Verified by 
Key points
- We control the meaning of our experience more than the events that shape it.
- The first law of personal empowerment: Focus on what you can improve.
- Self-obsession is a focus on how we feel; self-improvement rises from focus on how we want to feel.
Think of the things that have the most profound influence on life and how little control we have over them.
We didn’t choose our parents; we didn’t sit down with God and say, “I’ll take those two!” We didn’t choose what illnesses our mothers suffered during pregnancy or whether they smoked or took drugs. We didn’t decide how much money our families would have, what early childhood illnesses or accidents we would experience, which schools we would go to, or what kind of teachers and peers we would find at them. We didn’t choose whether other children would like or bully us, respect or humiliate us.
Although we have little control over major influences on our lives, we have absolute control over what every influence on our lives means to us. We create meaning. When we construe the meaning of our lives from bad things that have happened to us, we create chronic states of powerlessness and resentment, with intermittent depression. When we control the meaning of our lives by making our experience of life more valuable to us, we create a life of meaning, purpose, and personal power.
The first law of personal empowerment is one of focus. When we focus on what we cannot control, like the behavior of other people, we feel powerless and suffer the most impotent kind of resentment and anger. When we focus on what we can control—the meaning of our experience—we feel empowered.
To feel powerful—and valuable—interpret your experience in the most benign way realistically possible. This may lead to some disappointment regarding interactions with others, but in the long run, it will boost well-being and prevent much regret.
The Meaning of Feelings
We assign meaning to our feelings, although they have none intrinsically. Emotions are signals, highly influenced by physiological and mental states, and shaped by past experience more than by present or future considerations. When we have a feeling, the brain loads into implicit memory other times we’ve had that feeling.
If the feelings are painful, the brain must interpret, explain, and justify them. For example:
“I feel resentful. I have a right to feel resentment because of this, this, this, and this, not to mention that, that, that, and that. I've put up with a lot over the years. This is exactly like what I had to put up with in the past, or not exactly, but close enough.”
This whole process serves to habituate the feelings, that is, make them habits that recur automatically. In adults, the vast majority of emotional reactions are habituated. That's why we tend to make the same mistakes over and over when emotional.
A better strategy is to validate how you feel but focus on how you want to feel, which will be more future-oriented and less susceptible to the feedback loop of past mistakes.
For example:
“I feel resentful, but I want to feel kind.”
My brain will load into implicit memory other times I felt kind, with the recognition that I like myself better when I’m kind. I may imagine doing things that will intensify those feelings, such as wishing others happiness and well-being. I practice allowing myself to be concerned with the well-being of my significant others. I practice behaviors that embody my concern for them.
Each of the above increases the likelihood of positive response and cooperation from others.
Of course, for the process to work, I really have to want to be kind, rather than resentful. I must choose to feel more valuable, rather than temporarily self-righteous, due to the tiny dose of adrenaline that comes with resentment.
Stand for Basic Humanity
Standing for humane values (for example, compassion, kindness, respect for human dignity), moves us to appreciate, or at least tolerate, other people and enhance the meaning of our lives.
Ignoring or violating deeper values makes us vulnerable to guilt, shame, and anxiety, although we're likely to cover up those feelings of vulnerability with resentment, anger, alcohol, drugs, or other obsessions.
Worst of all, consistently ignoring and violating humane values can turn us into situational psychopaths, individually and as a culture, as history shows in 20th-century Nazis and 19th-century slave owners.
Standing for your most humane values is almost assured to prevent the most harmful types of regret.
Make the World a Better Place
Our brains are simply not wired for self-obsession. The more we focus exclusively on ourselves, the less in touch with reality we become. In contrast, self-awareness necessarily includes awareness of the world in which the self resides. In other words, you can make yourself happy (beyond temporary feelings) only by striving, in some small way, to make the world you live in a better place.
The Golden Promise: If you focus continually on making the world a better place in some very small way, you and those you love will be happier, your life will have more meaning and purpose, and you’ll create a legacy that will give you peace in your later years.
Practice Transcendence
To transcend is to go beyond limits, to become greater. The transcendent life is focused on growing into the most empowered and humane persons we can be. This, I believe, is the evolved function of pain—not to suffer or to identify with suffering or with victimhood—but to grow beyond it. The natural motivation of pain is to motivate behavior that will heal, improve, and repair.
Much of the suffering in the world occurs when we violate what is most important to us by acting on what is less important. If you think of the big mistakes you’ve made in life, nearly every one involved violating a deeper value by acting on something that was not as important to you.
For a meaningful life, we must transcend the urge to violate important values by acting on less important feelings and impulses.
