Start with the story, then let your actions follow

Why is America “The Greatest Country in the World™?”

Unlike Italy (Caesar), Greece (Alexander the Great), and Mongolia (Genghis Khan), America never ruled half the known world. In fact, America is only 200 years old. It’s one of the youngest countries of all.

So why do they get that slogan? America gets that slogan because for all 200 of those years, they’ve been yelling it at the top of their lungs. When the founding fathers put their signatures on that document, they said: “This is what makes a country great.”

Ever since, America at large has been saying, “Look! This is what makes a country great. And we’re doing it! Look at us! That is why our country is the greatest.” It’s marketing — but it works.

“Which country is the best?” is a stupid question, of course, but let’s ignore that for a second. For any of the years it has existed, including this one, you could argue a thousand ways that America is not the greatest country in the world. You could use facts. You could use opinions. You could use ideas.

Every country has problems. America is no exception. And yet, if you could put your ear on the global chatter-chamber, you’d find there’s no debate: By and large, people around the world agree that the USA are “The Greatest Country in the World™.” It might not be more than half the global population, but it sure is a hell of a lot more than just the 328 million people who live there. How many dream of moving to the USA? Billions.

USA wins, and it wins because when it comes to “the country reputation scoreboard,” Americans have made up a competition and declared themselves the winner. They’ve memed the outcome they wanted into existence, and even if the memes were just made up, the result is very much real.

Achieving your dreams works the exact same way.

The sooner you wrap your head around the fact that all large-scale change must — in large part — be memed into existence, the better. It’s not all of it but most of it.

Most people don’t want to accept this. People who don’t understand Bitcoin, the GameStop drama, or how Trump could ever win the election want logical explanations for why things work.

The truth is most things work because we collectively decide they should. Much more so than with facts and figures, we back them with belief — and human belief is one of the most powerful forces in the world. The story matters more than the data.

If we could travel through time and be there for some of the big moments of history, we’d understand this much faster. Imagine how skeptical the first users of paper US dollars must have been. “What the hell is this? I can’t bite on it to verify it’s real. It’s just paper!” Imagine how freaked out people were by the first light bulbs. “It must be witchcraft! They should hang this Edison guy.”

Early on, Martin Luther King was just a hot-headed guy with crazy ideas. So were Newton, Steve Jobs, Lady Gaga, and Amelia Earhart. Then, the story changed.

When you actively try to change your story, you are taking back your power. You’re starting to meme your dreams into existence.

There’s a great scene in The Dark Knight where Alfred explains why Bruce doesn’t have what it takes to defeat Bane: “I see the power of belief.”

A few weeks ago, Jake Paul knocked out Ben Askren in the first round. How can a Youtuber (repeatedly) beat professionals? Training, circumstance, luck — sure, but at some point, you have to admit: “I see the power of belief.”

Ten days before the fight, one of Jake’s security guards died. That guard told Jake he had a dream of him knocking out Ben in the first round. Imagine what it feels like to fight for that. Imagine the power of belief. Can you feel it? Goosebumps.

Of course, Batman ultimately does defeat Bane, but not because of his renewed physical strength, better gadgets, or smarter ideas. He wins because he fights for something bigger, something he believes in so much that he makes all the above happen in the first place. Belief is a self-reinforcing loop.

 If you want something, you need to tell yourself a story that leads to it. In that story, you must be the hero. Then, you keep telling it to yourself and everyone you come across. 

It matters not how asinine or unrealistic the story is. What matters is that it offers the power of belief — to others, but especially to you. You don’t need the facts on your side because if you persist with your story, the data will change over time.

When it comes to understanding what happens in the world as well as making your dreams a reality, the story isn’t everything, but it’s probably more than half. In today’s world of global awareness and instant story-spreading, don’t let anyone tell you what you can and can’t do. Decide what the story will be, then insist on it with your words and actions. One day, it is bound to happen.

Just like, one day, someone decided America should be the greatest country in the world — and today, that’s a story billions of people believe.

Pride has many flavors — they all make life unpleasant

A few years ago, we had a falling out with my grandfather.

Sadly, my grandma died fairly young. Lung cancer. 2008. After her death, my grandpa started “acting out” — or at least that’s what a parent might say.

Before he retired, my grandfather was an architect and a very successful one at that. Since grandma died, however, my grandpa has been “spending the money with both hands,” as we say in Germany. Trying to fill a void that can’t be filled, he buys cars, art, and expensive clothes. He takes fancy vacations, eats out a lot, and dates women half his age who only care about his money.

He’s also completely retreated from family activities. He bailed on my sister’s concert once — before it was her turn to sing. He never shows up at our house anymore. He’s angry, erratic, and scares everyone away, even his friends.

Now, my grandpa was always a bit difficult, but I also remember him as a generous, funny, interesting man. He always had good taste, hosted great parties, and told jokes about everything. Unfortunately, that man seems gone.

Next to my aunt, I was among the last to visit him before he stopped talking to us altogether. In the end, what shocked me the most was his utter lack of perspective. He was unable to see anyone else’s point of view, and that’s why he now spends most of his time alone.

