MY schoolgirl crush was Dale Carnegie; How to Win Friends and Influence People, my bedside bible. Did I win friends? Nope. Decades later, Wayne Dyer came along and stole my soul. The sky is the limit became my mantra. Life, I thought, was going to be a ball, after all. And the people around me? Well, my best friend Dyer, showed me How to Pull Your Strings and Take Control. And put bullies in their place. Wow, it seemed so simple then!
Today, Sartre’s sobering words, “everything has been figured out except how to live”, drive home more sense than the prophets of psychology, still around, still conducting workshops and still minting millions. As they propound away, pulling in wide-eyed disciples — including me — I’m still hanging in there in wait that some day, I may get it!
But where are these ‘pop psychologists’ when I really need them? Surely, when fragility, anxiety, anger and hopelessness come to visit without notice — uninvited — and settle in without saying when they will leave, do I really have the zing and the zest to recall ‘feel-good’ lessons I have committed to memory?
“Passion, excitement and confidence are medicines you need daily,” hammers away my latest shrink, Doc Phil. Watching him exchange notes with Larry King on Los Angeles heaven-on-earth lifestyle and shopping-in-paradise, (Dr Phil and family are soon to move to Larry’s multi-million-dollar neighborhood in L.A), he lost me. But who cares? Phillip McGraw is America’s top psychologist, psychiatrist, litigation analyst, public speaker and Oprah Winfrey’s weekly fixture. Phew!
And his book, Self Matters — Creating Your Life from the Inside Out — is the No. 1 New York Times Bestseller.
Larry King uses him as his sounding board. The high flying, terribly successful, fifty-something head doctor has a ready answer to any problem posed by the beleaguered always-women callers on Larry’s shows. He declares that while he’s a dud in math, his analytical skills are the best that money can buy. And to prove his point, he makes a soul-stirring confession (in his book) that leaves his readers gasping for air.
“Bottom line — I’m going jack-ass batty in here ... I think a huge part of my life absolutely sucks! I hate my career, I hate where we are living, I hate what I am doing ... I screwed up big time and now I’m stuck, trapped in a life I hate ... I have zero passion for what I am doing ... I’m choking ... I’m almost 40 years old. I’ve wasted ten years of my life and I can’t get them back no matter what I do...”
That’s him for sure! But 12 years ago, when his geeky talent remained entombed within the courtroom walls, making him filthy rich strategizing his clients’ legal briefs into a win-win verdict, but in the offing making him “feel like a fraud”.
The physician healed himself, first by discovering his authentic self vs. fictional self. “I am good at analyzing, I feel like I’m making a difference, impacted a person’s life by giving them a wake-up call ... I am an emotional compass, pointing people in a direction,” Dr Phil tells us. He does not give individual counselling, but conducts seminars in effective life-skills that have earned him a prized post right at the top of the slippery pole called ‘fame’.
“The world rewards action,” Dr Phil tells a 32-year-old caller, who’s just been dumped by her husband for another woman. Her life is going nowhere, she tells him. “Is your life going nowhere?” he repeats and then tells her to get a pad and a pen and cross out stuff that’s keeping her from moving ahead. “If you want to be different, do something different!”
Mushy stuff like sprinkling rose petals in the house or sending love letters to your spouse will not pep up your marriage, he says. “Women tell me romance means your husband cares enough for you to throw out the trash, listen to your problems, invest in quality time ... sex, sharing and caring will naturally flow from there.”
According to him, a marriage “doomsville” is not letting “your partner retreat in dignity” after he/she has lost an argument. That’s disaster! “Be a gracious winner.”
“How you interact with your partner in the first four minutes can set the tone for the day.” Just 240 seconds, he says, can “dictate” the entire mood and keep your marriage intact! Really?
Emotional abuse, says Dr Phil, is a “drop dead deal breaker”. It’s a silent epidemic in America where “somebody is attacking your person, values, dignity and respect”, and it can be a “parent, spouse, employer” anyone in authority or power to abuse. “You need to extricate yourself from that source ... get professional help or counselling, but do it!”
A 47-year-old woman tells him that she’s been laid off after serving her employer for 20 years. What’s she to do? “These are defining moments in our lives ... ask yourself who you are and what are your skills and choices and take that path ...”
“My dad, a psychiatrist, died at 75. At 72, he wanted a new career and got an MA in Divinity ... I never saw such passion, vibrancy and energy in him before.”
Self Matters is a memory jog for readers who must jot down their life’s 10 defining moments — most powerful external factors; five pivotal people who have shaped them positively and negatively; and seven critical choices they have ever made.
That’s a sweat, we’d say. Bottom line: the exercise will demystify our self-concept and teach us how to reclaim our authentic self. “In evaluating your life by only the facts, you can learn to think beyond the excuses and fears that have masked the person you have always wanted to be,” drones the Doc from Dallas.
And it’s never too late in life to follow his advice, he says!
Dr Phil cites a client whose teacher humiliated him when he was in class V. “I didn’t realize what caused me to choke, cough nervously at age 47 whenever I went for an interview,” and then the answer hit him: “I had given away my power to this teacher.”
Phobias, thinks Dr Phil, are the most curable. “All of them stem from the phobia of losing control”.
What is the toughest psychological dilemma that has ever faced Dr Phil?
“The toughest thing I have had to deal with is Schizophrenia.”
I see his smile evaporate and the glint gone. He looks dead serious at the thought of being “pulled in” by someone with “delusional system” suffering from “paranoid conspiracy”. And all he has to say: “It’s very difficult to penetrate into the psychotic disorders. Get help!”
I gaze at the gift from my sister-in-law. The hallow-eyed translucent glass head named ‘Brain’ has travelled from Sweden. It’s an anti-stress object sitting on my writing desk. It bears an eerie resemblance to the two bald-heads: doctors Phil and Wayne Dyer!
“From birth to age 18, a girl needs good parents, from 18 to 35 she needs good looks, from 35 to 55 she needs a good personality, and from 55 on she needs cash.” Sophie Tucker (1884-1966) tells-it-like-a-reality-check. She’s got my vote!
MY schoolgirl crush was Dale Carnegie; How to Win Friends and Influence People, my bedside bible. Did I win friends? Nope. Decades later, Wayne Dyer came along and stole my soul. The sky is the limit became my mantra. Life, I thought, was going to be a ball, after all. And the people around me? Well, my best friend Dyer, showed me How to Pull Your Strings and Take Control. And put bullies in their place. Wow, it seemed so simple then!
