Getting old  (“No one wants to get old, and you can’t kid me,
everyone worries about that one.” “I don’t know what I’ll do when
I retire and I really worry about that.”)
22. Flying  (“You hear about all those plane crashes.”)110 / Your Erroneous Zones23. My daughter’s virginity  (“Every father who loves his daughter
worries that she’ll be hurt, or get into trouble.”)
24. Talking in front of groups  (“I get petrified in front of a crowd
and I worry like crazy before I do it.”)
25. When my spouse doesn’t call  (“It seems normal to me to worry
when you don’t know where some one you love is, or if they’re
in trouble.”)
26. Going into the city  (“Who knows what’ll happen in the jungle. I worry every time I go in.” “I always worry about whether I’ll
get a parking space.”)
And perhaps the most neurotic of all…
27. Having nothing to worry about  (“I can’t just sit still when
everything seems all right, I worry about not knowing what will
happen next.”)
This is the collective worry sheet of people in our culture. You can
give worry points to each of those that seem most applicable to you,
total it up, and no matter what your score, it still adds up to zero. The following paragraph illustrates the extent of worry in our world. It’s taken from a story in Newsday  (May 3, 1975) on hospital malprac-
tice insurance. West Islip—Two officials of the Nassau-Suffolk Hospital
Council warned yesterday that those worrying  about the prob-
lems that the malpractice insurance crisis could create—if doc-
tors cease treating patients entirely or treat only emergency
cases—have not worried  quite enough. Indeed, a call to spend more time worrying about a problem. How
could a story like this even appear? Because the cultural pressure is
to worry, rather than to do. If all of those concerned were to worry
a lot more, perhaps the problem would go away.THE USELESS EMOTIONS—GUILT AND WORRY  / 111In order to eliminate worry it is necessary to understand the why
behind it. If worry is a large part of your life, you can bet that it has
many historical antecedents. But what are the payoffs? They are
similar to the neurotic dividends that you receive for guilt, since
both worry and guilt are self-nullifying behaviors, that vary only in
a temporal sense. Guilt focuses on the past; worry on the future. The Psychological Payoffs for Choosing Worry
• Worry is a present-moment activity. Thus, by using your current
life being immobilized over a future time in your life, you are able
to escape the now and whatever it is in the now that threatens you. For example, I spent the summer of 1974 in Karamursel, Turkey,
teaching and writing a book on counseling. My seven-year-old
daughter was back in the United States with her mother. While I
love writing, I also find it an intensely lonely, difficult chore which
requires a great deal of self-discipline. I would sit down at my
typewriter with paper in place and the margins set, and all of a
sudden my thoughts would be back on little Tracy Lynn. What if
she rides her bicycle into the street and doesn’t look? I hope she’s
being watched at the swimming pool, because she has a tendency
to be careless. Before I knew it, an hour had elapsed, and I had spent
it worrying. This was all in vain of course. But, was it? As long as I
could use up my present moments worrying I didn’t have to struggle
with the difficulty of writing. A terrific payoff indeed. • You can avoid having to take risks by using your worry as the
reason for immobility. How could you possibly act if you are preoc-
cupied with your present-moment worry? “I can’t do a thing, I’m
just too worried about———” This is a common lament, and one
with a payoff that keeps you standing still and avoiding the risk of
action.112 / Your Erroneous Zones• You can label yourself as a caring person  by worrying. Worry
proves that you are a good parent, good spouse, or good whatever. A handsome dividend, although lacking in logical healthy thinking. • Worry is a handy justification for certain self-defeating behavior. If you’re overweight, you undoubtedly eat more when you worry,
hence you have a sensational reason for hanging on to the worry
behavior. Similarly, you find yourself smoking more in worrisome
situations, and can use the worry to avoid giving up smoking. This
same neurotic reward system applies to areas including marriage,
money, health and the like. The worry helps you to avoid changing. It is easier to worry about chest pains than to take the risk of finding
out the truth, and then have to deal forthrightly with yourself. • Your worry keeps you from living. A worrier sits around and
thinks about things, while a doer must be up and about. Worry is a
clever device to keep you inactive, and clearly it is easier, if less re-
warding, to worry, than to be an active, involved person. • Worry can bring ulcers, hypertension, cramps, tension head-
aches, backaches and the like. While these may not seem to be pay-
offs, they do result in considerable attention from others and justify
much self-pity as well, and some people would rather be pitied than
fulfilled. Now that you understand the psychological support system for
your worry, you can begin to devise some strategic efforts for getting
rid of the troublesome worry bugs that breed in this erroneous zone. Some Strategies for Eliminating Worry
• Begin to view your present moments as times to live, rather than
to obsess about the future. When you catch yourself worry-THE USELESS EMOTIONS—GUILT AND WORRY  / 113ing, ask yourself, “What am I avoiding now by using up this moment
with worry?” Then begin to attack whatever it is you’re avoiding. The best antidote to worry is action. A client of mine, formerly prone
to worry, told me of a recent triumph over it. At a vacation resort
he wandered into the sauna one afternoon. There he met a man who
couldn’t take a holiday from his worries. The other man elaborated
all of the things my client should be worrying about. He mentioned
the stock market, but said not to worry about short-range fluctu-
ations. In six months there would be a virtual collapse, and that was
the thing to really worry about. My client made sure of all the things
he should worry about, and then left. He played a one-hour game
of tennis, enjoyed a touch football game with some young children,
participated with his wife in a Ping-Pong match which they thor-
oughly enjoyed, and finally, some three hours later, returned for a
shower/sauna. His new friend was still there worrying, and began
once again to chronicle more things to worry about. Meantime, my
client had spent his present moments excitedly alive, while the other
man had consumed his in worry. And neither man’s behavior had
any effect on the stock market. • Recognize the preposterousness of worry. Ask yourself over
and over, “Is there anything that will ever change as a result of my
worrying about it?”
• Give yourself shorter and shorter periods of “worry-time.”
Designate ten minutes in the morning and afternoon as your worry
segments. Use these periods to fret about every potential disaster
you can get into the time slot. Then, using your ability to control
your own thoughts, postpone any further worry until your next
designated “worry-time.” You’ll soon see the folly of using any time
in this wasteful fashion, and will eventually eliminate your worry
zone completely. • Make a worry list of everything you worried about yesterday,
last week and even last year. See if any of your worry did anything
productive for you. Assess also how many of the114 / Your Erroneous Zonesthings you worried about ever materialized at all. You’ll soon see
that the worry is really a doubly wasteful activity. It does nothing
to alter the future. And the projected catastrophe often turns out to
be minor, or even a blessing when it arrives. • Just Worry! See if it is something that you can demonstrate when
you are tempted to worry. That is, stop and turn to someone and
say, “Watch me—I’m about to worry.” They’ll be confounded since
you probably won’t even know how to demonstrate the thing you
do so well, so often. • Ask yourself this worry-eradicating question. “What’s the worst
thing that could happen to me (or them) and what is the likelihood
of it occurring?” You’ll discover the absurdity of worry in this way. • Deliberately choose to act in some manner that is in direct con-
flict with your usual areas of worry. If you compulsively save for
the future, always worried about having enough money for another
day, begin to use your money today. Be like the rich uncle who put
in his will, “Being of sound mind, I spent all my money while I was
alive.”
• Begin to face the fears you possess with productive thought and
behavior. A friend of mine recently spent a week on an island off
the coast of Connecticut. The woman enjoys taking long walks, and
soon discovered that the island was populated by many dogs who
were allowed to run wild. She decided to fight her fear and worry
that they might somehow bite her or even tear her limb from
limb—the ultimate calamity. She carried a rock in her hand (insur-
ance) and decided to show no sign of fear as the dogs approached. She even refused to slow down when the dogs growled and came
running toward her. As the dogs charged forward and encountered
someone who refused to back down, they gave up and ran away. While I am not advocating dangerous behavior, I do believe that an
effective challenge to a fear or worry is the most productive way to
eradicate it from your life.THE USELESS EMOTIONS—GUILT AND WORRY  / 115These are some techniques for eliminating worry in your life. But
the most effective weapon you have for wiping out worry is your
own determination to banish this neurotic behavior from your life. Final Thoughts on Worry and Guilt
The present moment is the key to understanding your guilt and
worry activities. Learn to live now and not waste your current mo-
ments in immobilizing thoughts about the past or future. There is
no other moment to live but now, and all of your futile guilt and
worry are done in the elusive now. Lewis Carroll in Alice Through the Looking Glass  talked about living
in the present. “The rule is, jam tomorrow, and jam yesterday…but never jam
today.”
