I used to lie to myself.
I wanted to be the big dog.
A status symbol.
I wanted to drive a fancy car.
I wanted the hot model girlfriend to roll into my European pro games. Even as an All-American basketball player in college, I had a taste of what being famous was like.
And after 18 years of being known for my basketball craft in Europe and back home, I started to see the lies I told myself that kept me unhappy.
And maybe you’re crushing your work life like Joe Burrow (scroll down)!
Maybe you have a shit ton of money coming in and a higher net worth than Donald — no, I won’t say his last name.
Or maybe you aren’t an uber-successful millionaire and just want to learn about why successful people might struggle with building a thriving relationship and life as I did (and still do).
But I know this is true for me: success will bring you short-term pleasure but will not make you authentically happier in your life, work, and relationships.
These are the six lies I told myself.
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Lie #1. I don’t have to be best friends with my partner
Bullshit.
I saw many pro athletes walk around with their trophy wives buying their Gucci bags and Rolexes, pimped-out cars, but the truth is, talking to them usually sucked.
It didn’t feel authentic. Or fun. or interesting. It felt like a status game of who did what, who had that, or this, and nothing about the fun or interesting things we could discuss or share.
Status-seeking people don’t have the time for deeper connections and true authenticity, they are busy trying to be successful; worse, they don’t embrace the self-awareness to shift towards better values for their partners, projects, and friendships in their world.
This is why I believe authentic friendship is one of the most important pillars of happiness — with our partner, community, family, and job. To build happier, more meaningful lives, we must strip away the insecurities and the comparisons and know who we truly are.
Once you know and act as who you truly are, you’ll filter out the people or things that don’t align with your authentic value system.
And if you want to be great (not good) at relationships like you do your work, you better start figuring out how to find people that fit your authentic values or learn how to change yours.
Ultimately, I don’t care who you are unless you are happy with who you are.
If you truly want to date supermodels and snort lines of cocaine for the rest of your life, go right ahead!
But I can tell you that I was much happier when I stopped lying to myself about what I valued.
Be yourself.
Go for it.
I trust you’ll be amazing, even if you enjoy waving light sabers at weekend Star Wars conferences with your lover (like me).
Lie #2: Your lifestyle is actually authentic
Is it?
I thought mine was for the longest time.
How has our culture shaped what you buy, what you eat, how you act, what you do, and what you believe?
I define ‘lifestyle’ as your current set of behaviors in real-time. This is relative to a style of living that reflects a person’s or group’s attitudes and values.*
- Consciously choosing with intention defines your authentic lifestyle.
- Unconsciously reacting to the world’s pressures, fears, stereotypes, and insecurities equal an inauthentic lifestyle.
Do you want a fancy fast car because it’s fun to drive fast or because you want people to see you?
If success is the number of dollars in your bank account, you may be disappointed when the grim reaper comes-a-knockin’.
And I’m pretty sure no one has ever been on their deathbed saying, “Damn, I regret having such amazing authentic f*cking friends and meaningful relationships.”
Since I’m earnestly trying to help successful people be happier by recognizing their lies — I won’t get into a nut-measuring contest, but retirement equals freedom, not happiness.
Lie #3: I don’t need to care
Every year I played pro hoops, I’d buy a rental house to fix up when I was home during the summers.
At a certain point, I bought 13 rental houses. I cleaned them. I fixed them. I painted them. I learned how to get tenants. But rather quickly, I realized most tenants don’t care about the property as much as I did.
Dog shit on the carpet.
Broken blinds.
Holes in the wall.
I had to evict some people, and it sucked, and worse, I had to go back into the house I just fixed and fix it again.
And I learned if I want to be happier, I have to find people that care as much as I do.
If you want people to take care of you, you need to take care of them.
In my past life, I wouldn’t care. I would walk past people and not smile. I wouldn’t help the old man carry a bag up the stairs. Now I try my best to turn towards caring.
It’s not always easy because I tend to be self-absorbed and focused on my next goal. My next vision. But that’s just it:
Nobody cares about your external shine if your internal state stinks a mile away.
This goes for relationships too.
Taking her slow and caring for someone allows you to see their values and how they practice kindness (like if they’re mean to the 18-year-old coffee barista when they put too much oat milk in their latte — byeeeee Felicia.)
I used to f*ck this up all the time. I lost good friends. Jobs. People. Viable partners. I thought about myself and used to think love was only about physical attraction and feeling passion.
I used to believe, “What am I getting out of this relationship relative to what I’m putting in?”
That’s not genuine caring, it’s selfish.
