An Unusually Comprehensive Exploration of Maturity
A mini-ebook on the topic of the aspects of maturity and how we can develop them
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📖 Currently Reading: Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha - Daniel Ingram
Originally, this was supposed to be a short article on the topic of maturity. However, because maturity is such a complex and multi-faceted subject, I've ended up writing virtually a mini e-book on it. Below you will find a comprehensive exploration of maturity.
My goal for you is that you can see how multi-faceted the development of maturity truly is and also take some time to contemplate, reflect, and journal on whatever facet of the process calls to you most. Without further ado.
What is Maturity?
So, I've been sitting deeply with the topic of maturity lately, really contemplating what it means to be a mature human being. And this is what I've come up with.
Maturity is multi-faceted, deeply intertwined with the development of other aspects of life (explored in detail through this article). Maturity isn't ONE thing. It's a higher-order "thing" that emerges when multiple other more specific character traits have been cultivated. This realization stems from my recognition that I lacked some degree of maturity needed to show up as fully as I want for the problems of the world. There is an extreme degree of suffering and systemic dysfunction, and I want to step up and play my part in shaping it towards greater wholeness and systemic health, but my own immaturity gets in the way of that.
Ultimately, I believe that many systemic problems we face as a species result from the endemic nature of immaturity. There are many adults walking around who are basically just children with jobs.
Furthermore, I've come to realize that wisdom and maturity are deeply related, so to develop one, I must work on developing the other. They co-dependently arise and support each other's development. Being immature causes numerous problems in my life—the more immature I am, the more I suffer.
So what is maturity? And what can we do about it?
Deep down, we all seem to have a gut-level maturity detector. When we're interacting with someone, we get a sense of whether or not they're mature. We get a sense of how much responsibility they're taking for their life and how mature they are. Often, we're not sure exactly what it is we're detecting; it's just a knowing. Yet, we're unsure why we know.
Here, I'm going to attempt to elucidate what maturity is more specifically so that you can get clear on what character traits are that you can develop in yourself that will have the second-order effect of helping you mature faster and not get stuck in immature stages of development for too long.
Radical Responsibility
This is perhaps the most foundational characteristic that makes all the other characteristics possible. Without discipline and long-term strategic thinking, it’s virtually impossible to see the development of any characteristic through to the end. I’m talking about the ability to commit to developing some aspect of your psyche and actually follow it through to the end.
I have a difficult time writing each characteristic here as if it were separate from the rest. In order to develop discipline toward developing some aspect of ourselves, we must first have done enough reflection and introspection to know what in ourselves is lacking and needs to be developed.
Sure, it’s self-responsibility, but it’s also seeing that the more responsibility you can take for your life, the more effectively you can be of service to others. The opposite of this would involve blaming others for how bad your life is, as if it’s the government's fault, or your parents' fault, or the world’s fault. Blaming is entirely immature. Radical responsibility is the hallmark of maturity.
A key part of radical responsibility is being proactive. Jocko Willink calls this "default aggressive." Getting after it. Whatever needs to get done, you do. The immature person is lazy and waits for their reality to get so bad that it forces them into action. The mature person sees that if they wait to take action, then they will be forced to do something they hate, so they do the hard work of disciplining themselves in a way that pushes them to become the type of human they need to be to inhabit the role they want to play in the world. As John Vervaeke would put it, they find the agent-arena relationship they want to play and then engage in processes of reciprocal opening such that both they transform, and as a result, the arenas that they can participate in also expand. Therefore, discipline, mastery, and being "default aggressive" (as in getting after it, not literal aggression) are key characteristics of maturity.
Reflection Questions
Where am I not taking responsibility for my life?
How does taking more responsibility enhance your ability to be of service to others?
Where can you adopt a "default aggressive" approach in tackling tasks in your life?
How does discipline contribute to your maturity and personal development?
How can you embody a mindset of mastery in your approach to personal growth and development?
Facing Reality Fully
The mature person realizes that life is challenging, and that’s okay. They face up to the pain of their existence fully and let go of the avoidance mechanisms/addictions that they’ve previously utilized in their life to “get by.” They see that fully confronting the pain of existence is better than living a life of indifference and lack of feeling at all.
