Why Do We Need to Belong?

There is a basic/fundamental need to belong to social groups. People have discovered that to do more in life than merely scrape by, they need to work together with others in order to succeed in living. 

There are hurdles on the way to this preferred social setting. People need to have common ground upon which to agree before they can come together for the greater good of all involved. They need agreement on beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors to reduce the chance of the group becoming chaotic and erratic. The commonality needed also lends to the good of all. This may be more important than the avoidance of disunity. 

People will learn to bend to rules of others as they move toward unity. 

This bending becomes contagious because as more people bend, others who see this conformity will likely feel obligated to bend and follow the crowd. 

People will often conform even when they are in a group of complete strangers. Going along with the flow is the, perceived, easiest way to avoid negatively standing out in the crowd. 

That being said, the strongest urge to conform and fulfill the need to belong comes when a person loves and cares about the others in the group. Within families and groups of close friends this is called normative social influence. People with self-esteem issues are more easily influenced in this way. 

  

Non-conformity within the group is often considered deviant behavior even if the behavior is well within the social norms of society at large.

Behaving outside of the group’s norms may well get a person ejected from a group. Churches, for example, provide too many examples to even begin to discuss in this forum, but suffice it to say that one of the major failures of the local church is the way they treat people who are different, and do not yet have the proper understanding of why they need to conform. 

Our country is an individualist culture, but there is an irony in the fact that normative social influence is so pervasive.

What is the social impact of the normative social influence? Fads and fashion are the first two areas that come to mind. The most powerful areas are racial and political. Look at the rhetoric in the news, within congress, and within groups of differing ethnicities where the differences in norms are most acute. 

Changing a person’s behavior on this level is easy or tough based on the context and personal preferences of the individual and the group.

This is the plight of nearly every type of group we could think of today. 

The optimal goal for most groups is to create environments with guard-rails wide enough to include as many as possible without compromising the standards. One of my goals in life is to help groups do this very thing. It would be great if the goal of every group was to help people with their need to belong.

TJ

Power or Powerless?

When two people interact, there is always a disparity in power, meaning one person is, to some degree, more vulnerable. The values we develop concerning vulnerability help us to compensate for this difference by limiting the actions of the more powerful person, particularly if the less vulnerable person falls into one of these categories:

Children: Who are smaller, innocent and understand less.

Elderly: Who are physically frail and may be cognitively fading.

Disabled: Who have particular physical or mental difficulties.

Women: Who are physically weaker than men.

Religious: Who are from minority belief groups.

Ethnic minority: Who are from minority and oppressed races.

Sexual minority: Including homosexual and transgender people.

And to varying degrees:

Destitute: Those who have no money or home.

Weaker: Those who are not disabled but who are shorter, weaker and otherwise less able to defend themselves physically.

Outcasts: Those who are reviled for some aspect of their person.

Minorities: Any small group within a bigger group.

Victims: Who have suffered at the hands of others.

Confused: Who temporarily do not have their full mental facilities to hand.

Strangers: Who do not know local places and customs.

Powerless: Who lack the ability to defend themselves or get what they need.

In other words, vulnerability is related to two major factors: weakness and difference. Weak people can be taken advantage of by those with more power. Those who are different in some way are more likely to be rejected by groups who are composed on grounds of similarity.

It should not surprise us that there are significant laws and policies to protect the vulnerable. In organizations, this includes protection for employees who may be harassed by those in power above them. In public, a key law is that people must not physically attack one another.

The first vulnerability value, to 'do no harm' is relatively easy to comply with, as it is a passive act that only requires self-control.

The second vulnerability value, to 'actively help' can be harder as it takes time and may lead to embarrassment or even putting ourselves in harm's way to protect the vulnerable. 

 

 While we may instinctively do this for our own family, it can be a difficult choice to do the same for a stranger. 

There is a danger that vulnerable people who understand this value may take excessive advantage of it, trying to force others to help them when they could perhaps be more independent and do things for themselves. Children, for example, naturally appeal to the 'nurturing parent' in adults for help, even when the child is older. Other groups may also play to their weakness, even to the point of being explicit about this ('You can't touch me, I'm ...'). This seems selfish as witnesses to this abuse of rights may be motivated to avoid helping other vulnerable people in the future.

