RETREAT FROM ADULTHOOD -- NUMBER FOUR

RETREAT FROM ADULTHOOD – NUMBER FOUR

DO YOU LIKE YOURSELF?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© July 8, 2011

If you are a reader, sometimes a book can introduce you to yourself.  It is a strange phenomenon.  You have to be in a peculiar state of mind to be receptive to such a book, an awareness level that only seems to happen when our conscious and unconscious minds meet and speak to each other from the depths of our being. 

Such a moment occurred to me when I returned from South Africa after completing my assignment with the terrible agony of apartheid still reverberating in my psyche, and the values with which I had been programmed in total shatters. 

It happened in Chicago picking up a book at a newspaper kiosk after having my last meeting with Nalco Chemical Company, my employer, before resigning at the advanced age of thirty-five.  The other book came into my hands a few years later when I was still stumbling in the dark trying to gain purchase of who I was and where I was going.  On this particular day, I wandered into the Haslam Book Store in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The books were both slender paperbacks, introducing me to new authors.  I would eventually read everything they had published, including biographies and autobiographies, more than twenty volumes by each cogent author.

Perhaps not surprising, the titles were catchy, and reflected my troubled mind. 

The books proved to be easy reads although their missives touched my soul.  The Chicago book was written by the English author, turned eastern philosopher, Alan W. Watts, and was titled THE BOOK: ON THE TABOO AGAINST KNOWING WHO YOU ARE (1966).  The St. Petersburg book was written by the eastern mystic J. Krishnamurti, and was titled YOU ARE THE WORLD (1972).

The book by Watts backed me away from thoughts of suicide, while Krishnamurti's book reminded me that in me was the whole world, if I knew how to look and learn, and the door to that world was before me, and the key was in my hand, but no one could open that door except myself.

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It finally dawned on me, and it didn’t happen in a second, but after reading and reflecting on these books, that I liked myself, not as I should be, not as others said I was meant to be, but as I actually was.  My drive, my laziness, my dreaminess, my lustfulness, my passion, my temper, and my physicality became acceptable to me, as well as my lower middle class Irish Roman Catholic roots. 

When I was young, I was very strong and always worried about hurting someone badly in a heightened state of anger.  Accepting this flaw in me lowered its voltage.  Anger, a psychiatrist once told me, was the seat of my motivation.  It stoked my boiler, but needed to be managed.  He said it was my creative force.  Distill and sublimate it, and it will work to your advantage.  Let it seethe and it could erupt into spontaneous emotional combustion.  He wasn’t telling me to deny its force, or erase it from my persona, but to use it, pointing out that it had been the basis of my success in work without my realizing.

About that same time, I came across another book, SELF-REALIZATION AND SELF-DEFEAT (1966) by Samuel S. Warner, a psychotherapist.  In reading it, I was amazed how often I turned defeat into success in one sphere, and success into defeat in another.

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With this introduction to myself, I said, “So, I like myself, warts and all, so what?” 

At the time, I was retired thirty to forty years younger than anyone else in my neighborhood.  I would read, play tennis, jog and play basketball with my son Robert and his friends everyday after school. 

I was writing short stories, even had a national agent, who liked my offbeat style, but couldn’t get me published.  He kept saying when we break you into print you’ll go gangbusters.  Well, it never happened.  It was the Broome Agency, and he eventually dropped me.  I felt like a totally deflated balloon.

My wife gave me the same advice Hemingway gave a would-be writer, write about what you know, write about why you were so successful so young.  

In six weeks I turned out a manuscript, which I titled LET’S TAKE THE WORRY OUT OF SELLING (1969).  It was sent to Prentice-Hall in New Jersey.  Two weeks later, Prentice-Hall called and said they wanted to publish the book.  I was elated but shocked because it wasn’t the kind of writing I wanted to have published.

The publisher changed the title to CONFIDENT SELLING (1970) without changing a word in the manuscript, unfortunately, while asking me to describe the book in one or two paragraphs.  Known for my prolixity, I went on a jog and came back and wrote this:

The book is not actually a selling book, but a psychology or book on a developing pragmatic philosophy.  Since I am not a psychologist or philosopher, I would say for your purposes the book’s message is this: accept yourself as you are, and you will accept others as you find them.

It didn’t occur to me, until much later, that I had provided a definition for self-acceptance, liking oneself, and tolerance, accepting others as I found them.  Thanks to what I had read by these authors, I had distilled what existed behind my mask, and what could be useful in day-today life.

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My success was in the discovery that my conflict wasn’t with others with whom I would deal, but with myself.  Colleagues thought I was lucky, when luck had nothing to do with my performance.  My success had been a combination of being disciplined, a good listener, a careful observer, an energetic worker, a planner who planned his work and worked his plan, a person who saw the customer’s surroundings as personal extensions of him as much as the way he dressed, talked and walked, and that in taking extensive notes after sales calls and transcribing them into tickler files on each person, I had created a typology of every type of person I was likely to encounter. 

This became the basis of CONFIDENT SELLING, which was in print for twenty years and went through scores of printings.

The back cover of the book gives a sense of its content.  You will note the influence of the authors mentioned in this missive here:

If you’re a salesman who’s got what it takes to be the best, but you haven’t proved yourself yet, or you have proved yourself, but you’re finding it rough maintaining the tempo, here’s a dynamic new confidence builder that helps you leap over the final hurdle to success to continued success!  This book, your own private counselor, shows you how to develop confidence in your ability to sell.  By the same token, it demonstrates why you should be confident.  Here’s the door to opportunity with you holding the only key to the biggest sale you will ever make, belief in yourself!

Liking yourself, or self-acceptance is not easy.  It hasn’t been easy for me.  I once was a perfectionist.  Warner says that is the worse thing in the world and leads only to self-defeat.  Another mystery solved here is that of being seen as a seller.  Many don’t like that designation although every job no matter how humble or exalted involves selling, and the selling is the value added of oneself to oneself as well as to others.

I have written other books on this subject including CONFIDENT SELLING FOR THE 90s (1992), which won a Pulitzer Prize nomination.  An article in READER’S DIGEST (June 1993) grew into a book, THE TABOO AGAINST BEING YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND (1996).  Each has been a modest attempt to repay my debt to books and ideas that have helped me find my fragile self and celebrate what that discovery has allowed.

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