The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why Being Your Whole Self--Not Just Your "Good" Self--Drives Success and Fulfillment

by Todd Kashdan

three major dysfunctional beliefs directly ramp up distress and destructive behavior: “I must do well and win the approval of others to be accepted.” “Other people must do ‘the right thing’ or else they are no good.” “Life must be easy, without discomfort or inconvenience.”

when anxiety is concerned, there is really only one underlying problem: avoidance.

THE TAKEAWAYS Modern people are less accustomed to hardship than our forebears, who had to contend with world wars, economic depressions, influenza epidemics, and other pervasive hardships. Relative wealth and advances in technology mean that, nowadays, we enjoy unprecedented comfort. They also mean that we increasingly view discomfort as toxic, unmanageable, and intolerable. Attitudes toward comfort are more than just personal opinions, they are embedded in culture. The social and economic climate of the 1980s and 1990s helped shape our modern views of comfort and discomfort. Perhaps the group most directly affected by modern leanings toward comfort is children. Parents are increasingly involved in school, social life, and recreation in an attempt to create an environment that is safe, hygienic, and psychologically supportive. Ironically, this trend might be making the lives of our children more difficult rather than less. Asians, by virtue of their unique socialization, have a different relationship with so-called negative emotions than Westerners do. Asians are better able to tolerate unpleasant emotions. Because they do not attempt to avoid or suppress these feelings, they are also more open to positive moods, even if they do not try to artificially savor them for long periods. CHAPTER 3

When we talk about a happy person, we’re describing someone who lives through frequent positive emotions and infrequent negative emotions.

THE TAKEAWAYS When we’re happy, our comfort with the status quo interferes with our ability to carefully attend to detail, and as a result we end up a bit more gullible, a bit less persuasive, and a little further from success. Although happiness is widely beneficial, organizing one’s life around it can lead to a great deal of effort and time being spent unwisely. Trying too hard to be happy interferes with the pleasure, engagement, and meaning we could otherwise find in the world. Happiness agendas backfire. Short-term and long-term goals are connected to each other, and we often need to sacrifice short-term happiness to accomplish meaningful long-term outcomes. People want to feel bad from time to time, especially when these “negative” psychological states are seen as instrumental to achieving a particular goal, such as preparing for a confrontation or persuading another person to alter their opinions. When a task is boring or requires detail-oriented or analytical skills, happy leaders can inadvertently squelch motivation and impair performance. The best leaders tailor their expression of emotions to what their followers are going through and what will inspire the best outcome. If you want to be surrounded by productive, creative, satisfied people, create an environment where diverse feelings and behaviors are honored. Peter Drucker once quipped, “Never mind your happiness; do your duty.” Based on the latest science, we offer a similar recommendation that happy thoughts...

researchers found that pilots who took naps in this study were 20 percent faster in their decision making and made 34 percent fewer mistakes after they woke up. The power of strategically turning the mind off to recharge cannot be underestimated. Where else can you gain a measureable 34 percent performance improvement in less than twenty-six minutes?

In 2012, his team monitored the brain activity of adults taking a midday nap. These researchers found that, during these napping periods, the right hemisphere of the brain—heavily associated with creative thinking—communicated frequently with the left side.

THE TAKEAWAYS Mindfulness can be beneficial, but we are also naturally predisposed to mindlessness. Automatic thinking helps conserve mental resources. Mental depletion can lead to a productive form of dis-inhibition. Mindless processing often leads to superior performance and better decisions, especially in complicated situations. Subliminal prompts can push us toward greater goal effort. Attempts to stamp out mindlessness are destined to fail.

Here are some additional shortcuts for harnessing mindlessness: Set ridiculously short deadlines—ten seconds—in which to make decisions that you have already spent a few minutes paralyzed about what to do. In doing so, you force a mindless decision. There is always a reason not to take a trip somewhere. There is always a reason to stick with the same grocery store purchases. Take ten seconds and then press submit, put the item in your car, or walk away without wasting any more energy on the decision. Use cues or signals that represent your goals. Do you want to be cool and collected in a situation, or be candid and open to whatever you’re feeling? Do you want to have big aspirations and be willing to take risks to achieve them, or be risk adverse, being sure not to make mistakes? Words and images can be taped in your room and on your desk that prime particular goals and motivational styles. Schedule time for mental meandering. Mindfulness is a resource-intensive strategy; there’s a reason we are not exclusively hardwired that way. When the mind wanders, our brain activity is almost the same as when we are resting. Ideas collide and creativity happens by accident. Households and organizations can be organized to encourage strategic mindless activity. This is one of many reasons that free play and physical activity during recess is the last thing that should be removed from school schedules. Set rules for the use of intuition. When you have a simple choice to make, you will ...