“It must come sometimes to ‘jam-today,’ ” Alice objected. How about you? Any jam today? Since it must come sometime,
how about now?116 / Your Erroneous ZonesVI
EXPLORING THE
UNKNOWN
Only the insecure strive for security. You may be a safety expert—an individual who shuns the un-
known in favor of always knowing where he is going, and what he
can expect when he gets there. Early training in our society tends to
encourage caution at the expense of curiosity, safety at the expense
of adventure. Avoid the questionable, stay in areas that you know,
never wander into the unknown. These early messages can become
a psychological barrier that prevents your own personal fulfillment
and present-moment happiness in countless ways. Albert Einstein, a man who devoted his life to exploring the un-
known, said in an article entitled “What I Believe” in Forum  (October
1930),
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the true source of all art and science. 117He might also have said it is the source of all growth and excite-
ment as well. But too many people equate the unknown with danger. The pur-
pose of life, they think, is to deal with certainty, and to always know
where they are headed. Only the foolhardy risk exploring the fuzzy
areas of life, and when they do, they end up being surprised, hurt,
and worst of all, unprepared. As a young scout you were told to Be
Prepared. But how can you prepare for the unknown? Obviously,
you cannot! Therefore avoid it and you’ll never end up with egg on
your face. Be safe, don’t take risks, follow the road maps—even if it
is dull. Perhaps you’re getting tired of all that certainty, knowing what
every day will be like before it has been lived. You can’t grow if you
already know the answers before the questions have even been
asked. Probably the times you most remember are those in which
you were spontaneously alive, doing whatever you wanted, and
delightfully anticipating the mysterious. We hear the cultural messages of certainty throughout life. They
began with family and are reinforced by educators. The child learns
to avoid experimentation and is encouraged to avoid the unknown. Don’t get lost. Have the right answers. Stay with your own kind. If
you still cling to these fearful encouragements to security, now is
the time to break free. Get rid of the idea that you can’t try out new
and doubtful behavior. You can if you choose to. It begins with an
understanding of your conditioned reflex to avoid new experiences. Openness to New Experiences
If you believe in yourself fully, no activity is beyond your potential. The entire gamut of human experience is yours to enjoy, once you
decide to venture into territory where you don’t have guarantees. Think of the people who are regarded as geniuses and were spectac-
ularly effective in their lifetimes. They weren’t people who could
do only one thing well. They weren’t individ-118 / Your Erroneous Zonesuals who avoided the unknown. Benjamin Franklin, Ludwig van
Beethoven, Leonardo da Vinci, Jesus Christ, Albert Einstein, Galileo,
Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, these
and many like them were pioneers, adventurers into new, unreliable
areas. They were people, just like you, set apart only in that they
were willing to traverse areas where others dared not tread. Albert
Schweitzer, another Renaissance Man, once said, “Nothing human
is alien to me.” You can look at yourself with new eyes, and open
yourself up to experiences that you’ve never even considered as a
part of your own human potential, or you can do the same things,
the same way, until you reach your coffin. It is a fact that great men
remind you of no other, and their greatness is generally discernible
in the quality of exploration and the boldness with which they ex-
plored the unknown. Opening yourself up to new experiences means surrendering the
notion that it is better to tolerate something familiar than to work
at changing it because change is fraught with uncertainty. Perhaps
you’ve adopted a stance that the self (you) is fragile, and easily
shattered if you enter areas where you’ve never been before. This is
a myth. You are a tower of strength. You are not going to collapse
or fall apart if you encounter something new. In fact, you stand a
much better chance of avoiding psychological collapse if you elim-
inate some of the routine and sameness in your life. Boredom is de-
bilitating and psychologically unhealthy. Once you lose interest in
life you are potentially shatterable. You won’t choose that mytholo-
gical nervous breakdown if you add a little spicy uncertainty to your
life. You may also have adopted the “if it’s unusual I must stay away
from it” mentality, which inhibits your openness to new experiences. Thus, if you see deaf people using sign language, you watch with
curiosity but never attempt to converse with them. Similarly, when
you encounter people who speak a foreign language, rather than
work it out and attempt somehow to communicate, you very likely
just wander off, and avoid the vast unknown of communicating in
other than your own spokenEXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 119language. There are uncountable activities and people who are
considered taboo merely because they are unknown. Thus homo-
sexuals, transvestites, the handicapped, the retarded, nudists and
the like, are in the category of the obscure. You are not quite certain
how to behave, and therefore you avoid the entire business. You may also believe that you must have a reason for doing
something; otherwise what’s the point of doing it? Balderdash! You
can do anything you want just because you want to, and for no
other reason. You don’t need a reason for anything that you do. Looking for a reason for everything is the kind of thinking that keeps
you from new and exciting experiences. As a child you could play
with a grasshopper for an hour, for no reason but that you liked it. Or you could climb a hill, or take an exploratory trip in the woods. Why? Because you wanted to. But as an adult, you have to come up
with a good reason for things. This passion for reasons keeps you
from opening up and growing. What freedom to know that you
don’t have to justify anything to anyone, including yourself, ever
again. Emerson, in his Journal of April 11, 1834, observed
Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that
I could see. Not to eat. Not for love…But only gliding. You can do whatever you want because you want to and for no
other reason. This kind of thinking will open up new vistas of exper-
ience and help to eliminate the fear of the unknown that you may
have adopted as a life-style. Rigidity vs. Spontaneity
Take a hard look at your spontaneity. Can you open up to some-
thing new or do you rigidly hang onto your accustomed be-120 / Your Erroneous Zoneshavior? Spontaneity means being able to try anything, at the spur
of the second, just because it is something you’d enjoy. You may
even discover that it’s something you don’t enjoy doing but you did
enjoy attempting it. It is likely that you will be condemned as irre-
sponsible or incautious, but what does the judgment of others matter
when you’re having such a marvelous time discovering the un-
known. There are many people in high places who find it difficult
to be spontaneous. They live out their lives in a rigid fashion, oblivi-
ous to the absurdities they blindly follow. Democrats and Republic-
ans support the statements of top party leaders and vote the party
line. Cabinet officials who speak spontaneously and honestly are
very often ex-cabinet officials. Independent thinking is discouraged,
and there are official guidelines for how one should think and speak. Yes-men are not spontaneous men. They desperately fear the un-
known. They fit in. They do what they are told. They never challenge
but rigidly adhere to what is expected of them. Where are you on
this dimension? Can you be your own person in this area? Can you
spontaneously take the avenues that don’t always lead to a sure
thing? The rigid never grow. They tend to do things the same way they’ve
always done them. A colleague of mine who teaches graduate
courses for teachers frequently asks the old-timers, who have spent
thirty years or more in the classroom, “Have you really been teaching
for thirty years or have you been teaching one year, thirty times?”
And you, dear reader, have you really lived 10,000 or more days or
have you lived one day, 10,000 or more times? A good question to
ask yourself as you work toward more spontaneity in your life. Prejudice and Rigidity
Rigidity is the basis of all prejudice, which means to prejudge. Prejudice is based less on hate or even dislike for certainEXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 121people, ideas, or activities than on the fact that it’s easier and safer
to stay with the known. That is, people who are like you. Your pre-
judices seem to work for you. They keep you away from people,
things and ideas that are unknown and potentially troublesome. Actually they work against you by preventing you from exploring
the unknown. Being spontaneous means eliminating your prejudg-
ments and allowing yourself to meet and deal with new people and
ideas. The pre-judgments themselves are a safety valve for avoiding
murky or puzzling provinces and preventing growth. If you don’t
trust anyone you can’t get a “handle on”; it really means you don’t
trust yourself on unfamiliar grounds. The “Always Having a Plan” Trap
There is no such thing as planned spontaneity. It is a contradiction
in terms. We all know people who go through their lives with a road
map and a list, unable to vary their life a single iota from the original
plan. A plan is not necessarily unhealthy, but falling in love with
the plan is the real neurosis. You may have a life plan for what you’ll
do at age 25, 30, 40, 50, 70, etc., and then you simply consult your
agenda to see where you ought to be, rather than making a new
decision each day and having a strong enough belief in yourself to
be able to alter the plan. Don’t let the plan become bigger than you. Henry was a client of mine who was in his middle twenties. He
suffered desperately from the having-a-plan-neurosis, and as a
consequence he missed out on many exciting life opportunities. When he was twenty-two he was offered a position in another state. He was petrified about the move. Would he be able to make it in
Georgia? Where would he live? How about his parents and friends? The fear of the unknown literally immobilized Henry, and he turned
down what might have been a chance at advancement, exciting new
work and a brand new en-122 / Your Erroneous Zonesvironment, in favor of staying where he was. It was this experience
that brought Henry to counseling. He felt that his own rigid adher-
ence to a plan was keeping him from growing, and yet he was afraid
to break out and try something new. After one exploratory session,
it was revealed that Henry was a veritable plan freak. He always ate
the same breakfast, planned his clothing days in advance, had his
dresser drawers arranged perfectly by color and size. Moreover, he
imposed his plan on his family as well. He expected his children to
have things in their place and his wife to conform to a rigid set of
rules that he had laid down. In short, Henry was a very unhappy,
albeit organized person. He lacked creativity, innovation and per-
sonal warmth. He was in fact, a plan unto himself, with his goal in
life to get everything into its proper place. With counseling, Henry
began to try some spontaneous living. He saw his plans as manipu-
lators of others, and as convenient escapes from wandering into the
risky unknown. He soon eased up on his family and allowed them
to be different from what he expected them to be. After several
months, Henry actually applied for a job in a firm that would require
him to move frequently. The very thing that he originally feared
became desirable. While Henry is by no means a totally spontaneous
person, he has effectively challenged some of the neurotic thinking
that supported his previously planned-out existence. He is working
on it every day, and learning to enjoy living, rather than living out
his life in a ritualized fashion. Security: Internal and External Varieties
A long time ago you learned how to write a high school theme or
essay. You were taught that you need a good introduction, a well-
organized body and a conclusion. Unfortunately, you may have
applied the same logic to your life, and come to see the whole busi-
ness of living as a theme. The introductionEXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 123was your childhood wherein you were preparing to be a person. The body is your adult life, which is organized and planned out in
preparation for your conclusion, which is the retirement and happy
ending. All of this organized thinking keeps you from living your
present moments. Living according to this plan implies a guarantee
that everything will be okay forever. Security, the final plan, is for
cadavers. Security means knowing what is going to happen. Security
means no excitement, no risks, no challenge. Security means no
growth and no growth means death. Besides, security is a myth. As
long as you are a person on earth, and the system stays the same,
you can never have security. And even if it weren’t a myth, it would
be a horrible way to live. Certainty eliminates excitement—and
growth. The word security as used here refers to external guarantees,
possessions such as money, a house and a car, to bulwarks such as
a job or a position in the community. But there is a different kind of
security that is worth pursuing, and this is the internal security of
trusting yourself to handle anything that may come down the pike. This is the only lasting security, the only real security. Things can
break down, a depression can wipe out your money, your house
can be repossessed, but you, you can be a rock of self-esteem. You
can believe so much in you and your internal strength that things
or others will be seen as mere pleasant but superfluous adjuncts to
your life. Try this little exercise. Suppose that right now, this second, as you
are reading this book, someone swooped down on you, stripped
you naked, and carted you off in a helicopter. No warning, no money,
nothing but yourself. Supposing you were flown to the middle of
Red China and dropped in a field. You would be up against new
language, new habits, and new climate, and all you would have is
yourself. Would you survive or collapse? Could you make friends,
get food, shelter and the like, or would you simply lie there and
moan about how unfortunate you were to have this catastrophe
visited on you? If you need external security, you’d perish, for all
of your goods would have been taken away. But if you have internal
security and are not afraid124 / Your Erroneous Zonesof the unknown, then you would survive. Security can then be re-
defined as the knowledge that you can handle anything, including
having no external security. Don’t be trapped by that kind of external
security, since it robs you of your ability to live and grow and fulfill
yourself. Take a look at those people without external security,
people who don’t have it all mapped out. Perhaps they are way
ahead of the game. At least they can try new things and avoid the
trap of always having to stay with the safe. James Kavanaugh in Will You Be My Friend? writes tellingly about
security in his little poem called Some Day. Someday I’ll walk away
And be free
And leave the sterile ones
Their secure sterility. I’ll leave without a forwarding address
And walk across some barren wilderness
To drop the world there. Then wander free of care
Like an unemployed Atlas. *
Achievement as Security
But the “walking away” to “be free,” as Kavanaugh puts it, is
difficult as long as you carry around the conviction that you must
achieve. Fear of failure is a powerful fear in our society, one incul-
cated in childhood and often carried throughout life. You may be surprised to hear this, but failure does not exist. Failure is simply someone else’s opinion of how a certain act should
have been completed. Once you believe that no act must be per-
formed in any specific other-directed way, then failing becomes
impossible. There may, however, be occasions when you will fail in some
given task according to your own standards. The impor-
*Los Angeles: Nash Publishing Corp., 1971.EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 125tant thing here is not to equate the act with your own self-worth. Not to succeed in a particular endeavor is not to fail as a person. It
is simply not being successful with that particular trial at that partic-
ular present moment. Try to imagine using failure as a description of an animal’s beha-
vior. Consider a dog barking for fifteen minutes, and someone say-
ing, “He really isn’t very good at barking, I’d give him a “C.” How
absurd! It is impossible for an animal to fail because there is no
provision for evaluating natural behavior. Spiders construct webs,
not successful or unsuccessful webs. Cats hunt mice; if they aren’t
successful in one attempt, they simply go after another. They don’t
lie there and whine, complaining about the one that got away, or
have a nervous breakdown because they failed. Natural behavior
simply is! So why not apply the same logic to your own behavior
and rid yourself of the fear of failure. The push to achieve comes from three of the most self-destructive
words in our culture. You’ve heard them and used them thousands
of times. Do your best! This is the cornerstone of the achievement
neurosis. Do your best at everything you do. What’s wrong with
taking a mediocre bicycle ride, or going for an average walk in the
park? Why not have some activities in your life which you just do,
rather than do to the best of your ability? The do-your-best neurosis
can keep you from trying new activities and enjoying old ones. At one time I counseled an eighteen-year-old high school senior
named Louann, who was imbued with the achievement standard. Louann was a straight A student, and had been since she first set
foot in a school. She worked long tedious hours on her school work,
and as a result she had no time for being a person. She was a veritable
computer of book knowledge. Yet Louann was painfully shy around
boys, never even having held hands let alone dated. She had de-
veloped a nervous twitch which came into play whenever we talked
about this side of her personality. Louann had placed all of her em-
phasis on being an achieving student at the expense of her total de-
velopment. In126 / Your Erroneous Zonesworking with Louann, I asked her what was more important in her
life. “What you know, or how you feel?” Even though she was a
valedictorian, she was lacking inner peace and was actually very
unhappy. She began to place some importance on her feelings, and
because she was such an excellent learner, she applied the same
rigorous standards to learning new social behaviors as she had to
her school work. Louann’s mother called me a year later and told
me that she was concerned because her daughter had received her
very first “C” in a college freshman English class. I recommended
that she make a big production out of it, and take her out for dinner
in celebration. Perfectionism
Why should you have to do everything well? Who is keeping
score for you? Winston Churchill’s famous lines about perfectionism
indicate just how immobilizing the constant search for success can
be. The maxim “nothing avails but perfection” may be spelled
PARALYSIS
You can paralyze yourself with perfectionistic do-your-best nonsense. Perhaps you can give yourself some significant areas in your life in
which you truly want to do your best. But in the vast majority of
activities, having to do your best, or even to do well, is an obstacle
to doing. Don’t let perfectionism keep you on the sidelines avoiding
potentially pleasurable activities. Try changing “Do your best” to
simply “Do.”