My grandpa never grew up. He is a 4-year-old child inside the body of a 79-year-old man. What my grandpa is missing — and what my grandma used to compensate for all these years — is emotional maturity.

Unlike physical development, emotional ripeness isn’t something we pick up naturally. We have to cultivate it. When children throw a hissy fit, we show them how to calm down, manage their ego, and put their emotions in context. When an old man does the same, we shake our heads in disbelief — he should have learned to process his feelings ages ago. The truth, however, is that many people don’t, and some, like my grandfather, never do.

At nearly 80 years old, I’m not holding my breath waiting for my grandpa to come around. Hope dies last, but for now, I think the best you and I can do is to learn from his mistakes. I’m only 28, but, next to observing him, I’ve also spent the last few years studying emotions in myself and others.

 Here are five qualities I continue to see in those I’d call emotionally mature.  Most of our challenges today are emotional challenges. It’s not that you faint when giving a presentation to the higher-ups or that your heart stops pumping blood when your girlfriend breaks up with you — it’s that the prospect of these events conjures a plethora of difficult emotions, and those emotions make you want to escape. Emotionally mature people resist this urge.

Instead of running away and hiding, whether that’s leaving a physical location or drowning their discomfort in distractions like alcohol or entertainment, emotionally mature people sit with their pain. They stay with the discomfort until they’re able to identify their emotions. Psychologist Nick Wignall calls this emotional tolerance, and meditation is one of its key enablers.

None of us control our impulses, but by briefly pausing as they come up, we can choose the thoughts that follow those impulses. We can assess our feelings, then act on them, rather than getting hijacked and merely reacting to them. We can accept our feelings without surrendering to them — and that’s exactly what emotionally mature people do.

The reason emotional tolerance is the most important aspect of mastering modern life’s challenges is that without it we have no chance of even figuring out why we’re struggling.

A study looking at how well children can identify emotions compared to adults found that, surprisingly, 3- and 4-year-olds were better at recognizing sadness in people’s faces than 5-year-olds and even adults. Psychologists call the skill of labeling our own feelings correctly emotional clarity.

While we have a talent for it in our early years, we might lose this skill and never get it back. Many of the behaviors we adopt from those around us lead to the opposite of emotional clarity: burying our feelings beneath a pile of surface-level, easily treatable symptoms, like boredom, laziness, and apathy.

Emotionally mature people refuse to settle for anything less than knowing what they feel. They are committed to wading through the thick of discomfort until they emerge with real answers they can process.

Once they’ve done the hard work of figuring out what’s actually going on in their minds, emotionally mature people humbly assess the issue at hand.

They’re not stubborn. They don’t insist on being right after they find out they’re wrong, and they expect to find out they’re wrong often and repeatedly. They also don’t feel too bad about either of those — because they know they happen to everybody all the time.

Emotionally mature people are honest beyond the point where it hurts. Even if they stand to be humiliated, they speak their truth to the best of their ability. Especially then.

Most of all, emotionally mature people are almost always willing to talk, whether it’s with another person or simply to themselves. They exert a great deal of empathy in working through their own feelings and support others in doing the same.

Almost all problems between people are communication problems. Sitting down with an ex won’t guarantee a happy ending to the story, but, most of the time, emotionally mature people will be willing to try and write one.

Equipped with insight on how they feel about a situation, where they might have gone wrong, and what others involved may think and feel, emotionally mature people then contrast these findings with their values and boundaries.

Did I violate one of my principles here? Did the other person cross a barrier I’d like to keep intact? Where do I want to draw my lines and what will it take to defend them? Of course, answering these questions requires knowing what your boundaries and values are in the first place.

Self-respect is rooted in individuality and, much like knowing how we feel about any particular situation, necessitates digging into our psyche and uncovering something we can proudly and shamelessly hold up in the world.

Emotionally mature people think about their pillars of self-worth often and make an effort to maintain them as best as they can.

Finally, emotionally mature people choose to do what they can with what they’ve got — again, and again, and again. They understand the difference between taking responsibility and assigning blame, and they decide to do one instead of the other, even in the face of little control and predictability.

The world is full of people, elements, and events we have no hand in shaping. Being emotionally mature is about influencing what you can, accepting what you can’t, and learning to recognize the difference.

Doing so requires seeing the big picture at all times — and if you can’t see it, make an effort to. Is this fight worth sacrificing your marriage? Where will staying with your angry boss take you? Ask these questions before you answer them with your actions.

Emotionally mature people always ask, “What else could I try?” and even if the answer is “Nothing,” they maintain a sense of awareness that they’ll soon have to ask it again. Facing an unknown future, they embrace their agency.

Emotional maturity is knowing you’ll keep meeting new situations where you’ll need to practice emotional tolerance until you find emotional clarity. It’s considering the past and the mistakes you have made, as well as the future and whether your self-image warrants sticking around and trying again.

Finally, it’s about remembering you’re a tiny particle in a chaotic, cosmic sea of coincidence, but that, no matter what happens, you decide what to think of, feel about, and do with all the other particles you collide with.

As long as you do that, no matter how old you are, you’ll always be grown up.