The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance.
Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com.

Here is a question that I received from Roger. And I think that many of us can relate to this. I know that I certainly could.

Hi, Dr. Kenner. I don't feel confident about myself. I am shy. Now, when I was a young kid, I was very shy. Back to Roger here, when I'm with others, I bend over backwards not to sound offensive. That ultimately turns me into a meek person. I want to be happy and confident, and I have no idea how to go about it. Please guide me. Regards, Roger.

So, Roger, you want to first, kind of take a microscope up to—or what do they call it? A magnifying glass—up to your family of origin, how you grew up. You're a meek person. What happened? When did you tell yourself it's not okay to speak your mind? Was it in the context of your parents, where you just felt like if you spoke up, Dad would say that's selfish? Or, "Why are you saying that? You just have stupid ideas." Was it a put-down from your brother? Maybe it was a brother or sibling who just said, "You're being mean, wanting something for yourself. You hurt my feelings. You're always hurting my feelings," and you didn't want to do that. So you back off. Maybe it's from the culture. You know, we're taught in our culture to think of others first. Never hurt anybody else's feelings. Always monitor for their feelings, even if you don't like them. Put on that happy face. If you could see me now, I have that grotesque fake smile. And grotesque is not that it looks grotesque, but we can all read fake smiles on people.

The good person is a person who never hurts anyone's feelings. Oh man, if you have those ideas in your mind, guess who you are being incredibly rude to, really rude to and very offensive to? With all of our efforts to try to not be offensive to anyone else, we all end up being very offensive and very rude to one particular person—ourselves.

Hey, I got to interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that's it, a very quick ad, and then Ellen will be back.

Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where's that ad I saw? Here it is. The Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at selfishromance.com and buy it at Amazon.com. Hmm, the Selfish Path to Romance—that is interesting.

With all of our efforts to try to not be offensive to anyone else, we all end up being very offensive and very rude to one particular person—ourselves. And when you experience—or when any of us experience that— that robs us of being confident, of self-esteem, of being happy. There's no you or there's no me there if we're always trying to be a people pleaser, and you make yourself into a doormat. And it's not the path to anyone's happiness. It is the path to faked happiness, and you can see it, as I mentioned, on the faces of many, many different people.

So how do you turn that around? It is a lifetime glorious goal to turn that around, to start taking ownership of your own life, to enjoy your life, to be able to say what you feel among people. I mean, granted, you don't have to gratuitously say, "You know, your hair is very frizzy, and I can't stand looking at you." You don't just gratuitously go up. But if somebody says to you, "Do you like this music?" And it's—you say, "You know, I'm not a fan." You need to learn assertiveness skills. You need to be able to know how to express yourselves in ways that don't attack the other person but let them know where you stand.

And that takes what is called in psychology, assertiveness skills. Not, "I'm going to tell you a thing or two. You know, you're an idiot. You're a jerk." That's speaking my mind, but it's not doing it assertively. It's doing it aggressively, with that finger-pointing and squished face attitude towards someone.

So the good news is that you're aware that you're, in quotes, meek or a people pleaser, and you've already run the experiment. You don't enjoy that, and you can learn how to be more happy and confident, which is your goal.

So first, first realize that this is a war on you. Anyone from any place in the culture—whether it's your family, whether it's friends, whether it's watching a commercial, whether it's from religion, whether it's from school—that tells you that you are not important, that your goal is to sacrifice, to serve others. Be tuned into that because it is not true. This is your only life. You want to enjoy it. You want to milk it. You want to pursue your own goals, without stepping on anyone else and without letting them step on you.

And then you can, as I mentioned, learn assertiveness skills and also study people that you would admire. So if you see somebody who can hold their own but isn't a mean person—there it is—but they're honest. They say what they mean. They seem happy; they seem confident. Use them as role models.

And if you don't have anybody in your immediate life who is like that, you can certainly read books. I know my life turned around when I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and her nonfiction book The Virtue of Selfishness. So I, of course, will highly recommend those books, and those are on my website, DrKenner.com.

And if you want a more psychology-related book, the others are phenomenal, really life-changing. There's also—but this book is just a short, simple book that may jumpstart you. It's called 10 Simple Solutions to Shyness: How to Overcome Shyness, Social Anxiety, and Fear of Public Speaking. This will help you with the how-to, the skills, the tips. However, this will do you no good if you don't have the conviction that it's your life and you own it, and you have every moral right to it.

And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner.

Trust—very important in a relationship. It's also very important in a clinical situation. Why is trust the most important thing in making a breakthrough with a client?

And that's a very good question. Why is trust so important in any relationship? In a relationship, a love relationship with your kids, or in therapy. Why is it so important?

Well, I can tell you from my own perspective, if I were in therapy, or, and I am in a love relationship, it allows me not to have to censor. It allows me to hear my own thoughts clearly, to discover myself, to feel visible within—in the case of romance with my husband, and in therapy, it's the same thing. You can get to self-honesty when you're honest with yourself, when you can let down your guard.

We all put up guards or things that we won't tell our parents or things that we wouldn't and shouldn't share with even maybe a best friend. When you're in therapy, though, you are with a loving partner. You want to get to core issues. You want to see what your hopes and dreams are, to be able to talk about them openly without someone saying, "Oh, that's so stupid," you know, putting you down or betraying you in telling your sister who you hate what your dreams are, and she's just going to make fun of you.

When you don't have the trust, it's very painful, and so not only the positive emotions, but you want to get to the core of some yucky emotions. Maybe you're feeling really sad, and in therapy, you can let down your guard and really hear yourself explore what bothers you most. And of course, if you get to the real core and you're very sad and you're in therapy, you're going to cry. If you're feeling very angry, you're going to experience that—not that you get angry at the therapist, but it will come out. And you need to be able to be in sync with yourself, in harmony with yourself.

So that's a long way of saying that trust is critical in all relationships, and the biggest relationship you have is the one with yourself. Can you trust yourself? And that trust has to be earned. You earn it with other people, and you earn it with yourself.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com and please listen to this ad.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and co-author Dr. Edwin Locke.

The problem with full-fledged narcissists as romantic partners is that they are incapable of truly valuing another person because they do not value themselves. They are fundamentally lacking in self-esteem and are obsessed with relieving their own anxieties. They don't know what it means to pursue a positive value, one that is not tied to relieving self-doubt. They need, in quotes, "others" in a desperate sort of way. And they, in quotes, "use" them, but they cannot love them. They are not truly selfish because narcissists have no real sense of self. Their self, in quotes, is only a cauldron of fears and doubts and grandiose, self-deceptive fantasies whose goal is to alleviate those self-doubts.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.