1. Overcoming the monster (see April 26 post)
2. Rags to Riches (this post)
3. The Quest
4. Voyage and Return
5. Comedy
6. Tragedy
7. Rebirth
Walk out onto the American Idol stage and stand in front of those three judges. You can feel them evaluating you. This is it. This is your opportunity. Your chance to show the world your true worth.
You may have seen Susan Boyle take this same walk a little over a week ago and stand in front of the three judges of the TV show “Britain’s Got Talent.” The camera panned the audience, taking in smirks and raised eyebrows as she declared her dream of becoming a famous singer. She looked more like a mouse than a star performer and spoke like a country hick. But then… she opened her mouth. When she sang the first line of “I dreamed a dream,” from Les Miserables, the audience stopped breathing. Their eyes opened wide in shock. This was no mere country girl, this was Cinderella at the ball, transformed before their very eyes by the sound of her voice. The audience realized they’d misjudged her. As they continued to listen, every person there (and the 30+ million watching the YouTube video later that week) felt their hearts pried open. Something magical had just happened.
What made Susan Boyle famous overnight is the archetypal promise fulfilled in every rags to riches story. Assuming you as the hero/heroine, the story begins with the inner conviction that your current lowly circumstances (the story plot assumes they’re lowly) are not a true measure of your worth. You receive a call to action, an opportunity to prove yourself. The story promises that, if it’s the right opportunity and you do your best, you will shine brightly, and fame and fortune will be yours.
The true prize is knowing your value
Yet fame and fortune (and sometimes a trophy mate) are only external symbols of the true prize. The real prize is to know we have value (Edinger, 1972). That’s why, in non-Hollywood versions of the tale, external accolades are only the first part of the archetypal rags-to-riches transformation. What Susan Boyle needs to do next is every bit as important to her happily-ever-after as what she’s already done. In order for you (or anyone) to experience a happily-ever-after, the world’s recognition of your greatness (and Susan’s) must match your opinion of yourself. If it doesn’t, glory turns to dust in your mouth and, without an inner journey of transformation to get the two to match, self-sabotage is the result.
Listening to the sage
But even if you’re already in the middle of a self-sabotaging scheme, that doesn’t mean it’s too late to experience the happily-ever-after you desire. In fact, your own acts of self-sabotage can be like a wise sage whispering where you need to go next on your journey… that is, if you can listen to the wisdom within. Here’s one way to listen.
Self-sabotage occurs when you experience success and feel a gap between that success and your internal barometer of self-worth. Because you are constantly receiving feedback from both internal and external sources, one of your most important jobs as a human being is to merge these two streams of feedback into an “integrated” picture of the self (Deci & Ryan, 2000). When you find a discrepancy between what the outside world says about your worth and what your internal sources are telling you, you experience a very uncomfortable tension. This tension lingers until you resolve the discrepancy in one of three general ways:
- You change your behavior to realign external and internal feedback (this might sound like a good option, but it could mean lowering your performance to match a poor self-concept, in other words, self-sabotage).
- You undermine and/or ignore one of the feedback sources (Hollywood endings often end with this approach, sending the message to ignore your internal barometer and take the money, the glory, and your highly desirable new spouse, and run before anyone else figures out that you didn’t deserve any of the above.)
- You find a higher synthesis in which both sources have validity (here’s the gold at the end of the self-transformation rainbow, but it means growing up and becoming psychologically mature. See below).
Quite simply, options one and two above do not lead to happy endings that last. The third option, however, has held our attention for about 2000 years of storytelling and still has merit today. In the language of self-regulation psychology, it means:
- Your behavior is directed by an entire hierarchy of goals, and the ones on top control all kinds of underlying processes (Carver & Scheier, 2000).
- One of the highest goals up the human hierarchy tree is the transformation of your ego-self to a mature human being who sees and cares about the bigger picture (Loevinger, 1976).
- This mature human being is defined as someone who can deflect personal desires for the greater good and can delay gratification in the service of higher goals.
- Your own self-sabotaging behavior can be quite valuable to you, if you use it to become aware that there is a discrepancy between how the world treats you and how you feel about yourself.
Becoming aware of a discrepancy like this doesn’t always feel good. Sometimes it feels like someone grabbing hold of your insides and giving them a good twist. But there’s always a sense of relief that accompanies this gut twist. Part of you knew something wasn’t quite right when all that external success was piled at your door. In this case, it’s not a matter of low self-esteem (a common reason offered by many cognitive psychologists), it’s a matter of using feedback discrepancies to guide internal transformation, and this, my friend, is the stuff of kings. For more on using feedback loops to guide personal transformation, keep reading. We'll look in detail at feedback loops after we fleshing out the seven story types.
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