the reason you don't have to live a life of quiet desperation is because once you identify your mental spectators — and your interaction with them — you can move beyond vanquished and into the role of victor, a gladiator who rules your spectators in every battle. Muhammad Ali was a gladiator who broke the mold of quiet combatant. For years, prizefighters concentrated on their opponents and never acknowledged the spectators except at the beginning a fight while being introduced. To the contrary, Ali treated the audience as part of the fight itself, waving them on, shouting at them, using them to intimidate his opponent and energize himself at the same time. In Zaire, Africa, when he fought George Foreman for the heavyweight championship of the world, he incited spectators to chant, "Ali, Ali, boom ayah", meaning "Ali, Ali, kill him." Likewise, you need to rule your mental spectators the way he ruled his outer ones.

Here's how it works: Your thoughts, your feelings, and your behaviors are so securely linked that any activity in one influences the other two. If you are a slave to even a single mental spectator who gives you thumbs down when you try to improve yourself, then you will give up on your quest for self-improvement. Your self-concept will remain in the gutter. For example, say that you decide to improve your vocabulary. Such an improvement will help you understand complicated issues and will also give you confidence to talk more professionally at work. This increased confidence would naturally make you feel better about yourself and also enhance your job opportunities. So you study a vocabulary book, and you learn new words and terms. But when you try to use one around another person, your mental spectator laughs and tells you that you sound phony, "like ignorant trash trying to sound smart." Instead of controlling your mental spectator, you collapse in a heap, a vanquished gladiator. Your opponent—self-doubt—made one threatening gesture and down you went. You caved in. The dream of self-improvement died. Worst of all, you added strength to your mental spectators because they thrive on your each and every loss. Unlike Ali, who used spectators for strength, you let them use you. And now you're the one who is bloodied.

What has happened to you is that negative thoughts (your ridiculing spectator) caused you to revert from the new, improved behavior (speaking more intelligently) back to an old behavior (speaking as you always have), and you feel like pond scum. And you're going to keep feeling like pond scum until you wake up and realize that you can rule those mental spectators. Ruling them will change the negative thoughts that are keeping you down. Self-doubt didn't beat you by itself and it can't keep you down by itself. It needed the help of your own mental spectators, and you can learn to rule them. I'm going to show you how.

The remaining chapters of this book will guide you on your quest to rule by improving your self-concept. And no, you don't need to swing a sword or toss a spear. As I said, you are a gladiator in the social arena—you have no choice—but you'll become a smart one, one who learns how to win those spectators to your side, who becomes adept at getting a grip on life and becoming the person you most want to be. What it takes are eight steps for getting command, eight steps you can apply to most any situation you want altered. Critical thinking is crucial to each step. You'll learn to think in situations to which you now merely react. You will learn who your mental spectators are, how you can deal with them, and how to battle your way to a better, more fulfilling life. You will read about other people with similar problems to yours and how they worked their way through those problems. Because I would never violate the confidence of a friend or self-concept student, the characters I use as examples in this book are actually composites of several people. However their problems and solutions are real.

The characters you will read about share something in common: none of them are "sick" in the clinical sense; none are insane or even abnormal. They're simply people stuck in self-destructive patterns. Because of their negative self-concepts they're not likely to change those patterns without some kind of help. Professional counseling offers one path to achieve that. Taking command of their own lives by learning to rule their relationships with mental spectators offers another path. But few people know how to take command once they are stuck in a self-destructive pattern. They try one thing and then another. Then, with several failures under their belt, they give up and accept their dispiriting fate without recognizing why they failed. But the reason is clear: they let their mental spectators rule them. They had no one to coach them in the arena. That's where I come in. My goal is to coach you, to show you how to deal with those spectators; your task is to take command of your life.

About the Author

Dr. Hartley is a social psychologist, a scientist, and the author of "Tyrants of Self-Concept: Ruling the Rulers," a 122-page ebook that thoroughly describes the eight steps for improving your relationships, taking control of your life, and living the life you want to live. It includes easy-to-relate-to stories, examples, humor, and concrete, practical worksheets and exercises that get results fast.