Shawshank is my favorite movie of all time.

It was a film about institutionalizing people. 

Not only physically within the walls of the jail, but also mentally and emotionally and psychologically. Inside their own heads and hearts. 

Brooks, the elderly prison librarian, finally finds out that his parole is up after fifty years. But his first response is to grab a fellow inmate in a chokehold and put a knife to his throat. He cries that killing someone is the only way they’ll let him stay. 

It’s the most heartbreaking scene in the film. Brooks is officially institutionalized. 

Red’s haunting speech says it all:

Man’s been here fifty years. This place is all he knows. In here, he is an important man, an educated man. A librarian. Out there, he is nothing but a used up old con with arthritis in both hands. Couldn’t even get a library card if he applied. Believe whatever you want. These walls are funny. First you hate them. Then you get used to them. After long enough, you get so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized. They send you here for life, and that’s just what they take. The part that counts, anyway.

Brooks is the despondent personification of how organizations, not just prisons, but many large institutions, are committed to the dulling of the individual.

To paraphrase the great folk song:

They can be so cold, they’ll hurt you and desert you, they’ll take your soul if you let them, but don’t you let them. 

The problem is, the fish often don’t know they’re in water. One telltale sign is their relationship to permission.

Here are a few examples.

If you’re the passive naysayer who comes to meetings solely to shitting on other people’s ideas, you might have been institutionalized. But if you’re the impatient initiator who creates contagious energy, generously amplifying the work of others, you’re not.

If you’re the distrustful cynic who has a long list of all the things we’re not allowed to do here, you might have been institutionalized. But if you’re the brave creator who would rather ship something risky and beg for forgiveness later, you’re not.

Shawshank has another great scene at the end of movie about this.

Red, now a free man, asks his new boss at the grocery store if he can take a restroom break.

To which his boss replies, listen, you don’t need to ask me every time you go take a piss. Just go. Understand?

Prisoners like him don’t know any better. Thirty years he’s been asking permission to piss, and can’t squeeze a drop without say so. He’s an institutionalized man.

The good news is, it’s never too late to unlearn. You’re never too old to be free.

Yes, it took your heart and mind a long time to get this way, and it will probably take a while to unfuck them.

But it is possible.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Have you liberated yourself from the prison, or merely switched to a different institution in which you are not free?

Cults are scary because they suck you in, but also because they don’t let you leave. 

There is simply too much psychological pressure. 

Members can’t just come and go as they please. People are strongly encouraged, and often times physically forced, to be committed and obey the rigid rules of conduct. 

It’s like that aggressive store owner who doesn’t let you leave without buying something. Or when you go to cancel your contract for some technology service, only to find out that all your website data is deleted, and the company denies you access and ownership to your account, making it impossible for you to leave them for another vendor.

Of course, this is not about cults. This is about coercion, power and pressure. 

Particularly in a social setting, where the tribal energy can be very difficult to resist. 

Think about the last time you were part of group, a club, or an organization, either personal or professional, that you decided to leave for whatever reason.

Were you afraid the people would criticize and judge your decision? Did you feel shame and sadness for not following through on your implicit commitment? Or perhaps you felt trapped under the weight of expectations? 

That’s completely normal. And healthy. Hell, only sociopaths don’t have feelings like that. 

However, one of the ways we set healthy boundaries is by staying strong in our decisions despite social pressure. Embracing our inner confidence to have certainty about our decisions, whether or not they disappoint others. 

It’s really hard. Not everybody is comfortable resisting majority influence and subverting social norms. What’s more, some people in your group will demand to know why you’re leaving so they can mend their heart and have clarity with the situation going forward. They will insist you tell them why you’re leaving because they deserve closure and resolution. 

But sadly, closure doesn’t exist. Boundaries do. 

Goldsmith calls this halting the journey. In his book about creating meaning and achievement, he writes:

Like cross country skiers, we’re stuck in a set of tracks that someone else has created with a particular route in mind. But the evolutionary journey from surviving to thriving requires a sort of global positioning system. You have to understand how to seal the doors behind you. 

It doesn’t mean you should act callously and inconsiderate of other people’s feelings. But it does mean that you should make your journey one of internal control, not outer. That you should be vigilant about excising out of your life any investment you truly believe has reached a point of diminishing returns.

Better to courageously abandon something you have clearly outgrown than to stick around too long and pay a premium on opportunity cost. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What support would you need to have in place in order to remember that you have a choice?

