Blog
16 lessons from the Moral Perfection Project(DW# 843)
Nov 18, 2020
Over the last few weeks, we have been exploring and learning from Benjamin Franklin’s Moral Perfection Project.
Here are the 15 lessons we discussed, with links to the relevant post.
Track your progress(DW #830)
Oct 30, 2020
Do you wear a Fitbit? Or use a food journal?
If you do, you already know that tracking what you are trying to change or improve is a powerful way to set yourself up for success.
Well, hundreds of years before the invention of fitness- tracking devices, Ben Franklin came up with a self-improvement experiment that let him track his mind hacking progress in a measurable, scientific way.
As described in his autobiography, Franklin gave his experiment the lofty title of the ‘Moral Perfection Project.’ He began by laying out a set of thirteen virtues that he wished to develop in himself and then he found a way to track his progress on a daily basis with this method:
He writes in his autobiography:
- "I made a little book, in which I allotted a page for each of the virtues."
- "I ruled each page with red ink, so as to have seven columns, one for each day of the week, marking each column with a letter for the day."
- "I crossed these columns with...
Higher highs and lows(DW #820)
Oct 16, 2020
If we have bad days and go off track, how do we know that we are still on the path of self-growth and not in fact, truly regressing?
Because although we will have highs and lows, our highs will be higher AND our lows will be higher too.
Our baby steps and compounded progress on the journey will mean that
1) Our good days are better than the previous good days
2) Our bad days are not quite so bad as our previous bad days and
3) Overall, we have more good days than bad days.
If we take time to pause and notice, we may even find that our bad days are better than what our good days used to be.
And that, my friends, is progress!
Speaking of congratulations . . .(DW #815)
Oct 09, 2020
How often do we stop, reflect on how far we have come, acknowledge progress and celebrate small and big wins?
Turns out, this is rather important for motivation and change.
So today, take a few moments to congratulate yourself for any progress that you have made till today in the different areas of your life.
For those of us who are super self-critical, this will be challenging and feel weird.
That is okay. Do it anyway.
How much do you value the relationship(DW# 800 )
Jul 17, 2020
As we end our series on apologies, I leave you with one final thought:
If we value our relationships, we need to learn to apologize effectively. When we apologize, we send a clear message that the other person matters to us. That our relationship with them is valuable enough that we will do what it takes to make amends for our poor behaviour without evasion, excuse making or blaming.
Sometimes the process of apologizing is less about insisting on justice and more about investing in the relationship and the other person’s happiness. It is also about having the maturity and emotional intelligence to apologize for our part even when the other person’s reactions seem exaggerated, or when they can’t see their own contribution to the problem.
Here is how Dr Lerner ends her book Why Won't You Apologize?: Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts:
Lead with your heart and not your attack dog. It’s difficult and it’s worth...
Have the last laugh(DW# 795)
Jul 10, 2020
As we conclude the series on emotional abuse, let us just remind ourselves that regardless of other people’s behaviour, we can still choose how to respond to it.
With support, with increased emotional awareness, by learning to identify and call out the gaslighting, we can learn to validate ourselves. When others challenge our perception, we can choose to ignore them. We can work against adopting the self-doubt that is so crippling in emotionally abusive tactics such as gaslighting. We can practice reminding ourselves that despite the challenges we are currently experiencing, we have the resources to emerge stronger.
Let us look at what happens in the last scene of the movie Gaslight:
Paula, realizing that her husband Gregory has been manipulating her and intentionally trying to drive her crazy, turns the tables on him. In the final scene, Gregory has been caught and tied to a chair by police. When Paula enters the room, he instructs her to get a knife...
Can relationships heal after gaslighting has... (DW# 786)
Jun 28, 2020
We have been discussing gaslighting and its significant impact on a relationship.
The question we will explore today is this: is it possible for a relationship where there has been gaslighting to heal and become healthy?
Of course, it is not a good idea to write anyone off since people can surprise us and change in healthy ways when we do not expect them to.
However, we also need to be realistic about what is probable.
In relationships where gaslighting is a pattern, or used as a tool of emotional and characterological abuse, change is only possible if the perpetrator is open to intensive and long-term individual therapy. This requires some level of self awareness or awakening on the part of the perpetrator to realize their behavior has damaged another human being’s psychological wellbeing. Since abusers and perpetrators of gaslighting are rarely open to such treatment or to examining their own behavior and its impact, it is often up to the victim of gaslighting to seek...
Motivation matters (DW# 785)
Jun 26, 2020
We have been talking about gaslighting in relationships: that is saying or doing things which cause the person on the receiving end to start questioning their own perceptions, reality and even sanity.
There are various situations where another person may question our view of events or our perceptions and we need to remind ourselves to be careful about being quick to label something as gaslighting or writing the person off as a narcissist.
The first situation is more a matter of personality than of malign intentions. Some people are dismissive of things and attitudes of others as a matter of habit. So what we may think of as gaslighting may simply be a person’s argumentative nature, their air of superiority, or their judgmental tendency. Many high functioning and powerful individuals sometimes have a hard time practicing humility or knowing how to have egalitarian relationships. They may not intend harm on purpose and are often surprised when their partners get angry and hurt...
Why is gaslighting so harmful in relationships? (DW# 784)
Jun 25, 2020
Yesterday, we distinguished between two types of "gaslighting", one where there is intent to control, manipulate, and subjugate the other person compared to where the person doing the gaslighting is simply trying to save themselves from facing accountability.
Experts agree that even when gaslighting is done on a one-time basis and is not part of characterological abuse, it is still very harmful to relationships as it destroys trust between people.
Since trust is the very foundation of an intimate relationship, when this is destroyed, it makes it very challenging to repair. When someone discovers that they were gaslit, they are shocked and traumatized that someone they trusted has the ability to harm them in this way. The breaking of trust leads to not feeling safe in the relationship and often results in shrinking away and protecting oneself from being intimate or vulnerable in the relationship.
Can a relationship continue with this emotional distance and self-protection? Yes of...
What is “Gaslighting" (DW# 783)
Jun 24, 2020
Yesterday we started talking about a situation where you experience a major break of trust, hurt or betrayal from a trusted loved one or colleague and instead of apologizing, they actually deny any wrong doing on their part. And then they turn the blame on you by suggesting that the problem is in your head and not in their behaviour.
The psychological term for this is "Gaslighting".
The word Gaslighting comes from Gaslight, the 1944 Oscar winning film starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. In the story, a husband (Boyer) tries to convince his new wife (Bergman) that she’s imagining things, in particular the occasional dimming of their home’s gas lights. (He was dimming the gaslights as part of his plan to rob her of some very valuable jewelry.) Over time, the wife, who trusts that her husband loves her and would never hurt her, believes his lies and starts to question her own perception of reality. What is so disturbing about this story is that there...