11 January 2025
I’m not very good at this. I tend to catastrophize and get upset rather than taking a step back to put a problem in a more positive perspective. But if life is choices, we all have a choice about how we respond. We can improve.
Today we look at three ideas that begin that improvement: 1. Collect data—not judgment, 2. Change losing games, and 3. Understand boundaries.
There’s an attitude I bring to therapy whereby I inform clients that incomplete homework assignments are not failures, they’re data. And good data are hard to come by. For example, you’re working with a new business partner, and she makes a move that cuts you out of a portion of the proceeds that you understood were yours. Could be a misunderstanding, could be an accident, or it could be an ethical issue. Some calm discussion would probably bring this out quickly. And what it brings out is more data. Becoming angry and dysregulated will stop the flow of data and possibly rupture a relationship. Instead, become a data collector. That way, there is no failure, there’s just good data.
In order to do that—to stay cool, open a conversation, and keep gathering facts and opinions—you need the ability to self-regulate. If you grew up with trauma, either in-utero or after birth, this won’t be easy. Facing it is a first step.
The second idea is from a once-neighbour, Dr. Posen, who wrote some self-help books. The title of this first book intrigued me: Always Change a Losing Game.
There’s a lot involved in changing a losing game. First, we have to be able to call it which requires standards, confidence, and boundaries. Secondly, we have to be epistemically hip i.e., we need to think about what and how we know in order to measure the unfolding situation against our own metrics. And we have to have valid metrics.
But probably the toughest part is knowing we’re worth it—that you deserve to play in a winning game. And here’s the thing: if you don’t close a door on the losing game, you don’t move into the space in which the next doors open. Let’s call this discarding, in keeping with the games theme. If you don’t discard, you can’t change your hand. If you don’t change your hand, you don’t improve your odds. If you’re not willing to improve your odds, your vector is heading downward.
Boundaries were mentioned above but have not been precisely defined. They make up the third and final point.
boundary, n., 1. a psychological demarcation that protects the integrity of an individual or group or that helps the person or group set realistic limits on participation in a relationship or activity (APA Dictionary of Psychology, updated 16.iv.18).
In most dysfunctional contexts, boundaries remain unnamed, unidentified, and are frequently violated. Examples of boundary violations are personal correspondence read by people other than the writer and recipient. Or being asked to work hours beyond your professional agreements without compensation or asked to do work you are not properly qualified to do.
Boundaries are everywhere. Is a loved one comfortable being touched, praised, kissed? Are washroom doors to be kept locked when occupied? In one boundary worksheet, used in therapy, the main issues addressed are the porosity of boundaries (too loose, too tight, defined but with some flex). The definition that worksheet provides states that, “Personal boundaries are the limits and rules we set for ourselves within relationships. A person with healthy boundaries can say ‘no’ to others when they want to, but they are also comfortable opening themselves up to intimacy and close relationships” (Therapist Aid, 2016). The areas discussed are physical, intellectual, emotional, sexual, material, and time boundaries. I hope this brief outline provides a sense of the omnipresence and value of well-defined and articulated boundaries.
The outlining of these three points: 1. Collect data—not judgment, 2. Change losing games, and 3. Understand boundaries, brings this Processes section of the book to a close. To provide you with a sense of what I’m seeing—in a broad cultural context—we will end with two quotes. The first defines some current human data, the second, a way past that state toward self-actualization. The point is that without testable, defensible processes, individual and social (political) identity collapses into chaos. We cannot let that happen.
The results are stark. Since 2011, the Syrian Network for Human Rights has documented more than 112,000 disappearances—men, women, and children arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned with no formal or legal justification. The regime has tortured tens of thousands of people in brutal prisons, keeping them in the dark, forbidding them contact with the outside world. Infamously, Assad used poison gas against his own people and then lied about it. Joint Russian and Syrian-government air strikes deliberately targeted hospitals and practiced ‘double-tap’ strikes, bombing a civilian target and then hitting the same location soon afterward to kill rescue workers.
—Applebaum, 8 December 2024, The Atlantic
But the name ‘Peripatetic’ [walking, mobile] stuck to Aristotle’s philosophy for two reasons. First, his entire intellectual system is grounded in an enthusiasm for the granular, tactile detail of the physical world around us. Aristotle was an empirical natural scientist as well as a philosopher of mind, and his writing constantly celebrates the materiality of the universe we can perceive through our senses and know is real. His biological works suggest a picture of a man pausing every few minutes as he walked, to pick up a seashell, point out a plant, or call a pause in dialectic to listen to the nightingales. Second, Aristotle, far from despising the human body as Plato had done, regarded humans as wonderfully gifted animals, whose consciousness was inseparable from their organic being, whose hands were miracles of mechanical engineering, and for whom instinctual physical pleasure was a true guide to living a life of virtue and happiness. As we read Aristotle, we are aware that he is using his own adept hand to inscribe on papyrus the thoughts that have emerged from his active brain, part of his well-exercised, well-loved body.
—Hall, E. pp. 19-20, Aristotle’s Way
References
Applebaum, A. (8 December 2024). “The Sudden Collapse of Bashar al-Assad,” The Atlantic Column.
Hall, E. (2018). Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life, Penguin Press.
Morris, W. (Ed.) (1975). The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of The English Language. American Heritage Publishing Co, Inc.
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