Feeling Stuck? Try Generosity.

As winter rolls in and the American election drags on, I wanted to share a story about generosity and meaning that’s always inspired me.  I hope it will inspire you as well in those times when everything feels out of your control.

To me the story is a good example of how taking the attention off of our own struggles and helping others can bring us meaning and fulfillment, if not even happiness. Since people with obsessive-compulsive personality traits often feel that the right thing is to hold on to money, time, objects and compliments, we may miss out on the benefits of generosity. But perhaps worse, since we tend to get engrossed in goals, projects, and fixing things, we may neurologically wire ourselves into a narrow focus which excludes generosity.

Then we’re stuck.

The story I’ll tell is about how one man got unstuck. It’s also an example of someone who had to come to terms with his self-critical nature in order to bring out the best in his obsessive-compulsive personality.

His approach to healing is not appropriate for everyone, but many of us can benefit from that approach, at least in smaller doses.

The Story of Buckminster Fuller

At the age of 32, polymath designer, scientist, philosopher and artist, Buckminster Fuller (1895 – 1983) walked to Lake Michigan to drown himself. After losing his 5-year-old daughter and failing in a business his family and friends had financed, he had become depressed and was drinking heavily. He was stuck. He thought everyone would be better off with the payout from his life insurance policy than with him alive.

But he had an epiphany. Instead of killing himself he resolved to live his life in a way that would benefit humanity. At the time his circumstances were genuinely dire. He could not be happy himself, so he decided that he could at least do what he could to improve the lives of others. He decided to put his ego aside and make his life an experiment, an experiment in realizing one’s potential by working for the greater good.

For this reason he called himself “Guinea Pig B.”

He committed himself to work as a single individual to better the world, Spaceship Earth, as he called it. He considered himself just a normal, healthy human, and wanted to set an example for everyone else: we are all capable of contributing to progress.

He isolated himself for two years to reflect on how best he could manage this.

Re-entry was not easy. His designs were initially rejected by architectural and construction companies. But he persisted, and he eventually gained respect. He worked across the usual field lines that separate industries, cross-fertilizing and coming up with new ideas.

He invented the Dymaxion House, an efficient and simply constructed apartment that could be flown to its destination. Then came the Dymaxion Car, which, while not a commercial success, laid the groundwork for more efficient vehicles that followed. Then, perhaps most famously, he created the Geodesic Dome, an innovative construction design now used for some 300,000 units worldwide.

Here’s a description of the Geodesic Dome from the Buckminster Fuller Institute website: “Lightweight, cost-effective, and easy to assemble, geodesic domes enclose more space without intrusive supporting columns than any other structure; they efficiently distribute stress; and they can withstand extremely harsh conditions. Based on Fuller’s “synergetic geometry,” his lifelong exploration of nature’s principles of design, the geodesic dome was the result of his revolutionary discoveries about balancing compression and tension forces in building.”

I’m tempted to explore this symbolically as a metaphor for psychological growth and individuation. The goals of creating inner space, distributing stress, withstanding harsh conditions, and balancing the tension between self-care and generosity could all be part of a psychotherapeutic treatment plan. But I’ll restrain myself and stick with the concrete for now.

I stayed in a Geodesic Dome just last month when visiting Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. Spacious and connected to nature, it was a pleasure to be in, and especially satisfying knowing that Bucky had designed it.

But, let’s get back back to our story….He traveled the world urging audiences to think bigger, to see the possibilities of change on earth, and how as humans we might grow and contribute.

Despite his apolitical stance and his philosophy being completely at odds with that of President Ronald Reagan’s administration, his inventions were so significant that he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Reagan himself in 1983.

He had become unstuck. Shortly before his death he wrote:

“I am now close to 88 and I am confident that the only thing important about me is that I am an average healthy human. I am also a living case history of a thoroughly documented, half-century, search-and-research project designed to discover what, if anything, an unknown, moneyless individual, with a dependent wife and newborn child, might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity that could not be accomplished by great nations, great religions or private enterprise, no matter how rich or powerfully armed.“[i]

Bucky passed away at the age of 88. His many contributions and designs have opened new possibilities for creators in many fields, and he has served as a personal inspiration for countless individuals all over the world. That’s quite a turnaround for someone who was ready to give up. And his gifts to the world gave him meaning.

Was Bucky Obsessive-Compulsive?

So, what makes me say that he was obsessive-compulsive? I did hear him speak once, but I never met him personally and therefore can’t really give him a formal diagnosis. Still, I’m going to go out on a limb here, describe some of his personality traits, and venture that he was by nature compulsive. I’ll go on to say that he became a Healthy Compulsive once he decided to utilize his skills and devote himself to human progress.

I say he was compulsive because of his determination, his work ethic, and his discipline. He would sleep as little as 2 hours a day so he could get more work done. He held 28 patents, wrote 28 books and was awarded 47 honorary degrees. He delivered more than 2,000 lectures at 500 universities and colleges, and made 48 trips around the world.

One of the central organizing themes of his work was efficiency; doing more with less, a principle that many people with compulsive tendencies espouse.

And, like most people with compulsive tendencies, he was a passionate problem solver.

But the clincher comes from a report from his daughter: “I remember how my father always loved to wash dishes. I had a perfectly good dishwasher, a piece of excellent technology, but he preferred to get his hands wet, to rinse, soap and stack the dishes in just the right way,” (emphasis added).

