A few days ago, I was talking to a Muslim friend of mine, and we got talking about religion.
I’m an atheist, so I don’t believe in God, but I don’t mind what other people believe, as long as it works for them. The reason I’m sharing this story is because of the following exchange:
“But what do you do when you’re feeling down? When I feel down, I kneel and pray, or meditate and then I feel better. But what do you do?”
“When I’m feeling down, I pause and figure out why. Then I go and do something about it.”
He went on to claim that I might be feeling down for no reason. I just smiled and said “I don’t think so, buddy.”
I thought – There is ALWAYS a REASON why you’re feeling down. Sometimes it’s just hiding really well. If you have a knife sticking out of your back, and a pool of blood spreading around you on the floor, it’s pretty obvious why you’re feeling down. When you let too much stress and adrenaline build up in your body (without releasing it through exercise) it’s less obvious. But there’s always a reason.
Until recently, I used to think that’s the only approach. That people who believe in “feeling down for no reason” are just lazy thinkers. That they can’t be bothered to figure out the reason, and they like to give up responsibility for their life.
But then I started reading The Way of The Superior Man by David Deida. (Which is an awesome book, by the way. Guys – my highest recommendation!) And I realized I was using the masculine approach to feeling better:
- Notice you’re feeling bad
- Identify the reason
- Solve the problem
- Feel good
Apparently, there’s also a feminine approach to feeling better, which goes something like:
- Notice you’re feeling bad
- ??? (I don’t really understand this step)
- Feel good
The second step involves something along the lines of feeling through your emotions, or talking about them, or something like that. I’ve read through the explanation several times, but I still don’t get it at a deep gut level.
Just because they’re called the masculine and feminine approach… it doesn’t mean that every man uses the former and every woman uses the latter. They’re just a lot more common among those genders.
…
As a man, I’ve found some common causes that make me unhappy. They probably affect you too, whether you realize it or not. Maybe you can benefit from my masculine identify-aim-kill approach here. In fact, 90% of the time I find myself feeling down, it’s for these two reasons:
1. Lack of exercise
When I go for 3 or 4 days without physical exercise, I start feeling irritable and vaguely bad. Lack of exercise is by far the most common reason why I find myself feeling down. The good news is, if you find yourself in this situation, ANY form of exercise will do! Just get down and do pushups until you hit the floor and can’t get up, or get outside and run!
2. Focusing on the wrong things
I sometimes simply replay negative experiences in my mind over and over. I usually catch myself and stop, but once every couple of months, I manage to completely trash my mood by doing this. Once I realize this is the problem, I just lie down comfortably, and do a bunch of quick visualisation exercises, getting rid of the negative images and making them less emotionally charged (that stuff is way too much to get into here). And voila! I’m back to being a happy skippy penguin!
…
And that’s it. So remember the masculine approach: When you’re feeling down, just pause, figure out the reason, and then DO something about it! Like a warrior – quickly kill the problem, and then feel good again.
For you women readers – do you use a different approach to feeling better? Can you maybe quickly explain it? Who knows, we guys might benefit from it too!
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In other news, I’ve got another interview for you, coming this Saturday. This time I interviewed an actual Zen Master! Make sure you don’t miss this interview 
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Please, please, please i also would love to know how you girls solve the happiness problem. I really don’t get it to …..
Paulo’s last blog post..Niege 2
I prefer to cheat.
1: Recognize that you’d rather be happier than you are now.
3: Be happier.
Now I just had to simplify it (a missing 2??), and it’s quite very much what you said anyway. But I’d like to draw more attention to the idea that you’re often working your way towards happiness, not away from unhappiness. You focus on the right things, you’re not avoiding focusing on the wrong things (though you are indirectly). Quite like in learning theory.
Now lack of exercise is a real beast, there’s no avoiding slaying that one.
Way out of topic; the name field in the post comment section is not optional as it says. I lost my whole post after forgetting to sign it.
Vlad, you just sailed right past the gigantic catch: your method only works if you CAN solve the problem. It won’t work with, say, terminal cancer, or the death of your mother. And your assuming everyone has the freedom to deal with their problems. I wish! But your chances of taking charge of your own life increase with every tick you can put in the following boxes: adult, educated, living in a rich country, accessible cash, no responsibilites, white, straight, male.
