Both liberal and conservative political writers have been commenting on the negative public reactions to Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, despite their being the leading Republican contenders for their party’s nomination. For example, conservative George Will portrays Romney as the person we don’t trust – writing of the “… impression many Republicans seem to have of his slipperiness…(and) the suspicion that there is something synthetic about him.” Liberal Eugene Robinson describes Gingrich as the person we don’t like, citing both Fox and CNN polls showing that Gingrich has about a 57% disapproval rating.

Unfortunately, that’s a tall order. It’s more likely that Mitt Romney, if he’s the candidate, and his party will present a vision that’s largely disconnected from — even denies — facts and realities about today’s world. Therefore, they’re likely to offer solutions to problems that derive from their alternate reality.

One way to explain this oddity is from a political psychology perspective. That is, let’s examine the emotional attitudes and beliefs that may underlie the Republican Party’s view of reality and the solutions they offer to problems as they define them. For example, the party appears wedded to a singular view of what “success” in life is, and should be. And yet, that vision is increasingly disconnected from emerging new realities. Those point to the need for a broader, more inclusive view of success in today’s world, and how to achieve it.

The New Normal

You’ve probably noticed the following:

• Unrelenting turmoil, disruption, and unpredictability throughout the world.

• Worldwide interconnection and transparency, socially, technologically, and economically.

• Rising diversity (which will become a majority within the current decade) along with acceptance of working and living with people of different backgrounds, beliefs and sexual orientation.

• Increasing scientific data about the impact of humanly-created climate change upon water shortages, famines, and weather extremes — events we’ve already witnessed, with more already waiting in the wings.

• Factual evidence that Keynes was correct and continues to be — made even clearer by the failure of austerity measures in the Eurozone.

The scope of the new normal is broad and encompassing. Recognizing it as a reality is the basis for creating solutions to the new challenges that worldwide turmoil and interconnection create. And that includes defining what success in personal life and for a society really means, in this new era. The problem is, current Republican ideology doesn’t even acknowledge the new normal. Within its alternate universe, success means exclusionary pursuit of extraction and possession for oneself and like-minded associates.

That is, the Republican candidates embrace a self-interest-oriented, wealth-based view of success. It maintains that success and stability occur and prevail through unfettered pursuit of self-interest and in the absence of government regulations. It includes the failed policies of deregulation, lower taxes for the wealthiest and reducing the deficit. It also includes social and religious values that are acceptable to them as necessary for a successful life, as they define it.

In short, the Republican candidates’ view of success is exclusionary, anti-inclusive, and opposed to serving the common good. Consistent with that view, Romney sees any criticism of it and of the financial inequality it creates as simply “envy” of the rich. But describing its negative consequences isn’t “putting free enterprise on trial,” as Romney likes to claim. Nor is it a stepping stone to a “European-style social welfare state.” In fact, the recent polls showing opposition to the growing inequality between the rich and the rest of society reflect increased awareness of the negative impact the singular view of success had, the one that Republican candidates willingly embrace.

Until recently, that is. By attacking Romney’s work at Bain Capital as “vulture capitalism” and destructive to people’s lives, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have — perhaps unwittingly — heightened public awareness of the damage created not by capitalism, per se, but by different kinds of capitalism, as E.J. Dionne pointed out in his recent Washington Post column. It’s the contrast between the goals of extracting value vs. building something that generates value; “vulture” vs. “creative” capitalism.

The Republican candidates express a more entrenched, extreme version of an old theme, actually — the consequences of intoxication by financial wealth, power, and possessions. That view of success can warp and distort the ego to the point of self-delusion, self-deception and self-aggrandizement. We read about examples in the media most every day.

Some recent studies point out the social and individual dysfunction this can create. One found that people in power tend to shift to analytical thinking which then becomes divorced from perceiving the larger context of the problem. While that can enhance the capacity for power and control, it also diminishes the ability to recognize how achieving power and maintaining success depends so much upon others; your interconnection with them. That diminishment fuels what I’ve called our “empathy deficit disorder” in a previous post.

Moreover, another recent study found that humble leaders are more highly effective than those who are egocentric. The latter are more associated with an exclusionary, self-focused view of their success and importance. In a similar vein, recent research finds that lower class people are quicker to show compassion in the face of suffering. The point is that a singular pursuit of wealth can, in fact, blunt your capacity for compassion and negatively impact your effectiveness in your work roles or other relationships.

What’s “Success” In Today’s World?

The interdependence and turmoil of the new normal point towards expanding our view of success to one that’s more relevant to our times. It includes being able to build, contribute, create and innovate in ways that have impact on and can benefit all people and institutions for the long run, not only oneself or one’s allies. Now, more than ever, it’s true that “nothing comes from nothing.” Creating success for oneself is inseparable from individual actions and public policies that promote security, opportunity for growth of competencies, physical and mental well-being, and a sustainable environment for future generations. Success means contribution to all of those things.

This broader view of success is increasingly framed as serving the common good, something larger than just your own needs and desires. That orientation reflects an awareness that beneath our surface differences we’re all One. We experience the same human needs, fears and longings. We’re all intertwined in mutual dependency on this shared planet. We’re all equal shareholders in the future.

That perspective is the foundation for creative solutions to today’s challenges. Psychologically, it fuels the capacity for empathy and compassion; honest self-awareness and harnessing the self-centeredness that’s part of being human. It includes mental attitudes like flexibility and openness; “thinking like Google.” This is a view of “whole life success.” It’s less defined by personal financial wealth and self-interest alone, and more by living a successful, sustainable life that is grown through active support of the well-being of all.

The prospect of a societal shift towards a more inclusive view of success and how it can contribute solutions to our challenges is heightened by trends in that direction already visible. Some examples:

• A growing movement towards serving common good through charity and individual acts.

• The application of scientific research to building compassion and diminishing egocentrism.

• The simple expression of a little girl who, in this video, instinctively “gets” the reality of interconnection.

• New management philosophies about sustainability and leadership.

• The growing merger of new psychological perspectives about emotional health, ancient spiritual teachings about the authentic self, and the discoveries of modern science, as Deepak Chopra and others have written about.

Meanwhile, in the political arena, we’re witnessing the clash of two visions: one that pulls towards the old extraction-oriented, self-serving way of life that produces “winners” and “losers;” the other, towards behavior and policies that promote successful, sustainable lives and resources for the many, and positive interconnection with others, through tolerance and acceptance of the differences among people on our planet. The political debate would be more honest if it took place around those different visions of life and the consequences they have for our future.

I’m often asked that question by men and women who feel puzzled about why things didn’t go so well, just when the situation seemed ideal.  It’s ironic, they think, because they’re absorb the flood of advice and prescriptions for having super sex out there.  The magazine covers touting “10 new techniques to drive him/her wild;” the online e-zines like Your Tango or Libido for Life.  Some of the advice is pretty sound, like that from the respected sociologist of sexual relations, Pepper Schwartz, or the advice on sexual matters that’s useful for both straights and gays from Dan Savage.  But there’s so much more that’s not so good.  It touts juvenile-sounding, superficial advice.

In fact, the majority of the advice, strategies and techniques overlook the core of a sustaining, mutually energized sexual connection: It’s an integrated relationship—one that combines transparency in your communications, true mutuality in decision-making, and physical/sexual encounters that heighten erotic energy.

If you’re not working at all three parts in unison as a couple, your sexual connection will flatline over time, no matter how ideal the setting and environment.  I’ll describe these three below, but first let’s look at what fuels the possibility for an integrated relationship to begin with.  It’s essentially a thriving spiritual connection between the two partners: Your values and outlook about life; your desires and fears in your shared journey through life.  That includes your sense of meaning and purpose in the world. As Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina, “Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is meaningless.”

Your spiritual core is reflected in the extent to which all of the above are in synch; shared and expressed, between yourself and your partner—or aren’t:  As a woman said to me about her 11-year marriage, “It’s worse than seeing things differently; we see different things!”

Whole-Person Sex

The spiritual core of your relationship includes your life and family goals as a couple; how your values and ideals may change and evolve over the years, as separate individuals and as a couple.  If this spiritual core grows over time, it fuels the three parts of an integrated, intimate relationship – the kind of romance that couples desire, as research shows.  I call them Radical Transparency, Sharing The Stage, and Good Vibrations. Think of the result as building and sustaining “whole person sex.”

Radical Transparency  — This means communicating truthfully and completely, to your partner.  Yes, that means exposing your vulnerabilities, fears, as well as desires and points of view about everything.  It can be hard, especially given the hiding out, concealment, secret manipulation or outright lies that couples often engage in with each other. Most people don’t really want to hide the truth or be deceptive, but family issues and our larger culture conditions us to relate to each other that way in love relationships – what I called our “adolescent model of love” in a previous post.

Radical Transparency means being fully open to hearing your partner’s feelings, wishes, desires, and differences from yourself; and revealing your own to your partner without inhibition or defensiveness.  Amy Elias, a yoga teacher and personal growth consultant, described this in The Huffington Post  recently, writing that, “The truth is the greatest gift we can give ourselves. Say the TRUTH when you feel hurt, sad, distressed, betrayed, abandoned, unrecognized, invisible — be out with it and be clear in your own heart… A coming clean refreshes all and allows the real you to emerge.”

Or, as a 42 year-old man recently blurted out in frustration—about himself—to his wife, “No more lies!”

Sharing The Stage - This is behaving with equality and mutuality in the large or small matters of daily life.  It means being neither dominating nor submitting in your decisions or areas of conflict.  For one person, it might mean working consciously to let go of your tendency to control or dominate your partner.  For another, containing your tendency to  submit and comply with what your partner wants, subordinating your own “voice”  in the process.  Shared power is what defines mutuality between partners.

The opportunities for Sharing The Stage exist throughout daily life.  For example, in decision-making, especially where there are differences or conflicts between yourself and your partner.  In those situations ask yourself, how you can best serve the relationship itself  rather than your own desires?  When both members of a couple do that, you’re drawing on the spiritual core of your relationship.  You’re contributing to the empathy for each other that’s part of that core, and which helps fuel an integrated relationship.

Good Vibrations – A heightened sexual/physical relationship depends on strengthening the other two parts.  And that’s where so many couples falter.  They assume they can enhance and energize their romantic, sexual connection while neglecting the other two. Or they haven’t built enough of a spiritual core to begin with.  But when you are working towards an integrated relationship, then some attentive, consensual practices and techniques are useful and important.

