“The Courage To Be Imperfect”: Rudolf Dreikurs On The Pursuit Of Rightness And The Fear Of Making Mistakes

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

In his lecture “The Courage to Be Imperfect,” psychologist Rudolf Dreikurs tells how we are driven every day by the desire to be more important and to the right, where the roots of the fear of making mistakes lie, and why this is just a legacy of the slave psychology of an authoritarian society, which is time to say goodbye to

If you still haven't gotten rid of the obsessive desire to be good, then here's a stunning speech by Austro-American psychologist Rudolf Dreikurs, "The Courage to be Imperfect," which he gave in 1957 at the University of Oregon. It is primarily about what makes us strive to seem better than we are, why it is so difficult to get rid of this desire and, of course, how to muster the courage to “be imperfect”, which is equivalent to the concept of “being real”.

If I already know that you are so bad, then at least I should find out that you are worse. This is what we all do. Anyone who criticizes himself treats others the same way.

Courage to be imperfect

Today I present to your judgment one of the most important aspects of psychology. Topic for reflection and reflection: "The courage to be imperfect."

I knew an incredible number of people who tried hard to be good. But I have never seen them do that for the benefit of other people.

I discovered that the only thing behind striving to be good is caring for your own prestige. The desire to be good is needed only for one's own exaltation. Someone who really cares about others will not waste precious time and find out if he is good or bad. He is simply not interested in it.

To make it clearer, I’ll tell you about two ways of acting on the social scene - two ways of using your powers. We can define them as horizontal and vertical. What I mean?

Some people move along a horizontal axis, that is, whatever they do, they move towards other people. They want to do something for others, they are interested in others - they just act. This fundamentally does not coincide with other motivation, thanks to which people move along the vertical axis. Whatever they do, they do it out of a desire to be higher and better.

In fact, improvement and help can be replicated in any of these 2 ways. There are people who do something well because they like it, and there are others who do the same thing, but for a different reason. The latter are happy to prove how good they are.

Even human progress is likely to depend both on the contributions of those who move along the horizontal axis and those who move upward along the vertical line. The motivation of many people who have brought great benefits to humanity was the desire to prove how good they are, in order to feel their superiority.

Others have made our world kinder by the so-called unselfish method, without thinking about what they can get out of it.

And, nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference between the ways of achieving the goal: regardless of whether you move horizontally or vertically, you go forward, you accumulate knowledge, you raise your position, prestige, you are more and more respected, perhaps even your material well-being grows.

At the same time, the one who moves along the vertical axis does not always move upward. It all the time soars up, then falls down: up and down. Doing a good deed, he climbs several steps up; the next moment, mistakenly, he is down again. Up and down, up and down. It is along this axis that most of our compatriots are moving. The consequences are obvious.

A person living in this plane will never be able to determine for sure whether he has climbed high enough, and is never sure that he will not fly down again the next morning. Therefore, he lives in constant tension, anxiety and fear. He's vulnerable. As soon as something is wrong, he falls, if not in the opinion of other people, then certainly in his own.

Advancement along the horizontal axis takes place in a completely different way. A person walking horizontally moves forward in the desired direction. He does not move up, but goes forward. When something does not work out, he tries to understand what is happening, looks for workarounds, tries to fix it. He is driven by a simple interest. If his motivation is strong, then enthusiasm awakens in him. But he does not think about his own elevation. He is interested in acting, and not worrying about his prestige and position in society.

So, we see that in the vertical plane there is a constant fear of error and a desire for self-exaltation.

And yet, today, many, spurred by social competition, are completely dedicated to the problem of self-worth and self-aggrandizement - they are never good enough and are not sure that they can match, even if they appear to be successful in the eyes of their citizens.

Now we come to the main question of those who care for their own exaltation. This global issue is primarily a problem of making mistakes.

Perhaps, first of all, we need to clarify why people worry about mistakes. What's so dangerous about that? First, let's turn to our heritage, to our cultural tradition.

In an authoritarian society, mistakes are unacceptable and unforgivable. The lord king never makes mistakes, because he is free to do as he pleases. And no one dares to tell him that he is somehow wrong on pain of death.

Errors are made exclusively by subordinates. And the only person who decides whether a mistake was made or not is the boss.

Therefore, making mistakes means not meeting the requirements:

“As long as you act as I tell you, there can be no mistake, because I am right. I said so. And if you still made a mistake, it means that you did not follow my instructions. And I'm not going to take it. If you dare to do something wrong, that is, not in the way I told you, then you can count on my cruel punishment. And if you harbor illusions, hoping that I will not be able to punish you, then there will always be someone above me who will make sure that you have received in full”.

Mistake is a deadly sin. A terrible fate awaits the one who made a mistake! This is the typical and necessarily authoritarian view of collaboration.

To cooperate is to do what you said. It seems to me that the fear of making a mistake arises for another reason. It is an expression of our way of being. We live in an atmosphere of fierce competition.

And the mistake is terrible not so much by punishment, which we don't even think about, but by the loss of our status, ridicule and humiliation: “If I do something wrong, then I am bad. And if I am bad, then I have nothing to respect, I am nobody. So you are better than me! Awful thought.