Perfection means immobility. If you have perfect standards for
yourself, then you’ll never try anything and you won’t do much
because perfect is not a concept that applies to human beings. God
can be perfect, but you, as a person, need not apply such ridiculous
standards to you and your behavior. If you have children, don’t breed paralysis and resentment byEXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 127insisting they do their best. Instead, talk with them about the things
they seem to enjoy the most, and perhaps give some encouragement
to try hard in those areas. But in other activities, doing is so much
more important than succeeding. Teach them to play in the volleyball
game rather than sit on the sidelines saying “I’m no good.” Encour-
age them to ski, or to sing, or draw, or dance or whatever, because
they want to, not to avoid something just because they may not be
good at it. No one should be taught to be competitive, to try, or even
to do well. Instead, try to teach the lessons of self-esteem and pride
and pleasure in the activities deemed important by the individual. A child is easily taught the ugly message of equating his own self-
worth with his failures. Consequently he will begin to shun activities
in which he does not excel. Even more dangerous, he may develop
habits of low self-esteem, approval-seeking, guilt and all of the erro-
neous zone behaviors that go with self-rejection. If you equate your worth with your failures and successes, you’ll
be doomed to feelings of worthlessness. Think of Thomas Edison. If he’d used failure in any given task as an indicator of his own self-
esteem, after his first trial in which he failed he would have given
up on himself, announced that he was a failure and ceased his en-
deavors to light the world. Failure can be instructive. It can be an
incentive to work and exploration. It can even be thought as success
if it points the way to new discoveries. As Kenneth Boulding put it,
I have revised some folk wisdom lately; one of my edited pro-
verbs is Nothing fails like success  because you do not learn any-
thing from it. The only thing we ever learn from is failure. Success only confirms our superstitions. Think of it. Without failure we can learn nothing, and yet we have
learned to treasure success as the only acceptable standard. We tend
to shun all experiences which might bring about fail-128 / Your Erroneous Zonesure. Apprehension of failure is a big part of fear of the unknown. Anything which doesn’t smack of guaranteed success is to be
avoided. And fearing failure means fearing both the unknown and
the disapproval that accompanies not doing your best. Some Typical “Fear of the Unknown” Behavior In Our Culture
We have already discussed some typical behavior engendered by
fear of the unknown. Resisting new experiences, rigidity, prejudice,
slavish adherence to plans, the need for external security, fear of
failure and perfectionism are all subheadings in this large self-limit-
ing zone. What follows is a listing of the most common specific ex-
amples in this category. You can use it as a checklist to assess your
own behavior. • Eating the same kinds of foods for a lifetime. Avoiding exotic,
new taste treats in favor of the more traditional, and using descrip-
tions such as, “I’m a meat and potatoes person” or “I always order
chicken.” While everyone has certain preferences and predelictions,
avoidance of unknown foods is merely rigidity. Some people have
never eaten a taco, or been to a Greek or Indian restaurant, simply
because they stay on the familiar ground of what they are used to. Leaving familiar grounds can open up a whole exciting gastronomic
world. • Wearing the same kinds of clothes forever. Never trying out a
new style, or wearing something different. Labeling yourself as a
“conservative dresser” or a “loud dresser” and never varying your
sartorial style. • Reading the same newspapers and magazines which support
the same editorial position day after day and never admitting a
contrary viewpoint. In one recent study, a reader, whose political
position was well known, was asked to read an edito-EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 129rial which began with a position identical to his own. In the middle
of the editorial, the viewpoint shifted, and a hidden camera revealed
that the reader’s eyes similarly shifted to another part of the page. The rigid reader in this experiment would not even consider a dis-
similar point of view. • Seeing the same movies (with different titles) for a lifetime. Re-
fusing to view anything that might support a different philosophical
or political belief, because the unknown is disconcerting and must
be shut out. • Living in the same neighborhood, city or state, simply because
your parents and their parents happened to have chosen that loca-
tion. Being afraid of a new place because the people, climate, politics,
language, customs, or whatever, are different. • Refusing to listen to ideas which you do not share. Instead of
considering the other speaker’s viewpoint—“Hmm, I’ve never
thought of that”—you immediately insist he’s crazy or uninformed. This is a method of avoiding the different or the unknown by refus-
ing to communicate. • Being afraid to try a new activity because you can’t do it well. “I don’t think I’d be very good, I’ll just watch.”
• Compulsive achievement in school or on the job. Grades are
more important than anything else. The fitness report matters more
than the pleasure of work well done. Using achievement rewards
as substitutes for trying something new and unknown. Residing in
the safe areas of inquiry because, “I know I can get an A,” rather
than risking a C by embarking on a new discipline. Taking the safe
job where you know you’ll be successful instead of entering a new
race and taking a chance on failing. • Avoiding anyone whom you label deviant, including “fags,”
“commies,” “weirdos,” “spics,” “niggers,” “wops,” “wasps,” “hip-
pies,” “kikes,” “gooks,” and any derogatory tags that serve as pro-
tection from fear of the unfamiliar. Rather than trying to learn about
these people, you label them with a slanderous epithet and talk
about them rather than to them.130 / Your Erroneous Zones• Staying with the same job even though you dislike it, not because
you have to, but out of apprehension about entering that vast un-
known of new work. • Staying in a marriage that obviously is not working, out of a
fear of the unknown, single life. You can’t remember what it’s like
not to be married, so you don’t know what you’d be getting yourself
into. Better to stay with the unpleasant familiar than to wander off
into new potentially lonely territory. • Taking vacations in the same place, at the same hotel, during
the same season each year. In this case you know what to expect,
and you don’t have to risk new places which might—or might
not—provide pleasant experiences. • Using performance rather than enjoyment as a criteria for
everything that you do. That is, doing only those things you do well
and avoiding those where you might fail or perform poorly. • Measuring things in monetary terms. If it costs more, it is worth
more, and therefore an indication of your personal success. The
known is measured in dollar signs, while the unknown cannot be
financially assessed. • Striving for the important title, the fancy automobiles, the right
labels on your clothes and other status symbols, even though you
may not even like the possessions and the life-style that they repres-
ent. • An inability to alter a plan when an interesting alternative arises. If you stray from the map in your head you’ll lose your way and
your place in life. • Being preoccupied with time, and allowing clocks to run your
life. Living by a schedule which keeps you from trying new and
unknown quantities of life. Always wearing a watch (even to bed)
and being controlled by it. Sleeping, eating and making love by the
clock, regardless of hunger, exhaustion, or desire. • Dismissing certain kinds of activities which you’ve never tried. These may include such “weird” things as meditation, yoga, astro-
logy, backgammon, bocci, Mah-jongg, isometrics, or anything that
you don’t know about.EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 131• Viewing sex without imagination. Always doing the same thing
in the same position. Never trying something new and exotic, be-
cause it is different and therefore might be unacceptable. • Hiding behind the same clique of friends and never branching
out with different people who represent new and unknown worlds. Having regular meetings with the same crowd, and staying with
the crowd for a lifetime. • At a party which you attend with your spouse or date, staying
with that person for the entire evening not because you want to but
because you are safe. • Hanging back because of a fear of what might happen if you
ventured into a conversation with strange people on strange topics. Thinking to yourself that they must be smarter, more talented, more
skillful, or more glib, and using this as a reason to avoid a new ex-
perience. • Condemning yourself if you don’t succeed in all your endeavors. These are only a few examples of unhealthy behavior engendered
by fear of the unknown. You can probably make your own list. But
instead of making lists, why not begin to challenge why you want
to live each day the same as the one before, with no possibilities for
growth. The Psychological Support System for Retaining These Behaviors
Here are some common payoffs that keep you from roaming
around in that delicious unknown. • By staying the same you never have to think on your feet. If you
have a good plan, you simply consult your script, rather than your
wits. • Staving off the unknown has its own built-in reward system. The fear of the obscure is strong, and as long as you stay132 / Your Erroneous Zoneswith the familiar, you are keeping that fear at bay, regardless of how
costly it is to you in growth and fulfillment. It’s safer to avoid un-
charted areas. Think of Columbus. Everyone warned him he would
fall over the edge. It is easier to be one of the many treading familiar
ground rather than an explorer risking everything. The unknown
is a challenge and challenges can be threats. • You can say that you are postponing your gratification, which
you’ve heard labeled “mature-behavior,” and thus stay with the fa-
miliar and justify it with such a stance. Thus it is “mature” and
“adult” to put it off, but really it is out of panic and misgiving that
you stay as you are, and avoid unknown parts. • You can feel important by having done it right. You’ve been a
good boy/girl. As long as you see it in failure/success terms, you
can equate your self-worth with your good performance and feel
good. But the right thing in this sense is only someone else’s editorial
opinion. Some Strategies for Coming to Grips with the Mysterious and the
Unknown
• Make selective efforts to try new things even if you are tempted
to stay with the familiar. For example, at a restaurant order a new
dish. Why? Because it would be different and you might enjoy it. • Invite a collection of people to your home who represent widely
divergent points of view. Go with the unknown rather than your
typical clique of acquaintances wherein you can predict everything
that will take place. • Give up having to have a reason for everything you do. When
someone asks you why, remember that you don’t have to come up
with a reasonable answer that will satisfy them. You can do what
you decide just because you want to. • Begin to take some risks that will get you out of your rou-EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 133tine. Perhaps an unplanned vacation with no reservations or maps,
