62. Play, Positive Psychology, and A-Holes with Jeff Harry Part 1: Putting A-holes in their Place

 
 
Play, Positive Psychology, and A-Holes with Jeff Harry Part 1: Putting A-Holes In Their Place
 
 
 
 

How to Be A-Hole Proof

What's holding you back from being visible?

For many, it boils down to an underlying fear of being judged and trolled.

It does unfortunately come with the territory of putting yourself out there. But there are exercises and mindset shifts you can make that can help you deal with navigating jerks, especially jerks on social media.

Jeff Harry joins India for a conversation about dealing with a-holes online and how positive psychology can help make you troll-proof.

Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:

  • How jerks and trolls online try to burden others with their own shame

  • Auditing your social feed and how you spend your energy

  • An exercise in befriending your inner critic

  • Using positive psychology to create strong boundaries against trolls

Play in the Day-to-Day

Jeff Harry combines positive psychology and play to help teams and organizations navigate difficult conversations and assist individuals in addressing their biggest challenges through embracing a play-oriented approach to work. For his work, Jeff was selected by BambooHR & Engagedly as one of the Top 100 HR Influencers of 2020 and has been featured in the NY Times, Mashable, Upworthy, & Shondaland. Jeff has worked with Google, Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, Adobe, the NFL, Amazon, and Facebook, helping their staff to infuse more play into the day-to-day.

Play, Perfectionism, and Shame

On the Flaunt Your Fire podcast, Jeff Harry opens by providing the positive psychology context to his approach to play and dealing with assholes both in real life and online.

He defines play as “any joyful act where you forget about time…[where] you are fully in the moment, you are fully in flow.”

He says that play is the opposite of perfection. Where perfectionism is rooted in shame, ego, fear of failure, and the need to be right, play is rooted in curiosity and embracing failure.

This distinction is important when it comes to dealing with jerks online, who, he says, are often coming from a place of shame.

“They’re trying to shame you because they haven’t created anything themselves…They’re trying to burden you with their own shame because they’re struggling and hurt people, hurt people.”

India adds that we can easily forget to pause for a moment and ask ourselves if the person being an asshole to you is even taking the same risks that you have to be visible and vulnerable before you give their message clout.

Jeff says there are a few approaches to dealing with these kinds of interactions.

If you have the time and energy, you can try to engage with the person and it is possible to make a connection.

In the case of someone who is trolling for the sake of trolling, he says you have to ask yourself why you’re devoting your energy to them, and why you’re allowing them to trigger your own inner critic.

But, he says, the more you confront your inner critic and address it directly, the quieter it will get.

Choose How to Spend Your Energy

Jeff says there are many ways for people to be assholes at work and online.

He lists being mean for the sake of being mean, arrogance, self-righteousness, dismissiveness, entitlement, and people who run hot and cold with you as types of assholes you’ll encounter at work and online.

“So you have to interpret, okay, where is my energy going? Who am I investing my time into?”

He says this goes for both how much time you’re spending on social media and the people you interact with by following or engaging with them.

He asks, “is this person’s account bringing me joy? Because if it’s not if it’s not inspiring you to create, then why are you looking at it?…You can just unfollow that person.”

India agrees and says she always recommends going into your feed at least once per quarter and reviewing who shows up and whether you want to mute or unfollow people if their content no longer feels good for you.

Befriend Your Inner Gargamel

When it comes to your inner critic and your own inner a-hole, Jeff says that the inner critic is really an extension of your rational mind.

“Your inner critic is there to keep you alive…We run to it when we want to create something new and we're like, ‘Hey, should I take this risk?’ And your rational mind is like, ‘No. Don't take any risks, just binge watch Netflix for the rest of your life.’”

He says first we have to realize why the inner critic is there, and then we have to find ways to befriend it.

He suggests writing down what your inner critic is saying to you and asking yourself where that voice is coming from, what it sounds like, even what it looks like.

“Start to paint a character of who this is, and then…once, you know what, it sounds like, what it looks like it's saying to you, you can then actually name it a character.”

By creating a character, you can separate that voice from who you are now and respond to it.

“When you actually respond to it, you can actually quiet it down.”

Jeff says he sometimes even texts his best friend with what his inner critic that he named Gargamel is saying to him and that act alone helps quiet it.

The final step is to flip the script on the mean things your inner critic says and repeat those positive mantras to yourself.

“From a positive psychology standpoint, when you start to repeat those to yourself, you start to see those patterns more and more. And what happens is your inner critic gets really quiet, then your inner child, your inner superhero, that inner cheerleader starts to get louder and you start to get inspired to create more.”

Setting Boundaries with Trolls

Because our inner critics are rooted in past negative experiences and trying to keep us safe, Jeff says that when we encounter assholes in the world who trigger the inner critic, “you’re not just having a conversation with the person right now, you’re having conversations that you’ve had in the past.”

Those conversational and behavioral patterns get subconsciously ingrained in us and “the only way to address those patterns is to lay new pathways down.”

Those new pathways take practice, from positive mantras to addressing your inner asshole, so that when you encounter an asshole out in the world, you are able to respond positively and stand up to them.

“It’s all about setting boundaries…The more that people are doing that boundary-setting online, the more you’re able to put a lot of trolls in their place.”

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