Seneca once wrote that the greatest peril of misplaced worry is that in keeping us constantly tensed against an imagined catastrophe, it prevents us from fully living. 

Perhaps it’s time we found a better place for that worry. 

To make the mental railroad switch, so to speak. 

Because even though it’s toxic energy, it’s still energy. Which means it can be channeled in a productive manner. 

Ellis tells his patients to begin with the worst possible situation and let it flood their senses. It’s a cognitive technique for desensitizing themselves to a diversity of frustrating situations. 

Instead of pretending not to be worried, they try following their irrational thoughts as far as they can possibly go. Because it might just prove to them just how ridiculous they’re actually being. 

For example, let’s say you’re running five minutes late for an early meeting at the office. 

How far can we follow that worry? 

Here we go. 

By running late, the client will get upset and close their account, which will piss off your boss and result in you getting fired, leading to your unemployment, which will send you into a pathetic spiral of depression, at which point your wife will walk out on your sorry ass, leaving you behind with no money, job prospects or friends, forcing you to move back in with your parents, who will resent you for disrupting their blissful retirement, which will soon create so much guilt that you will have no choice but to off yourself in the bathtub. 

All because you were five minutes late, you pathetic loser. 

Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? 

Next time you feel the weight of worry bearing down on you, go for broke. Go through your own hierarchy of mildly, moderately and intensely anxious scenes, and you might find yourself more relaxed than enraged. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How are you developing your ability to endure difficult feelings and learn from them?

The older we get, the trickier friendships become.

After a certain age, our schedules become more compressed, our priorities become more focused, our energies become more limited, our filters become more discerning and our values become more secure. 

Meaning, there is a finite number of new relationships we have room for. 

And so, we have to learn to approach our relationships with a sense of acceptance and trust. 

A few examples. 

We accept the changing tides of our friendships. Trusting that certain people come into our lives for a season for a reason. 

We accept there will be companions that we outgrow who we don’t know how to replace. Trusting that by letting go, we create the space in our hearts for new ones. 

We accept that soliciting new friendship is going to make us feel deeply vulnerable. Trusting that the process will pay dividends in the long term if we put ourselves out there. 

We accept that many people are unwilling to accept the burdens and risks of friendship. Trusting that when we reach out to them, it will be more meaningful that just sitting at home perpetuating our own disconnection and loneliness. 

We accept that some periods of solitude will be inevitable. Trusting that the more we know what matters most to us, the more we’ll become a beacon to people who are looking for a friend like us. 

It reminds me of something a friend once said about moving to a huge city in his thirties:

People come here to make it, not make friends. 

Maybe so. But lest we forget, we’re never alone in this world unless we want to be. There are no strings attached except the ones we choose to tie. 

Yes, the older we get, the trickier friendships become. And yes, the voluntary nature of friendship makes it subject to life’s whims in ways our other relationships aren’t. 

But there’s no reason to sentence ourselves to a destiny of loneliness. 

We just have to try harder. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What’s your system for keeping your relationships alive?

There’s a difference been adaptation and evolution. 

Adaptation is a specific process of adjusting ourselves to become better suited to our environment. It’s undergoing modification to fit our new circumstances. 

Evolution, however, is a broader term that refers to any change in anything over time. It’s the gradual development of something from a simple to a more complex form. 

But the two ideas work hand in hand. Despite their differences, the theme of both concepts is the same. 

Letting go. 

It’s about not getting stuck on something we first envisioned for ourselves. Because if we insist on consistency all the time in all things; if we are over reliant on our winning strategy for every endeavor, we will never adapt or evolve. 

Personally, my mistake was being way too religious about how I earned my money. It’s my stubbornly entrepreneurial and relentlessly independent personality. Profitable as that may have been, it also put limits on where my success could come from. 

And the epiphany was, oh wow, working by myself has finite earning potential. Not to mention a cap on overall job satisfaction. 

And in order to become better suited to the changing environment, in other words, to adapt, my career needed to diversify. Which meant working in a real office at actual companies, joining teams and collaborating with other human beings, in addition to running my own enterprise. 

It was far more complex than sitting in my living room in my pajamas making art all day, but ultimately more satisfying and less lonely. 

Such is the nature of evolution. We stay consistent in the micro, honoring our skills and talents; but we change in the macro, remaking ourselves as we grow and as the world changes. 

