Melodrama Part 2

Daniel Blanchard- Author and Speaker!

In my last blog I talked about drama being everywhere. Furthermore, I offered advice on how to be that leader that we were meant to be by better understanding our history as a species. For about 300,000 years we were hunters and gathers and we survived on our own aggressive individual survival instincts. And as odd as it may sound today, in the old days, being aggressive, selfish, and even somewhat brutal was a virtue in some ways and helped our species survive. Then I talked about how the more civilized agrarian age came along about 30,000 years ago, but that sometimes our 300,000 years of basic survival instincts still overpowers our 30,000 year history of more civilized farming way of life.

So, where do we go from here? Well, to city living of course! So now to confuse us humans even more, within roughly the last hundred years or so we have moved off the farms with their strict way of living and moved into the cities where once again our norms and social pressures have confused us by changing. To make it even worse, we’re left to our own to figure it all out without a map or any directions. Hmm… like us men would use the map or directions, anyways… It’s tough to be human.

             In the busy cities, our minds have become even busier and even fuller of mental melodrama. Our psyche, or that little voice we constantly hear in our minds won't ever shut the lights off. We have become so accustomed to this little voice, or maybe I should say noise in our heads that it doesn't even seem weird to us anymore. The funny thing is that it's frequently wrong and it is also constantly contradicting itself. For example, does this inner conversation sound familiar guys? "I don't think she likes me. No. she likes me. Why wouldn't she like me? Well, she doesn't like me because I'm too short. So give it up and don't even bother asking her. No. I'm going to ask her out. Don't..."

          Hey, that’s how our mind talks. It’s very melodramatic. And believe it or not, as crazy as our “psyche” can be at creating all of this mental anguish within us, we still listen to this mental dramatic conversation and allow this sometimes-crazy inner roommate of ours with the weird name to wreck our happiness. I bet none of us would allow a real roommate to talk to us like that! 

So, what is the leadership advice here? Well, it’s the same advice that I offered in my last blog. We have to remember that we’re all in this together and sometimes our history as an imperfect species, as well as a constantly changing world, makes us do stupid things. So let’s look beyond our imperfections and all this melodrama and let’s move towards being that sturdy leader that is inside of every one of us!