Sometimes people play at being vulnerable in order to get attention and support. This is a part of a victim mentality, where people say 'Help me, I'm being hurt and am unable to help myself'. Separating true victims from those who precipitate their situation can be difficult, especially when such people do this unconsciously, driven perhaps by inner pain.

What are we to make of all this?

If you are one of the truly vulnerable, ask for support rather than hoping someone will help. Values will force others to give you the assistance you need. It can also help to band together with other vulnerable people.

If you have power, beware of using this to harm vulnerable people in any way as this may result in a wider majority criticizing you for your abuse.

If you are in a place of influence, then be particularly careful with vulnerable groups and individuals. It is easy for what seems like a normal credible approach to appear as taking advantage of the vulnerable person and, in turn, result in you being socially punished. 

TJ

Looking Back on Your Life...

While you're in them, seasons of life seem extraordinary.  Fiery, fragile, and erratic. But once you have some distance from them, the moments seem to get smaller, until they are almost out of focus.

When you look back over your life, you can see more of it now than ever before. And yet it seems somehow diminished. Unassuming. Almost charming.

So you begin scanning your life, looking for something interesting or beautiful. You see an ordinary house, with an ordinary yard, on an ordinary street. It looks smaller than you remember. You once had wild dreams and obstacles and risks looming all around you, but now they look smaller too.

You remember giants and goddesses and villains you encountered, but all you see now is ordinary people assembled in their tiny classrooms and workspaces, each of us moving around in little steps, like tokens on a game board. No matter how many times you rolled the dice, it was always these little moves, here and there.

We do a little work, take a little rest, make a little friend, throw a little party, feel a little boredom, and have a little rebellion. There are so many of these token moments, that were supposed to represent some other thing. You keep adding them all up, as if there was something you forgot to count, some bundle of glory that fell off the back of a truck.

You may love the life you have, for everything it is. You know it isn't groundbreaking, but you wouldn't change a thing. Maybe when you first started building the life you wanted, you left plenty of room for what might happen, and somehow lost track of what was happening.

Or maybe you were never 'in it' to begin with. Maybe you knew even then that this wasn't the world you expected. A world so low and common you tried to keep your distance, floating somewhere above it, where nobody else could look down on this life you built.

Nobody else but you.

TJ

Ironic Reversal...What in the world...

When we are trying to avoid doing, saying or thinking about something, we often find that this is impossible.

This is because of the 'Catch 22' situation that in order to avoid thinking about something, we need to know what we are trying to avoid and hence we have to think about it. The situation then gets worse as our failure to succeed causes us to work harder at the task.

The thought can also act as a block against other thoughts. When searching for a word for a particular situation, the more available words that pop into our minds first become more available and consequently keep coming back when we try to think of other words.

As we get worn out by this fruitless task, our ability to control the situation weakens, we get stuck in the cycle and thinking can easily turn into saying and doing. Repetition also tends to strengthen our belief in what we are thinking, as in Mere Exposure Theory.

This spiral can easily fall into obsessive-compulsive behaviors and many psychological disorders include an inability to stop thinking about something uncomfortable.

Hypnotists use this in phrases like 'You may notice how, as your eyes close, your hand gets heavier and you sink into a deep trance.'

When you are trying to solve a crossword puzzle or quiz question, even though your first idea is not right, it gets in the way of you finding the correct answer.

Telling children not to drop a plate makes them think about dropping it, and that often takes them a step closer to the act!

If you want someone to think about something, talk about it (or even tell them not to do/say/think about it). To accentuate the effect, get them cognitively overloaded and stressed beforehand.

The way out of the trap is not to try. It's like going to sleep: the more you try, the more you can't. The trick is to not be bothered about it, reducing the stress.

TJ

What's Your Story???

Your life is a story. The days flip past, too quickly to absorb, a mess of seemingly random events. So you look back and highlight certain moments as important, as turning points in the main plot. You trace each thread back to its origin, finding omens and ironies scattered along the way, until it all feels inevitable, and your life makes sense. You know how this story is going to end, but you’re still eager to skip ahead, dying to know what happens next.