A kid who can’t get anyone to believe that s/he’s being raped can’t solve the problem.
An Afgani woman with a violent husband is stuck. If she runs away, she’ll almost certainly starve. That’s if the Taleban don’t get her first.
Josef Fritzel’s adult daughter and her seven kids couldn’t get out.
A gay Iranian will be hanged if he’s caught.
Most Africans can’t afford medicines for AIDS.
And so on, down a depressingly endless list.
I think your “masculine” method is more popular with males because, until fairly recently, most women had very little control over their own lives. (And outside Europe, North America and Australasia, they still have limited control. It takes several generations for learned helplessness to die away. And on average, women still earn less for the same work and still feel more responsible for the kids, which limits their options. Plenty of women stay in unhappy marriages to save their kids from a life of poverty.
The “feminine” approach consists of making the problem less painful. Once a friend empathises, you don’t feel so alone with it. More, you feel validated. Sometimes women are encouraged to believe there’s something wrong with having feelings. Talking with a friend also reminds you of something good in your life – your friend. If your lucky, she’ll come up with some sort of distraction to take your miind off it (“Hey, lets make chocolate milkshakes and rent a funny DVD”). If you’re really lucky, she’ll have a practical suggestion you’d never have thought of yourself (“If you mind someone else’s baby as well as your own, you might make enough money to hang onto the house. At least it’ll take longer for the savings to run out.”)
The gerat advantage of this appoach is that it works even if the problem is insoluble. And the big catch is that sometimes, making a problem endurable gives you an excuse not to solve it.
@Shadowart:
Good point. As you say, focus on “being happy”, not on “not being unhappy”.
And when posting comments, the name really is optional. But if you don’t fill it in, the comment gets sent to me for moderation and I have to approve it before it’s published. (That’s to prevent spam). On the other hand, if you fill in the name and e-mail, and I approve your comment, all your future comments will be approved automatically.
eek, maybe some people cant help their situation but accepting that doesnt help anything
and i cant help but read this and sense the hostility
“But your chances of taking charge of your own life increase with every tick you can put in the following boxes: adult, educated, living in a rich country, accessible cash, no responsibilites, white, straight, male.”
and myself becoming defensive and angry with you of course i could always apologize for being white and the smartest person in the world its sorta a back handed compliment.
@Sheila:
You’re absolutely right. I tick every single one of your boxes… so it’s easy for me to say “decide to do something and then do it.”. The fact is some people don’t have so much freedom.
I could write a long and detailed response to what you said… but you pretty much said it all. There’s a lot of stuff in this world that could be improved, and I really wish I could change it all.
But all the issues are too much for a single person to tackle. So I believe each of us should choose one primary focus, and a make a difference there.
That’s why I’m really happy to have people fighting for animal rights. And people fighting for women’s rights. And people fighting for the environment, and people fighting to make food I buy in supermarkets safe, and people fighting corruption and slave labor. I’m really happy to have all those people in the world.
Personally, I decided to tackle the education system and personal growth of rich folks. Because that’s what I’m familiar with, and where I can make the biggest impact.
Okay, I went off on a big digression there. Basically, I agree with what you said. And thanks for the second-to-last paragraph. I think that contained a lot of the “feminine view” I wanted to know about
I suspect the feminine perspective deals more with “enduring” and the male perspective with “fixing”. Very few of my sources of unhappiness are fixable, but one thing I can do is change my way of thinking about the problems. A paradigm shift can do wonders when one is feeling down. I’ve become a much happier person since I’ve learned to shift my viewpoint rather than try to bull my way through things I simply have no control over.
Gabrielle’s last blog post..My Fembot Hairdo
I’m sorry I came over as hostile. I wasn’t – merely irritated because the post sounded so glib. But I should know better than to post comments when I’m steamed about something else. In fact I do know better, and I forgot. Sorry.
Vlad, You’re absolutely right that no one person can hope to fix the world, and it makes sense to concentrate on one bit and do what you can there. And if you can raise the number of emotionally intelligent people in the world, you’ll help everybody.
