Bull session: Honesty and the ugly truth

Apple employees called it the reality distortion field: the ability of Steve Jobs to delude himself and others into thinking that nothing was impossible. Jobs utilized his “magical thinking” to create and reinvent entire industries, twice bringing Apple back from the brink of irrelevancy and finally cementing it as the world’s most important tech brand.

Jobs’ disregard for conventional boundaries was so successful in business that he applied it to his health as well: when diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he turned down surgery in favor of a combi-

Ever wonder what people don’t like about you? Our brave contributor did just that, asking the people closest to him to tell him his most deplorable traits.

nation of fad diets, alternative medicines and just plain ignoring that it was there. However, the cancer kept growing and Jobs eventually went under the knife; by then, it was too late.

When does reality distortion outlive its usefulness? In terms of self-perception, a whole host of white lies are often needed just to make it through the day. It’s extremely useful to develop idealistic notions about ourselves because it forces our hand: live up to these expectations or else. It’s that kind of stress that Jobs used to pluck miracles out of thin air.

But, in his case as in ours, faking it until you make it works perfectly well up until the point where you smash headfirst into reality. Asking the hard questions that can only lead to drastic changes in attitude and lifestyle is annoying, uncomfortable, and totally necessary.

I started this experiment by asking all of my close friends to share what they think my flaws are. “Hold nothing back,” I bravely declared in a mass Facebook message, to which they answered, “No thanks.” I suppose it’s more awkward to pop someone else’s bubble than it is to pop your own.

The first clue came from my wife, who replied, “I can’t tell you we might break up lol.” Now we’re getting somewhere: who’s better equipped to tell me how I ought to fix myself than the woman I spend every waking moment with? I thought of what her points of contention with me are, and after throwing away the quibbles (“The bathroom floor is always

Check it: Even a simple to-do list can My Name is change things. Earl from My Name is Earl made sure he never forgot what he had to do by listing down everything.