Good Vibrations build from open communication about your sexual feelings, desires and needs.  You need to carve out the time and setting for focusing on each other, physically and sexually –  “adult” time – without the kids.  But also, physical connection and affection in everyday life is a part of building Good Vibrations sexually, as well. You can’t do it just in the bedroom.

Couples who work towards an integrated relationship practice letting go of inhibitions and fears throughout their total relationship.  They don’t use their sexual relationship as a vehicle for unspoken emotional grievances or personal issues.  An example of what happens when you do the latter is the conflict a couple in their mid-30s experienced.  Julie feared talking openly with her husband, Tom, about what she wanted, sexually; but also stifled herself about what she thought and desired in the relationship as a whole.  She carried some shame about revealing her sexual desires, as well as her own “voice,” generally.  She had begun recognizing that her shame originated in her relationship with her mother. And Tom had his own issues, as well, which he wasn’t dealing with.  So, their efforts to learn new sex techniques didn’t go anywhere.  In fact, it made their alienation worse.

Essentially, the practices of Good Vibrations increase and exchange sexual energy within and between your own and your partner’s body. Their aim is to elevate and steadily expand pleasure throughout your entire body.  That is, to broaden, deepen,  and sustain arousal and positive tension between you and your partner during your sexual engagement.

The best sexual techniques for building Good Vibrations include a mixture of meditative, breathing, and physical movement exercises with your partner, combined with extended foreplay. These practices help you let go of your selfish needs.  For example, simply wanting to receive pleasure; or wanting to make your partner experience pleasure that you want him or her to experience. Orgasm isn’t the end-state that you’re trying to hurry towards. In fact, the practice of Good Vibrations might not even include genital intercourse.

Good Vibrations techniques will build and increase sexual energy exchange and flow, but the quality and level of arousal and pleasure your and your partner experience will depend on the extent to which you’re building connection and arousal in the other two parts of your relationship.  That is, when you treat each other as equal human beings in daily interactions, and you’re transparent about your inner life and emotions, you automatically feel more stimulation and excitement with each other. When you feel connected as equals and yet engage each other as separate, distinct individuals as well, that will generates new energy and enhance the sexual energy between the two of you.

The practices that build Good Vibrations have been described in Tantric practices, and many refer to them as practicing “spiritual sex.” But I think that description often mistakenly describes a transcendent, ecstatic physical experience that’s disconnected from the relationship as a whole.  That will lead to disappointment—or to a dead end of soulless, technical expertise.  Tantric and similar Eastern practices like Qi gong generate energy flow between partners—that “ego-less” state that people often long for. But your sexual relationship elevates to that higher plane only when you integrate those practices with energy generated by transparency and equality in your daily behavior with your partner.  That’s the key.

One of the best descriptions of Good Vibrations that reflect the growth of an integrated, spiritually strong relationship is a passage in Doris Lessing’s allegorical novel The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five. There, the Nobel laureate portrays what that looks like, sexually. In the story, the man was required to be apart from his new wife, during which time he became “ready” to learn equality and transparency.  The “zones” in the title symbolize stages of spiritual evolution, and the man’s partner had been helping him evolve towards readiness for “whole-person” sex. Now, they meet again and Lessing writes,

He had remembered something entirely blotted from his mind during that enervating month. The light, glancing, inflaming kisses that he had not known how to answer, had gone from his mind. The invitation, the answer and question, the mutual response and counter-response—none of this had been within the provision of the courtesan Elys, since she had never in her life enjoyed an equal relation with anyone, man or woman.

(His wife) came to him, and began to teach him how to be equal and ready in love. It was quite shocking for him, because it laid him open to pleasures he had certainly not imagined with Elys…..He was laid open not only to physical responses he had not imagined, but worse, to emotions he had no desire at all to feel. He was engulfed in tenderness, in passion, in the wildest intensities that he did not know whether to call pain or delight… while she, completely at ease, at home in her country, took him further and further every moment, a determined, but quiet companion.

He could not of course sustain it for long. Equality is not learned in a lesson or two… But he had been introduced to his potentialities beyond anything he had believed possible. And when they desisted, and he was half relieved and half sorry that the intensitites were over, she did not allow him to sink back again away from the plane of sensitivity they had both achieved. They made love all that night, and all the following day, and they did not stop at all for food, though they did ask for a little wine, and when they had been entirely and thoroughly wedded, so that they could no longer tell through touch where one began and the other ended, and had to look, with their eyes, to find it, they fell into a deep sleep…

Couples who aim for a sustaining, “whole person” sexual relationship feel enduring connection and sustained passion. Their relationship becomes more resilient through all of the changes and challenges that everyone faces along the path of life, as recent research shows. Their relationship becomes a gateway into ongoing spiritual evolution, both individually and as a couple.

Here’s to your own “evolution” through the New Year!

The products of this transformation call for policies and actions that respond to them in pragmatic, positive ways. But here in the U.S., our political culture of both left and right operates as though these new realities either don’t exist or don’t matter; as though the old order still prevails.

Examples of the political insanity include:

• From the left, President Obama is attacked for not achieving and pushing for a more progressive agenda, despite a range of accomplishments that he’s achieved. But the greater insanity is that he’s operating with the new “requirement” instituted by Republicans: That every piece of legislation must now be able to overcome a filibuster threat, rather than be hammered out through compromise and then subjected to a majority vote.

•  On the right, the Republican/Tea Party vilifies Obama’s “socialist,” “anti-American” or — in Newt Gingrich’s description — “Kenyan, anti-colonialist” agenda, despite an ironic reality to the contrary: President Obama’s policies and behavior are much closer to those of a moderate Republican of yore; the kind that doesn’t exist anymore.

• Then there’s the ongoing clown show — Republican presidential hopefuls who argue for returning to policies that — as data show — have created the economic mess we’re now in. Moreover, they try to outdo each other to embrace anti-science, anti-knowledge positions, whether about climate change or evolution; and they vocally embrace anti-human rights positions when those rights concern gays and lesbians.

Contrast the above positions and policy objectives with some of the transformations whose impact is increasingly visible in everyone’s lives. On the surface, they appear disparate; unrelated. But collectively, you can see a theme: A rising change of mentality. That is, a mixture of values, world outlook, emotional attitudes, and conduct. It’s simultaneously a response to and a driver of the rise of interconnection and interdependency. And it has cascading political, economic and social implications.

Here are some of the seemingly unrelated shifts that reflect the reality of today’s world:

• A movement towards transparency and accountability, fueled by increased exposure, connection and visibility, social media and social networking. This is visible in the Occupy and 99% movements, whose basic aims, polls show, are supported by a majority of the public and it’s awareness of financial disparities documented by the Congressional Budget Office. This trend towards transparency and connection has also contributed to the Arab Spring movements, and now the Russian rebellion.

•  The growing affirmation by business of the need for sustainable practices, especially around embracing the reality that greater financial success is linked with serving the social good. This was pointed out most recently by billionaire Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin business empire.

• Increasing activism by individuals and groups to provide service to others in need, and to the common good. It’s increasingly joined by celebrities who use their visibility to call attention to social need through their own actions. For example, Bono, Lady Gaga, 50 Cent and others.

• The number of stay at home fathers has doubled in last decade, and is no longer an oddity.

• Marriage is on the decline and cohabitation is on the rise, reflecting shifting social norms that don’t conform to previous ideas about relationships. New data show that just 51 percent of all adults who are 18 and older are married, placing them on the brink of becoming a minority. “In the 1950s, if you weren’t married, people thought you were mentally ill,” said Andrew Cherlin, a Johns Hopkins University sociologist who studies families, to the Washington Post. “Marriage was mandatory. Now it’s culturally optional.”

• At the same time, a majority of the public supports gay marriage and full gay equality as a human rights issue.

The new realities are marked by some common themes. For example, sharing and preserving resources for the public good; embracing and valuing innovation; openness to diverse people and rejection of hierarchical rank based on status. These themes contrast with the old order — fear of change; holding onto having and getting for oneself; the desire to believe and go along with actions that are ultimately destructive, as a former GOP operative recently described.

This is, essentially, a clash between those who cling to an old model of an older world — holding on to power that’s shared mostly by the powerful, with some concern given here and there to the poor, the needy and minorities — and those reflecting the shift of mentality towards raising all people towards more egalitarian sharing of resources and opportunity for increasing well-being.

The apparent insanity dominating our political culture reflects, to a great extent, a fear response to the disintegration of the old order and what it exposes. The transformation calls for actions that recognize and deal with them in social and public policies. But our political culture either ignores, denies or fails to understand them.

But the new realities are recognized and addressed by people outside the political culture, writing from different perspectives. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and others have written about the fear of transparency, for example. From an international perspective, Fareed Zakaria has written that economic growth outside the U.S. raises the question of how the U.S. can understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate, and what it means to live in a global era. Others, such as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman have described the implications of worldwide transformation, as has Umair Haque, writing for the Harvard Business Review blog.

Who within the political arena today shows the awareness, connection with and understanding of the realities of transformation today? Who is articulating ways to address their impact, socially, economically, psychologically and through constructive policy?

For example, this time of year can intensify feelings of losses you’ve experienced as well as fears about change, in general. In a previous post I described how you can become frozen into a mindset and perspective that your life is fixed and will spiral downward from your middle years onward. Such a mentality restricts your vision. You can’t see that it’s possible — and necessary — to continue evolving your life, while reframing your emotional attitudes about the life changes that will continue to occur. I’ve always liked a line from one of Norman Mailer’s novels, “It is a law of life… that one must grow, or else pay more for remaining the same.”

Many of 78 million baby boomers, now in the thick of midlife, are vulnerable to feeling demoralized about their lives. For some it’s the classic “midlife crisis.” But for many, it’s more of a chronic, low-grade fever, reflecting a range of things: Loss of intimacy with their partner, emotionally, sexually and intellectually. Regrets about what they didn’t do well enough in their parenting of their children, who are now launched into their own adult lives… and in an uncertain world. Unfulfilled creative longings for their careers or for contributing to something more meaningful. A career that’s flatlined, or worse — lost altogether. Physical changes or limitations that accrue. The desire for deeper friendships as they feel increasingly sporadic and elusive.

