If You Want Progress, Define Something

See: What is a 'little bitch'?

Real-life examples of what I’m talking about:

• I hate prepping part of Vern’s (my 77-year-old part time caregiving charge/roommate) requests for his motherfuckin daily fruit salad. He wants a bunch of ground nuts on it. I hate making them. I bulk prep them and they still just irritate the daylights out of me. (Obviously they still do at the time of writing this. I just finished a batch.) While I was fuming and probably projecting negative vibes onto his food I started wondering what the problem was. Answer: It feels like a waste of my time. I started timing it, and realized that it takes less than ten minutes. That realization relaxed me enough to finish.

  

• I asked 3 people to define one problem in their lives they wanted help with. The free offer I put out last week for 4 people to do 4 free sessions to address (1) problem got 3 people to reach out and 2 are currently booked for sessions with the new, less-ego driven (sounds suspicious to say that, Miss Samantha..) version of coaching. In replying to each of them, it was clear that simply asking them what problem they wanted to solve was quite the mental dance party. Defining one problem meant defining several and choosing one, and then together we figure out what a “solution” would mean for that problem.

• I’ve noticed that when I work with a marketing person, as soon as I have a problem defined I am overfloweth with ideas about how to talk about that problem. Left to my own devices, though, I tend to leave things undefined and so am relatively rarely posting any more about solving things. It’s been more personal stories and silliness recently when I post on Instagram.

My most fun example of late of defining things is another Vern one.

I am convinced that he is not experiencing his pain accurately - an asshole thing to say, you might imagine. I sent him this wonderful video for his consideration. But when it only “hurts” when he is caught off guard on a spot that he can handle lots of pressure on, anyway, I don’t feel like explaining each situation and the details that have convinced me of this. Some stuff hurts, yeah. Other stuff doesn’t but he yells about it, and in our relationship I was able to call him a little bitch.

What does it mean to be a little bitch?

Glad you asked, because I wondered the same after I said it. Asking myself to define it brought a nice punch of clarity.

Being a little bitch means you act as if you are weaker than you are. We can tell, and it causes a turn-off and an “ick” sensation. Men and women can be little bitches. Calling them one may have mixed results as to how helpful it is.

It is false weakness.

It is particularly unnerving when it is not self-aware, when you’re hiding it from yourself. A self-aware woman feigning weakness around something she could obviously and easily do for herself can be cute. A man has less leeway. Pretending to be more fearful than you are isn’t a good look on either.

Why are you acting like you’re afraid? It’s usually to avoid or manipulate. It is deceptive. Humans have an inherent distaste for deception. We are very reasonably suspicious of someone pretending to be less than they are.

I blame parents telling their kids to be careful and plastering fears on them at the playground and in life for shaping this deception and vision of weakness into virtue.

Overprotection indicates a lack of faith

The pendulum is swung far to the side of telling everyone it is ok to stop and you don’t have to push hard to do anything. I live a very casual life no one could accuse me of working too hard in so I get it. But these things do come at a cost. Facing risk and overcoming it expands us. The thing is that relaxing and working less could easily feel risky too — it’s not solely about effort. It’s about internal fortification, of saying yes because it’s something you want to do no matter what your mom says. Or of saying no without blaming something else for why you’re saying it. We have great admiration for people who rise in strength and ability past what they were prior capable of. We admire becoming stronger and more capable of handling things.

You can’t be cool without risk

I defined this because I did a poll on whether or not doing Jiu-Jitsu makes you cool. Like, if someone found out you did it would they make fun of you on the playground? At work? Or would they go and whisper to their friends in hushed tones about how cool you were later?

Nobody is “cool” without embodying a sense of physical risk. Living to tell the tale means that you were cool, but for most people eating ice cream on the couch isn’t something that would impress the group chat. You have to do things that envelop a feeling of personally elevating your heart rate, making your hair stand on end, and focusing your attention. Risk always does that. Physical risk does it faster.

For some that might mean stepping off of a curb after learning how to walk again after an accident. For others they might need to jump off bigger and bigger mountain bike drops because they have normalized what it is to do ten-footers on the regular.

(I know this isn’t a mountain bike shot.) Photo by Erik Brolin on Unsplash

The point is that whatever you avoid for fear will make you cool when you face it. It is a strengthening through challenge. It may be mental, it may be physical. It could be a conversation with your boss or literally lifting a heavy weight.

Defining a problem requires an amount of self-inquiry. And it tends to tune you into what things you might have subconsciously been avoiding below the surface of the problem.

Turn complaining into defining. What is my problem here? What would make it better? And then take it upon yourself to draw the map that would bring you closer to knowing if your solution works. You will be cool by definition if you take actions on that problem.