where you just trust yourself to handle whatever might come along. Interview for a new job, or talk with someone that you’ve been
avoiding because you were afraid of not knowing what might hap-
pen. Take a new route to work, or have dinner at midnight. Why? Just because it’s different and you want to do it. • Entertain yourself with a fantasy in which you allow yourself
to have anything you want. No holds barred. You have all of the
money to do anything you want for a two-week period. You’ll find
that almost all of your mental meanderings are indeed attainable
for you, that you don’t want the moon or the unreachable, but simply
things that you can achieve if you eliminate the fear of the unknown
and go after them. • Take a risk that might involve some personal upheaval, but
which would be intensely rewarding to you. For several years a
colleague of mine had told his students and clients about the need
for trying the unknown in their lives. But in many ways his advice
was hypocritical since he stayed with the same university, consulting
work and comfortable life-style. He had stated that anyone could
handle new and different situations, but he continued to stay with
the familiar. In 1974 he decided to live in Europe for six months be-
cause it was something he had always wanted to do. He taught two
courses for an overseas graduate program in educational psychology
and learned firsthand (experientially rather than verbally) that he
could handle the doubtful. After three weeks in Germany, because
of his inner security, he had as many opportunities to conduct
workshops, work with clients and give lectures as he had had in
New York where he was comfortable with the familiar surroundings. Even in a remote village in Turkey, where he lived for two months,
he was busier than he had been in New York. At last, out of experi-
ence, he knew that he could go anywhere, at anytime, and be effect-
ive, not because of the external circumstances, but because he could
handle the unknown, exactly as he handled the known, with his
own inner strength and skills.134 / Your Erroneous Zones• Whenever you find yourself avoiding the unknown, ask yourself,
“What’s the worst thing that could happen to me?” You’ll probably
see that the fears of the unknown are out of proportion to the reality
of the consequences. • Try to do something silly like going barefoot in the park, or
skinny-dipping. Try out some of the things that you’ve always
avoided because you “Mustn’t ever do such things.” Open your own
personal horizons to new experiences that you’ve previously avoided
because they were silly or inane. • Remind yourself that the fear of failure is very often the fear of
someone else’s disapproval or ridicule. If you let them have their
own opinions, which have nothing to do with you, you can begin
to evaluate your behavior in your own, rather than their terms. You’ll
come to see your abilities not as better or worse, but as simply dif-
ferent from others. • Make an attempt to do some things that you’ve always avoided,
with the sentence “I’m just not good at that.” You can spend an af-
ternoon painting a picture and have a hell of a time. If the end
product is less than masterful, you haven’t failed, you’ve had a half
day of pleasure. On my living room wall is a painting that is aesthet-
ically horrible. Everyone who visits comments or painfully avoids
commenting on how bad it really is. In the lower left-hand corner
are inscribed the words, “To you, Dr. Dyer, I give you not my best.”
It is from a former student who had avoided painting all of her life
because she’d learned a long time ago that she was bad at it. She
spent a weekend painting just for her own pleasure and it is one of
my most prized gifts. • Remember that the opposites of growth are sameness and death. Thus, you can resolve to live each day in a new way, being spontan-
eous and alive, or you can fear the unknown and remain the
same—psychologically dead. • Have a talk with those people in your life who you feel are most
responsible for your fear of the unknown. State in no uncertain terms
that you intend to do new things, and check out their reactions. You
may find that their incredulity is one of theEXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 135things that you’ve always worried about in the past, and as a result
you chose immobilization over those disapproving looks. Now that
you can handle the looks, state your Declaration of Independence
from their control. • Instead of “Do your best in everything” as a credo for you and
your children, try “Select the things that are important to you, and
work hard at them, and in the rest of your life, just do.” It’s O.K. not
to do your best! In fact, the whole “Do your Best,” syndrome is a
myth. You never do your absolute best, nor does anyone else. There
is always room for improvement, since perfection is not a human
attribute. • Don’t let your convictions keep you stagnant. Believing some-
thing out of past experience and hanging onto that belief is an
avoidance of reality. There is only what is now, and the truth of the
present may not be the truth of the past. Assess your behavior not
on what you believe, but in terms of what is and what you experience
in the present. By allowing yourself to experience, rather than color-
ing your reality with beliefs, you’ll find the unknown a fantastic
place to be. • Remember, nothing human is alien to you. You can be anything
you choose. Imprint this on your mind and remind yourself of it
when you fall into your typically safe evasive behavior. • Become aware of avoiding the unknown as you are doing it. At
that moment begin a dialogue with yourself. Tell yourself it’s okay
if you don’t know where you are going at every moment of your
life. Awareness of routine is the first step in changing it. • Deliberately fail at something. Are you really less of a person
for losing a tennis game or painting a bad picture or are you still a
worthwhile individual who just enjoyed some pleasant activity? • Have a conversation with a member of a group that you’ve
avoided in the past. You’ll soon discover that your prejudices, when
challenged by you, are keeping you stagnant and uninter-136 / Your Erroneous Zonesesting. If you prejudge anyone, you prevent yourself from dealing
with them honestly since your viewpoint has already been estab-
lished. The more different kinds of people you encounter, the more
likely you are to remark to yourself how much you’ve been missing,
and how foolish your fears have been. With these insights, the un-
known will become an area for ever-increasing exploration rather
than something to shun. Some Final Thoughts on Fearing the Unknown
The above suggestions represent some constructive means of
fighting fear of the unknown. The whole process begins with new
insights into your avoidance behavior, followed by actively challen-
ging the old behavior and moving in new directions. Just imagine
if the great inventors or explorers of the past had feared the un-
known. The entire population of the world would still reside in the
Tigris-Euphrates Valley. The unknown is where growth resides. Both for civilization and for the individual. Think of a road with a fork in it. In one direction lies security, in
the other the great uncharted unknown. Which road would you
take? Robert Frost answered the question in The Road Not Taken. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. The choice is yours. Your erroneous zone of fear of the unknown
is waiting to be replaced by new exciting activities that will bring
pleasure to your life. You don’t have to know where you’re going—as
long as you’re on your way.EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 137VII
BREAKING THE BARRIER
OF CONVENTION
There are no rules, laws or traditions that apply universally…includ-
ing this one. The world is full of “shoulds” that people apply to their behavior
without evaluation, and the total of these shoulds makes up a very
large erroneous zone. You may be guided by a set of rules and
principles to which you don’t even subscribe, and yet you are unable
to break away and decide for yourself what works and doesn’t work
for you. Nothing is absolute. There are no rules or laws which always make
sense or provide the greatest amount of good for all occasions. Flexibility is a far greater virtue, and yet you may find it difficult,
indeed impossible, to break an unserviceable law or violate absurd
tradition. Fitting into your society or enculturation may be useful
for getting along at times, but carried to an extreme, it can become
a neurosis, particularly when unhappiness, depression and anxiety
are the consequences of your meeting the shoulds. 138Nowhere is it being implied or in any way suggested that you
become contemptuous of the law, or break rules simply because you
see fit to do so. Laws are necessary, and order is an important part
of civilized society. But blind adherence to convention is something
else entirely, something, in fact, which may be far more destructive
to the individual than violation of the rules. Often rules are foolish,
and traditions no longer make any sense. When this is the case, and
you are unable to function effectively because you must follow
senseless rules, that is the time to reconsider the rules and your be-
havior. As Abraham Lincoln once put it, “I never had a policy that I could
always apply. I’ve simply attempted to do what made the greatest
amount of sense at the moment.” He was not a slave to a single
policy that had to apply in every single case, even if the policy was
written with such an intention. A should is unhealthy only when it gets in the way of healthy and
effective behavior. If you find yourself doing annoying or otherwise
counterproductive things which are the result of a should, you have
renounced your freedom of choice and are allowing yourself to be
controlled by some external force. A closer examination of this in-
ternal versus external control of yourself will be helpful before con-
tinuing to look at these erroneous musts which may clutter your
life. Internal vs. External Locus of Control
It has been estimated that a full seventy-five percent of the people
in our culture are more external than internal in their personality
orientation. This means that the chances are that you fit into this
category more often than you don’t. What does it mean to be “ex-
ternal” in your locus of control? Essentially, you are external if you
assign responsibility for your emotional state in your present mo-
ments to someone or something external to yourself. Thus, if you
were to be asked the question, “Why doBREAKING THE BARRIER OF CONVENTION  / 139you feel bad?” and you responded with answers like…“My parents
mistreat me,” “She hurt my feelings,” “My friends don’t like me,”
“My luck is down,” or “Things just aren’t going well,” you would
be in this external category. Conversely, if you were asked why you
are so happy, and you responded; “My friends treat me well,” “My
luck has changed,” “Nobody is bugging me,” or “She came through
for me,” you are still in the external frame, assigning responsibility
for how you feel to someone or something outside of you. The internal locus of control person puts the responsibility for
how he feels squarely on his own shoulders, and this person is in-
deed rare in our culture. When asked the same questions, he re-
sponds with internally oriented answers such as: “I tell myself the
wrong things,” “I put too much emphasis on what others say,” “I
worry about what someone else thinks,” “I’m not strong enough
now to avoid being unhappy,” and “I don’t have the skills to keep
me from being miserable.” Similarly, when the internally-put-togeth-
er person is up, he responds with “I” references such as, “I worked
hard at being happy,” “I made things work for me,” “I’m telling
