We Get What We Think We Deserve
“The clearer you are about what you want, the greater your chances are to achieve it.”
- Deepak Chopra
If, on an unconscious level, you think you deserve to be treated like shit, then without even realizing it, you will teach those around you to treat you like shit. You’ll tolerate it. You’ll unconsciously participate in your own abuse. If you don’t think you deserve a better job, you’ll conduct yourself as such. You won’t project confidence and you’ll stay stuck exactly where you are, silently condoning your own mistreatment. In short, knowing what we want is important, but knowing we deserve it is even more critical.
I’ve seen this countless times. I was desperately underemployed for years. Slowly, over time, I came to value myself. I came to think, “I deserve more. I deserve success. I deserve a good wage. I deserve a home of my own. Why not me? Yes, I’d be lucky to have a great, well-paying job, but you know what, they’d also be lucky to have me.” Shifting my deep-seated mindset motivated me to act. I took steps and spoke to people I never even would have thought to reach out to before. Suddenly, I was approaching things differently. I carried myself differently in interviews. I became someone who valued himself. Other people could sense that and responded by valuing me in return. And suddenly, I got a great-paying job. Far more than I’d even been paid before (not that I told them that).
I noticed the same was true in my personal life. You get exactly the type of relationship you think you deserve. My ex-wife treated me terribly. She bossed me around and controlled me because I tolerated it. I now realize, part of me thought I deserved it. When I began to think I deserved better, I began to act differently in relationships. Today, I would never tolerate that treatment so I attract a different kind of person. Someone who respects me as much as I respect myself. I put out a sense of self-worth and other people feel and believe it.
This is how I believe inner work leads to the external rewards. Some people might call this the rule of attraction. I prefer to think of it as human nature. We attract what we think we deserve, just as people naturally surround themselves with things that reinforce their view of the world. Think you’re worthless? You’ll unconsciously build for yourself a world that reinforces that belief. Think you are valuable person who deserves great things? You’ll begin building that world for yourself from the inside out.
We all surround ourselves with things that re-enforce our preconceived view of the world. Happy people like being surrounded by happy people. Miserable people like being surrounded by miserable people. It’s nice not to feel alone, so we naturally seek out others to reaffirm our worldview. With my old group of friends, all we did for over 10 years was get together and talk about how fucked our futures were. Then, I realized they were holding me back. Reinforcing the notion of being stuck was the very thing keeping me stuck. While I still love those friends, I chose to spend less time with them. I found more positive people and like magic, I began to get unstuck.
Optimists are also just simply more likely to try. As Martin Seligman explains in his book Learned Optimism, think of a salesman who has just had 10 failed sales calls. The pessimist is discouraged and is not motivated to pick up the phone for the 11th try. The optimist is much more likely to try again, and thus by the sheer nature of probability he is more likely to succeed.
Right or wrong, the optimist is in a position for better odds. But let’s take the argument even further than the fact that optimists are mathematically more likely to succeed. “Confirmation bias” says we all seek out evidence to reinforce our pre-existing view of the world (we’ll look at confirmation bias even deeper in “Idea 23: Is It Better to Be Right or Happy?”). Thus, the pessimist is likely to unconsciously self-sabotage so he can say, “See I was right.” The optimist is likely to set himself up for success so he can tell himself and others the same thing. This is the power of positivity. The optimist and the pessimist both get to be right, but which one is better off?
Oprah Winfrey aptly said, “What you focus on expands.” She explained, “When you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it. Opportunities, relationships, even money flowed my way when I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life.” Nietzsche took a darker perspective on the same phenomenon, writing, “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” In other words, how we spend our thoughts tends to determine our reality. So the question becomes, of all the infinite possibilities, what reality do you want to focus on and therefore live in?
Ask Yourself:
Do I deserve success?
Do I deserve a great relationship?
Do I deserve to get the things I want?
Do I feel stuck?
Are there any people I spend time with who might be reinforcing unhelpful modes of thinking?
Do I want to be happy (or happier)?
Next Letter: This Too Shall Pass