Therefore, the mature person (may I say “warrior”) must confront emotionally difficult tasks head-on. But I beckon you to broaden what emotionally difficult tasks entail. Yes, having difficult, truthful, integrous conversations fits in this bucket, but so does texting someone, ‘No, I don’t want to hang with you today.’ Or journaling for 30 minutes and uncovering a part of yourself that you don’t really want to look at. It also entails going for a walk and choosing not to have music drowning out your inner dialogue that is trying to tell you something. It also entails doing menial work day-after-day because you know that it’s in service of something that you care about. It not being tempted by shortcuts or easy fixes. You see that anything meaningful in life is going to require countless hours of emotionally difficult work. You must face your fears with courage a million and one times. The core fears won’t go down easy. They will fight until their last breath. Courage is not just something for the “big” moments in life. It’s something we must double down on in each and every moment. The courage to be creative when it scares you. The courage to say the thing you don’t want to say. The courage to make the move you’re scared to make. The courage to reveal something about yourself that feels edgy. The courage to do the work that needs to get done when something easier is available. The courage to get out of bed instead of hitting snooze one more time. The courage to get on the meditation cushion instead of checking social media. The courage to add 3-minute breaks of silence to reconnect with what is meaningful in the middle of your days.
Contrarily, one of the primary characteristics of the immature person is that they don’t want to do the emotional labor that is required to face up to reality. They’re caught in perpetual loops of reactively escaping and avoiding anything that rings of painful emotional experiences.
Reflection Questions
What avoidance habits can you release to face reality more fully?
In what ways can you confront the pain of your existence more directly?
In what ways can you approach daily tasks with the understanding that they contribute to something meaningful?
Where in your life are you tempted by shortcuts instead of facing the emotional difficulty of meaningful work?
How can you infuse courage into the small moments of your daily life?
Where in your life are you resisting the emotional labor required to face up to reality?
Equanimity
Another core facet of maturity is the ability to take on the challenges of life gracefully. What I mean by this is that even in extremely difficult times there is an ease that the mature person has learned how to inhabit.
The mature person has accepted things as they are to such a degree that they know no matter what happens, it’s all okay. They’re grounded in this ease. They’re balanced in the face of any internally or externally painful circumstances.
There’s a lack of struggle even when struggling, there’s effortlessness in effort, there’s peacefulness even when there’s no tranquility. When one is embodying the quality of equanimity, they are not frightened of being afraid, not concerned by being worried, not irritated when experiencing annoyance, not pissed off by being angry.
In other words, it’s a meta-perspective that holds everything else. It’s knowing this moment just as it is. Because as Daniel Ingram writes, “[i]n the end, we must ACCEPT the truth if our lives, our minds, our neuroses, of impermanence, of suffering, and of emptiness.” The person that has cultivated equanimity has accepted these facets of existence as deeply as they can.
Reflection Questions
How can you approach life's challenges with more ease and grace?
How deeply have you embraced the idea that "no matter what happens, it's all okay"?
How can you ground yourself in the knowledge that everything is fundamentally okay?
How can you maintain balance and ease in the face of internal or external challenges?
In what areas of your life can you introduce effortlessness into your actions, even amidst struggles?
How can you develop a meta-perspective that holds and accepts all facets of your existence, including impermanence, suffering, and emptiness?
Service and Duty to Others or Something Larger / Selflessness
There is a sense of loyalty and duty here. As the Phoenix Culture team and I have been building and participating in the Warrior100, we’ve put together a list of the virtues of ancient and modern warriors. The one that I struggled to understand the most has been loyalty. “Why the hell would I need loyalty?” I ask myself. “Isn’t that just for outdated religions and military regimes and communist-esque regimes?”
But as I’m now realizing, loyalty IS service. Loyalty is devoting oneself to something larger than oneself. In a nutshell, it’s selflessness. It’s realizing that deep down you’re not the center of the universe and that life is more meaningful when lived in service to something beyond your individual needs, wants, and desires.
The immature person thinks that life is about them. Their values are selfish. Their actions are selfish. Their thoughts are selfish. Their life is selfishness in motion. This is not meant to judge those that are immature but to make distinctions around what it means to be a mature human being so that we may aspire to notice when our way of life is lacking maturity and to move towards depth of maturity in more domains of our existence.