myself the right things,” “I’m in charge of me, and this is where I
choose to be.” Thus, you have one-fourth of the people taking re-
sponsibility for their own feelings, and three-fourths bestowing
blame on external sources. Where do you fit in? Virtually all shoulds
and traditions are imposed by external sources. That is, they come
from someone or something outside of yourself. If you are loaded
with shoulds and unable to break conventions which are prescribed
by others, then you are in the external bag. An excellent example of this externally directed kind of thinking
is a client who came to me recently. We’ll call her Barbara. Her major
grievance was an obesity problem, but she had a host of minor
complaints as well. When we started to discuss her weight problem,
she said that she had always been overweight because she had a
metabolism problem and also because her mother had forced food
on her as a child. Her pattern of140 / Your Erroneous Zonesovereating continued now, she said, because her husband had neg-
lected her and her children were inconsiderate of her. She had tried
everything, she lamented—Weight Watchers, pills, a variety of diet
doctors, even astrology. Therapy was to be her last resort. If I couldn’t
make her lose weight, she said, no one could. As Barbara told her story—and viewed her own dilemma—it was
no wonder she couldn’t lose those unwanted pounds. Everything
and everybody was conspiring against her—her mother, her hus-
band, her children, even her own body and the stars. Weight
Watchers and diet doctors might be able to help less afflicted souls
but in Barbara’s case the odds against her were too great. Barbara was a classic example of external thinking. It was her
mother, her husband, her children and some uncontrollable part of
her own body that made her fat. It had nothing to do with her own
choices to eat, or overeat, certain foods at certain times. Moreover,
her attempts to alleviate her situation were as externally directed as
her perceptions of the problem itself. Instead of recognizing that she
had chosen to overeat in the past and she would have to learn to
make new choices if she wanted to lose weight, Barbara turned to
other people and things—society’s accepted conventions for weight
loss. When all her friends went to Weight Watchers, Barbara went. Each time a friend discovered a new diet doctor, Barbara was close
on her heels for help. After several weeks of counseling, Barbara began to recognize
that her unhappiness and her complaints were the result of her own
choices, not the actions of others. It began with an admission that
she simply ate too much, often more than she really wanted, and
did not exercise enough. Her first decision was to change her eating
habits through sheer self-discipline. She could and would manipulate
her own mind. Next time she felt hungry she resolved to reward
herself with thoughts of her own internal strength rather than a
cookie. Instead of blaming her husband and children for treating
her badly and driving her to food, sheBREAKING THE BARRIER OF CONVENTION  / 141began to see that she had been playing the martyr for years, virtually
begging them to exploit her. Once Barbara began demanding to be
treated well, she found that her family was only too ready to treat
her that way, and instead of seeking solace in food she found fulfill-
ment in relationships based on mutual respect and love. Barbara even decided to spend less time with her mother who she
had come to see as running her life and ruining it with overdoses
of food. Once Barbara came to recognize that her mother did not
control her and that she could see her when she chose to, not when
her mother said she should, and similarly that she didn’t have to
eat that piece of chocolate cake just because her mother said she
should, Barbara began to enjoy rather than resent the time they spent
together. Finally Barbara realized that therapy had nothing to do with
anything outside herself. I couldn’t change her. She had to change
herself. It took time, but gradually, with effort, Barbara replaced her
external shoulds with internal standards of her own. She is now not
only thinner, but happier as well. She knows that it isn’t her husband
or her children, her mother or the stars that are making her happy. She knows it is herself, for now she controls her own mind. Fatalists, determinists and people who believe in luck are in the
external slot. If you believe that your life is mapped out for you in
advance, and you need only follow the appropriate roads, then you
are very likely loaded with all of the shoulds that will keep you on
your road map. You can never find self-fulfillment if you persist in permitting
yourself to be controlled by external forces or persist in thinking
that you are controlled by external forces. Being effective does not
mean eliminating all of the problems in your life. It does mean
moving your locus of control from the external to the internal. In
that way you make yourself responsible for everything that you ex-
perience emotionally. You are not a robot, running your life through
a maze, filled up with other people’s rules and142 / Your Erroneous Zonesregulations that don’t even make sense to you. You can take a
sterner look at the “rules” and begin to exercise some internal control
over your own thinking, feeling and behavior. BLAMING AND HERO WORSHIP: OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE
SAME EXTERNALLY DIRECTED BEHAVIOR
Blame is a neat little device that you can use whenever you don’t
want to take responsibility for something in your life. It is the refuge
of the externally oriented person. All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find
with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will
not change you. The only thing blame does is keep the focus off you
when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappi-
ness or frustration. But blame itself is an act of folly. Even if blame
has some effect, it will not be on you. You may succeed in making
another feel guilty for something by blaming him, but you won’t
succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you
unhappy. You may succeed in not thinking about it; but you won’t
succeed in changing it. The tendency to focus on others can go to the opposite extreme
where it surfaces as hero worship. In this case you may find yourself
looking to others to determine your values. If so-and-so does it, then
I should do it too. Hero worship is a form of self-repudiation. It
makes others more important than you, and relates your own fulfill-
ment to something outside of yourself. While there is nothing self-
defeating about appreciating others and their accomplishments, it
becomes an erroneous zone when you model your own behavior
on their standards. All of your heroes are people. They are all human. They do the
same things that you do every day. They itch where you itch, they
have bad breath in the morning just like you. (The only good hero
is a ham and cheese or possibly an eggplant par-migiana.) All are
wasteful of your efforts.BREAKING THE BARRIER OF CONVENTION  / 143All the great heroes of your life have taught you nothing. And
they are no better than you, in any way. Politicians, actors, athletes,
rock-stars, your boss, therapist, teacher, spouse, or whoever, are just
skillful at what they do—nothing more. And if you make them your
heroes and elevate them to positions above yourself, then you are
into that external bag of giving others the responsibility for your
good feelings. If you blame at one end or hero worship at the other, you are
someplace on this Focusing On Others Line. You are behaving as a fool if you look outside of you for an explan-
ation of how you should feel or what you should do. Taking credit
as well as responsibility for yourself is the first step to eliminating
this erroneous zone. Be your own hero. When you get out of the
blaming and hero worship behavior you’ll be moving over from the
external to the internal side of the ledger. And on the internal side
there are no universal shoulds, either for yourself or for others. The Right vs. Wrong Trap
The question of right vs. wrong as it applies here has nothing to
do with religious, philosophical or moral issues of a priori  rightness
or wrongness. That is a discussion for another place. Here the subject
is you, and how your notions of right and wrong get in the way of
your own happiness. Your rights and wrongs are your universal
shoulds. You may have adopted some unhealthy stances which in-
clude right means good or just, while wrong is equated with bad or
unjust. This is nonsense. Rights and wrongs in this sense do not exist. The word right144 / Your Erroneous Zonesimplies a guarantee that if you do something a certain way, you’ll
have sure-fire results. But there are no guarantees. You can begin to
think in terms of any decision as bringing about something different,
or more effective, or legal, but the moment it becomes a question of
right vs. wrong, you are trapped into the “I’ve always got to be right
and when things or people are not right, then I’m going to be un-
happy” trap. Perhaps some of your need to find the right answer has to do with
the search for certainty that was discussed in the chapter on fear of
the unknown. This may be a part of your tendency to dichotomize,
or to divide the world neatly into extremes such as black/white,
yes/no, good/bad and right/wrong. Few things fit neatly into those
categories and most intelligent folks roam around in those gray
areas, rarely coming to rest on either black or white. This proclivity
for being right is most clearly evidenced in marriage and other adult
relationships. Discussions inevitably become a contest which results
in one partner being right, and the other wrong. You hear it all the
time. “You always think you’re right,” and, “You’ll never admit
you’re wrong.” But there is no right and wrong here. People are
different and they see things from different perspectives. If one must
be right, then a breakdown in communication is the only predictable
outcome. The only way out of this trap is to stop thinking in those erroneous
right vs. wrong ways. As I explained to Clifford, who was in a
marriage in which he argued every day about every conceivable
topic, “Instead of attempting to convince your wife how wrong she
is, why not simply have discussions in which you have no should-
expectations for her. As long as she is allowed to be different from
you, you’ll eliminate the incessant arguing in which you doggedly,
albeit frustratedly, pursue being right.” Clifford was able to set aside
this neurotic need, and also to put some communication and love
back in his marriage. All rights and wrongs of every description
represent shoulds ofBREAKING THE BARRIER OF CONVENTION  / 145one kind or another. And the shoulds get in your way, particularly
when they conflict with another person’s need to have his own as
well. Indecisiveness As a Spin-Off of Right vs. Wrong Thinking
I once asked a client if he had trouble making a decision, and he
said, “Well—Yes and No.” Perhaps you have difficulty with decision-
making, even with small things. This is a direct outgrowth of the
inclination to divide things into right and wrong categories. The in-
decision comes from wanting to be right, and the postponement of
a choice keeps you from dealing with the anxiety that you choose
for yourself whenever you feel you’ve been wrong. Once you take
away the rightness and wrongness of every decision (because right
implies a guarantee), then decision-making will become a snap. If
you are trying to decide on the right college to attend, you might
stay immobilized forever, even after you’ve made the decision, be-
cause maybe it wasn’t right.
