by Nathan Chua
I often hear this said to me by clients who feel like they can’t figure out how they want to spend their limited time on this planet. I can understand how difficult it is. Having spent much of my earlier years in my career doing stuff that I didn’t really like, it took me a midlife crisis to realize I was going on the beaten path that others expected of me. In my studies in ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, I have learned the importance of the plumbing underneath the approach that I am using. The plumbing I am referring to is Relational Frame Theory or RFT. In RFT terms, doing what is socially acceptable is called pliance. Many of us do what other people expect us to do in our lives. I have first hand experience!
There are also ways that our minds can get in the way of us finding more effective approaches to how we spend our time. These happen when we follow certain rules that eventually lead us to dead ends. Sometimes these rules are inapplicable or inaccurate. Sometimes some of these rules lead us to short term gains to the detriment of our longer term goals for life. Some rules keep us from breaking a glass ceiling so to speak, where we get rewarded with choices that ultimately limit what we are capable of accomplishing.
This will be a long piece if I discuss them all. Hopefully, I will be able to come up with a series of posts that can go through each one. Let’s start first with something that I am sure many of you have experienced. It is quite often that we hear stories of people going into careers only to get the authority figures around them off their case. I am quite sure you would get it if I gave a few examples.
- The college student who is taking a major only to keep their parents happy and worry-free about their own futures, at least financially.
- The employee who feels that their job is not what they expected it to be. Very little satisfaction is obtained after a few years and sadly, this could stretch into decades.
These are examples of pliance. We all at times make choices that are meant to please others or to be socially acceptable. It is not always wrong to do so, but if brought to an extreme, it can lead to questions about life’s meaning and purpose such as that question posed in the title of this article.
If you find yourself dissatisfied with life and want to know if you are on the right track, here are some helpful hypothetical questions to ask yourself as written by Drs. Steven Hayes, Matthieu Villatte(my friend and consultant), and Jennifer Villatte in the book, “Mastering the Clinical Conversation: Language as Intervention.” If you were an unhappy student and feel like you are just out there performing for your parents, here are some good questions to ask yourself:
- If your parents would approve your choice of major no matter what it is, do you think your current major will still be your choice?
- If no one knew that you were going to school, what course would you take?
- If you were successful at doing what your parents expected you to do but could not tell them about it, what would you do?
- If you turned into somebody other than yourself, what would you want to be doing?
If you have answers to these questions, then this could mean something in determining how you want to spend the rest of your life.