Have you ever walked past a house you admired and wondered what the owners paid for it and, perhaps, what it might sell for now? That’s become such an automatic inclination, it might fly beneath our radar. Rather than take in the beauty of the home, we jump to what’s it worth.
On a recent visit to the Museum of Modern Art with my sons, I became aware of our curiosity as to what a certain piece of art was worth, distracting us from the experience of immersing ourselves in the creativity before our eyes.
Think about our educational system. Do you ask your children what they think about what they’re studying in school and try to entice them to be intellectually curious? Or do you ask them what their grades are?
The motivation to learn has become replaced by the measuring of achievement from grades, to ACT or SAT scores, to college admissions… all based upon measurement.
We focus on whether our kids will get into a high-ranked college, not on where they will best blossom as thinkers and as young adults?
We’ve all become so geared to quantify and measure, we’ve lost sight of what truly matters.
How do we measure happiness, joy and love?
We can’t, and we shouldn’t.
But if we debase these core values because we can’t quantify them, we miss out on our human experience, and the result is malaise, anxiety or depression.
We’ve become the cogs in our mind’s calculator.
Can you Enjoy Without Excelling?
Many years ago, I was working with a young man who was a nationally seeded tennis player. I asked him if he had played any other sports, and he said no, he never did.
I asked him, “Why not?”
He said, “Well, I wasn’t good enough.”
There’s the measuring at work.
“I wasn’t good enough to play other sports.”
What about the enjoyment of playing, even if you’re not particularly good?
I shared with him that when I was young, I loved playing baseball. I was average, maybe slightly above average. But I had immeasurable—notice my choice of this word—joy in simply playing baseball. If I were living his life, where everything is quantified and measured, I never would have played baseball.
What a loss that would have been.
In my therapy practice, I have at times counseled people who are really focused on their tennis or golf game. What gets in the way of enjoying their chosen sport is their self-measuring, which, paradoxically, impedes the improvement they seek.
To excel, you need to be in a flow state, completely immersed in the experience.
You can’t be in flow and also be measuring yourself.
Always Do Your Best
There’s a commonsense adage that we “always need to do our best.”
Focus on the word always. If you always need to do your best, that’s a compulsion. It’s a pathology.
Why do we always have to do our best?
Shouldn’t there be times when you don’t have to do your best?
Doing your best requires constant assessment, constant measurement, and as I’ve just explained, one cannot do one’s best while also tracking one’s performance. Also, such a neurotic obsession with quantification is de-humanizing, and stupid.
It’s not common sense. It’s harmful.
Now, I am not proposing we shouldn’t set goals for ourselves and try to improve and succeed, but the inner measuring of ourselves can be destructive. We become both the measured and the measurer at the same time.
What is My Life’s Purpose?
What are our goals in life? Health, happiness, joy, thriving in relationships?
Those values have nothing or little to do with measuring.
My argument here is that this perverse measuring and quantifying of everything diverts us from the true joys of life. Life becomes a game to win, but what are we winning?
The quantification of our lives leaves no space for our heart, for our soul, for our well-being, for compassion, for empathy, for the values that make lives thrive and provide connections with one another.
Going out for a run, I find myself measuring how fast I’m going. I want to get my heart rate up; I want to build my physical resilience… but could I ever just take a run for the joy of taking a run? Could I ever choose to not turn on my devices and measure how well did I do?
There needs to be balance, and that, in some ways, requires being aware of our measuring and quantifying and taking a step back and saying to ourselves, “stop measuring and just be.”
To be at one with yourself, or being truly present in the conversation with another, requires giving up quantifying and measuring.
Just think about it; try to notice your thought’s tendency to measure and quantify, and step back and think, “I don’t need to go there that often. I can measure selectively when necessary, but not in a compulsive way where my mind is entrained. I must choose not to lose myself, or I lose my connection to my authentic self as well as my wonder and curiosity.”
You can reclaim your connection to yourself, to others and to nature by noticing your addiction to measuring and putting it in its proper place in your mind’s toolbox.
Want more? Revisit the Possibility Podcast episode on this subject!