Your_Eroneous_Zones_by_Wayne_Dyer.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Getting old  (“No one wants to get old, and you can’t kid me,
everyone worries about that one. ” “I don’t know what I’ll do when
I retire and I really worry about that. ”)
22. Flying  (“You hear about all those plane crashes. ”)110 / Your Erroneous Zones23. My daughter’s virginity  (“Every father who loves his daughter
worries that she’ll be hurt, or get into trouble. ”)
24. Talking in front of groups  (“I get petrified in front of a crowd
and I worry like crazy before I do it. ”)
25. When my spouse doesn’t call  (“It seems normal to me to worry
when you don’t know where some one you love is, or if they’re
in trouble. ”)
26. Going into the city  (“Who knows what’ll happen in the jungle. I worry every time I go in. ” “I always worry about whether I’ll
get a parking space. ”)
And perhaps the most neurotic of all…
27. Having nothing to worry about  (“I can’t just sit still when
everything seems all right, I worry about not knowing what will
happen next. ”)
This is the collective worry sheet of people in our culture. You can
give worry points to each of those that seem most applicable to you,
total it up, and no matter what your score, it still adds up to zero. The following paragraph illustrates the extent of worry in our world. It’s taken from a story in Newsday  (May 3, 1975) on hospital malprac-
tice insurance. West Islip—Two officials of the Nassau-Suffolk Hospital
Council warned yesterday that those worrying  about the prob-
lems that the malpractice insurance crisis could create—if doc-
tors cease treating patients entirely or treat only emergency
cases—have not worried  quite enough. Indeed, a call to spend more time worrying about a problem. How
could a story like this even appear. Because the cultural pressure is
to worry, rather than to do. If all of those concerned were to worry
a lot more, perhaps the problem would go away. THE USELESS EMOTIONS—GUILT AND WORRY  / 111In order to eliminate worry it is necessary to understand the why
behind it. If worry is a large part of your life, you can bet that it has
many historical antecedents. But what are the payoffs. They are
similar to the neurotic dividends that you receive for guilt, since
both worry and guilt are self-nullifying behaviors, that vary only in
a temporal sense. Guilt focuses on the past; worry on the future. The Psychological Payoffs for Choosing Worry
• Worry is a present-moment activity. Thus, by using your current
life being immobilized over a future time in your life, you are able
to escape the now and whatever it is in the now that threatens you. For example, I spent the summer of 1974 in Karamursel, Turkey,
teaching and writing a book on counseling. My seven-year-old
daughter was back in the United States with her mother. While I
love writing, I also find it an intensely lonely, difficult chore which
requires a great deal of self-discipline. I would sit down at my
typewriter with paper in place and the margins set, and all of a
sudden my thoughts would be back on little Tracy Lynn. What if
she rides her bicycle into the street and doesn’t look. I hope she’s
being watched at the swimming pool, because she has a tendency
to be careless. Before I knew it, an hour had elapsed, and I had spent
it worrying. This was all in vain of course. But, was it. As long as I
could use up my present moments worrying I didn’t have to struggle
with the difficulty of writing. A terrific payoff indeed. • You can avoid having to take risks by using your worry as the
reason for immobility. How could you possibly act if you are preoc-
cupied with your present-moment worry. “I can’t do a thing, I’m
just too worried about———” This is a common lament, and one
with a payoff that keeps you standing still and avoiding the risk of
action. 112 / Your Erroneous Zones• You can label yourself as a caring person  by worrying. Worry
proves that you are a good parent, good spouse, or good whatever. A handsome dividend, although lacking in logical healthy thinking. • Worry is a handy justification for certain self-defeating behavior. If you’re overweight, you undoubtedly eat more when you worry,
hence you have a sensational reason for hanging on to the worry
behavior. Similarly, you find yourself smoking more in worrisome
situations, and can use the worry to avoid giving up smoking. This
same neurotic reward system applies to areas including marriage,
money, health and the like. The worry helps you to avoid changing. It is easier to worry about chest pains than to take the risk of finding
out the truth, and then have to deal forthrightly with yourself. • Your worry keeps you from living. A worrier sits around and
thinks about things, while a doer must be up and about. Worry is a
clever device to keep you inactive, and clearly it is easier, if less re-
warding, to worry, than to be an active, involved person. • Worry can bring ulcers, hypertension, cramps, tension head-
aches, backaches and the like. While these may not seem to be pay-
offs, they do result in considerable attention from others and justify
much self-pity as well, and some people would rather be pitied than
fulfilled. Now that you understand the psychological support system for
your worry, you can begin to devise some strategic efforts for getting
rid of the troublesome worry bugs that breed in this erroneous zone. Some Strategies for Eliminating Worry
• Begin to view your present moments as times to live, rather than
to obsess about the future. When you catch yourself worry-THE USELESS EMOTIONS—GUILT AND WORRY  / 113ing, ask yourself, “What am I avoiding now by using up this moment
with worry. ” Then begin to attack whatever it is you’re avoiding. The best antidote to worry is action. A client of mine, formerly prone
to worry, told me of a recent triumph over it. At a vacation resort
he wandered into the sauna one afternoon. There he met a man who
couldn’t take a holiday from his worries. The other man elaborated
all of the things my client should be worrying about. He mentioned
the stock market, but said not to worry about short-range fluctu-
ations. In six months there would be a virtual collapse, and that was
the thing to really worry about. My client made sure of all the things
he should worry about, and then left. He played a one-hour game
of tennis, enjoyed a touch football game with some young children,
participated with his wife in a Ping-Pong match which they thor-
oughly enjoyed, and finally, some three hours later, returned for a
shower/sauna. His new friend was still there worrying, and began
once again to chronicle more things to worry about. Meantime, my
client had spent his present moments excitedly alive, while the other
man had consumed his in worry. And neither man’s behavior had
any effect on the stock market. • Recognize the preposterousness of worry. Ask yourself over
and over, “Is there anything that will ever change as a result of my
worrying about it. ”
• Give yourself shorter and shorter periods of “worry-time. ”
Designate ten minutes in the morning and afternoon as your worry
segments. Use these periods to fret about every potential disaster
you can get into the time slot. Then, using your ability to control
your own thoughts, postpone any further worry until your next
designated “worry-time. ” You’ll soon see the folly of using any time
in this wasteful fashion, and will eventually eliminate your worry
zone completely. • Make a worry list of everything you worried about yesterday,
last week and even last year. See if any of your worry did anything
productive for you. Assess also how many of the114 / Your Erroneous Zonesthings you worried about ever materialized at all. You’ll soon see
that the worry is really a doubly wasteful activity. It does nothing
to alter the future. And the projected catastrophe often turns out to
be minor, or even a blessing when it arrives. • Just Worry. See if it is something that you can demonstrate when
you are tempted to worry. That is, stop and turn to someone and
say, “Watch me—I’m about to worry. ” They’ll be confounded since
you probably won’t even know how to demonstrate the thing you
do so well, so often. • Ask yourself this worry-eradicating question. “What’s the worst
thing that could happen to me (or them) and what is the likelihood
of it occurring. ” You’ll discover the absurdity of worry in this way. • Deliberately choose to act in some manner that is in direct con-
flict with your usual areas of worry. If you compulsively save for
the future, always worried about having enough money for another
day, begin to use your money today. Be like the rich uncle who put
in his will, “Being of sound mind, I spent all my money while I was
alive. ”
• Begin to face the fears you possess with productive thought and
behavior. A friend of mine recently spent a week on an island off
the coast of Connecticut. The woman enjoys taking long walks, and
soon discovered that the island was populated by many dogs who
were allowed to run wild. She decided to fight her fear and worry
that they might somehow bite her or even tear her limb from
limb—the ultimate calamity. She carried a rock in her hand (insur-
ance) and decided to show no sign of fear as the dogs approached. She even refused to slow down when the dogs growled and came
running toward her. As the dogs charged forward and encountered
someone who refused to back down, they gave up and ran away. While I am not advocating dangerous behavior, I do believe that an
effective challenge to a fear or worry is the most productive way to
eradicate it from your life. THE USELESS EMOTIONS—GUILT AND WORRY  / 115These are some techniques for eliminating worry in your life. But
the most effective weapon you have for wiping out worry is your
own determination to banish this neurotic behavior from your life. Final Thoughts on Worry and Guilt
The present moment is the key to understanding your guilt and
worry activities. Learn to live now and not waste your current mo-
ments in immobilizing thoughts about the past or future. There is
no other moment to live but now, and all of your futile guilt and
worry are done in the elusive now. Lewis Carroll in Alice Through the Looking Glass  talked about living
in the present. “The rule is, jam tomorrow, and jam yesterday…but never jam
today. ”
“It must come sometimes to ‘jam-today,’ ” Alice objected. How about you. Any jam today. Since it must come sometime,
how about now. 116 / Your Erroneous ZonesVI
EXPLORING THE
UNKNOWN
Only the insecure strive for security. You may be a safety expert—an individual who shuns the un-
known in favor of always knowing where he is going, and what he
can expect when he gets there. Early training in our society tends to
encourage caution at the expense of curiosity, safety at the expense
of adventure. Avoid the questionable, stay in areas that you know,
never wander into the unknown. These early messages can become
a psychological barrier that prevents your own personal fulfillment
and present-moment happiness in countless ways. Albert Einstein, a man who devoted his life to exploring the un-
known, said in an article entitled “What I Believe” in Forum  (October
1930),
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the true source of all art and science. 117He might also have said it is the source of all growth and excite-
ment as well. But too many people equate the unknown with danger. The pur-
pose of life, they think, is to deal with certainty, and to always know
where they are headed. Only the foolhardy risk exploring the fuzzy
areas of life, and when they do, they end up being surprised, hurt,
and worst of all, unprepared. As a young scout you were told to Be
Prepared. But how can you prepare for the unknown. Obviously,
you cannot. Therefore avoid it and you’ll never end up with egg on
your face. Be safe, don’t take risks, follow the road maps—even if it
is dull. Perhaps you’re getting tired of all that certainty, knowing what
every day will be like before it has been lived. You can’t grow if you
already know the answers before the questions have even been
asked. Probably the times you most remember are those in which
you were spontaneously alive, doing whatever you wanted, and
delightfully anticipating the mysterious. We hear the cultural messages of certainty throughout life. They
began with family and are reinforced by educators. The child learns
to avoid experimentation and is encouraged to avoid the unknown. Don’t get lost. Have the right answers. Stay with your own kind. If
you still cling to these fearful encouragements to security, now is
the time to break free. Get rid of the idea that you can’t try out new
and doubtful behavior. You can if you choose to. It begins with an
understanding of your conditioned reflex to avoid new experiences. Openness to New Experiences
If you believe in yourself fully, no activity is beyond your potential. The entire gamut of human experience is yours to enjoy, once you
decide to venture into territory where you don’t have guarantees. Think of the people who are regarded as geniuses and were spectac-
ularly effective in their lifetimes. They weren’t people who could
do only one thing well. They weren’t individ-118 / Your Erroneous Zonesuals who avoided the unknown. Benjamin Franklin, Ludwig van
Beethoven, Leonardo da Vinci, Jesus Christ, Albert Einstein, Galileo,
Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, these
and many like them were pioneers, adventurers into new, unreliable
areas. They were people, just like you, set apart only in that they
were willing to traverse areas where others dared not tread. Albert
Schweitzer, another Renaissance Man, once said, “Nothing human
is alien to me. ” You can look at yourself with new eyes, and open
yourself up to experiences that you’ve never even considered as a
part of your own human potential, or you can do the same things,
the same way, until you reach your coffin. It is a fact that great men
remind you of no other, and their greatness is generally discernible
in the quality of exploration and the boldness with which they ex-
plored the unknown. Opening yourself up to new experiences means surrendering the