Self-involved people are interested in the Big Stuff. Narcissistic people want to be admired, and this motivates them to take action in situations that will appeal to the outside world.

the only rule in the game of social influence: it’s okay to manipulate as long as you don’t get caught.

The first rule of creativity is that you must be able to risk being wrong, risk making mistakes, and risk public scrutiny.

The problem with creative people is that they have a tendency to fall in love with their own ideas. This is partly because creativity is experienced as a pleasurable epiphany, and what feels good is often mistaken for what is good.

Some amount of critical pushback, or so-called depressive realism, acts as an antidote to falling in love with our own ideas.

entitled, grandiose people are better at facing uncertainty. They experience fear openly, without the fear of fear, because they are busy moving in the direction of the grandiose kind of life they most want to live, feel they deserve, and are willing to work toward.

What have you given up, how has your life space narrowed over time, in an attempt to feel less social discomfort?

In the right context, we can all draw on Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy to keep a level head in tense situations, to charm others, and to believe in our ability to pursue big dreams. Acknowledge this part of your psychological repertoire, be willing to access it when needed, and you’ve just gained the 20 percent edge that you will need in that final lap.

THE TAKEAWAYS Everyone, without exception, manipulates others. Doing so effectively is a matter of dosage and timing. It is essential to separate the malevolent parts of the Dark Triad from the benevolent parts of psychopathy, such as fearless dominance, and the benevolent parts of narcissism, such as grandiose self-assuredness, that stimulate courage, creativity, and leadership ability. Some of the greatest leaders in history had these qualities and with them were willing to take risks and be disliked in the pursuit of personally valued, ambitious goals. A little narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism (underutilized skills in human relationships) can be extraordinarily effective in winning others over, creating great experiences for friends and customers, motivating other people, and accelerating a sense of intimacy and comfort.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. —C. G. Jung

The salient facts are these: Comfort addiction results in lower immunity to negative experiences (chapter 2). Negative emotions are an underappreciated resource (chapter 3). The pursuit of happiness can weaken you (chapter 4). Mindlessness is beneficial, especially when alternated with mindfulness (chapter 5). Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy give you an edge in tough, complex dealings with other people (chapter 6).

This positivity bias, as psychologists call it, is the tendency to artificially inflate the goodness of, well, just about everything.

Defensive pessimists, according to Dr. Julie Norem at Wellesley College, “hope for the best but expect the worst.”

imagining worst-case scenarios, defensive pessimists transform their anxiety into action, implementing plans that can mitigate disaster.

What’s more, initial research evidence indicates that these types of people don’t experience negative moods as intensely as people who are more routinely upbeat. That is, their lowest lows aren’t so bad. In fact, research shows that defensive pessimists perform better than optimists in stressful, challenging situations.

This, then, is the Holy Grail of psychology: wholeness. Medicine is not about penicillin, or setting bones; it is, fundamentally, about health.

Modern psychological scholars are not naïve about neurosis, hardship, and the darker half of human nature. The real travesty comes in dismissing these as ills needing to be cured in the same way that cancer needs to be treated. In fact, most modern scholars differ from their lay counterparts in that they view uncomfortable states not only as an inescapable aspect of self-growth, but also as tools for success in their own right.

To recap the basic thesis of this book—divorcing yourself from the so-called negative aspects of your natural psychological architecture limits your potential. By not only accepting but also actually embracing the less comfortable aspects of your being, if only for brief periods, you maximize your chances for true success and becoming whole. This, and not some feeble-minded happiness, is the true Elysium.

We present two primary dimensions of a good life: (1) pleasure/meaning, and (2) novelty/stability. Simply put, people want to experience pleasure and meaning, and they want to balance some degree of fresh experience along with a modicum of predictability.

Pleasure + Growth + Sacrifice = Wholeness

Being whole is about being open and accommodating of all parts to your personality: the light and dark passengers, the strengths and weaknesses, the successes and failures. To this we add the combination of a pleasurable and profoundly meaningful life, and the embrace of both novelty and stability. Acknowledging seemingly contradictory aspects of the self will increase the power and influence you wield in the present, and the vitality, agility, and perseverance you can bring to the life tasks that lie ahead.