What do you need to let go of to keep moving the story forward? 

Once you figure that out, just know this. Each of us needs to find the balanced commitment to whatever our primary goal is, but with a willingness to pivot quickly when necessary. 

Because evolution doesn’t necessarily favor the strong, it favors the most adaptable to change. 

If we can learn to do that slowly and constantly, we will triumph. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What has always been heroic about your work that is now preventing you from growing?

The was a famous legislation passed in the seventies that provided enforcement for something called a satisfaction guarantee warranty. 

After all, the customer is always right. This act stipulated that businesses would have to refund the full purchase price regardless of the reason for dissatisfaction. 

Carlin famously named this the advertising lullaby, meaning, the whole purpose of marketing is to lull consumers to sleep. And it may have been revolutionary at the time. But fifty years later, there is massive proof of just how ubiquitous our satisfaction guaranteed consumer culture has become. 

That worn and tired phrase is more than just fine print at the end of an advertisement, it’s an entire mythology. Since the legalization of the satisfaction guaranteed concept, people have become deeply demanding of fulfillment in all of their interactions, not just their retail purchases. 

Each of us keeps mental ledgers of our disappointments and diminished expectations, and demand payback when the debit column gets a little too high. 

We embark on this quest for unrealistic satisfaction, poised in a great ballet of expectation, only to get our hearts broken again and again. 

But that’s the challenging part. Life is not a retail shop. Once our experience fails to match up to our impossibly high standards, we don’t get our money back. The product is not replaced within thirty days of purchase. 

How do we cope with that? 

Cameron’s book on finding inspiration urges us to ask ourselves a question to become more intentional around the idea of fulfillment:

What choice can you make right now that would fill you with pride and satisfaction? 

Her question is a hopeful reminder that although life is not set up to meet our meaning needs, we can still wield some control. We can still engage in the enterprise of paying singular attention to something we really want to bring into existence, big or small, no matter how shitty everything else is at the moment. 

Perhaps it’s time to amend that famed legislation to something a bit more realistic. 

Satisfaction is not guaranteed. 

The only thing we are guaranteed is the possibility of satisfaction. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Where can you express appreciation instead of expectation?

The four most liberating words in any language are:

Not my problem anymore. 

Like the entrepreneur who sells his company, but still gets phone calls from old customers who have complaints about their products. Not my problem anymore. 

Or the longtime board member who resigns from her volunteer role, but still gets emails about mundane issues that need voting on. Not my problem anymore. 

What about the property owner who sells his condo, only to learn about real estate tax hikes and waterline construction. Not my problem anymore. 

Or the broke and drained painter who gratefully takes a stable day job but keeps hearing news stories about how the gallery marketplace is tanking. Not my problem anymore. 

Each of these little moments of freedom happen for the same reason. 

Somebody somewhere set healthy boundaries. 

They bravely accepted that their golden goose was done laying eggs, and they made the risky choice to get on with their life. 

Whyte names this experiencedaring to rest. He says how to rest is to give up on the already exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its endless outward need to reward itself through established goals. To rest is to give up worrying and fretting and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to put it right. 

This is the type of rest that awaits us on the other side of surrender. It’s the reward for the difficult work of letting go. And it’s completely liberating. 

The best expression of this freedom is the departure of an outgoing president. 

The nation’s newly installed chief is escorted by their predecessors out of the capitol after the swearing in ceremony. They gather on the stairs on the east front of the building and wave to the whole world. 

And while the new president waves to the crowds, putting on his best executive face, but secretly terrified how the hell he is going to do this impossible job, the former president looks around as if to say, not my problem anymore. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What can you let go of right now so that you can regain your freedom?

Most of us don’t change until we have to. 

But the best time to prepare for change is before we need to. 

And so, why wait until things get visibly shaky? Better to habituate ourselves to the inevitable loss and uncertainty and fear that change brings. Better to train ourselves to make those small, effortless and irrelevant changes on the regular. 

That way, when the big kahuna comes along, we’ll be in a better position to ride it. 

Senge writes in his pivotal book about the dance of change our sense of surrender can make this process much lighter:

The notion that everything is in motion, in process, can relieve us of the pressure to have everything fixed and worked out. The only reliable thing we can know is that this situation shall change. And we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that whatever we are experiencing is not forever. 

Imagine if you adopted that mindset. The prospect of change would not only become less cumbersome, but more attractive. 