notion that it is better to tolerate something familiar than to work
at changing it because change is fraught with uncertainty. Perhaps
you’ve adopted a stance that the self (you) is fragile, and easily
shattered if you enter areas where you’ve never been before. This is
a myth. You are a tower of strength. You are not going to collapse
or fall apart if you encounter something new. In fact, you stand a
much better chance of avoiding psychological collapse if you elim-
inate some of the routine and sameness in your life. Boredom is de-
bilitating and psychologically unhealthy. Once you lose interest in
life you are potentially shatterable. You won’t choose that mytholo-
gical nervous breakdown if you add a little spicy uncertainty to your
life. You may also have adopted the “if it’s unusual I must stay away
from it” mentality, which inhibits your openness to new experiences. Thus, if you see deaf people using sign language, you watch with
curiosity but never attempt to converse with them. Similarly, when
you encounter people who speak a foreign language, rather than
work it out and attempt somehow to communicate, you very likely
just wander off, and avoid the vast unknown of communicating in
other than your own spokenEXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 119language. There are uncountable activities and people who are
considered taboo merely because they are unknown. Thus homo-
sexuals, transvestites, the handicapped, the retarded, nudists and
the like, are in the category of the obscure. You are not quite certain
how to behave, and therefore you avoid the entire business. You may also believe that you must have a reason for doing
something; otherwise what’s the point of doing it. Balderdash. You
can do anything you want just because you want to, and for no
other reason. You don’t need a reason for anything that you do. Looking for a reason for everything is the kind of thinking that keeps
you from new and exciting experiences. As a child you could play
with a grasshopper for an hour, for no reason but that you liked it. Or you could climb a hill, or take an exploratory trip in the woods. Why. Because you wanted to. But as an adult, you have to come up
with a good reason for things. This passion for reasons keeps you
from opening up and growing. What freedom to know that you
don’t have to justify anything to anyone, including yourself, ever
again. Emerson, in his Journal of April 11, 1834, observed
Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that
I could see. Not to eat. Not for love…But only gliding. You can do whatever you want because you want to and for no
other reason. This kind of thinking will open up new vistas of exper-
ience and help to eliminate the fear of the unknown that you may
have adopted as a life-style. Rigidity vs. Spontaneity
Take a hard look at your spontaneity. Can you open up to some-
thing new or do you rigidly hang onto your accustomed be-120 / Your Erroneous Zoneshavior. Spontaneity means being able to try anything, at the spur
of the second, just because it is something you’d enjoy. You may
even discover that it’s something you don’t enjoy doing but you did
enjoy attempting it. It is likely that you will be condemned as irre-
sponsible or incautious, but what does the judgment of others matter
when you’re having such a marvelous time discovering the un-
known. There are many people in high places who find it difficult
to be spontaneous. They live out their lives in a rigid fashion, oblivi-
ous to the absurdities they blindly follow. Democrats and Republic-
ans support the statements of top party leaders and vote the party
line. Cabinet officials who speak spontaneously and honestly are
very often ex-cabinet officials. Independent thinking is discouraged,
and there are official guidelines for how one should think and speak. Yes-men are not spontaneous men. They desperately fear the un-
known. They fit in. They do what they are told. They never challenge
but rigidly adhere to what is expected of them. Where are you on
this dimension. Can you be your own person in this area. Can you
spontaneously take the avenues that don’t always lead to a sure
thing. The rigid never grow. They tend to do things the same way they’ve
always done them. A colleague of mine who teaches graduate
courses for teachers frequently asks the old-timers, who have spent
thirty years or more in the classroom, “Have you really been teaching
for thirty years or have you been teaching one year, thirty times. ”
And you, dear reader, have you really lived 10,000 or more days or
have you lived one day, 10,000 or more times. A good question to
ask yourself as you work toward more spontaneity in your life. Prejudice and Rigidity
Rigidity is the basis of all prejudice, which means to prejudge. Prejudice is based less on hate or even dislike for certainEXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 121people, ideas, or activities than on the fact that it’s easier and safer
to stay with the known. That is, people who are like you. Your pre-
judices seem to work for you. They keep you away from people,
things and ideas that are unknown and potentially troublesome. Actually they work against you by preventing you from exploring
the unknown. Being spontaneous means eliminating your prejudg-
ments and allowing yourself to meet and deal with new people and
ideas. The pre-judgments themselves are a safety valve for avoiding
murky or puzzling provinces and preventing growth. If you don’t
trust anyone you can’t get a “handle on”; it really means you don’t
trust yourself on unfamiliar grounds. The “Always Having a Plan” Trap
There is no such thing as planned spontaneity. It is a contradiction
in terms. We all know people who go through their lives with a road
map and a list, unable to vary their life a single iota from the original
plan. A plan is not necessarily unhealthy, but falling in love with
the plan is the real neurosis. You may have a life plan for what you’ll
do at age 25, 30, 40, 50, 70, etc. , and then you simply consult your
agenda to see where you ought to be, rather than making a new
decision each day and having a strong enough belief in yourself to
be able to alter the plan. Don’t let the plan become bigger than you. Henry was a client of mine who was in his middle twenties. He
suffered desperately from the having-a-plan-neurosis, and as a
consequence he missed out on many exciting life opportunities. When he was twenty-two he was offered a position in another state. He was petrified about the move. Would he be able to make it in
Georgia. Where would he live. How about his parents and friends. The fear of the unknown literally immobilized Henry, and he turned
down what might have been a chance at advancement, exciting new
work and a brand new en-122 / Your Erroneous Zonesvironment, in favor of staying where he was. It was this experience
that brought Henry to counseling. He felt that his own rigid adher-
ence to a plan was keeping him from growing, and yet he was afraid
to break out and try something new. After one exploratory session,
it was revealed that Henry was a veritable plan freak. He always ate
the same breakfast, planned his clothing days in advance, had his
dresser drawers arranged perfectly by color and size. Moreover, he
imposed his plan on his family as well. He expected his children to
have things in their place and his wife to conform to a rigid set of
rules that he had laid down. In short, Henry was a very unhappy,
albeit organized person. He lacked creativity, innovation and per-
sonal warmth. He was in fact, a plan unto himself, with his goal in
life to get everything into its proper place. With counseling, Henry
began to try some spontaneous living. He saw his plans as manipu-
lators of others, and as convenient escapes from wandering into the
risky unknown. He soon eased up on his family and allowed them
to be different from what he expected them to be. After several
months, Henry actually applied for a job in a firm that would require
him to move frequently. The very thing that he originally feared
became desirable. While Henry is by no means a totally spontaneous
person, he has effectively challenged some of the neurotic thinking
that supported his previously planned-out existence. He is working
on it every day, and learning to enjoy living, rather than living out
his life in a ritualized fashion. Security: Internal and External Varieties
A long time ago you learned how to write a high school theme or
essay. You were taught that you need a good introduction, a well-
organized body and a conclusion. Unfortunately, you may have
applied the same logic to your life, and come to see the whole busi-
ness of living as a theme. The introductionEXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 123was your childhood wherein you were preparing to be a person. The body is your adult life, which is organized and planned out in
preparation for your conclusion, which is the retirement and happy
ending. All of this organized thinking keeps you from living your
present moments. Living according to this plan implies a guarantee
that everything will be okay forever. Security, the final plan, is for
cadavers. Security means knowing what is going to happen. Security
means no excitement, no risks, no challenge. Security means no
growth and no growth means death. Besides, security is a myth. As
long as you are a person on earth, and the system stays the same,
you can never have security. And even if it weren’t a myth, it would
be a horrible way to live. Certainty eliminates excitement—and
growth. The word security as used here refers to external guarantees,
possessions such as money, a house and a car, to bulwarks such as
a job or a position in the community. But there is a different kind of
security that is worth pursuing, and this is the internal security of
trusting yourself to handle anything that may come down the pike. This is the only lasting security, the only real security. Things can
break down, a depression can wipe out your money, your house
can be repossessed, but you, you can be a rock of self-esteem. You
can believe so much in you and your internal strength that things
or others will be seen as mere pleasant but superfluous adjuncts to
your life. Try this little exercise. Suppose that right now, this second, as you
are reading this book, someone swooped down on you, stripped
you naked, and carted you off in a helicopter. No warning, no money,
nothing but yourself. Supposing you were flown to the middle of
Red China and dropped in a field. You would be up against new
language, new habits, and new climate, and all you would have is
yourself. Would you survive or collapse. Could you make friends,
get food, shelter and the like, or would you simply lie there and
moan about how unfortunate you were to have this catastrophe
visited on you. If you need external security, you’d perish, for all
of your goods would have been taken away. But if you have internal
security and are not afraid124 / Your Erroneous Zonesof the unknown, then you would survive. Security can then be re-
defined as the knowledge that you can handle anything, including
having no external security. Don’t be trapped by that kind of external
security, since it robs you of your ability to live and grow and fulfill
yourself. Take a look at those people without external security,
people who don’t have it all mapped out. Perhaps they are way
ahead of the game. At least they can try new things and avoid the
trap of always having to stay with the safe. James Kavanaugh in Will You Be My Friend. writes tellingly about
security in his little poem called Some Day. Someday I’ll walk away
And be free
And leave the sterile ones
Their secure sterility. I’ll leave without a forwarding address
And walk across some barren wilderness
To drop the world there. Then wander free of care
Like an unemployed Atlas. *
Achievement as Security
But the “walking away” to “be free,” as Kavanaugh puts it, is
difficult as long as you carry around the conviction that you must
achieve. Fear of failure is a powerful fear in our society, one incul-
cated in childhood and often carried throughout life. You may be surprised to hear this, but failure does not exist. Failure is simply someone else’s opinion of how a certain act should
have been completed. Once you believe that no act must be per-
formed in any specific other-directed way, then failing becomes
impossible. There may, however, be occasions when you will fail in some
given task according to your own standards. The impor-
*Los Angeles: Nash Publishing Corp. , 1971. EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 125tant thing here is not to equate the act with your own self-worth. Not to succeed in a particular endeavor is not to fail as a person. It
is simply not being successful with that particular trial at that partic-
ular present moment. Try to imagine using failure as a description of an animal’s beha-
vior. Consider a dog barking for fifteen minutes, and someone say-
ing, “He really isn’t very good at barking, I’d give him a “C. ” How
absurd. It is impossible for an animal to fail because there is no
provision for evaluating natural behavior. Spiders construct webs,
not successful or unsuccessful webs. Cats hunt mice; if they aren’t
successful in one attempt, they simply go after another. They don’t
lie there and whine, complaining about the one that got away, or
have a nervous breakdown because they failed. Natural behavior
simply is. So why not apply the same logic to your own behavior
and rid yourself of the fear of failure. The push to achieve comes from three of the most self-destructive
words in our culture. You’ve heard them and used them thousands
of times. Do your best. This is the cornerstone of the achievement
neurosis. Do your best at everything you do. What’s wrong with
taking a mediocre bicycle ride, or going for an average walk in the
park. Why not have some activities in your life which you just do,
rather than do to the best of your ability. The do-your-best neurosis
can keep you from trying new activities and enjoying old ones. At one time I counseled an eighteen-year-old high school senior
