The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

"I just talked to my father. He's making me quit the play at Henley Hall. Acting is everything to me. He's planning the rest of my life for me and… he's never asked me what I want. I know what he'll say, he'll tell me that acting's a whim, and I should forget it. Just tell me to put it out of my mind for my own good."

And that's from Dead Poets Society. And that hurts—that hurts to listen to. When you have someone in your life who's powerful and you're living with them, you're dependent on them, whether it's your parents or whether you're living with an abusive spouse, somebody who tells you what you have to do, someone who tells you when you have to do it, someone who tries to control you. And how do you fight for your values? In this case, how does he fight? He wants to go into the theater; he doesn’t want to go on his father’s path for him in life.

With me today to discuss this is somebody who knows how to speak out. She is Lynn Zinser, who is the Vice President at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, which is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute. And Lynn knows the psychological benefits of acting on your values. She is a prominent, passionate intellectual activist, and I want to welcome you, Lynn.

Lynn: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Dr. Kenner: Many of us want to speak out. We’ll hear something that makes us feel angry or anxious or depressed on the news, and we may yell back at the radio or the TV set, and then we just throw up our hands and say, “You know what? You can’t fight city hall. What’s the use?” But part of us wants to take action. How does anyone overcome their reluctance to speak out?

Lynn: Well, I think partly, you have to have a value that is important to you, that you want to take action about. And then you need to look, go at the process rationally. You need to examine it, figure out what you can do, what is possible for you, yeah, and then start to educate yourself about it, and then take action.

Dr. Kenner: Okay, so like with the current healthcare situation, if you want to fight that battle— I mean, you can fight it in your own home too, with a parent who's telling you how to live your life or how to bring up your kids, and you can do it politically too. If you don’t like what’s happening in the political scene, then you need to educate yourself first. You need to understand the issues. That’s what you’re saying.

Lynn: Yes, and it can be very daunting and intimidating at first.

Dr. Kenner: Yeah, and so how do you take the baby steps to even take the first steps into becoming an activist?

Lynn: Well, I think it differs for every person, but one of the things you can do is set a small goal for yourself. You can set a small goal of writing a letter to the editor. You can set a small goal of saying that, “I will say to someone who I disagree with, I disagree with you.”

Dr. Kenner: Yeah, just as simple as that—“I disagree,” yeah.

Lynn: And if they do not, you don’t have to give them the reason, okay?

Dr. Kenner: But then you seem like an idiot, you know, “Well, why do you say I? I’m not prepared right now, right?” But I, but I want you to understand that I disagree with you, or it might not be the right time to argue with someone at that point.

Lynn: Okay, just speaking up gives you a tremendous sense that you are taking that baby step forward.

Dr. Kenner: Okay, so it helps you break through the barrier and give yourself just the beginning step. And of course, that’s only step one. Step two would be to say to the person, I’m assuming, something along the lines of, “I want to give that more thought. I want to give you a thoughtful response, not just my knee-jerk response. I know I disagree. I want to gather, you know, I want to do more research, or gather some or do my own thinking. And I’d like to get back to you,” you know, if the person’s reasonable. So that’s where you start to grow. That’s where you start to get immersed in the issues, whether it’s healthcare or whether it’s something in the personal area. Maybe your parents want you to bring your kids up in a way that you don’t want to bring them up. You know, they want you to be more authoritarian, or they want you to be more laid back and you want none of the above. So it can apply on all levels. Ayn Rand, she’s the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and an amazing book with the amazing title, shocking title to many, The Virtue of Selfishness, has said something along the lines of “To refuse to face a fear is to assume that the worst is true.” What does she mean by that?

Lynn: Well, I’ll just tell you, from my personal experience, most of the time, the reason that I have refused to face a fear is because I thought that what I imagined was so horrible that I wouldn’t know what to do once I faced it, that I would be overwhelmed. But in fact, that’s not true. The actual facts were never, have never been as awful as what I imagined.

Dr. Kenner: So give me a quick example of that.

Lynn: Well, I will just say that the first time that I spoke out on healthcare, that I actually did a talk. I was asked to speak to a group, and I went, and I imagined that they were going to laugh at me, that they were going to have questions that I couldn’t answer, that they were going to make fun of me or just disregard everything that I had to say.

Dr. Kenner: So you anticipated a hall full of enemies.

Lynn: Yes, and that wasn’t true. There were some that disagreed with me, but everyone was respectful. I had been studying the issue for four months. At that point, I did know what I was talking about, to some extent, and I mean as much as I could in four months. And actually, what was really fabulous, as I found out later, there was a gentleman in the audience who kept nodding in response to what I was saying. During the question and answer period, he actually identified himself as a doctor. So here was a doctor actually agreeing with what I was saying during the entire talk.

Dr. Kenner: So it was a gift to both of you, for you to speak up. It crystallized his own thinking, and he validated what you were saying.

Lynn: Yes, I’m on your side, basically.

Dr. Kenner: What did that give you when you spoke up? What did you then feel? What are the next steps once you have a wonderful experience like that?

Lynn: Well, first of all, it gives you confidence. It gives you confidence in yourself, that you actually can do this, that you can speak up. And it gives you a sense of integrity that I’m acting to support the values that I care about and that I’m acting as the person that I want to be and think that I can be. Those are self-values that are really important. The other thing that it provides you, as in this case, is there are a lot of people out there who share the same values that you have, who are just as intimidated and scared as you are. And that’s what I found in promoting free-market healthcare in Colorado, is that once I spoke up, other people responded to that, and they found the courage to speak up as well.

Dr. Kenner: So it’s like fun going off. Once you light one, you can have a whole lot of good things happening.

Lynn: Fireworks, not bombs. Yeah.

Dr. Kenner: So that’s wonderful. And so, what website could you give people to learn more about activism?

Lynn: They could go to the AynRandCenter.org.

Dr. Kenner: That’s aynrandcenter.org.

Dr. Kenner: Thank you so much, Lynn, for joining us. Lynn Zinser is the Vice President at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, a division of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Lynn: Thank you.

Dr. Kenner: And I am always fascinated by the fact that sometimes it’s much easier to speak up to a stranger, to be assertive and say what’s on your mind to a stranger than it is to the people who are closest to you. It might be much harder to face your dad or your mom or maybe one of your kids and level with them, tell them what’s going on in your mind. And how do you give yourself a voice to be true to yourself, to build confidence and integrity? Partly, you need to know assertiveness skills so you don’t come across as aggressive. For example, saying “I’m feeling frustrated,” not “You frustrate me.” It’s a matter of learning good skills, and also knowing your own position well and how to support it.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com.

Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Dr. Kenner and Dr. Locke.

Here are two important personality traits valuable in romance: being open and being conscientious. Openness applies especially to emotional openness and the willingness to share one’s deepest values and feelings with the other. If one partner refuses to do this out of fear or is unable to due to poor introspective skills, then the other partner necessarily feels cut off from the deepest layers of the closed partner’s soul. This severely limits emotional intimacy and closeness and undermines visibility. However, openness does not mean your partner should act as your therapist.

Another important trait is conscientiousness, for example, being responsible about one’s money, work, promises, chosen obligations, and health.

Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book on Amazon.com.