Jul 12 2022
Today I want to share something personal. Personal enough that I’m nervous to write about it.
It was my birthday last week so I asked a group of my close friends for a very unusual gift: an intervention.
Like the kind you’d give an alcoholic. Or a friend with a toxic boyfriend.
Specifically, I asked my buddies to meet up and make a google doc of my flaws and blindspots.
And because they love me, four of my close friends went to a bar together, got some drinks and debated my character for two hours. My errors. Moral failings. Issues with women. Predilections for pathological fuckery. They listed all of it in a google doc and hand-delivered it to me on my birthday.
And yes I’m going to share (some of) it. Here’s a taste:
(Note: Number 1 is blurred for reasons that are too complicated to express here).
I don’t feel like focusing on the contents of the doc itself (if you’re curious about that DM me). What’s more intriguing is how mysteriously powerful this experience was.
By the end of it, everyone agreed that this ritual is worth doing every year.
How it felt
At the party on Saturday, me and my four friends snuck away from the main group to discuss each bullet point in private. What I experienced next was akin to a medium-dose psychedelic trip.
Imagine. You’re in your bedroom surrounded by 4 highly intelligent people you trust. In your bones you believe they love you (mostly). Then they bring out this list and all start saying the same things about how you might be wrong about your life.
Together they point out the behaviours they believe you’ll regret in 10 years if you don’t change. Some of them air their personal grievances. But crucially, they all speak in agreement with one another. They take time recasting each bullet point from their own personal angles, until it all clicks and everyone collectively nods.
While this was going on I had many impulses to defend myself. But since I was committed to quietly listen, something strange happened. My ego relented. The rigid structure of “the self” loosened. The front of my body relaxed and my heart softened. I thought:
“These people really love me. They are saying this because they care about me. I trust them. I asked them to do this.”
Eventually the combination of being open and outnumbered allowed wisdom to land.
Here’s the thing. Most of my friends' critiques were somewhat familiar to me (I journal a lot). Nothing was profoundly new or devastating. But the way it all landed felt different.
Familiar words carried 100x more weight to them. They became fire-tipped arrows. The group unanimity. The ritualized nature of it. The birthday. These elements swirled together and transformed old insights into “new” things that penetrated my personality structure.
Maybe I’m overstating this (I definitely feel the desire to, in a sort of self-fulfilling way).
At the very least I can say that brutal honesty from friends of virtue is the original psychedelic. Put down the mushrooms. Just get a few guys together to call you out on your bullshit.
It’s efficient too. I can read books or journal for months, but I’m like most people: I have difficulty taking my own advice. It takes hundreds of iterations for something to land.
Your own advice seldom penetrates your personality structure. The ego blocks the wisdom from entering the soul. Altered states seem to help with this, but even those are short-lived and everyone struggles with integration.
Instead use your friends. There’s nothing quite like having them all agree on the advice you need, and then bringing that into common knowledge. The google doc now exists between us all. My flaws have been consecrated into the ether and can no longer be ignored.
Put another way, it’s gonna be hard to face my friends next week without making changes.
But it’s even better than that: my friends are motivated to help me make those changes. Integration is built into the process.
Finding courage
I’m always impressed by the courageous truth-telling capacities of people like Douglas Murray. How do you have the huevos to speak radioactive facts to a world that will 100% punish you for saying them?
People like this (whether they are right or wrong) are needed as a bulwark against bullshit, tyranny and mass idealogical possession. Without them our civilization declines.
So it’s important to reiterate: how do you become the type of person who can tell the truth when it’s especially hard to? Where do you draw your courage?
According to Murray, the secret is to be in good standing with with a small group of people you trust (who would have thought!).
“I only desire the approval of a relatively small number of people who I respect.” - Douglas Murray
I don’t want to oversell it, but this birthday ritual has given me an unexpected sense of power. Something sunk in a couple days after it. I realized with deep confidence that I was in “good standing” with the small group of people who’s opinions I cared most about. I just had to attend to a few things on that list.
Moreover, being in good standing means a 10% increase in my felt-sense of courage. I’m not joking. I now have a stronger foundation from which to move the world from.
***
I’m not advocating that everyone needs a self-induced intervention. But if this sounds like your thing, just ask your friends to list your blindspots. Give them a lot of space to speak (it’s hard). Commit to actively listen and watch what happens to you.
Daniel
This is a beautiful share, Daniel. Thank you for sharing!