If I try to become more aware of my own intentions on why I desire or why other people desire to increase their height or grow taller, there is only 3 possible reasons that I have come up with.
1. To finally be able to accept themselves.
2. To get other people to accept and like them.
3. To feel good about themselves they look at themselves in the mirror.
In all three of the reasons, the element of acceptance is the main factor. They are either trying to get someone else to accept them and love them, or trying to get themselves to accept who they are and love themselves.
Time and time again I see with people around me and in my own coaching program that often the biggest problem that people face is that they either can’t love themselves or can’t get other people to love them, at least not the people they secretly wish would love them.
In terms of not getting other people to love them, the best example is a hormonal, rash teenage guy who is being reckless and uncaring. His parents and siblings can love him completely and unconditionally but he doesn’t care about that. He only wants that cute girl in his writing class to love him because that person is who he holds a high respect for and value in their opinion and judgement. It is so cruel and sad sometimes to realize that what we really want deep inside is something that the world or other people will not give us, at least at this point in their life or development.
As for trying to get other people to like who we are, I used to help other people with that. When it comes to getting other people to like us and accept us, the process is actually not that hard. Most people at a deep level want to be liked so if you just express your own genuine nature, be kind, and show that you like them without any expectations of getting anything in return, most people would be receptive to your actions, become very kind towards you, and like you in return. Learning about social skills, mirroring body language and vocal communication, building rapport, creating attraction or deep comfort, understanding qualification, these ideas will be enough to help us gain friends and lovers if we apply them diligently and practice them daily through forced communication.
As for ourselves, we know at some intellectual level that it is never that we “CAN’T” love ourselves. It is always that we “won’t” love who we are. The main issue is over acceptance. At the back of our minds, we logically understand that part. Unfortunately another part of our mind creates a force that resist us from reaching full acceptance so we are not letting ourselves just relax. We often find that we feel the need to struggle, to compete, and to improve just so that we can be even satisfied with our state in our lives at that current moment. We really will not accept who we are so obviously we can not reach the next step which is to love. For any of us to ever even be able to reach the level of acceptance, we have to do it at both an intellectual and emotional level. However, research has shown that we as emotional creatures can override and then rationalize away our emotions so all we really need to do is find a way to emotionally accept ourselves. So how do we at a deep level emotionally accept ourselves? It could either take years and years of trials, tributlation, mistakes, and errors before we finally hit some breaking point where the external world becomes a place where we can no longer deal with or control, or have any power over. Once the extenral world becomes too hard or difficult for us to deal with, our ego will logically go to the inner world and try to find safety and security therre. If then we find that our inner world is also in strife and chaos from anxiety, turmoil, then our brain has three choices,
1. Run back to the external world and struggle again to exert our will on it to give it what we want
2. Go mad and crazy
3. Give up and let go of the emotional pain inside.
To be able to let go , we have to at some level change or reframe ou identity. Our identity is the image and idea of who we think we are. How we view ouselves and how we stay congruent with that image is how
The great Anthony Robbins once stated that one of the most powerful forces within us is to stay “true and consistent with our identiy , of who we think we are”
Of course other wise people have also shown that the greatest force within us is not the survival instinct, which is to run away from death , “but to keep things the same, the way it is”. Change often leads to discomfort.
There is one last axiom which I wanted to bring which is that humans mainly operate on the pain and pleasure principles. Our actions can be simplified and explained by assuming the individual will run towards pleasure and run away from pain. However, the force of pain and suffering is far stronger and more likely to get us to take some form of action than the force of pleasure. The stick is a better incentive than the carrot.
If we then combine the three axioms together then we understand the true primary force within people. People want to continue to do the same thing over and over again while creating a subjective illusion that they have choice and free will within a safe comfortable environement keeping to their own personal blueprint of the world and staying always within their identity. If anything comes in to try to change their identity, they feel immediately threatened and creates resistance from using every form of ego defense mechanism possible. This is all played at a metalevel of communication and intepersonal behavioral dynamics. If we realize that in our meta level battles that we can’t win, we either try to make the opponent lose at the cost of ourselves, fight to remain at our position, or try to find a way to end it in a draw. Again, all meta-level communication conflict theory.
If we somehow are pushed to the edge of our comfort zone, we will react irrationally to come back to our comfrot zone. We will definitely react towards the force of pain because that is one of the primary drives.
How you define yourself as a person will ultimately create the most pain and also the most joy in you. In certain very dramatic situations in our life, our identity can be completely stripped form us.
Ex: We were married and one day we found out our spouse has been cheating on us and just ran off with the other women/guy. We are left stupified at what happened. There is no emotional closure, our brains and emotions can’t make sense of what happened, and no one can give us an adequate answer to the main question “Why??” so both our mental and emotional circuits are destroyed. Our notion of who we are, our identity, has been completely ripped out of us in one day, and there was nothing we could have done. Then comes the blame, and where the blame is placed. Is it on ourselves or the person, organization, or agent that caused the change in the situation which we had absolutely no control over?
When it comes to almost anything else in our life, we have some form of control and ability to change something that we don’t like by taking action. When it comes to the issue of height and size, it maye turn out that we may have to one day have to find a way to emotionally accept our limitations and the realities of our real size.
The problem with identity is that ultimately, the concept of “I” is very fluid. The self ultimately is constantly changing. As time moves on, our surroundings change, our relationshps chagne, our thoughts change, and our values change. When we try too hard to define ourselves only in a certain way, our attachment to that mental construct of what is ourselves will be lsot eventually. When we call ourselves a mother, what happens when our children dies suddenly? We lose that sense of identity. Partly, our sense of identity is connected also to what we do.
When it comes to something like height, that almost never changes once we reach a certain age, we can often feel stuck. How we are compared to others is the primary way we define ourselves in this world. When we state that we are short (which is from being compared to others of our age range and primary peer group), that is something that can not change. If we are too focused and attached to that label or description, we develop often an emotion to that part of our identity. When that identity elicits a feeling of insecurity or anxiety, we try to find a way to avoid it. However, with height we can never truly escape that level upon us. So either we can try to change the external by finding a way to help us grow, or we stop focusing on that label and that part of our identity.
What if instead that although we are 5 feet tall and we graduated from Harvard Medical School? Well then we are short and a doctor. We can reinterpret our identiyty by using the positive, stronger parts of our identiy. At some level, everyone is proud of themselves or confident in themselves in some way.
While we may not have the best body qualities, we might have an amazing intellect. While we may not have an amazing intellect, our social skills and ability to deal with people are amazing. While we may not get along with people well, our skill sin making money and dealing with finances makes us rich and wealthy.
The primary point is that if you never do find a way to change the attributes that make up who you are, then look for another aspect of your identity, which is always changing, and be confident (and even arrogant) from that.