There’s a realization here that in order to live a life of service we must sacrifice many things. We can’t keep all of the payoffs that we get from our selfish patterns and also be of service to something larger. We must not only sacrifice the pleasure of addictions and escape from reality, but also sacrifice the smallness that we feel. We must sacrifice: the insecurities that we act from, the pleasure of feeling like we’re right, the avoidance of the pain of being wrong, the fear of making wrong decisions, the fear of standing up for the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible and getting criticized for doing so by those who are less mature/feel attacked by our doing so.
A tangential point here is that in order to fully be of service, we must also have the discernment to recognize what are and are not higher values. We must be able to tell when our actions are in alignment with values of service, discipline, courage, loyalty, duty, and truth.
To dive even deeper, the mature person sees that any insecurity or self-doubt that they have in their system directly gets in the way of their ability to serve. Just imagine if you’re trying to work at a coffee shop and all that’s going through your mind is what other people think about you and how you look sitting there. Do you really think that the entirety of your being could ever be devoted to something greater than yourself in that scenario? Insecurity is selfish. It’s not wrong or bad. It’s okay to experience insecurity. We’re all human. But the mature person strives to live a life of deep presence and truth where insecurity is seen through so the energy that was once devoted to selfish thoughts of “how do I look?” is re-routed towards: building something beautiful, solving meaningful problems, total cognitive bandwidth, inhabiting empathy, being present, sensitivity, compassion, and depth of care.
Finally, the easiest example of service is a parent. The parent upon bringing a child into the world immediately sees that they aren’t the center of the world. They must be of service to raising and supporting the needs of this being that they’ve brought into the world. It seems inarguable that to become a parent instantly endows more maturity. That the pain and difficulty of raising a child are directly related to the development of the characteristics of maturity that I’m listing forth in this newsletter.
Lastly, selfishness is utterly immature because it’s a state of being that can’t fathom how one’s own self-seeking behavior could possibly harm others. Someone that is selfish is stuck in the immediacy of what they’re doing and never takes time to reflect on how doing something could have a second-order effect of harming others and even themselves. That creating excess waste can cause pollution of microplastics in the ocean which end up feeding back into the water supply that they themselves consume. The selfish person can’t see how their actions come back to affect them and so, therefore, acts in entirely unconscious ways. They can’t fathom how their own self-indulgence is supporting a system of injustice and perpetuating systemic dynamics of harm and fragmentation on planetary levels.
Reflection Questions
How does loyalty connect with selflessness and service to something larger?
In what ways have your values reflected selfishness in actions, thoughts, and life?
What aspects of smallness, insecurity, and pleasure must you sacrifice to truly serve something beyond yourself?
How does insecurity hinder your ability to fully serve and devote yourself to a higher purpose?
How can you cultivate discernment to recognize actions aligned with higher values of service, discipline, courage, loyalty, duty, and truth?
How does selfish behavior contribute to systemic harm and environmental degradation, perpetuating injustice and fragmentation on planetary levels?
Long-Term Strategic Thinking
This is intimately interwoven with the discipline and service to others, characteristics in multiple ways. Essentially, what we're talking about here is the ability to see more than two steps down the line. It involves seeing how our actions today are an execution of some larger vision and plan. The immature person can only see one step down the line, planning for something that will come to fruition next week. The mature person is thinking 100 steps down the line. Nine times out of ten, their strategy won’t work out fully as planned. The 100 steps won’t happen exactly as they thought, but the act of perceiving things in a long-term, strategic way and envisioning what they want their life to look like years down the line is the hallmark of developing extremely advanced degrees of human experience. Or, to put it more accurately, experiencing and relating to life in increasingly more subtle and nuanced ways in alignment with the true, good, and beautiful.
Reflection Questions
In what ways can you enhance your ability to see multiple steps down the line?
How does perceiving life in a long-term, strategic way align with your pursuit of the true, good, and beautiful?
How can you enhance your adaptability when facing unexpected challenges in executing your long-term plans?
Decisiveness
Decisiveness is directly related to maturity. The ability to perceive a situation and make a rapid decision based on sensitivity, wisdom, and gut instinct in service of the good is something that a mature person can do. The mature person perceives how indecision impairs service, loyalty, and duty. They see that being apathetic and stuck, not knowing what to do (with their life, in this moment, in relation to others), only causes one to be in a "deer in the headlights state."