On top of all that are the anxieties about what lies down the road for yourself and your children in this world of economic instability, political polarization, the specter of terrorism, and general unpredictability on all fronts of life. It can be hard trying to maintain sanity (assuming you know what that even looks like) while dealing with all this. It can make you wonder what the point of it all is, as a midlife woman said to me: “It’s been hitting home lately that I’m going to die, eventually, and all of a sudden nothing has any meaning, anymore.”

Of course, there are people whose emotional conflicts predate midlife, or for whom midlife issues trigger old conflicts that now erupt in the form of depression, anxiety and other symptoms. But most don’t fall in that category. For the majority, their suffering is a product of having arrived at midlife in our culture with socially conditioned attitudes about loss and change; a mentality that doesn’t allow for envisioning new possibilities within the reality that now exists. Without that vision, there’s no hope. And without hope you can’t learn what actions will support positive growth in your life from this point forward.

That’s especially ironic, because people are living longer, with extended health and the potential for productive, energized lives. What we call “midlife” is really an outmoded term that reflects an earlier era in which you could expect to die in your 60s. But the mature adult years now cover several decades in people’s minds. For example, recent surveys find that about 80 percent think “old age” doesn’t begin until around 85.

So: Here are a few evidence-based ideas that can help catapult you out of the risk of suffering from midlife blues during this holiday period — or any other time.

Continue Your Personal “Evolution”
Take note of the evidence that you can — and should — continue to evolve within your lifetime, especially during the so-called middle years. By then, you’ve accrued enough life experience to know what’s worth going after, and what’s worth letting go of. In a previous post I pointed out that your capacities for positive development — emotionally, intellectually, creatively, spiritually, physically, and in your relationships — are actually heightened, but you have to know how to use them. One example: Research finds that the brains of older people are not slower but rather wiser than young brains. That is, older adults in the study achieved at least an equivalent level of performance, based on that enhanced capacity.

Revise the Meaning of Loss and Change
What you probably call “loss” is the conventional emotional experience of change, transition and the overall impermanence of life. It reflects your desire to stay attached to and hold onto something that’s ended or evolved in a different direction. It may be a relationship, your growing child, your physical state or some experience you once “had.”

It can be hard to see or open yourself to the other side of that coin: that every “loss” contains a new experience to learn from and do something with. That’s your karma in action. For example, if you accept that your son or daughter is no longer a young child, that opens the door to a new challenge: building a different kind of relationship as he or she grows and matures. You might not embrace that side of the coin if you’re fixed on the fear and pain of letting go of what you’ve “lost.” The key is to fully absorb your emotional experience of whatever’s changing or evolving — including sadness or regret. But at the same time embrace and feel gratitude for what now exists in the life you have, at this moment in time. This shift of perspective can be helpful to you if you’ve suffered a career loss or downturn, as well.

Build A Sustainable Relationship
Studies of couples who are able to maintain a highly positive, energized connection for the long term find that they learn to “forget” themselves and become more focused on serving the relationship itself. By “forget” yourself I’m referring to conscious actions that serve and support the relationship between the two of you, not just your own needs. That is, think of your relationship as a third entity, with a life of its own.

A woman in a 20-year marriage illustrated the difference when she said to her husband during a couples therapy session in my office, “I still love you, but I hate our relationship.” Psychological and social conditioning within our culture teaches us to relate to intimate partners as commodities, and therefore engage with them in transactional, mercantile terms: I give in order to get. I “invest” in the relationship to receive a “return.” Relationships have become another part of a commercialized, consumer-orientation approach to life.

At midlife, though, you have a greater opportunity to break through this mentality and behavior. One reason is that you’ve hopefully learned from some negative experiences in your relationship. Most people have some along the way. Also, it helps to note that research has found that couples who are pretty materialistic have unhappier marriages than couples who don’t care as much about possessions. The effect holds true across all levels of income. And a more materialistic orientation goes hand-in-hand with the commercialized, commodity orientation to one’s partner. That’s a good prescription for becoming unhappy roommates, at best.

Serve Something Greater Than Yourself
It’s almost a cliché to engage in volunteer activity around holiday time — and then forget about it the rest of the year. But providing service to some problem — through your time, abilities and efforts – can generate renewed vitality and life purpose during midlife. It can mitigate feelings of inner emptiness or absence of real human connection. It stimulates more proactive growth regarding your values and life. Service to some issue or purpose larger than yourself at midlife often triggers a strong yearning and action to create more positive, authentic connections in your life. It can awaken you to the reality that beneath surface differences, we’re all one; all organs of the same body, so to speak.

When you engage others who have it worse off than yourself, it often leads to a healthier perspective about your own life dilemmas or disappointments. That shift of consciousness increases your flexibility in the face of ongoing life changes, and contributes to your overall psychological health and resilience during the midlife years.

In brief, it’s that management practices, the workplace relationships that result from them, and the overall business model is stuck within a 20th century mindset and worldview. And that’s dysfunctional in today’s world of chaos, interdependency, and transparency. Today, collaboration and openness are essential for generating and sustaining success, both in work and in life outside of work. The new world environment includes clear shifts in what people look for and want from their careers; and from the organizations to which they’ll commit their creative energies. These new realities are pushing companies to transform how they do business and how they treat people working within them. The push is towards supporting new learning, creative innovation, and long-term vision that promotes sustainability as well as contributes to greater well-being via the product or service.

What Happens At Work

With those emerging shifts in mind, some of the new findings shed light point to what may help support these transformations in people’s life at work and within business leadership. Consider a new survey from the consulting firm rogenSI. It reports that about 25% of the global workforce is depressed. The primary source is people’s experience at work. In fact, 92 percent of those surveyed linked the state of their mental health to their job.

That’s no surprise, really: A ComPsych survey finds that two-thirds of employees report unprecedented levels of stress. And 29% report feeling so stressed that they’re often unable to be effective at all, during the workday. Of course workload is a factor. But the impact of other sources has been increasing. They include negative, unsupportive and undermining relationships on the job, including those with peers; destructive interactions with management; and the negative impact of a management culture that’s stifling or unrewarding of talent.

Another study finds that work actually makes many people physically sick. It’s not so much the long hours but conflicts with others, each day at work. Also contributing to sickness are confusion, ambiguity or negative competition around roles; in addition to insufficient resources or other organizational constraints. A recently promoted senior executive described the latter, telling me that her new role didn’t include the staff and other resources she needed to be effective.

Overall, continuous intense pressure and heavy workloads fueled by negative management practices will generate fear and anxiety, especially when employees lack the flexibility or resources they need. These are unhealthy Catch-22 situations, and the research shows the consequences: a close association between physical symptoms and each of the above factors. Moreover, research finds a link between your level of stress at work and the length of your life. In a literal sense, your work may be killing you.

Chronic stress takes an emotional and physical toll, and working within a negative, unrewarding workplace and management culture are prime contributors. Researchers find that such factors are the single most important factor related to length of life, especially the absence of positive support and collaboration in relationships with co-workers. Another study found that the level of engagement and connection in people’s workplace relationships with co-workers and in performing their workplace roles corresponded to whether they felt they were thriving, struggling….or suffering.

Most of these destructive features coalesce around trying to succeed and have impact within a workplace culture that either undermines what you need to be successful, or is stacked against you to begin with. When I first wrote about the link between career success and emotional conflict in Modern Madness a couple of decades ago, I found that the main conflicts people typically experienced were enervating trade-offs and feelings of self-betrayal — especially around personal values and ideals that clashed with the behavior and attitudes necessary for career advancement. Much of that is still true, but those conflicts have been mostly supplanted by two major changes: In the world that organizations operate in; and in what people look for in their careers today.

The Backstory

The Crash of ’08 helped unraveled the old model of career pressures to cope with unhealthy work and role behavior in exchange for financial reward and steady career advancement. That’s now gone. Much of the mental and emotional distress people experience today reflects the disruption that we’re now in the midst of. Robert Reich has described the heart of the current unraveling, writing that,

In that old view, being rich was proof of hard work, and lack of money proof of indolence or worse. The old view was anyone could make it in America with enough guts and gumption. The old view was also that great wealth trickled downward — that the rich made investments in jobs and growth that benefited all of us. But that view, too, has lost its sheen. Nothing has trickled down.

 At the same time there’s rising awareness that many alternative paths to success and fulfillment are sprouting all over the place. That can leave one chagrined about what’s happening – the current decade’s version of “Mr. Jones” in Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man.” For example, recent stories in the media question the value of college and it’s relevance to a successful, fulfilling life. And New York Times columnist Tom Friedman described an emerging, relevant theme of younger people who see themselves as a pro-active personal vehicle of innovation and success; of their own development — what he calls “the start-up of you.” A great illustration of the new paths and attitudes that are breaking free from the old model was a recent story in the New York Times Magazine about Lex Luger, a young, highly successful music-maker who dropped out of high school, driven by his love of what he wanted to do, his pro-active attitude and his talent.

The consequences of the new world environment for careers in organizations is that people respond with energy and commitment when their workplace is highly collaborative and supports continuous growth; when it enables them to have impact on something beyond just financial reward. And, when the company pursues long-term, sustainable business strategies. People who build success and well-being within such organizations are highly proactive within the “nonequilibrium” world they’re immersed in. These are among the features I’ve described as part of the rising 4.0 career orientation.

If employees are more likely to be engaged and productive when their work provides a greater impact than simply helping increase profit, companies are also more successful when they building a culture of collaboration and transparency; when they create a flexible, long-term vision of the business. All this is a far cry from the old top-down, command-and-control world of yesterday. In short, companies that are able to retain the best workers build a business model that integrates sustainable practices, commitment to high value in their service or product, and contributes to the common good.

Moving Towards Transformation

There are hopeful signs of the kinds of changes that will support positive, healthy practices for both organizations and their employees. Some are found in research findings; others in examples of new business perspectives. Some examples:

• Studies find that well-being is highly related to a sense of positive connection and engagement at work, and to being able to provide service of some kind through your contributions to the enterprise. In fact, only 7% of well-being was attributed to income. In addition — the flip side of the finding that an unpleasant workplace can shorten your life — positive relations with co-workers and a supportive, positive management behavior is associated with a longer life. The perception of emotional support at work was the strongest indicator of future health.