Bucky Becomes a Healthy Compulsive

I say Bucky was a Healthy Compulsive because he chose to use his compulsive traits consciously and meaningfully. He realized that he needed to change himself to change the world. In one of his many books, Critical Path, he shared a list of 22 disciplines he had developed for himself. I won’t list them here, but be assured it’s an inspiring list that would warm the cockles of the hearts of most obsessive-compulsives.

In my book, The Healthy Compulsive, I list the eight criteria for obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. Then I go through that list a second time, noting the positive potential in each of those criteria. All of these traits manifest on a spectrum from adaptive to maladaptive.

You can see the adaptive, positive nature of these traits in Bucky’s life:

 

1. He used lists and was committed to order and detail without losing the point of his projects.

 

2. He was a pragmatic perfectionist. “Mistakes are great, the more I make the smarter I get.”

 

3. He was extremely productive, but remained committed to his family and community.

 

4. He was adamantly committed to integrity—which in its unhealthy form is over-conscientiousness.

 

5. As far as I know he did not hoard objects, but he was scrupulous in using his time as a valuable resource, and doing more with less was a foundation of his work.

 

6. He worked independently and rarely delegated work to others, but was able to cooperate with others when he needed to.

 

7. He was efficient with money but not miserly. His inventions were designed to use money more effectively to reduce suffering in our society.

 

8. He was stubborn in his determination, but not rigid. Two of his 22 disciplines were to listen to others and to learn from his mistakes.

 
As I write in my book:

“A healthy compulsive is one whose energy and talents for achievement are used consciously in the service of passion, love, and purpose. An unhealthy compulsive is one whose energy and talents for achievement have been hijacked by fear and its henchman, anger. Both are driven: one by meaning, the other by dread.”

Bucky, I think it safe to say, was a Healthy Compulsive.

Caveats and Limitations

This post is not for everyone. If you give yourself away too easily (note especially server-friend types) and have difficulty setting boundaries, you may want to move on to another post like this one on people pleasing. You may already err on the side of trying to make others happy at your own expense. My point in this post is to help those who have become stuck in their projects to the point where they have not been getting the benefits of kindness toward others.

For those who already give too much, rather than launch into new projects benefiting others, it may help you to improve your mood simply by acknowledging what you have already done to help others.

Also beware of potential spiritual bypasses—trying to deny that you have a feeling by developing a devout attitude or engaging in virtuous behavior. Depression needs to be taken seriously, and, should you be depressed, I urge you to find professional help. In Bucky’s case, I don’t think it was denial or a spiritual bypass, but a direct conscious response to his own suffering and the suffering he observed in others. Ideally suffering leads us all to active compassion.

Benevolent action can be helpful in improving our mood–once a depression is acknowledged and confronted. But we should not try to bypass this step.

Making A Difference and Feeling Better

Sometimes making someone else happy is our best option to improve our own mood. There is ample research to support the idea that acts of generosity and random acts of kindness leave the generous person feeling better. There is something natural in us that longs to be generous, but too often it is blocked.

So if I find a five-dollar bill on the street and decide to give it away, I’ll feel better than if I keep it and spent in on a fancy brownie.

I can’t guarantee you’ll feel happier if you engage in large or small acts of kindness, but I do believe there is a very good chance that you will at least feel like your life has more meaning—and, silver lining for the compulsive—you’ll feel like you have more control over your mood.

There are a fair number of people, not evil or mean or even selfish, whose focus on perfection, control, order and achievement has led them to a dead end. They can benefit from doing simple acts of kindness to re-open their perspective when their world has become too small. These acts may not be as world-changing as their previous goals, but they are people-changing—for both parties involved. Sometimes that pleasure in helping others is enough to break out of a rut.

Bucky liked to say that he was just a normal human being and that anyone could achieve what he achieved. I get his point, but I suggest that we not take him too literally here. Clearly his brain functioned on a higher level than most of ours do. So if you can’t achieve everything he achieved, don’t feel bad.

Acknowledging that you may not save the world after all may involve some humility, but it may also get you unstuck.

And don’t underestimate the effect of small acts of kindness, for the recipient or for yourself. Merely being nice to someone who doesn’t deserve it, but needs it desperately, can make a real difference.

This is not to say that you should abandon your previous goals, but rather to supplement them with acts of kindness. If you are not in a position to help in a big way, just being nice to the customer support operator could brighten their day, and thereby, yours.

Bucky Weighs In

I thought it would be interesting to ask Bucky what advice he had for the obsessive-compulsive folks who read this blog. I had to pay a psychic good money to reach him, but here’s what he had to say:

“Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren’t any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn’t be here in the first place. And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life’s challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person.”

Alright, that’s actually an old quote. I didn’t hire a psychic to contact him and I can’t find the source of the quote, which is widely attributed to him. But if you imagine for a moment that he’s speaking to us personally, it really hits home.

I’ve been trying to ask myself this week, “How might I make this person’s day a little better?” When I was able to remember to ask this question, and to act on it, it was often the best part of my day.

[i] Fuller, R. Buckminster (1983). Inventions: The Patented Works of R. Buckminster Fuller. St. Martin’s Press. p. vii.