Coming to Mindset Shifts U this Summer and Fall
The paradox that we resist solutions to the problems we create is at the heart of self-deception.
Our work with Man’s Search for Meaning winds up this week.
On June 22nd, we begin C. Terry Warner’s Bonds that Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves.
Philosopher C. Terry Warner is the world’s leading expert on self-deception and founder of the Arbinger Institute. The Arbinger Institute has introduced many people to Warner’s work through best-selling books, including Leadership and Self-Deception and The Outward Mindset.
Warner and Arbinger believe self-deception is “so pervasive that it touches every aspect of life.” That “people systematically create their own obstacles to well-being—without knowing they are creating them—and then resist any attempts to overcome these obstacles” is a universal truth.
When we are drowning in our self-deceptions, we cannot distance ourselves from our grievances, resentments, anger, judgments, bitterness, self-pity, and other troubling emotions. Our self-justifying stories rule our mind.
This paradox that we resist solutions to the problems we create is at the heart of self-deception, and Warner offers us a way out. Warner does not use positive thinking, cognitive behavioral therapy, or other methods you may be familiar with. Instead, he helps us expose the roots of our self-deception.
I have taught Warner’s and Arbinger’s material in MBA leadership classes and workshops and have seen firsthand how this understanding opens minds to radically fresh perspectives on human relationships.
I have chosen Professor Warner’s inspired book, Bonds that Make Us Free, for our work at Mindset Shifts U because it finds the sweet spot between his more academic papers and books that are more limited in scope.
Warner reveals the tough realities of the human experience, but he is never preachy. He makes it clear he is traveling the same road as us.
Importantly, Warner’s expression of universal truths is practical; you can apply his insights immediately. Working with Warner’s wisdom will shift your mindset and help you become a better partner, parent, colleague, and friend.
Marcus and Frankl reminded us that tomorrow is not guaranteed. Why wouldn’t we want to be the best version of ourselves today?
Right at the start of his book, Warner clarifies how “troubled thoughts and feelings” can leave us feeling stuck.
Consistent with what we have been learning, Warner defines stuck as “experiencing other people or circumstances as having more power over our own happiness than we do.”
Warner asks, “Can we ever get out of this box once we find ourselves in it?”
He writes that most prescriptions to improve our emotional well-being don’t work very well “because they fail to show how our hearts can be changed.”
Warner adds, “Without a change of heart whatever we do will carry the smell of our manipulative, selfish, or fearful intent, and other people will readily discern it.”
We will work with consecutive chapters in Bonds that Make Us Free, over approximately seven weeks, giving the profound material time to shift our mindsets and touch our hearts. I have read Bonds many times over the past twenty years, and new insights are revealed each time I do.
We will begin on June 22nd with Chapters 1 and 2.
Looking ahead to September, in the run-up to the election, we will do our civic duty by studying F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.
Since the COVID pandemic began, I have reread The Road to Serfdom twice, once for a series of essays and once for a family book club that my wife and I have with our adult children.
Passages I previously overlooked leaped from the pages as if in bold print, signaling imminent danger to human progress. Hayek’s message never seemed more prescient: The descent into totalitarianism can happen anywhere. America is no exception.
Most of us recognize that something is deeply off with America’s trajectory. As we read together The Road to Serfdom, you will arm yourselves with the knowledge of what false beliefs drive America’s fall from grace.
With more books of incalculable value coming to Mindset Shifts U, this is a great time to support this Substack. By studying the next two books, you will improve your relationships and help ensure freedom is not lost in America.
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I just started reading this book today and I'm so excited! It's coming at exactly the right moment for me.