“Stress is a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath.”
Natalie Goldberg
How we live our lives and show up in our work truly is a matter of life and death. Suicides and deaths due to addictions are rising to epidemic levels, especially among many considered the most privileged, those with greatest access to opportunity and often the most successful; middle-aged white males. They are dying at record numbers, not from heart attacks and cancer but from suicide and drug and alcohol addiction, says recent news reports in New York Times and the Huffington Post. Their demise is a symptom of a bigger problem and begs the question: Why is this happening?
Adlerian psychology, (which drives much of our work at LifeWork Systems) is finally coming into it’s own and shines new understanding and hope on societal ills of all kinds, including poverty, racism, addiction, suicide and crime. Alfred Adler was born in 1870, and many suggest he was born at least a century too early. I agree. His psychology was less warmly received and acknowledged than other contemporaries of his time, such as Freud, Skinner and Jung because he clearly espoused equality in all forms, including between the sexes, the races, and relationships that spanned differences in economics, age, religion and more. He created practical applications for social equality and empowerment that were not accepted by the general public. Like the controversy over tobacco and pharmaceuticals today, there were people in his day and now, that had and have conflicts of interest that make Adler’s approach less palatable.
Above all, Adler emphasized personal responsibility, self-determination, and the negative conditions in the environment that contribute to interruptions in a person’s positive use of their autonomy. He identified specific factors that contribute or destroy a sense of social interest and healthy adaptation in the development of the human personality and what is needed in their place. Imagine if our cultural objective was for people to learn to be fully responsible for their actions, socially conscious for the good of all, and where they are empowered to make new decisions while effectively supported by others around them. Here are Adlerian tenets to consider as you run your business, your homes, schools, and communities:
- People are more alike than different, even though they may behave very differently.
- People need cooperation, collaboration and connection; they are biological necessities.
- People behave in accordance with what they want, not who they are, overriding their consciences and fears.
- All human beings are equal.
- All people have potential for social interest, their own “innate predisposition” to care for others.
- All attitudes are learned. The cure is reeducation.
- People compensate for alleged as well as real inferiorities.
- People are Social – with 4 core needs: To feel empowered, contributing, lovable, and connected.
- People are Subjective – operating from private logic they developed, often when interpreting events poorly.
- People are Self Determining (they author their reality based on their subjective private logic
- People are Purposeful – all behavior is goal oriented. We use emotions and actions to achieve goals.
- People are Holistic – even poor behavior is an attempt to correct a problem and heal.
As published in the column The Extraordinary Workplace in St. Louis Small Business Monthly, December 2015