• Increasing movement towards a business model that prioritizes well-being over growth, in which a company’s products, services and brands support maximum flourishing for customers, workers and society. For example, Dov Seidman calls it the rise of the “new normal,” marked by high degrees of transparency, interconnection and interdependency. Successful companies embrace these perspectives, rather than ignore or resist them. Short-term mindsets become displaced by long-term perspectives.

• The best businesses realize that they are more than just engines to make money, as Rosabeth Moss Kanter pointed out in the Harvard Business Review, writing that they are “also vehicles for accomplishing societal purposes and for providing meaningful livelihoods for those who work in them.” The most successful companies consider whether or not they are building long-term institutions of society. They invest in the future while paying attention to the needs of society and people.

The upshot of these encouraging signs is that employees will feel their work is meaningful and will be more engaged when it has some wider benefit other than simply increasing profits. But that’s part of a larger shift in leadership and business perspectives that represents, in effect, an evolution of the “DNA” of the organization’s culture at all levels. For the individual worker, that means healthier interactions with co-workers, subordinates and bosses, and a diminishing sense that your work is “interfering” too much with your life.

A team from Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Notre Dame and the University of Western Ontario conducted the study. They surveyed people’s self-reported descriptions of their level of “agreeableness.” The researchers found that men who rated themselves “highly agreeable” earned less money than men who described themselves as less so — on average, about 18 percent less annually. The gap was found among women as well, but to a lesser degree. Regarding these findings, one of the study’s co-authors, Beth A. Livingston, concluded that “Nice guys are getting the shaft.”

But how, exactly, did the researchers define “nice” or “agreeable” in the study? Moreover, it’s notable that defined “success” solely in terms of income, and that may not be the criteria that everyone uses — especially since the post-2008 crash.

The researchers asked the participants to rate themselves along several related dimensions, such as “agreeable” vs. “quarrelsome;” “difficult” vs. “cooperative;” and “stubborn vs. flexible.” One problem with this is the wide variation among people’s self-definitions of “agreeable,” “cooperative,” and so forth. And, those traits were contrasted with traits the researchers provided to reflect the other end of the scale, which prevented considering that such “opposite” traits might co-exist in a person. But overall, I think the researchers failed to understand today’s changing workplace — how the highly fluid, intensely competitive, interconnected, unpredictable business and economic environment shapes the criteria for success.

That is, a more accurate interpretation of the findings that linked “nice guys” with less financial success is this: People who chose “agreeableness” and related descriptions as better descriptions of themselves then the alternatives they were given, like “stubborn” or “quarrelsome” (even though they aren’t mutually exclusive, as I explain below), are likely to share some traits. They’re likely to be less pro-active; more complacent and less assertive in their roles than others who are more successful, innovative and productive in their careers.

To explain, the researchers seem to have assumed that being “nice” — as they envision it — means being passive or less actively engaged. Hence, Dr. Livingston’s comment that men who are too “agreeable” may not conform “…to expectations of ‘masculine behavior,” and that such men may be less successful because they’re not living up to longstanding expectations that men be aggressive, combative or even rude.

However, the reality of successful companies today trends towards a different, more complex direction: towards people and leaders who embody on the one hand, assertiveness, engagement, passion, high energy, and self-assurrance; and, on the other, collaboration, positive team relationships, keeping their ego in check, and willingness to put their energies and skills into serving the larger enterprise.

The latter traits are less characteristic of inhibited, demure and passive people. And their career success and financial rewards are likely to be more limited. But the successful traits go hand-in-hand with “niceness” in the sense of demonstrating respect, mutual support, working together towards common goals. In short, you can be highly engaged, collaborative and pro-active; but not dominating, controlling, or a jerk. These are the features of people who increasingly populate today’s organizations — what I’ve called the rise of the 4.0 career orientation in a previous post.

In today’s business and career environment, one will see strong argument, debate and highly charged discussion around decisions and projects. But all of that goes hand-in-hand with civility and mutuality; all necessary for teams to perform at high levels. Kathy Savit, CEO of Lockerz, a Seattle-based company, pointed this out when she emphasized the difference between being respectful and being agreeable. “We are not about being ‘nice’ or ‘agreeable’… we have a lot of robust debates about all kinds of things. But we do stress the notion of being respectful.”

Being “nice” or “agreeable” in ways that lead to success means being open, flexible, collaborative, and non-defensive; along with high energy, creative innovation, and commitment to new learning — generally, highly pro-active behavior, the orientation that Thomas Friedman described in a recent column as, “The Start-Up of You.”

Of course, there’s often a fine line between self-assurance, conviction… and arrogance. Steve Jobs was recently described as having both — “…the last great tyrant,” as David Streitfeld described him in the New York Times. But Jobs is likely to have kept his self-assurance on the productive side of self-destructive, narcissistic arrogance. We’ve seen the latter topple some CEO’s careers and their company’s success.

In fact, research finds that the negative side of the Type A personality and extreme Alpha Male behavior are not very successful in today’s work culture. Nor are they healthy. For example, the Alpha Male has a high level of physiological and emotional stress and is more prone to heart disease and a host of other problems.

The True Links Between Personal Traits and Success

Overall, considerable research and other observations of workplace behavior supports the alternative finding, that “niceness” is linked with success. Some examples:

• People who maintain positive moods and attitudes perform more effectively in the workplace. They create greater profitability, customer satisfaction and peer-rated performance. An atmosphere of rudeness and disrespect undermines success.
• Vigorous, engaged, but collegial discussion and argument lead to more effective problem-solving. However, that’s diminished when the tone of interactions is negatively competitive.
• More broadly, positive leadership is linked with increased levels of employee health and well being. And speaking of health, research also finds that collaboration and positive workplace relations can increase your lifespan.
• As far as relationships outside of work, the rude, hostile and arrogant behavior that the Cornell research team concluded was more “successful,” doesn’t do so well at home, either. It’s found to unleash uncivil behavior upon family members, and contributes to domestic dysfunction.

In fact, there’s evidence that the more people feel devalued at work, whether by peers or management practices, the less energy goes into creating value and contributing to the product or service. Top performers recognize such negatives, and that often leads to their leaving the organization.

I’m interested in hearing about your own experiences and observations, in your comments, below. Meanwhile, try staying “nice,” mutually supportive….and highly assertive!

• A public interest organization engaged in social justice advocacy is confronted with staff allegations of hostile, abusive management practices. “We’re all committed to our mission,” its director tells me, “so we shouldn’t be having these kinds of problems.”

• A humanitarian organization witnesses increasing dysfunction of a senior staff member. Management time is swallowed up trying to deal with the person’s declining performance, absenteeism, and erratic behavior toward coworkers. The CEO doesn’t know what to do. Fire the person? Get him help? He asks me, “How do we balance compassion for this person with our need to carry out our work?”

All organizations want to be successful, whether for-profit businesses or those in the non-profit world, large and small — such as trade associations, humanitarian government contractors, advocacy groups or government agencies. All of them grapple with new challenges emerging from our insecure and shifting economic, political and cultural environment. The later also includes growing workplace diversity and changing attitudes about career and leadership. But organizations in the nonprofit realm are especially vulnerable to problems like the examples above. That’s partly because their mission is often at odds with the behavior of its employees and leaders. Increasingly, that clash is reflected in an intertwined mixture of personal conflicts and dysfunctional organizational management.

Several new circumstances contribute to the blend of personal and organizational conflicts that nonprofits deal with today. For example, they face intense competition for funding in the new economic climate. Some operate within a political culture that’s overtly hostile to their mission, such as the expressed desire of some Republican politicians to abolish the EPA or FDA. They’ve  tried to claim that advocacy groups promoting clean air, clean water, or public safety in food products harm the economy, contrary to fact.

One consequence is that nonprofit organizations recognize the need to become more efficient and focused; and need to apply management and fiscal practices from the for-profit realm. Such strategies are good steps when they work. But they can also create new, confusing conflicts for the organization as well, if new, “business-type” practices appear to contradict the organization’s mission and values. That can generate confusion or suspicion among staff regarding the leadership’s intent and trustworthiness.

Moreover, a range of career conflicts often occur among employees. For example, many are attracted to an organization’s ideals, especially those that with an advocacy or humanitarian mission. But over time, they may become increasingly motivated by career, financial and personal goals that are limited by virtue of working within such organizations, especially those with limited budgets and few opportunities for career advancement. That can create conflicts between personal desires and ideals.

The leadership of nonprofit organizations often makes the mistake of assuming they’re immune to any of these conflicts simply because they’re committed to missions they believe in. But no organization today is immune to the larger forces impacting our society. One example: People attracted to working for economic or social justice organizations nevertheless want and expect a positive management culture and collaborative work-place. The rising orientation to work and career that I’ve described as the “4.0″ career orientation includes wanting greater meaning and purpose in work, and having more integration between work and personal life. The latter is especially true among the younger generation of workers. Moreover, women and minorities expect that equality and respect will be actually practiced, not just listed as principles in a mission statement.

All of these issues directly affect a person’s well-being, work relationships, and creative energy in the workplace; often more so in nonprofit organizations because explicit ideals are embodied in the organization’s very purpose and mission.

What Helps?

Successful dealing with problems that impact nonprofit organizations include good fiscal and organizational leadership, and programs that support ongoing learning and development of employees. But especially important is linking the ideals of the organization’s mission with positive, supportive management practices. Ironically, what often fails to help is bringing in an organizational consultant to restructure communication and management systems. Or, asking the employee assistant program or human resources office for help when there’s an employee or executive of the organization who appears emotionally troubled, dysfunctional or abusive. Either approach may either be ineffective, or even make matters worse.

Here’s why: Your typical management and organizational consultants don’t necessarily share the same values or ideals with the nonprofit organization that’s asking them for help. That’s often true for those engaging in advocacy-oriented or ideologically committed causes. Consultants might recommend changes or restructuring in areas that clash with organization’s values, mission or image of itself. Charges about “selling out” the mission for the sake of organizational “efficiency” may result. The consultant may not have been tuned-in to this possibility.

When a member of the staff appears out of sync with the culture of the organization, and/or seems to be dealing with personal troubles that undermine working relationships, a different kind of challenge exists. Referral to the employee assistance program or to the organization’s wellness center usually miss the mark, in terms of identifying the source of the problem and what could help. An executive coaching program may not address the source of the work-related conflict, either. Consequently, no change results, or the problem may get worse.