It’s just a weather pattern. How long can it keep raining, anyway? 

Hawaii definitely has a few cities with the most consecutive days of rain in the country. But that happened back in the late thirties, when it rained for two hundred days straight. A meteorological anomaly. Outside of that, it never rains for more than a few days. Maybe a week. 

Thoreau once called this the calendar of ebbs and flows of the soul. He wrote in his legendary journals:

The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of clouds pass over the earth. Pay not too much heed to them. Let not the traveler stop for them. They consist with the fairest weather. 

His concept not only applies to matters of the mind, but to matter itself. 

Change is taking place everywhere at every moment. And we can wait until it taps us on the shoulder to take action. 

Or we can throw our arms up in the air, surrender to the ebbs and flows of the soul, change before we need to, and have faith that the rain is going to pass eventually. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Once you learn that small changes won’t kill you, what big changes might you try?

Most credit card companies are vigilant about watching for unusual activity. 

Their algorithms constantly scan accounts and purchases, flagging any suspicious activity, and alert customers about any questionable transactions. Their computers know our spending habits better than we do. 

If we’re suddenly buying a thousand dollar handbag, but the average charge on our card rarely exceeds a few hundred dollars, be ready for the notification. 

We’ve noticed some unusual activity on your account and are concerned. Everything okay? Please call if you have questions. 

When this happens, customers feel scared and surprised, but also safe and cared for. Considering credit and debit card fraud is one of the biggest financial fears people have, fraud notifications offer us peace of mind. 

Wouldn’t it be great if people could receive similar notifications for every area of their lives? 

Just imagine, any time our behavior dramatically deviated from our normal patterns, it triggers a red flag. A computer analyzes every permutation in our history, measuring biofeedback such as pupil dilation, heart rate and body temperature; along with geolocation, cell phone data and other relevant data points, calculated against the standard variation, discovering if the activity is unusual and suspicious. 

The human seems to be experiencing genuine shock and surprise. Pupil dilation. Elevated heartbeat. Deploy response team!

Technologically, this is possible. With the capabilities of artificial intelligence, we are closer to this reality than we realize. 

Culturally, however, we may not be ready for this yet. It’s a little too close to one of those science fiction thriller movies. 

But in the meantime, this a useful exercise for each person to ask themselves. 

What triggers a red flag for you? What qualifies as unusual or suspicious activity? 

Credit card companies, for example, have certified identity theft risk management specialists who look for the following spending patterns:

Shopping away from your home base, making several purchases quickly, buying something small and then something big, charging travel expenses in multiple geographic locations on the same day, and so on.

What red flags are on your personal list? What if you shared that list with the people closest to you, and they were notified in the event of unusual or suspicious activity? 

It might prevent people from going down some dangerous roads, creating greater levels of accountability and integrity within relationships. 

Look, they’re already watching our every move anyway. May as well use it for our benefit. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Who is notified when your behavior suddenly becomes unusual and suspicious?

It’s true that the heaviest burden is having nothing to carry. 

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t areas of our lives where a lighter touch might be called for. That doesn’t mean there isn’t some part of us that has been bursting to rid itself of all this psychic weight. 

Here’s a scary thought experiment:

Where in your life you feel most burdened by the weight of expectations? What commitments have been eating away at your soul for a long time that you’re just dying to release? And if one burden could be removed from your life today, what would it be? 

Start from that place. All those obligations and crusades and responsibilities you once said yes to, that now make your life so heavy. Odds are, they are the stones in your pack that are dragging you down. The time has come to jettison some of that bulk, so your life can take on a lighter quality. 

Look, humans are meaning making machines, which means we can both invest and divest our meaning as we see fit. We’re grown ass adults who can do whatever we want. 

And the best part is, when we finally rid of all this stuff, we will be lighter for the journey in front of us. Which is not only a gift for ourselves, but everyone we encounter. 

It’s like cleaning out your closet or garage. One dedicated afternoon of purging all the crap you shouldn’t have kept in the first place, and by the time the sun sets, you physically feel lighter. 

Just imagine feeling like that, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually. 

That’s is the true benefit of deleting expectations, both yours or other people’s. They add up quickly. But because we never question their validity, we fail to calculate their total psychic burden. 

And we end up carrying the weight of ourselves on our shoulders.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What if you released the onus of taking responsibility for the rest of the world?