Bill, I’m sorry you felt I was attacking you. I don’t have a problem with people being lucky – I tick most of the boxes myself. I just have a problem with the idea that there’s automatically something wrong with you if you’re less lucky. It´s really not my friends’ fault they got a brick thrown through their window. They´re gay, that´s all.
(Fortunately nobody was physically hurt.)
Just stickin up for us poor white people here.. haha
and apologies atleast serious ones have always creeped me out but thank you
finally atleast im a big enough smart ass to say i can fix the world
Good post! I’m fascinated by the variety of responses to it too, which is why I thought I’d add my two cents.
I’m a masculine approach person myself and agree that when a problem is too big for me to solve then I have to simply back up those who do have control to affect it. The thing about the feminine approach is that in many ways its actually the masculine approach in disguise. For a problem like you feeling down, there are several solutions, and often the feminine one takes less effort and in many ways is better. Like if you are feeling down because someone is bothering you, the masculine approach might be to find that person and discuss the problem with them. The feminine approach would be to bitch to a friend about them and then just forget about it. Both would probably work, but one is not really solving the issue so much as diverting your attention away from it.
The hardest bit: When a feminine approach is always taken, even in the face of a REAL problem that needs a REAL solution. I have a friend, male, but who usually follows your feminine approach here. When he gets a piece of work back, and notices the bad grade that he got, he bitches about the marker, complains about the teaching then hangs out with friends before going to bed with his girlfriend and in the morning comes back into college as though nothing had happened. This, I would say is a much more typical “feminine” approach than working out what was wrong with his answers, building on that and making sure that the next piece of work is done correctly.
So to conclude, there can be advantages to both approaches. The art of feeling happy is to know which one to use for a given situation. Now, I currently feel down because I have pieces of work looming that are due tomorrow. My procrastination in writing this has created the short term diversion, but I guess now I should go and actually get the damn thing done.
Nice work Vlad!
Simeon Jackson’s last blog post..Eco-Town have your say… or have your click, at least
@Gabrielle:
Ah yeah, good point! We guys sometimes get stuck trying to fix things we have no control over! (Like other people). Hmmm, maybe also traffic jams? I wonder if shouting at other cars is a primitive attempt at “fixing” them
I’m definitely a lot happier after I started taking some feminine approach and stopped trying to fix things I have no control over.
@Simeon:
Ha! Feminine approach! You’re procrastinating, so you go write about it here instead of fixing it!
(No, I’m not actually being serious
)
Thanks for the comment, that’s a lot of good stuff there!
Hey
My approach is the silliest, but I do think some females swear by it. I sit down and have a long cathartic cry. It works most of the time. Rest of the times it is exercise..just like you. But I never get down to doing it. Which is why I have signed up for that get rid of procrastination course. “)
Btw, I want to say that I love your blog. I have a friend who keeps mocking me for reading that “self-help pseudocrap”blog. But I dont’ think your blog is pseudo nor is it crap. He’s just prejudiced.
Anne’s last blog post..The Rise Of Brawn GP
@Anne:
(Now if we could only convince everybody else to share our delusion…)
Hey, what a coincidence, I also don’t think my blog is crap! That’s two of us
Joking aside, it’s really too bad that self-improvement has such a negative image in the popular culture. The popular culture just plays to people’s egos (“Self-help? I don’t need any help! I’m perfect!”), instead of doing what’s best for everybody.
Oh well, all the more world domination for the rest of us
Honestly, it’s not always the ego. A lot of self-help out there is bogus and is written by people who know it sells, are capitalizing on that and spewing the obvious advice that probably you’re parents give you better. So I don’t exactly blame people for having a negative image. I was skeptical of your blog too when I saw it. But it won me over.
Anne’s last blog post..The Rise Of Brawn GP
@Anne:
Awww, you sound like a teleshopping success story
“At first I was skeptical, but then Vlad won me over. Now whenever I need crazy psychology and self-help ideas, I go with Vlad! So BUY NOW for the LOW LOW price of $199.95 …”
Thanks, though. I appreciate it.