The challenges, here, include separating out conflicts that are a situational response to something work-related from those that reflect some disturbance within the person, independent of work; identifying when the two are, in fact intertwined; and knowing how to best deal with any of them.

When I began working with the link between work and behavior issues a few decades ago, confusion around understanding these challenges was the norm. Today, it’s better, but not much. Most managers and leaders — as well as most mental health practitioners and business consultants — lack sufficient understanding that the management culture, career conflicts and desires, and minority and gender diversity all impact and shape a person’s emotional attitudes and behavior. They can exacerbate old vulnerabilities, mask conflicts, or create new ones.

Although nonprofit organizations face unique issues, what does help is a version of what companies in the corporate world need to do for effective dealing with their own people-organization conflicts. An important first step in either world is commitment to self-examination – self-knowledge, on the part of managers and leaders. In the non-profit world, that means confronting the gaps that may exist between the organization’s purpose and mission and those embodied in “real time;” that is, in those reflected in its leaders’ actual interaction with and management of employees. Many nonprofits ignore this gap, or think it’s irrelevant. And then they’re flummoxed when they’re accused of contradictions between the organization’s actual workplace culture and what it presents to the outside world.

It’s also crucial to become aware of and embrace the fact that people want a positive, creative, energized, and learning-oriented workplace culture. Opportunity for growth and development, and for having an impact through work are significant drivers; as are wanting a culture of respect, recognition, teamwork, and creative opportunity. This orientation isn’t nullified just because the person works for a mission-driven or service organization.

Today’s workers repudiate arrogance, authoritarian behavior and insensitivity on the part of managers — even though they may share the same ideals or ideology. I witnessed an example of this recently when the young staff and interns of a small nonprofit rebelled against the executive director’s old-style “command and control” management, and complained en masse to the Board of Directors. There are many nonprofits whose values and mission are completely at odds with the tyrannical behavior of their leaders, who would easily qualify for a listing in “Worst Bosses in America.”

When a consultant is brought in, his or her own perspectives and values need to be in synch with those of the organization. The consultant’s experience and savvy dealing with the link between personal and organizational conflicts is relevant; as is the consultant’s point of view regarding sustainable practices, social responsibility, transparency and related issues.

The bottom line is that the successful nonprofit organizations — whether small advocacy groups, large charities or foundations, USAID contractors, trade associations, or professional membership organizations — give more than lip-service to the developmental needs of staff as well as to current anxieties and uncertainties that affect everyone’s work and career. The most successfully functioning nonprofits know they need to practice their own ideals inside the organization, not just in their work within the outside world.

I think what helps support a long-term, positive relationship through midlife is not so much finding the right techniques – for good communication, compromise, and so forth.  We know how many of those are available in all the  self-help books crowding bookstore shelves. Instead, it’s building your relationship’s spiritual core. By that I mean your sense of purpose and life goals as a couple; and dealing with how your values and ideals change and evolve over the years. The challenge is whether these and other spiritual dimensions remain in synch over your years together.

In this post I describe a path that can help build (or resuscitate) your relationship’s spiritual connection.It’s learning to “forget yourself” within your relationship. I’ve described this seeming-paradox more generally in a previous post, but it think it’s especially helpful for bringing fresh energy into a midlife relationship, to keep it alive and growing. By “forgetting yourself,” I’m referring to a conscious choice to behave in ways that serve and support your partner rather than just yourself. That is, acting in ways that strengthen the relationship between the two of you. Think of your relationship as a third entity, with a life of its own. A woman in a 20-year marriage illustrated that difference when she said to her husband during a couples therapy session in my office, “I still love you, but I hate our relationship.”

In fact, learning to “forget yourself” in your relationship is linked with long-term positive emotions — essential for long-term psychological health through your middle years. Research shows that positive emotions are a powerful antidote to stress, pain and illness throughout life. And they’re associated with proactive attitudes and behavior in general — all elements of psychological health.

Moreover, learning to “forget yourself” is crucial for reasons that relate to our evolutionary heritage, and the ways we’re socially conditioned into our relationship behavior. Here’s what I mean: First, research into the evolutionary basis of intimate relationships indicates that humans (and some other primates, such as the bonobos) are highly sexual and social creatures. Evolution may have created intertwined needs for sexual and social connections with more than one partner at the same time. In other words, such research indicates that monogamy may not be “hard-wired.”

At the same time, our psychological and social conditioning also creates challenges for enduring, positive relationships. We learn to relate to intimate partners as commodities and engage in transactional, mercantile terms: I give in order to get. I “invest” in the relationship to receive a “return.” Relationships have become another part of a commercialized, consumer-orientation approach to life in which someone wins and someone loses.

This orientation is part of what I’ve called our “adolescent model of love.” It includes learning to hide yourself; self-serving goals of gaining power and control over the other; and in many cases repeating the dysfunctional relationships that you had growing up in your family, like feeling loved only when performing or behaving in ways desired by parents, and subsequently by the larger society.

Learning To “Forget Yourself” In Your Relationship

The many changes and transitions of midlife — kids growing up, career and retirement uncertainties, physical changes, desires for new growth — can accentuate the impact of both our evolutionary heritage and our socially conditioned attitudes upon your relationship. However, long-term connection and commitment to one partner can also be your conscious desire and choice. That capacity is also part of your potential for continued evolution and growth.

That is, there’s also evidence that consciousness enables you to evolve, psychologically, toward attitudes, emotions and behaviors that you want to strengthen or build. Those can include an enriched spiritual connection and deeper intimacy with your partner.

In fact, the 21st century — with its unpredictable, unstable, economic and political conditions and an increasingly diverse, highly interconnected and networked world — makes such conscious evolution both more necessary and possible. The events of 9/11 and the economic decline of the last few years really turned our old way of life on its head — in love, in work and in our sense of life purpose. That upheaval has opened the door to new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving — ones that serve larger, common goals, beyond just self-centered ones.

Overall, I think we’re in the midst of a large-scale shift toward behavior and values that reflect more awareness of interconnection and interdependency throughout the planet. People are becoming more awake to the fact that actions everywhere and anywhere affect everyone, everywhere. That well-being throughout life depends upon actions that sustain and build something of value for the larger good. That’s different from seeking to control and extract from the other what you want just for oneself.

The broader perspectives and the life experience that can accrue by midlife enable you to apply these new realities to your relationship, consciously. Ask yourself how you feel when you do something or give something to someone who really enjoys and appreciates, what you give — whether it’s emotional or material. You probably recognize that it just feels good, period. That’s a form of “forgetting yourself,” and is a model for bringing positive energy in your relationship. That is, such action comes from the heart, for the sake of giving, without regard for getting something back.

Studies of couples who are able to maintain a highly positive, energized connection for the long term indicate that they “forget” themselves and engage in serving the relationship itself. Interestingly, brain scans of couples in long-term love find similarities between them and couples who had just fallen madly in love. Their energy stays healthy and alive.

Here are two practices in common to midlife couples who maintain long-term connection:

Two-way communication and openness. This is the opposite of the CFO who, when informed that his subordinates complained about a lack of two-way communication, said cluelessly, “But I do provide two-way communication: I send e-mails and I tell them in person!” No, this refers to being open in the sense of receptivity to what your partner is experiencing and communicating to you; and being open in the active sense — revealing your own thoughts, concerns, fears and so on. Two-way openness is the antidote to conventional, relationship-killing vying for power over the other. It supports building positive emotions within yourself and toward your partner. And, as new research shows, positive emotions and attitudes can protect against poor health later in life.

Collaboration toward joint, common goals. That’s visible in the most successful, contemporary workplaces. For relationships, the common goal isn’t a new killer app or a new service but rather a high-energy, engaged connection between equals — emotionally, spiritually and behaviorally. In fact, research shows that shared decision making between equal partners actually leads to better decisions. Similarly, brain scans of couples who’ve maintained long-term, positive marriages show activation in areas of the brain that indicate strong connections and engagement. Overall, positive connection around the common goal of the relationship itself is associated with long-term vitality and energy.

In short, a living, growing relationship is an ongoing, flowing energy exchange, emotionally, behaviorally and sexually. Deepak Chopra provides a good description of this in Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, writing that “…the difference between healthy and unhealthy energy can be summarized as follows:  Healthy energy is flowing, flexible, dynamic, balanced, soft, associated with positive feelings. Unhealthy energy is stuck, frozen, rigid, brittle, hard, out of balance, associated with negative emotions.”

At midlife, especially, you have the capacity to shift an unhealthy energy state into a healthy one. And that’s a good description of resuscitating a declining relationship and giving it new life.

For example:

• You happened to catch an old episode of “Sesame Street” or “Mister Rogers” on TV, and you felt engulfed by a wave of nostalgia and loss over your children, who are now grown and building their own lives without you.
•  You worry about whether your career has peaked, especially when you’re reminded every day of the hordes of younger people coming up right behind you — or who’ve now moved ahead of you.
• You’re divorced and dealing with new challenges as a single person.
• Or, you’re married/with a partner, but feelings of passion and intimacy have faded like autumn leaves.
•  You’re stressed about your financial future in your later years, given our economic uncertainty.

I think there’s a core reason why such feelings and experiences aren’t helped all that much by the midlife guides and programs out there: We’ve learned to experience midlife through a mentality that keeps us frozen within feelings of loss, regret and fears about change. That paralyzes our capacity for consciously-created actions, ones that can generate renewed energy, creativity and engagement in the period of life we’re now living through.

What can help free you from that sense of sinking, sliding and stagnating — the “big three” of midlife despair — is first, learning to mentally reframe your current experience of loss, regret and the like. And secondly, using that new perspective to identify and undertake actions that serve something beyond preoccupation with yourself.

Reframe Your Perspective About Loss, Regret and Change

In our culture, we tend to equate change with loss and therefore experience it as painful and bad. Most of us can recall something that we wanted to “possess” forever — a special moment, a period in a relationship, a particular experience. The difficult part is accepting those feelings while also embracing the reality that all life is in a state of transition, from one state to another. All is impermanent. But that awareness will activate your capacity for engaging life and creating positive experiences with what now exists at this moment in your life.