But there are times when you look up and realize that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore. You thought you were following the arc of the story, but you keep finding yourself immersed in passages you don’t understand. Either everything seems important or nothing does. It’s a tangled mess of moments that don’t even seem to belong in the same genre, that keeping changing depending on what you choose to highlight.

What kind of story is this? Just another coming-of-age tale, the same one your parents told, with the names switched around? Is your everyday life part of the origin story of something truly epic? Are you unwittingly getting by on other people’s charity, mistaking your own luck for your own success? Are you a character in a romance, a tragedy, a travelogue, or just another cautionary tale?

As you thumb through the years, you may never know where this all is going. The only thing you know is that there’s more to the story. That soon enough you’ll flip back to this day looking for clues of what was to come, rereading all the chapters you skimmed through to get to the good parts—only to learn that all along you were supposed to choose your own adventure.

TJ

Want to be More Attractive???

 

A person who is off-the-charts attractive will have these qualities:

 
Are warm and friendly towards others

Are open and real

Know their own strengths and weaknesses - and neither boasts nor puts themselves down

Look for the good in every situation, and is generally positive and optimistic
 
Absolutely will not gossip or pass on others’ secrets

Never takes pleasure when things go wrong for others

Is secure and has a healthy self–esteem; is not self-centered and narcissistic
 
 Is not highly critical or argumentative

Is not possessive and jealous in relationships

Make time for the people they care about

These are just the basic qualities. There could be many more, but without the basics everything is only skin deep...

 
TJ 

Want To Get Ahead In Life?

Don’t get too wrapped up in your feelings.
Feelings change throughout the day and they are unreliable. Don’t let them rule your life, or interfere with your goals.

Don’t worry so much because worrying, more than likely, will make things worse.
Focusing on your worries will drain your energy, and the source of your worry, what we’re dreading, doesn’t happen anyway.

Stop the caustic internal commentary.
Stop telling yourself that things are going to fall apart, or that you will probably fail, or that no one does, or will like you. Keep trying, moving forward, and keep living your life.

Stop being self-critical.
You must be your own cheerleader and your biggest fan. Keep a journal of your successes, and the times your perseverance, attitude, and inner strength helped you overcome something. Be encouraging and kind, and always lean into what makes you successful.

Stop feeling guilty.
Feeling guilty changes nothing. You are going to make mistakes. Accept you aren’t perfect and then get up and try again.

Stop worrying about what others think of you.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what they think. Choose your own goals for your life and remember you’re not accountable to them.

Don’t worry about set-backs or changes to your plans.
Plans always need adjusting and things always go wrong, but that doesn’t mean “it’s over” or you’ll never reach your goals. Expect to make some changes. Just be adaptable.

TJ

Honesty. What does it look like?

What does honesty look like?

Being open about yourself, your feelings, and what you have done. When you are asked a question, tell the truth, even it is embarrassing. Do not make excuses for your weaknesses, just be truthful.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to a healthy version of honesty is exposing yourself too much and too early in any relationship. The optimum way to build an honesty bridge is to open-up one step at a time and try to do it at the same rate as the other person in the relationship. 

Use personal, truthful, stories to gently encourage the other person to also expose themselves, or just to stimulate normal conversation.

Openness can also include disagreement. When others express views with which you disagree you can gently state your disagreement with the view, and be careful not to reject the person.

When you expose a personal vulnerability to another person, you are offering them a way to criticize or attack you. This shows them that you are trusting them not to attack. By being trusting, you encourage them to be trustworthy and trusting in return.

It is important to be careful when exposing vulnerabilities because you can embarrass others and make them feel they should be open in return when they are not ready to do so. This is why you should start small and move forward incrementally as they open up to you.

Openness implies you have the confidence that you will not be attacked and can be a unspoken indicator of power. In effect you are saying 'I am so powerful I can admit weaknesses or express views because I can repel all criticism or attack.'

Open disagreement is also helpful in creating a bond because it also encourages trust by saying 'I know you understand me well enough not to take this the wrong way.' Of course this level of openness requires a lot of care in accepting the person even if you reject their argument.

TJ