Feet Of Clay

I’m not entirely sure what set me off on this train of thought, but I’m noticing a lot about hero worship cropping up in various ways. It probably started a couple of weeks ago when I was mucking about with a MySpace page because a friend had sent me a link to his new blog at www.myspace.com/chriscrudelli – well worth a read if you want the lowdown from a true martial artist – and one of the required formats on the page was to list your heroes. That got me thinking that I don’t actually have any. I have inspirations, for sure – people whose work, spirituality or integrity is something I value and admire, but I just don’t go in for the whole hero worship thing.

Having met many of the major figures in the self-help and spiritual arena over the years, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that there’s no-one who’s got it totally together, whose life works seamlessly and who behaves impeccably every single day. That’s an illusion – and a very real danger spot for those who begin to believe their own publicity – as well as being pretty much a human impossibility. We all have our vulnerabilities, our blind spots and our bad hair days and it’s a cruel joke we play on ourselves when we think everyone else has got it together but us. If you’re alive, you’ll have issues. That’s just the way the story goes. Life is about letting go of the stuff that gets in the way of knowing that there’s a divine perfection within you. In that process you’ll need to have compassion for yourself as you work through your human frailties – it’s about aligning yourself with an inner truth, rather than trying to create an outer facade through rigid control and perfection obsession.

The Brand Beckham phenomenon is a perfect case in point. They are both subject to an almost unimaginable amount of hero worship, not only for their careers, but also for being an allegedly perfect couple (until the wheels fell off in the shape of Rebecca Loos et al). Yet whenever I see them appear in the media I just feel exhausted. Victoria Beckham is the epitome of someone who is dedicated to the ‘trying too hard’ school of style and she never, ever looks happy. Control and rigidity are written all over her face and the staged ‘togetherness’ pics – particularly when their marriage crisis was in full swing – simply smack of desperation to uphold an image rather than a genuine attempt at togetherness. We seem to have reached a societal nadir where we value image above all else. We hero-worship people who are little more than just famous for being famous and a whole generation of children is growing up with the idea that fame is a goal in itself, rather than a by-product of success in your chosen field.

Couple this with the explosion of glossy magazines showing airbrushed celebs with cosmetic enhancements creating a kind of dubious beauty that doesn’t exist in nature, and we’ve created a seriously poor breeding ground for self-esteem, not only for ourselves, but for children who are too young to know any better. At least we’ve accumulated a little life wisdom that allows us the perspective to realise that no-one’s perfect, but what chance do they have when calculated imagery is all they see? Stars have always existed, but they were escapist figures, remote from daily life, and there wasn’t the modern pressure to meet those impossible standards in real life.
I wonder if we’re all yearning for a time when perfection wasn’t the byword and people were more raw, honest and interesting. The huge popularity of the BBC TV show Life On Mars with its unrestrained, testosterone-fuelled 70s detective Gene Hunt, played with gloriously unashamed machismo by Philip Glenister, makes me think so. Of course Gene Hunt’s a complete git and every feminist’s nightmare, but it’s wonderful to see a real character come to life, full of flaws and utterly beguiling in his humanness.

The 70s were fertile ground for recognising that heroes had feet of clay, with the most infamous tale coming from John Lennon’s lengthy sabbatical from his marriage to Yoko Ono, the ‘lost weekend’ period with girlfriend May Pang. One night, drunk on Brandy Alexanders, Lennon was at a gig at the Troubador in LA when – with the kind of twisted genius that alcohol is known for – he came across a clean sanitary towel on the floor, which he decided to wear as a headband. When the waitress refused to serve him, he pulled the “Don’t you know who I am?” card, to which the waitress rather dryly replied, “Yeah, you’re some asshole with a Kotex on his head”. She later went on to muse about what a bummer it is to find out that your hero is an asshole. That’s the downside of hero worship – it’s ultimately going to come a cropper because sooner or later we all do something stupid, no matter how famous we become.

One of my favourite inspirational authors has pushed the boundaries of acceptable behaviour recently. I’ve followed the work of Caroline Myss from the early days before Anatomy OfThe Spirit became a runaway success and was particularly looking forward to her latest work, Entering The Castle, based on the writings of St Teresa of Avila’s extraordinary treatise on the soul, El Castillo Interior. I’m still working my way through the book, but I found her meditation CDs based on that work almost impossible to endure, due to the berating, judgmental and condescending rants that accompany them. Sadly, for me it’s kind of up there with the John Lennon incident – there’s a point at which it might be prudent to realise that perhaps you’re taking yourself a little too seriously and that being contemptuous of your core audience could turn out to be a risky strategy.