What we call “loss” is the conventional emotional experience of change, transition and the impermanence of life. It’s your response to the desire to stay attached, holding on, to something that’s ended or evolved in a different direction. It may be a relationship, your growing child, your physical state or some experience you once “had.”

It’s hard to see or accept the other side of that coin: that every “loss” contains a new experience as well, that you can do something with or learn from. For example, if you accept that your son or daughter is no longer a young child, that opens the door to building a different kind of relationship as he or she grows and matures. But you won’t see or embrace that side of the coin if you’re fixed on fear of letting go of what you’ve “lost.”

The key, here, is to fully absorb your emotional experience of what’s changing or evolving, including feelings of sadness or regret. But, at the same time, accept and feel gratitude for what now exists in the life you have at this moment in time. This enables you to continue to evolve, as I’ve written about in a previous post.

Fear of letting go and accepting change is powerful. It can fuel a desire to stay fixed, just as you are, even as you suffer — whether from a specific loss or a sense of life having gone awry. You might feel as though it’s safer to suffer, because at least that way you feel alive. Or worse, as one midlife person told me upon learning that he had a serious illness, “I don’t mind dying, because I’ve never really lived.”

Learning to reframe the experience of loss is hard. It requires embracing the unknown, what can look like darkness and uncertainty that lies in front of you. That fear can freeze you into unhealthy nostalgia and fantasy about what you once “had” or embellish in your mind a time in your life that might not have been quite as positive as you now want to recall. I frequently see examples of aging baby boomers who retreat into such nostalgic paralysis.

Fears of loss and change often lead to trying to cope with and manage decline, an attempt to slow down the impact of the involuntary events that are part of midlife change. You’re probably well-acquainted with them: children growing up and leaving home, unexpected changes at work that impact your career, an aging body that doesn’t look or act the same as it used to, unexpected injury, illness or death of friends or family members. Involuntary events and experiences are part of life in general but are often more visible and pronounced at midlife. However, when you equate managing involuntary events with a healthy midlife, you remain mired in fear and stagnation. You’re unable to become unstuck and engage life with passion, energy and gratitude.

In contrast, healthy midlife builds from voluntary events and experiences that you set in motion. That builds the positive resiliency you need for life in today’s world, as I’ve written about in some previous posts. It involves reframing how you envision loss and transition – away from fear and holding on, away from a coping, reactive mentality in which you keep looking at what’s behind you; and toward a conscious vision of how to engage your powers and energies towards something larger than your self-interest. As the novelist Graham Greene wrote in “The Heart of the Matter,” ”One small act of daring can change one’s entire conception of what is possible.”

Live for More Than Your Ego

Much fear, sense of loss and focus on the involuntary events of life is rooted in fixation on your self, your ego, in the sense of too much self-interest, self-absorption and perhaps self-pity. What helps is expanding your perspective beyond that preoccupation and engaging your energies with a purpose or aim that’s larger than just “you.” In that sense, learn to “forget” yourself.

This is a shift toward being highly engaged with your mental, emotional, creative and other powers, yet disengaged at the same time. That is, you let go of ego-expectations for “getting” something for yourself because of your acceptance and awareness that change is ongoing and continuous. Of course, psychological health throughout adulthood, not just midlife, includes flowing with the involuntary changes and experiences but, more importantly, focusing your powers on voluntary actions. The latter enable you to continue evolving all of your life’s dimensions — emotionally, spiritually, creatively, spiritually, intellectually.

Ironically, the failures and losses you experience along the way into midlife are helpful allies. Those experiences can strengthen courage to undertake new actions because you’ve learned something about what works and what doesn’t, and why. A healthy midlife perspective is to think of “failures” as ineffective solutions to problems at the time, and “losses” as a transition into a new opportunity contained within the reality that now exists.

I find that the most energized, engaged and positive midlife men and women share some features. Keep in mind that most everyone has these capacities:

• They don’t identify so much with what they’ve lost or failed at, compared with others who become defeated or stagnated by them. In contrast, they are much less inhibited by the past regarding new actions, new risks and new possibilities to stretch toward.
• They can see through the banal, shallow and inconsequential values and preoccupations that dominate so much of our culture – the gossip, the concern with appearance, the social status and recognition, and so forth. They focus their energies and intent on what they identify as more meaningful and lasting.
• They can see — and accept — the end of the road more clearly than ever. That perspective fuels a greater sense of urgency, new determination and vision. They know what’s really worth going after and what to let pass by. That helps you become more of the “author” of your own life rather than a character in a story that’s been written by someone else.

Here’s an exercise that can help you apply an expanded perspective about loss, change and self-preoccupation to actions that serve something larger than “getting” for yourself:

Imagine that you’ve been informed that you have just a few years left to live. From that vantage point, reflect on what you might want to alter now — or wish you had altered — regarding your values, perspectives, priorities and actions. Don’t compile a list of “50 things I want to do before I die.” Look beyond that kind of self-interest, toward:

• How do you want to use your mental and emotional energies in your remaining time, and toward what end?
• What will those choices have contributed to others, or to the world? How does that sit with you?
• What kind of legacy or “footprint” will your actions and decisions create? Will you be satisfied with that impact? If not, what’s missing?
• From your answers, reflect on what changes you might want or need to make.

All of them offer good, concrete recommendations for how Obama could demonstrate the leadership and a clear action program that his supporters have been waiting and longing for. They offer plausible explanations of why he isn’t doing that. More broadly, it’s also useful to understand what fuels a growing sense of unraveling throughout our country (a current poll finds 79% dissatisfied with our political system); and, increasingly, around the globe.

One way to do that is by recognizing some psychological drivers of the polarization — around the role of government, and in the opposition to forging reasonable, compromise-based solutions to problems. I think a major psychological source originates in people’s responses to the crumbling of an overall way of life that’s pretty much predominated throughout the 20th Century — in business and at work; in personal life goals and relationships; and in social and public policy. It’s themes are embracing self-interest and selfishness; domination of some groups by others; and control of resources by the few at the expense of the larger society’s needs.

That worked fairly well in the 20th Century; or at least it was accepted, with all its inequities. But today, people sense that their old way of life just isn’t working. And it’s not. Today, we’re plunging headfirst into a new reality — and no leader has really articulated it or helped people understand how to deal with it.

That is, the world is transforming in ways that require shifting away from the short-term self-interest that’s defined our way of life. The 21st Century world — the post-9-11, post-2008-economic-meltdown world — is highly interconnected, unstable and fluid. For example, economic strategist Umair Haque has pointed out that our business, social and economic institutions have become obsolete; they are set of ideas inherited from the industrial age of the 20th century. He argues that they no longer work for business, people, society, or the future. The old “business as usual” model has outgrown the old paradigm of short-term growth, competition at all costs, adversarial strategy, and pushing costs onto future generations. What he describes about business can also apply to values and behavior in personal lives.

And on a larger scale, Fareed Zakaria emphasizes that the new era is one in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the “rise of the rest” — the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, and Russia — reshaping the world. That shift, in turn, poses a new challenge of how the U.S. can understand and thrive in a rapidly changing international climate.

Success and stability in the new, evolving era requires letting go of the old mentality and orientation that was driven primarily by self-interest and its ultimate expression, greed; and instead, creating ways to serve the larger, social good. That means some form of sacrifice for the greater benefit of all lives.

The Psychological Impact

Dealing with these shifts can have frightening impact. Any highly disruptive change can result in feeling unmoored and uncertain about your future. The values, beliefs and vested interests that we’ve acquired and absorbed have brought material success to many, and stirred aspirations in others. But we’ve reached a tipping point in that respect. A culture that’s valued and rewarded accumulating the fruits of business success and the resources of the planet for oneself; for purposes of primarily self-interest — whether individuals or corporations — is not adaptive to the needs of the 21st Century world.

The new reality is that giving primacy to self-interest in the way that’s predominated in personal and public life will undermine both individual and societal wellbeing. Recognizing this can open the door to creative solutions to problems based more on an orientation to the common good. Or, it can generate very regressive, unhealthy, fear-based responses.

That is, when the values you’ve absorbed, believed in and lived for; and have defined who you are — including what a successful life is supposed to be — no longer work as they have, that creates conflict. You have practical problems (how do I deal with this, or restore my life to how it’s always worked?) and psychological problems: fearing loss of identity, of self-worth. Helplessness in the face of unknown forces. Unanticipated stress or insecurity in your relationships. Confusion or fear about the influx and expectations of people who think, behave, look and believe differently from what you’ve always known and are accustomed to.

These new conflicts and fears can result in two unproductive and unhealthy responses:

First, Fears and threats can create a powerful emotional backlash that overwhelms reason, judgment and empathy. That is, strong fears can activate the “primitive” part of the brain, the amygdala, and drive you into the classic “fight” or “flight” response: Either run away from the danger, or attack it.

Such powerful emotional responses overwhelm the functioning of the frontal lobes and pre-frontal cortext, regions of the brain associated with our inborn capacity for judgment, rational problem-solving, flexibility, and the capacity for organized thinking. They can inhibit the expression of the inborn capacities for empathy and altruism.

Regarding the latter, research finds that social class can also inhibit empathy when it’s linked with excessive self-interest. A recent study found that upper class people demonstrate less empathy than lower class people. The two groups have the same innate capacity for empathy, but it appears that upper class people tend to be more lulled into self-absorption and selfishness, while members of the lower classes, who deal more with survival within diminished economic and work opportunities, may be more “connected” empathically to others’ emotional and material needs.

The second response to fears and threats, when they activate more primitive “fight or flight” behavior, is seeking the “safety” and “security” of escapist solutions. For example, retreating into a fantasy land of outright denial of what’s changing in front of your eyes; or attempting to destroy those who represent it.

That can lead to viewing the “other” with fear, resentment, irrational anger, or refusal to compromise around differences for a common goal. Or, aggressive assault to destroy that which embodies the changes that threaten your way of life. We see all three at work in the fear-based responses to the massive changes underway, especially the growing need to serve the greater good, not just one’s own selfish interests.

• Escapism, such as expressed by those who speak about the need to “take back America;” or isolationist, cult movements and conspiracy theories.

• Denial of factual reality, by politicians and others who deny climate change, often for fear of loss of financial interest; or as in Michele Bachman’s insistence that the founding fathers worked to abolish slavery.

