Card Holders

“The Disadvantages of Advantage Seeking”

If you were asked which side you would rather be on, and the only two choices were advantage or disadvantage, which would you choose? If you were asked whether advantage was a good or bad thing to have, how would you answer?

Seminar attendees arrive in thundering herds to learn about gaining “unfair advantages” in business, where leverage is king and facts are filtered to serve the one who win/wins. Having the upper hand is appealing, and it has its rewards, like money, cars, and clothing. There’s other stuff, too. Having a physical advantage has been useful for men to dominate the human species for eons. Intellectual advantage wins in law and politics every day.

Using sexuality to sell, no matter what sex, is big business in the land of the Card Holders. You can see the drive to gain advantage all around you, and in the attitudes of others. The desire for, and belief in the idea that controlling your life is good, drives each of us to vie for position in every interaction, with every person we meet. This has its advantages. But for every positive there’s a negative of equal proportion, and believe it or not, there are some disadvantages to seeking advantage, in the complex process of living.

Let’s take a look …

1.) Invulnerability Shuns Connection

Humankind naturally desires a mate to share life with. If intimacy takes shape between mates, emotional vulnerability is required by both people. Pain is certain any time we are vulnerable. The willingness to suffer is rare, and can be an accurate gauge for the depth of your caring; about anything or anyone. Intimacy requires attitudes that cut against the mental grain of advantage seekers. Attitudes that are honest and innocent. Sadly, those of us most emotionally guarded may stand to gain advantages, or at least avoid being hurt. But impenetrable walls of invulnerability retard the chance to offer and receive bonds with others that are meaningful and enduring.

2.) Sentiment Peddled As Caring

As children, we were all trained to be good and have right answers. For this life-long effort, we expect and sometimes receive approbation. This perpetual quest for acceptance and approval leads to the well-known practice of societal pretense. I call them “sposeda’s”; doing all the things you’re ‘sposeda’ do. But remember, conformity breeds both morality and rebellion. Most of us have built-in contradictions in our fantasies of who we should be, and what we feel entitled to. Disappointment pervades daily experience when the facts in our lives contradict comforting ideas… like love, for instance.

Have you ever had someone tell you they love you but then their actions appeared to be different than your idea of love? Often love is defined by intentions and feelings. Feelings are fleeting, and intentions are worthless without follow through. Follow through is found in actions. Actions are where you find love, especially when it is inconvenient or painful to act in a caring manner; to nurture life even if it doesn’t nurture us back. To give focused energy in a relaxed context of warm acceptance, even when being ridiculed, criticized, and condemned. Sentiment can’t pass that test. Sentiment is pretend caring. Caring is observed in behaviors, not words.

3.) Desire to Win Promotes Deceit

Have you ever worked with someone who had decided, “failure is not an option”? We all want to win. I’ve never met someone who wants to lose. Creating winning habits and attitudes is center to creating desirable outcomes. Influencing outcomes is important if you’re going to get what you want. And everybody’s trying to get what they want out of life. That’s how we define a happy life. Trouble is, when advantage is going to swing away from us, we tend to omit, ignore, “forget”, and manipulate facts. We can even believe in our personal integrity as we pretend we didn’t understand past agreements we made that no longer serve us well. We can feel entitled to nearly anything and still believe in ideas that contradict our actions, all the while controlling outcomes to our own benefit. Do you have any experience with this dilemma?

4.) Desires Precede Needs

Once you’re 18, you can do what you want, right? This popular idea runs rampant in the minds of the free. But look around. Does doing, getting, and being everything we want lead to fulfillment? Do people that have the most (externally) also experience equal fulfillment in their lives?

It’s easy to miss that doing anything you want includes eating everything you want. This little contradiction shows up in study after study of obesity problems. Doing anything you want means entertaining yourself pleasurably, to your discretion, beyond what affirms life, even to the exploitation of others. Having everything you want means that once you get something, the needle is empty, and attention soon turns to the next item you’re willing to trade your future for. That’s how credit cards were invented.

Point is, doing everything we need is more important than doing anything we want. By mastering what our bodies, minds, and emotions need, many unhealthy desires dissolve. This is not to say that all desire is unhealthy. But ya gotta watch them impulses, every step of the way, and see if they meet up with what’s needed. If not, choose need and watch a problem disappear.

5.) Thinking to Understand is Missing

Have you ever thought about thinking? (This is the stuff I do for fun on Friday night — I know, get a life, right?) Think for a moment about your purpose for thinking. Why do people usually think? Most often it’s to get answers, solve problems, and accumulate information. Accumulated information is stored and used as needed to gain temporary advantages and feel good. (More on how “feeling good” falls miles short of Self Worth in later entries. For now, let’s continue…) It’s rare that people think solely to understand.

Think about how people normally listen. Let’s give all of us listeners the benefit of the doubt and say that a conversation began with a question rather than a statement. As listener, it’s common to gather enough information so that we find common ground, then respond with our own feeling, desire, or opinion about what we hear. It’s rare to ask more questions with the sole purpose of understanding someone else’s perspective. If more questions come, there is frequently an agenda: probing for useful information. Why is that so wrong? Well, it’s not, necessarily. It’s just a recipe for communication ping- pong and a tendency to think for control rather than understanding — listening to respond rather than explore. How many questions are you good for in a conversation with someone else?

Listen sometime. Practice with someone you really care about. Ask a question. Watch your mind want to tell them something, then pause, and ask them another question. You may learn something. Some people learn that they’re not really that curious. This is a chance to begin recapturing that childhood innocence, if you’re willing to let go of some of the cards. Subtle shifts in purpose can open doors to intimacy; and blindness to old habits can keep the most important people in your life hungry at your hands. Saddest part is, without looking, neither person may ever know why. Happy part is, you have a choice. Give up some advantage. (It has it’s advantages.)