"I want to be better than you because I want to be more important!" In our time, there are not many signs of superiority left. A white man can no longer be proud of his superiority, just because he is white. The same man, he no longer looks down on a woman - we will not allow him. And even the superiority of money is still a question, since it can be lost. The Great Depression showed us this.

There remains only one area where we can still calmly feel our superiority - this is the situation when we are right. This is the new snobbery of intellectuals: "I know more, therefore, you are stupid, and I am superior to you."

And it is precisely in the struggle to achieve moral and intellectual superiority that a motive arises that makes a mistake extremely dangerous: “If you find out that I was mistaken, how can I look down on you? And if I can't look down on you, you can do it."

In our society, the same happens as in our families, where brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, parents and children look down at each other for the slightest mistake, and each is desperate to prove that he is right and not right. they are just other people.

Also, those who don't give a damn may tell you, “Do you think you're right? But it is in my power to punish you, and I will do whatever I want, and you cannot stop me!"

And although we are cornered by our little child, who commands us and does what he likes, at least we know that we are right and he is not.

Mistakes put us in a quandary. But if you are not depressed, if you are willing and able to use your inner resources, difficulties only stimulate you to make more successful attempts. There is no point in crying over a broken trough.

But most people who make mistakes feel guilty: they are humiliated, they cease to respect themselves, they lose faith in their abilities. I watched this over and over again: it was not mistakes that caused irreparable damage, but the feeling of guilt and disappointment that arose after. This is what they spoiled everything.

As long as we are consumed with false assumptions about the importance of mistakes, we cannot take them calmly. And this idea leads us to misunderstand ourselves. We pay too much attention to what is bad in us and around us.

If I am critical of myself, then naturally I will also be critical of the people around me.

If I already know that you are so bad, then at least I should find out that you are worse. This is what we all do. Anyone who criticizes himself treats others the same way.

Therefore, we need to come to terms with who we really are. Not like many say: “What are we, after all? A small grain of sand in the ocean of life. We are limited by time and space. We are so small and insignificant. Life is so short, and our stay on earth does not matter. How can we believe in our strength and power?"

When we stand in front of a huge waterfall or look at high mountains covered with snow, or find ourselves in the middle of a raging ocean, many of us are lost, feel weak and awe at the greatness of the power of nature. And only a few made, in my opinion, the correct conclusion: the strength and power of the waterfall, the amazing majesty of the mountains and the amazing energy of the storm are manifestations of the life that is in me.

Many people, whose hearts sink in awe of the amazing beauty of nature, also admire the amazing organization of their bodies, their glands, the way they work, admire the strength and power of their minds. We have not yet learned to perceive ourselves and relate to ourselves in this way.

We are just beginning to free ourselves from the yoke of autocracy, in which the masses were not taken into account and only reason or the ruler, together with the clergy, knew what the people needed. We have not yet gotten rid of the slave psychology of the authoritarian past.

What would have changed if we had not been born? One kind word sunk into the soul of the young man, and he did something differently, better. Maybe thanks to him, someone was saved. We cannot even imagine how strong we are and how much benefit we bring to each other.

Because of this, we are always dissatisfied with ourselves and try to rise, fear harmful mistakes and desperately strive for superiority over others. Therefore, perfection is not needed, and besides, it is unattainable.

There are people who are terribly afraid to do something wrong because they value themselves low. They remain eternal students because at school they can be told what is right and they know how to get good grades. But in real life it doesn't work.

Someone who is afraid of failing, who wants to be right anyway, cannot act successfully. There is only one condition under which you can be sure that you are right - this is when you try to do something right.

And there is one more condition by which you can judge whether you are right or not. These are the consequences. By doing something, you can realize that you did the right thing only after the consequences of your action appeared.

Someone who needs to be right cannot make a decision, because he is never sure that he is doing the right thing.

Being right is a false premise that makes us often misuse the right.

Have you ever wondered about the difference between logical and psychological correctness? Can you imagine how many people torment their loved ones that they must be right, and, unfortunately, they are always like that?

There is nothing worse than a person who is always morally right. And proves it all the time.

Such righteousness - both logical and moral - often destroys human relationships. We often sacrifice kindness and patience in the name of righteousness.

No, we will not come to peace and cooperation if we are driven by the desire to be right; we are just trying to tell others how good we are, but we cannot deceive ourselves.

No, being human does not mean always being right or being perfect. To be human means to be useful, to do something not only for yourself, but also for others. To do this, you need to believe in yourself and respect yourself and others.

But there is a necessary prerequisite here: we cannot focus on human shortcomings, because if we are too worried about the negative qualities of people, we can not treat them or ourselves with respect.

We need to realize that we are good the way we are, because we will never be better, no matter how much we have acquired, what we have learned, what position we occupy in society or how much money we have. We need to learn to live with it.

If we are unable to come to terms with who we are, then we will never be able to accept others as they really are.

To do this, you need not be afraid to be imperfect, you need to realize that we are not angels or superheroes, that we sometimes make mistakes, and each has its own shortcomings, but at the same time each of us is good enough, because there is no need to be better than others. This is a wonderful belief.

If you agree with what you are, then the devil of vanity, the "golden calf of my superiority" will disappear. If we learn to act and do everything in our power, then we will get pleasure from this process.

We must learn to live in peace with ourselves: understand our natural limitations and always remember how strong we are.