• Aggressive actions intended to intimidate and render impotent, if not destroy outright, the opposition or those who embody various feared changes — gays, immigrants, minorities, or those who advocate eliminating tax loopholes and ending tax breaks for the ultra-rich.

Our Absentee Leadership

Understanding some of the psychological threads of our current crisis points to three leadership needs:

• The need to confront and expose destructive, irrational and extreme ideological goals that are promoted as a desirable agenda; and clearly repudiate them.

• The need to address and articulate with empathy the concerns, fears and sense of loss of people drawn to the Tea Party movement, or others who advocate solutions that fail to serve the common good. Help them see a different path that will benefit themselves and others.

• The need to clearly articulate the programs and actions required of all — in individual lives, in communities, and in national policies that will build long-term well being, growth and security for the society.

Much of the current criticism of Obama is that he does none of those very well.

And that’s a lost opportunity, because showing the way towards greater wellbeing for all is not only consistent with the best of American values; it’s essential to survive and thrive in this tumultuous era.

The research says that fantasizing about achieving goals makes you less likely to achieve them because it drains the energy you need to pursue them. I think the research is as flawed and distorted as The Secret and similar teachings, but for very different reasons. Let’s take a look.

This study, from New York University’s Motivation Lab, found that “positive fantasies” predict poor achievement because they don’t generate the energy to pursue the desired future. That is, if you create idealized images of future outcomes, your fantasized ambitions are less likely to become reality. That’s because positive fantasies are de-energizing.

The research contains so many confused ideas and faulty assumptions that it’s hard to know where to begin. But it does, indirectly, open a door to understanding some important elements for turning your goals into reality.

Ironically, the popular idea it’s based on — that visualizing your goals with enough “intent” will make them happen — is, itself, a twisted and misunderstood version of an ancient spiritual perspective. But this new research also confuses a “positive fantasy” with visualizing a goal or objective. They are different. And, the research also misunderstands what you need to turn a vision into a reality.

The research was done using college students. (That’s typical, for academic research, which is then extrapolated to people of all life stages and all post-21 experiences, but that’s another story.) Researchers examined the effect of experimentally induced “positive fantasies” about the future, in four different studies.

For example:
Women were asked to fantasize positively about looking and feeling good in high-heeled shoes (I know – and I’m not even going to try commenting on the merits of that Mad Men-era “positive fantasy.”)

Some participants asked to fantasize positively about winning an essay contest. And some were asked to describe a positive outcome for the week ahead, including imagining getting “A” grades, or being sought after by a desirable sexual partner.

The researchers decided to induce these “positive fantasies” because they assumed that those are the most desirable things one would want to achieve. Note that they’re actually acquisitions, or accolades for looking good, or getting recognition for oneself. I don’t see any “positive fantasies” such as, say, creating a new, useful iPhone app; or having created a service to feed malnourished children. But more about that later.

The researchers measured the effect of positive fantasies upon systolic blood pressure. They had decided that would be a good measure of “low energy;” that “low energy” would indicate that positive fantasies translate into poor achievement.

That is, the assumption was that people’s “energy,” defined by this measure, decreased as the participants engaged in positive fantasies, compared with another group who looked upon the fantasies with more skepticism. The latter group included women who were asked to fantasize more critically about the pros and cons of wearing trendy, high-heeled shoes; people who were asked to fantasize more negatively about their prospects for winning the essay contest; and those who were asked to just daydream about the coming week rather than fantasize about a hot date or getting “A’s”.

In short, researchers concluded that positive fantasies result in less energy than fantasies that question the desired future. That is, that positive fantasies will drain the energy you need for doing the work that will make them achievable.

What you can draw from this study is grossly misleading, at best. And that applies to its definition of desirable goals; what it means by a “positive fantasy;” and its assumption about what really helps achieve your goals or objectives. But through its flaws it illuminates some important things that are helpful to know about how you can, in fact, increase the possibility of achieving a desired dream.

Fantasizing vs. Envisioning - There’s a big difference. A fantasy is more like a wish or ungrounded notion of something you hope for or idealize acquiring. It’s usually thought of in terms of the end result. That’s closer to a daydream, and, interestingly, the researchers instructed people in a control group to just daydream about anything at all, rather than, for example, getting all “A’s.”

Creating a vision, however, is a more specific and developed formulation. It’s more of a picture of something you that you can envision pulling you towards, like from a magnet or rubber band. You experience it as a process, steps along the way that you move through, in order to turn it into reality. A fantasy is likely to just linger, hover in the air, and go nowhere. You work at a vision, because it pulls you along a path — from its beginnings, in a thought, a wish, (or fantasy); towards more fleshing out of what it could look like; towards steps that require your mental, creative, emotional and strategic powers, to bring it into fruition.

What Goals Are Desirable Ones? - The goals in this study were all self-serving, self-centered ones – “getting” for oneself to consume or to glorify the ego. Such goals are, in fact, less likely to generate positive outcome, whether in personal life or at work. The most creative, positive accomplishments and achievements result from leaning to “forget yourself,” in the sense of putting your energies into something larger than just your own ego-gratification. I’ve described this in some previous posts about what supports finding a fulfilling life purpose, and what enables people to evolve in healthy, productive ways in their lifetime.

Examples of the contrast between purely ego-related, self-absorbed goals and a larger vision would include the difference between a goal to create a great new product or service, rather than trying to capture a big market share from the product. Or, building a solid, mutually loving relationship with a partner, rather than wanting to “have” a girlfriend or boyfriend to show off or have readily available sex with. Too much self-interest tends to undermine success in life. That’s been observed in the business world, by looking at the goals of those who proved to be most successful: They achieved business and career goals by pursuing themindirectly; by deliberately not pursuing them. In relationships, the same principle is visible among those whose aims are not so much to “acquire” a new partner, but who wants to experience pleasure and enjoyment in relationships, and then find that one may grow and develop over time

What Does It Take To Get There? - The assumption that lower systolic blood pressure means you don’t have enough “energy” to achieve your goals is very mixed-up thinking. It confuses lower motivation associated with residing in a wish-fulfilling, ego-serving fantasy – and which may correlate with lower blood pressure — with the ingredients for energizing the cognitive and emotional capacities you need for achieving a goal or objective that you’ve visualized, not just fantasized about.

That is, an internal state of calm — associated with lower blood pressure — can underlie both wishful thinking and having a clear focus on and determination to achieve your visualized goal or objective. Much research supports this. For example, a large number of studies of the impact of meditation upon the brain and behavior show that internal calm, centeredness, focusing and mindful attention enhances both your cognitive powers and the strategic actions you need to undertake to bring your vision into reality.

The upshot: Know the difference between idealized fantasies that go nowhere and a vision of possibility that activates your powers and your actions. Pursue goals that have worthwhile impact on something more than just your own narrow self-interest. And realize that internal focus, mindfulness and physiological calm activate the right kind of energy for making your vision possible. And that’s no “Secret!”

Many people struggle to find ways to better cope when subjected to unhealthy, abusive management. Often that means learning stress management techniques. They can be helpful, especially when you don’t think any alternatives exist. But ultimately, they aren’t enough. However, reframing how you envision your situation to begin with can open the door to proactive, positive actions in the situation you feel trapped in.

Cathy’s example contains some ways you can do that. She was at mid-level in her company and had a record of steady promotion. At one point, senior leadership in her area changed abruptly, and she was now reporting to a newly appointed boss. “I’m here to shake things up,” he told everyone when he took over. “Everyone’s job is on the line.”

Cathy’s assessment of her new boss was that he didn’t really know her area of expertise, nor was he very interested in learning about it. Nevertheless, he freely criticized her work. Moreover, he kept sitting on a promotion that she had been in line for.

It wasn’t just her: Her boss stirred up much resentment among others because of his arrogant, controlling, dismissive style. When Cathy researched something he had requested and presented it to him, he exploded, saying that she had wasted her time doing something that had “no relevance.” When she pointed out that he had requested the analysis to begin with, he denied it.

But Cathy didn’t just hunker down, become stressed and depressed, or feel disempowered. First, she used a meditative technique to focus her attention on just observing the negative emotions her boss’ behavior aroused in her. That is, she practiced “watching” her emotions as they passed through her. This helped her refrain from being pulled by angry emotions into greater, more debilitating depths, or into unproductive behavior.

Doing that enabled her, in turn, to step “outside” herself (that is, outside the narrow vantage point of her own ego). She looked at herself as if she were a character in a movie. She imagined rewriting the dialogue and actions of the character that was herself, and she envisioned how this “character” might create a different scenario.

This is a form of what I’ve called learning to “forget yourself” (that is, moving beyond and through your immediate self-interest to see yourself in a larger context). Cathy’s enlarged perspective enabled her to accept that her boss was simply acting in accordance with the person he was, regardless of the reasons or how she judged them. Doing that helped prevent her from being drawn into taking his behavior personally, even though it impacted her personally. She rose “above” her situations with, in effect, “engaged indifference.”

That is, she remained “indifferent” to her own emotional reactions, yet she stayed very engaged in looking for solutions from within her broadened perspective. She considered the possible viewpoints and agenda of her boss, from within his possible mindset. That added to her capacity to figure out what might be going on — and what might help.

For example, she thought about what might be some drivers of her boss’ behavior. Was he simply a jerk? An unskilled manager? Did he have an agenda that she didn’t understand? Was he dealing with some insecurities of his own? Personal issues at home? She did a little sleuthing and learned that her new boss had been brought in under a lot of pressure to create some major changes in that part of the organization. Moreover, she learned that he had a troubled teenager at home. Knowing these things didn’t change her opinion about his behavior, but it helped her realize that it would be useful to both of them if he didn’t think of her as a thorn in his side. And it was up to her to try to make that happen.

In essence, she saw the whole picture as a set of circumstances that created a “perfect storm” for her, and that called for an effective solution, from her. So, when her boss criticized a report she had prepared — on the grounds that it didn’t include something that he had previously told her to ignore, but which he now claimed he needed and had told her so — she anticipated that. Rather than reacting with anger, defensiveness or frustration, she simply said she would provide it immediately and asked how she could best help him with anything else that he needed at this point.

Now this may sound counterintuitive, or that it’s “giving in” to a tyrant. But from an enlarged perspective of indifference and engagement, it’s not. That’s because you’re taking into account the emotional drivers and needs of the difficult person you’re dealing with. And you can’t do that if you’re driven solely by your own.