Today, I imagine a thriving relationship and healthy life built like a skyscraper of satisfying experiences and valuable memories, and John Gottman, the world’s renowned marriage therapist concurs:
Each layer of friendship and attraction and admiration and positive bid of interaction* forms another steel foundation for building a thriving relationship.
Turning towards and caring will turn your life around.
Lie #4: You aren’t doing what you say you value
Speaking of turning towards.
Mark Manson writes insightfully on deciding which values are good for you to turn towards.
Good values are:
- Evidence-based
- Constructive
- Controllable
Bad values are:
- Emotion-based
- Destructive
- Uncontrollable
Hell, I dunno — maybe you are the next Elon Musk. Firing 50 percent of your Twitter workforce, having an estranged ex-wife and kid, and telling the other 50 percent to get back to the Twitter office sounds like Mr. Musk values hard office work and control above all else, which may make him happy (but does it really, Elon?^)
And maybe Elon doesn’t care about that side of life. I get it.
But if you say you value fitness and health and then eat entire pizzas, down a liter of Coke and cake every night, you may want to sit down and have an ‘authenticity’ talk with yourself.
If you lie about your values, your behaviors and actions will always represent those lies.
Look no further, fellas!
Good values and habits will be evidence-based (as Gottman says, 91 percent of divorces can be predicted), bring you closer to your partner, and build bridges towards a healthier, happier individual and partnership.
Bad values and habits will do the opposite.
Lie # 5: I don’t need to heal
As time and introspection unfold, you’ll start to see pain points, old trauma patterns, annoying feelings, and possibly what you’d classify as negative emotions bubbling up.
Conflict isn’t the end of relationships, it’s the beginning.
The art of practicing good manners, positive communication styles, and relationship habits aimed at resolving conflict must be practiced daily.
Suppose you let negative feelings/emotions/patterns influence your decisions every moment in how you behave with the partners/friends/coworkers you’ve chosen. In that case, you’re basically like a three-year-old child who agrees to stay put at the park while they watch the other kids use the slide. Then when you look away for one second, that kid is stripping naked and spitting on adults as they run for the top of a chrome steel-headed stead.
Instead of being aware of our negative reactions, observing them, accepting a myriad of possible positive reactions and behaviors, and letting our awareness flow into the present, we react like three-year-olds.
From a place of awareness, we can choose a reaction (or non-reaction) that builds bridges, not destroys them.
Lamenting your shit whenever you feel bad or uncertain won’t help.
Sometimes, you need professional talk therapy.
If you hate that last sentence, ask yourself if you can have meaningful experiences without feeling vulnerable. Ask yourself why NBA players sob when they win a title. Or why O-line coaches cry when their offensive line gives up their body to protect their QB?
I imagine it’s because feeling and being vulnerable means you care a helluva lot more than you thought.
Lie #6: Only Sissies Feel Vulnerable
When I started dating or getting into a relationship, I often over-explained my greatest uncertainties, negative feelings, and fears about being together.
“My parents didn’t model great relationship behavior, so I’m doomed,” I’d say. “Like monogamy isn’t a really proven model of happiness, is it?”
Yet, deep down, I feared being rejected, abandoned, or hurt due to the past trauma of losing my father and mother to a nasty divorce. I didn’t want to start a family, promise a life together, and recreate the same suffering.
It felt too vulnerable.
And in a way, I defended that vulnerability by never being vulnerable.
I analyzed my relationships with such a critical eye that it didn’t allow me to begin to know, cherish, and admire anyone on a deeper, more meaningful level.
I had the emotional capacity of a baby turtle.
As I retired from my successful pro career, there was a lot of pausing and reflection and wondering why I couldn’t hold down a relationship.
These questions led me to understand that vulnerability might mean I care about something meaningful.
There’s no one way to become healthy or happy, heal trauma, or thrive. Yet, our society shouts to run away from your conflict, swipe again and again, consume more shit to forget that conflict, make bigger bank accounts, get VIP status, grind for dem dollars, have them Lambos and Scotch, own a mega yacht, and sacrifice your left-work-testicle to get to the promised land of success.
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I’ll finish with this anecdotal truth.
Being a successful man on paper doesn’t guarantee a happy, thriving, and meaningful life.
And I truly admire those fathers, husbands, workers, and CEOs that continue to be vulnerable and explore the boundaries of their authenticity and kindness.
Attempting to live a meaningful life offers men a culturally conditioned fish tank that we, individually and collectively, must be willing to probe around and swim in.
We must be willing to dig up the dirty lies.
We must look inside for the good values that build happier relationships, bodies, and lives.
And don’t build a one-story ranch.
Build a skyscraper.
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**7 Types of Bids with John Gottman
^Elon’s ex-wife and kid cut ties
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: Erick Reyes on Unsplash