This week, take a look at those you might be hero-worshipping, even on the mildest of scales. If you’re comparing yourself to them, by assuming they’ve got it all together and you haven’t, take a closer look. Things are not always as they seem and none of us is perfect in every way. That doesn’t mean you need to look at them negatively or judge them, but that you can see that they have their own struggles and you can love them for that as much as their achievements. A lot of greatness comes from people who are driven to achieve extraordinary things because they’ve had to overcome real difficulties. Know that having compassion for others helps you to have compassion for yourself. Having a blind spot isn’t the problem – not being willing to face it and do something about it is. We may not always get things right and we should just get comfortable with the idea that we’re not meant to be perfect all the time, but it’s the willingness to move forward that really counts. Be kind to yourself this week, learn to love your own frailties and have compassion for those who can’t relax long enough to let themselves just enjoy their own lives, however imperfect they may be.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 16 Apr 07)

Blind Spots

This week I’ve had an initiation into the perils of public life with my first ever bit of hate mail. I’d like to say I’ll treasure it, but let’s face it, no-one’s that enlightened! After the initial shock wore off, it began to fascinate me. Why would someone go out of their way to tell you not only that they didn’t like what you wrote, but that you should stop writing altogether? Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but quite why they felt empowered to call for a halt to my literary escapades rather escapes me. Even more curiously, buried in the strange ramblings was a suggestion that we should all be kinder to each other. Call me old-fashioned, but writing poison-pen letters doesn’t exactly cut it in the kindness stakes where I come from.

It made me wonder how the writer could fail to see their own very obvious contradiction in terms, yet we witness these kinds of blind spots on a grand scale in the news every day. A classic example is that happy band of American pro-life fundamentalists who think it’s perfectly justifiable to bomb abortion clinics and don’t seem to get that there’s an intrinsic conflict in trying to preserve life in the womb at any price, including murder. That has to be the most monumentally deluded case of ‘the end justifies the means’ thinking I’ve ever come across.
It may be a very extreme case, but it highlights just how destructive a lack of self-awareness can be. If we’re not willing to look at our own behaviour, we can become so out of integrity with ourselves that we will undertake actions that are totally opposed to what we stand for. On an individual scale, this is what happens when we don’t pay attention to the everyday choices we make and why we often end up a long way away from our intended goals.

Shedding a little light on your own blind spots can free you from persistent problems and get you back on track with the life you want to create. After all, if you don’t even realise you’re part of the problem, how exactly are you going to fix it? A good friend of mine calls these little behavioural aberrations ‘unskilful’ – they’re the places in our lives where we know things don’t work too well, but we haven’t yet seen that perhaps the way we’re approaching them might be part of the problem.

Take for example someone who’s shy and wants to connect with people, but adopts an aloof air as a form of self-protection, and so always manages to miss out on getting to know others. That’s an ineffective and unskilful coping strategy because it achieves exactly the opposite of what it intended. Ever been persistently and aggressively chatted up by someone who just wouldn’t go away even when it was mightily clear that there was no attraction or interest at all? That’s another form of the same thing – at what point was arguing the toss ever going to help? Trying to force someone to like you could only ever achieve the complete opposite.

Not everyone crashes and burns in the same kind of way, but contradictory behaviour is par for the course for all of us – with the possible exception of a few saints. The key to getting an insight into your own blind spots is to start paying attention to whether your actions are in integrity with your values and your goals.

I’ve written about this particular exercise before, but it bears repeating on a regular basis, because it can give you so much insight for very little effort. Take a quick look at your life right now and jot down your main priorities and what you want to achieve. Then notice just how much time you spend in activities that support those goals. What you’ll probably find is that very little of your time will be spent creating the things you profess to want the most.

Having taken this little inventory, start looking at why you’re not doing what you say you want to do. Is it just the inertia of general resistance? If so, the only way out is to discipline yourself to just get on with it. Could it be that perhaps you’ve set yourself a goal you don’t really want? If that’s the case, then a little more thinking time is required to get clear on what you really want. Or do you have ambitions that you somehow think will just drop into your lap? Those ones need a reality check and an action plan, or they’ll just stay pipe dreams for ever.

Of course, if you’re a sucker for punishment, then you can always ask a good friend to tell you what your blind spots are. Remember that the psychological definition of a blind spot is that it’s known to others, although it’s not obvious to you. You might not like the answer you get when you ask that question, but it’s a fast-track way of getting clear if you’re stuck in a rut. Just pick a friend who knows how to stay on the right side of honesty – truthful, but not hurtful, or you’ll have opened a whole other can of worms.

It’s all simple stuff that can make a huge difference, as can being clear on what’s your issue and what’s someone else’s. In a frantic world, there’s a lot of stress and weirdness about and we just can’t take it personally. In the case of the hate mail writer, I could get upset about it or I could realise that it says more about them than about me and get hours of fun and enjoyment (and a column) out of dissecting that kind of behaviour. It’s a bit of a no-brainer, really.

It reminds me of a fabulous Buddhist story that I shall now re-tell rather badly, but hopefully you’ll get the gist. At one particular gathering, a man consistently harangued the Buddha, attacking his beliefs, but this was met by absolute detachment from the Buddha himself. When the meeting ended, one of his followers asked him why he sustained such a prolonged attack without reacting angrily or feeling the need to defend himself. The Buddha replied, “If someone offers you a gift and you do not accept it, to whom does the gift belong?”.

Here endeth the lesson. Have a fabulous week, pay attention to where you’re spending your time and your energy and if someone offers you a lousy gift, just don’t accept it!

Coach Fabulous is updated every Thursday at http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. You can also use the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right.
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All material © 2006 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 18 Sep 06)