named Louann, who was imbued with the achievement standard. Louann was a straight A student, and had been since she first set
foot in a school. She worked long tedious hours on her school work,
and as a result she had no time for being a person. She was a veritable
computer of book knowledge. Yet Louann was painfully shy around
boys, never even having held hands let alone dated. She had de-
veloped a nervous twitch which came into play whenever we talked
about this side of her personality. Louann had placed all of her em-
phasis on being an achieving student at the expense of her total de-
velopment. In126 / Your Erroneous Zonesworking with Louann, I asked her what was more important in her
life. “What you know, or how you feel. ” Even though she was a
valedictorian, she was lacking inner peace and was actually very
unhappy. She began to place some importance on her feelings, and
because she was such an excellent learner, she applied the same
rigorous standards to learning new social behaviors as she had to
her school work. Louann’s mother called me a year later and told
me that she was concerned because her daughter had received her
very first “C” in a college freshman English class. I recommended
that she make a big production out of it, and take her out for dinner
in celebration. Perfectionism
Why should you have to do everything well. Who is keeping
score for you. Winston Churchill’s famous lines about perfectionism
indicate just how immobilizing the constant search for success can
be. The maxim “nothing avails but perfection” may be spelled
PARALYSIS
You can paralyze yourself with perfectionistic do-your-best nonsense. Perhaps you can give yourself some significant areas in your life in
which you truly want to do your best. But in the vast majority of
activities, having to do your best, or even to do well, is an obstacle
to doing. Don’t let perfectionism keep you on the sidelines avoiding
potentially pleasurable activities. Try changing “Do your best” to
simply “Do. ”
Perfection means immobility. If you have perfect standards for
yourself, then you’ll never try anything and you won’t do much
because perfect is not a concept that applies to human beings. God
can be perfect, but you, as a person, need not apply such ridiculous
standards to you and your behavior. If you have children, don’t breed paralysis and resentment byEXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 127insisting they do their best. Instead, talk with them about the things
they seem to enjoy the most, and perhaps give some encouragement
to try hard in those areas. But in other activities, doing is so much
more important than succeeding. Teach them to play in the volleyball
game rather than sit on the sidelines saying “I’m no good. ” Encour-
age them to ski, or to sing, or draw, or dance or whatever, because
they want to, not to avoid something just because they may not be
good at it. No one should be taught to be competitive, to try, or even
to do well. Instead, try to teach the lessons of self-esteem and pride
and pleasure in the activities deemed important by the individual. A child is easily taught the ugly message of equating his own self-
worth with his failures. Consequently he will begin to shun activities
in which he does not excel. Even more dangerous, he may develop
habits of low self-esteem, approval-seeking, guilt and all of the erro-
neous zone behaviors that go with self-rejection. If you equate your worth with your failures and successes, you’ll
be doomed to feelings of worthlessness. Think of Thomas Edison. If he’d used failure in any given task as an indicator of his own self-
esteem, after his first trial in which he failed he would have given
up on himself, announced that he was a failure and ceased his en-
deavors to light the world. Failure can be instructive. It can be an
incentive to work and exploration. It can even be thought as success
if it points the way to new discoveries. As Kenneth Boulding put it,
I have revised some folk wisdom lately; one of my edited pro-
verbs is Nothing fails like success  because you do not learn any-
thing from it. The only thing we ever learn from is failure. Success only confirms our superstitions. Think of it. Without failure we can learn nothing, and yet we have
learned to treasure success as the only acceptable standard. We tend
to shun all experiences which might bring about fail-128 / Your Erroneous Zonesure. Apprehension of failure is a big part of fear of the unknown. Anything which doesn’t smack of guaranteed success is to be
avoided. And fearing failure means fearing both the unknown and
the disapproval that accompanies not doing your best. Some Typical “Fear of the Unknown” Behavior In Our Culture
We have already discussed some typical behavior engendered by
fear of the unknown. Resisting new experiences, rigidity, prejudice,
slavish adherence to plans, the need for external security, fear of
failure and perfectionism are all subheadings in this large self-limit-
ing zone. What follows is a listing of the most common specific ex-
amples in this category. You can use it as a checklist to assess your
own behavior. • Eating the same kinds of foods for a lifetime. Avoiding exotic,
new taste treats in favor of the more traditional, and using descrip-
tions such as, “I’m a meat and potatoes person” or “I always order
chicken. ” While everyone has certain preferences and predelictions,
avoidance of unknown foods is merely rigidity. Some people have
never eaten a taco, or been to a Greek or Indian restaurant, simply
because they stay on the familiar ground of what they are used to. Leaving familiar grounds can open up a whole exciting gastronomic
world. • Wearing the same kinds of clothes forever. Never trying out a
new style, or wearing something different. Labeling yourself as a
“conservative dresser” or a “loud dresser” and never varying your
sartorial style. • Reading the same newspapers and magazines which support
the same editorial position day after day and never admitting a
contrary viewpoint. In one recent study, a reader, whose political
position was well known, was asked to read an edito-EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 129rial which began with a position identical to his own. In the middle
of the editorial, the viewpoint shifted, and a hidden camera revealed
that the reader’s eyes similarly shifted to another part of the page. The rigid reader in this experiment would not even consider a dis-
similar point of view. • Seeing the same movies (with different titles) for a lifetime. Re-
fusing to view anything that might support a different philosophical
or political belief, because the unknown is disconcerting and must
be shut out. • Living in the same neighborhood, city or state, simply because
your parents and their parents happened to have chosen that loca-
tion. Being afraid of a new place because the people, climate, politics,
language, customs, or whatever, are different. • Refusing to listen to ideas which you do not share. Instead of
considering the other speaker’s viewpoint—“Hmm, I’ve never
thought of that”—you immediately insist he’s crazy or uninformed. This is a method of avoiding the different or the unknown by refus-
ing to communicate. • Being afraid to try a new activity because you can’t do it well. “I don’t think I’d be very good, I’ll just watch. ”
• Compulsive achievement in school or on the job. Grades are
more important than anything else. The fitness report matters more
than the pleasure of work well done. Using achievement rewards
as substitutes for trying something new and unknown. Residing in
the safe areas of inquiry because, “I know I can get an A,” rather
than risking a C by embarking on a new discipline. Taking the safe
job where you know you’ll be successful instead of entering a new
race and taking a chance on failing. • Avoiding anyone whom you label deviant, including “fags,”
“commies,” “weirdos,” “spics,” “niggers,” “wops,” “wasps,” “hip-
pies,” “kikes,” “gooks,” and any derogatory tags that serve as pro-
tection from fear of the unfamiliar. Rather than trying to learn about
these people, you label them with a slanderous epithet and talk
about them rather than to them. 130 / Your Erroneous Zones• Staying with the same job even though you dislike it, not because
you have to, but out of apprehension about entering that vast un-
known of new work. • Staying in a marriage that obviously is not working, out of a
fear of the unknown, single life. You can’t remember what it’s like
not to be married, so you don’t know what you’d be getting yourself
into. Better to stay with the unpleasant familiar than to wander off
into new potentially lonely territory. • Taking vacations in the same place, at the same hotel, during
the same season each year. In this case you know what to expect,
and you don’t have to risk new places which might—or might
not—provide pleasant experiences. • Using performance rather than enjoyment as a criteria for
everything that you do. That is, doing only those things you do well
and avoiding those where you might fail or perform poorly. • Measuring things in monetary terms. If it costs more, it is worth
more, and therefore an indication of your personal success. The
known is measured in dollar signs, while the unknown cannot be
financially assessed. • Striving for the important title, the fancy automobiles, the right
labels on your clothes and other status symbols, even though you
may not even like the possessions and the life-style that they repres-
ent. • An inability to alter a plan when an interesting alternative arises. If you stray from the map in your head you’ll lose your way and
your place in life. • Being preoccupied with time, and allowing clocks to run your
life. Living by a schedule which keeps you from trying new and
unknown quantities of life. Always wearing a watch (even to bed)
and being controlled by it. Sleeping, eating and making love by the
clock, regardless of hunger, exhaustion, or desire. • Dismissing certain kinds of activities which you’ve never tried. These may include such “weird” things as meditation, yoga, astro-
logy, backgammon, bocci, Mah-jongg, isometrics, or anything that
you don’t know about. EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN  / 131• Viewing sex without imagination. Always doing the same thing
in the same position. Never trying something new and exotic, be-
cause it is different and therefore might be unacceptable. • Hiding behind the same clique of friends and never branching
out with different people who represent new and unknown worlds. Having regular meetings with the same crowd, and staying with
the crowd for a lifetime. • At a party which you attend with your spouse or date, staying
with that person for the entire evening not because you want to but
because you are safe. • Hanging back because of a fear of what might happen if you
ventured into a conversation with strange people on strange topics. Thinking to yourself that they must be smarter, more talented, more
skillful, or more glib, and using this as a reason to avoid a new ex-
perience. • Condemning yourself if you don’t succeed in all your endeavors. These are only a few examples of unhealthy behavior engendered
by fear of the unknown. You can probably make your own list. But
instead of making lists, why not begin to challenge why you want
to live each day the same as the one before, with no possibilities for
growth. The Psychological Support System for Retaining These Behaviors
Here are some common payoffs that keep you from roaming
around in that delicious unknown. • By staying the same you never have to think on your feet. If you
have a good plan, you simply consult your script, rather than your
wits. • Staving off the unknown has its own built-in reward system. The fear of the obscure is strong, and as long as you stay132 / Your Erroneous Zoneswith the familiar, you are keeping that fear at bay, regardless of how
costly it is to you in growth and fulfillment. It’s safer to avoid un-
charted areas. Think of Columbus. Everyone warned him he would
fall over the edge. It is easier to be one of the many treading familiar
ground rather than an explorer risking everything. The unknown
is a challenge and challenges can be threats. • You can say that you are postponing your gratification, which
you’ve heard labeled “mature-behavior,” and thus stay with the fa-
miliar and justify it with such a stance. Thus it is “mature” and
“adult” to put it off, but really it is out of panic and misgiving that
you stay as you are, and avoid unknown parts. • You can feel important by having done it right. You’ve been a
good boy/girl. As long as you see it in failure/success terms, you
can equate your self-worth with your good performance and feel
good. But the right thing in this sense is only someone else’s editorial
opinion. Some Strategies for Coming to Grips with the Mysterious and the
Unknown
• Make selective efforts to try new things even if you are tempted
to stay with the familiar. For example, at a restaurant order a new
dish.
The author argues that worry and fear of the unknown can be debilitating and prevent personal growth, and that it is essential to understand the underlying reasons for these behaviors in order to overcome them.
What is the author's main point about worry and the unknown?
The author argues that external security is an illusion and that true security comes from within, as it is the only lasting and healthy form of security.
What is the author's view on the concept of security?
The author suggests that one should not equate their self-worth with success or failure, and instead focus on their own internal strength and abilities.
What is the author's advice on dealing with fear of failure?
The author argues that perfection is an unattainable and unnecessary goal, and that it is essential to recognize that perfection is not a human attribute.
What is the author's stance on the concept of perfection?
The author suggests that one should not get caught up in right and wrong thinking, and instead focus on making choices based on their own values and principles, rather than trying to be "right" or "wrong".
What is the author's advice on decision-making?