By stepping “outside” herself, Cathy saw some ways to provide her boss the support he need to feel, which, in turn, could help calm his anxieties. She asked him for ways that she could aid his objectives. At the same time, she decided to cede control of some areas that didn’t matter to her, but which her boss seemed to enjoy micromanaging. Cathy felt secure in the knowledge that her expertise wasn’t diminished by her boss’ agenda or his actions.

But there was one more important step that she took: looking down the road, Cathy concluded that her future under him was probably a dead end for the foreseeable future. So she immediately updated her resume and began looking for a new position. She kept her eyes on her own career development objectives, while at the same time navigating through her situation with as little friction as possible.

Learn To ‘Enlarge The Problem’

President Eisenhower once said, when speaking about his experience as Allied commander during World War II, that if you have difficulty understanding a problem or figuring out how to solve it, “enlarge the problem.” That’s what Cathy did. Her example provides some general guidelines that can help, at least in some situations. They include:

• Create an emotional buffer zone. Observe your internal emotional responses to your situation, but recognize that you’re not obligated to act on them. Visualize a “space” between your emotions and how you choose to deal with them in your behavior. If you don’t, you’re likely to say or do something unhelpful or damaging to yourself. That is, stay fully aware of your buttons that your boss is pushing, but separate that from simply reacting to what he’s triggered, or from taking his behavior personally. Don’t get drawn into reacting to your boss’ emotional issues. Recognize that you always have a choice about what you do with your emotions in your conduct.

• Expand your perspective. By not reacting externally to your internal reactions, you are, in effect, learning to be “indifferent” to them. This allows you to enlarge your perspective about the whole situation: what’s feeding into it, and what’s driving your boss’ conduct. When you expand your vision beyond your personal, narrow vantage point, you can see the problem in a much larger context. That includes the multiple factors that feed into it, such as the role of other players or other organizational issues and politics, regardless of what your opinion is about them. This includes getting inside your boss’ mental perspective to understand what he or she may be sensitive to or reacting to. For example, some of your boss’ controlling or abusive behavior may reflect fear about her or his own security in the position.

• Create productive actions with “engaged indifference.” That means staying proactively engaged with solving the problem, yet “indifferent” to your own emotional reactions. Then, you avoid getting sucked into unproductive behavior fueled by anger, resentment or self-pity, or staying fixed within too narrow an understanding of the problem, which leads to a dead end.

Ask yourself what you can do proactively, even if it means “feeding the dog what it wants to eat,” regardless of your opinion of your boss’ choice of “food.” Visualize alternative takes of the “movie” about your situation, as Cathy did. Use them to identify some new actions that reflect “turns of the plot.”

You might decide to go along with some parts of your situation, because your enlarged perspective enables you to see down the road, as you might from the rooftop of a building. You may decide that that’s the best strategy for achieving your longer-range objectives. That might sound like “giving in,” but it’s not when you know what you’re doing and why. For example, you might look for ways to help your boss feel more secure or supported, despite what you think of him or her, because that diminishes your boss’ anxiety and will therefore make your life a bit easier, as long as you remain there.

Of course, it’s important to self-examine at the outset, when you find yourself in a bad situation. Look honestly, with outside help, if necessary, at what you might be contributing to the problem. Ask yourself, “How much is it me or the situation?” Without doing that, you might take actions that you later regret or that prove to be unhelpful.

Finally, it’s crucial to leave any situation that becomes outright abusive, or if you’re subjected to humiliation and extreme denigration. And then, do the research when considering a new job: look for signs of a potentially negative situation, tune in to what you hear during interviews, ask people within the organization what it’s like to work for that company or that boss, heed any red flags raised by what you hear, and don’t enable history to repeat itself.

“This company values incompetence,” he continued. “That’s the real problem. That shows you how screwed-up it is. But they’re telling me that I’m the problem! That I need help? It’s the people upstairs that need it!” He shook his head in dismay.

Sound familiar? People like Ralph are all too common in companies today. He illustrates just one type of abusive boss, often part of an overall unhealthy management culture that takes an enormous toll on both workers and business success.

In this post I describe some examples of that toll in today’s workplace culture and point towards some ways to deal with them — ways that require something different from the usual coping and stress management strategies.

You might guess, correctly, that Ralph was oblivious to the fact that his description of others was how his co-workers and subordinates described him. One of his colleagues had e-mailed him after their last encounter, saying “If you ever set foot in my office again, I’ll throw your ass right out the window.” Ralph dismissed that with a wave of his hand, saying, “That’s typical – he’s threatened by me because he knows I’m leagues beyond him. Always have been.”

Ralph is a senior executive and, in fact, a high-level performer in his company. But his abusive management and poor relationships were generating a growing chorus of complaints. To its credit, his company wanted to salvage rather than fire him, and offered him an executive coaching program. But Ralph saw this as punishment.

Of course there are psychological roots to behavior like Ralph’s. But that doesn’t matter much to the people who have to deal with the consequences on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter what drives your boss’ or coworkers’ behavior if you’re having to pop Xanax to cope with it.

Ralph’s an example of just one kind of psychologically unhealthy management you might encounter at work: the narcissistic and arrogant boss. Others are more abusive, bullying people who create a great deal of suffering for those reporting to them. I find that some with those tendencies often gravitate towards companies that either implicitly sanction or actively encourage such behavior; organizations whose culture is marked by a hostile, abusive work environment.

An unhealthy management culture has a negative impact on both the employees and the business success of the company. Research shows that an unhealthy management culture and the stress it generates diminish the mental efficiency of workers subjected to it. For example, a Gallup survey found that such work groups are on average 50 percent less productive and 44 percent less profitable than more positively managed groups.

There’s even some evidence that psychologically unhealthy management can create a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, like that seen among soldiers returning from combat.

Abusive bosses often run into problems themselves, eventually, especially in organizations that require a high degree of teamwork and collaboration for both individual and business success – increasingly the norm, today. Nevertheless, many companies continue to harbor or foster unhealthy, toxic management. In fact, some research suggests that it’s on the rise, both in the U.S. and abroad.

It can be devastating. For example, Margaret landed a job with a small but growing event-planning company when she was just a few years out of college. Initially she was pretty excited by “wide-open opportunity” for career possibilities that her boss described to her. Unfortunately, the reality proved otherwise. She soon discovered that she was working for the classic Boss From Hell, like portrayed in the movie “The Devil Wears Prada.” Margaret was subject to daily tirades, name-calling, and constant threats of being fired. She heard through the grapevine that her boss always managed people this way, especially those in entry-level positions. Constant turnover was the norm. That seemed to be fine with her boss, probably because it made pay raises unnecessary.

Margaret sought advice from an older employee, but that didn’t help much. She was told that she was simply spoiled, like most 20-somethings; that she should feel lucky to have an entry-level job with benefits, in this economy. Margaret didn’t know which way to go, but she knew she had trouble sleeping and felt like she was developing an ulcer.

“When I finally leave after a 12-hour day, I’m usually in tears all the way home,” Margaret told me. “Some of my friends say I should just ‘suck it up.’ Others say I should quit right now, and some tell me I should just tell the bitch off. I don’t know what I want to do. I need the job, but I’m a wreck at the end of every day and I can’t take it much more.”

When you’re on the receiving end of bosses like that, you’re likely to feel highly anxious and on guard, at best. A senior executive of a large corporation once told me, with apparent glee, “This is a paranoid culture. We want people to feel that someone’s always looking over their shoulder, ready to catch them on something. That’s what keeps them sharp.”

But does it? Surveys find that large numbers of American workers are dealing with abusive and/or incompetent managers, and it hurts the companies they work for. A Gallup Poll of 1 million workers found bad bosses are the No.1 reason for quitting a job. And a 2011 pollconducted by Harris Interactive for the American Psychological Association found that 36 percent of workers report ongoing work stress, most of which is related to negative or outright unhealthy management practices. Between 40-50% report heavy workload, long hours, and unrealistic expectations as among the sources of emotional distress. Nearly 50% say they don’t feel valued on the job, and about one-third report that they intend to look for another job within the next year.

Such research and survey data underscore that a psychologically unhealthy management culture extends far beyond the presence of an abusive or bullying boss. It includes environments that denigrate, demoralize and don’t support your continued learning and development. There, you may find that your achievements are ignored or unrewarded. The APA survey found that over 50% reported not receiving adequate recognition for their achievements. Moreover, you might find yourself dealing with constant political manipulation, secrecy, questionable ethical behavior, or other kinds of negative management practices.

In one company the human resources director was told by a consultant about the effect that abusive supervisors were having on employees. The consultant reported that “She got very cranky and said, ‘We don’t have time to be nice to people.’” In such companies, people are likely to be subject to a range of abusive behavior. For example, Samantha discovered that among the unwritten items in her job description was walking the boss’s dog and taking his clothes to the cleaners. Andrew, who worked in a management consulting firm, reported that his boss might scream at him for whatever he decided Andrew had done wrong, or simply not to his liking, on any given day…and then later might flip around and tell Andrew how great he was; how much his contribution was valued.

Of course, one might ask why anyone would put up with abusive bosses or unhealthy management cultures. There are many reasons – and holding on to a career position in a shaky economy can certainly play a role. But there are psychological reasons as well. Unconscious fears and conflicts can pull someone to “find a home” with abusive superiors or authority figures. He or she might be recreating the experience with an abusive parent, unconsciously, in an effort to change or repair the parent, symbolically.

Another person might live with a bad situation because he or she was taught to not make waves; or had learned to assume you can’t change or control your circumstances. Perhaps self-confidence wasn’t sufficiently fostered or strengthened while growing up, or self-esteem was damaged. One hopeful sign is that younger workers tend to be more attuned to recognizing an unhealthy workplace culture and more likely to be pro-active on their own behalf find a healthier environment. These are the kinds of workers I described in a previous post as part of the newly emerging “4.0″ career orientation.

For those who suffer, just learning better coping with unhealthy management practices with stress management techniques isn’t enough. What helps is thinking “outside the box” and creating a mental and emotional perspective that frames your dilemma differently. That can open up new, constructive actions – though they may appear contradictory at first. I’ll explain and describe some of these in Part 2 of this post.

This post originally appeared in The Huffington Post, in somewhat different form.