Reflection Questions
What decisions have you made recently, and which values did they honor?
Of these mature character traits, which should you work on first? What are some decisions that would move you towards developing that character?
Are there any unmade decisions in your life? What are they? Make them.
How do you change your behavior to become a more decisive person?
Contemplate what indecisiveness will cost you in the long run.
Which values are you voting for based on the decisions you're making?
How does integrity relate to decisiveness?
Deeply Understanding Our Emotions // Introspection
When we think about what makes a teenager less mature than a wise old person, the first thing that comes to mind is the degree of self-awareness. The child simply doesn’t have as much self-awareness as the elder. The elder has engaged in more reflection and introspection around their actions. They see how the ways they’ve acted and shown up in life have influenced others and led to certain outcomes, and now they know themselves more intimately in a way that embodies maturity.
One of the easiest examples to point to here is whether or not one is reactive against their emotional and psychological states or has developed the capacity to sit with themselves fully. The immature person experiences an emotion, and then immediately a cascade of reactions, impulses, and behaviors arise out of that experience. If an experience is painful or has a tinge of suffering, the immature person will do whatever they can to escape that feeling, whether that means eating a bowl of ice cream and binge-watching Netflix or manipulating others to make them feel loved.
To overcome reactivity and the cycle of craving and rejection, we must learn how to sit with ourselves and get curious about our experience. Spend as much time as possible reflecting and introspecting on the experience of life that we’re having in this moment.
There is a level of agency that comes from not reacting to negative experiences. The mature person is freer because they’re not entrapped by their own reactivity.
On a much deeper level, the mature person sees how much of their identity and personality has been shaped by these patterns of reactivity. They’ve done so much introspection in their life that they understand their psyche to greater depths than the immature person. They peer even more deeply and see below their emotions and reactivity and get to the place where all of this arises. They see that underneath each emotion is an attachment, an assumption about what’s true of themselves. A core interpretation through which every experience gets filtered. For example, let’s say your core assumption is, “There is something wrong with me” (this is the one I’ve been working with lately). If you hold this core self-assumption, you will interpret anything that happens during your day through that frame. If someone gets mad at you in traffic, the thought will be, “Oh, there must be something wrong with me, I pissed off that person.” and then the emotion of sadness/depression/apathy/melancholy will arise in relation to the thought, “Because X happened, I am wrong/bad/not-enough.” Then, now that this experience of sadness is here, a painful experience infused with suffering, you will choose to be silent in the social gathering that you’re going to. Since something is wrong with you and you always feel sad, this means that you can’t socialize and that you’re introverted. You interpret your lack of engagement and participation in conversations as further evidence that there is something wrong with you. You then, as a result of feeling the pain of this, choose to distract yourself by scrolling through social media and getting in a fight with your spouse. You then interpret the fact that you’re addicted to social media and always getting in fights with the people closest to you as further evidence that you’re wrong and not enough. Which only further entraps you in this core self-assumption that is fueling your identity. In reality, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with you and you are enough; you’ve just been so entrapped in the cycle of:
experience —> interpretation —> emotion —> action —> reaction —> interpretation
Then an entire personality has solidified based on a false interpretation of self and reality. As a result of this false interpretation, you’re caught in a downward spiraling (reciprocal narrowing) process of more entrapment, more suffering, more pain, more smallness, and increased intensity of the feeling of being wrong.
The mature person, as a result of spending time introspecting, begins to become conscious of this cycle and chooses to interpret things differently and allow themselves to reciprocally open to different patterns of behavior and different relationships with their experience/emotions. Eventually, the new and more whole/truthful interpretation of their experience leads to experiencing different emotions altogether. When enoughness is present, anger is a response to being wronged rather than apathy and insecurity/self-hatred.
Reflection Questions
How do you respond to negative emotions, and can you sit with them without immediate escape or distraction?
How does resisting reactivity contribute to a sense of agency and freedom in your life?
What core self-assumptions influence your interpretations and emotions in daily life?
In what ways has false interpretation led to entrapment, suffering, and intensified feelings of inadequacy?
How does choosing to interpret things differently open you to new patterns of behavior and relationships with your emotions?
Not Subtly Manipulating — Deep Integrity — Facing Truth — Depth of Honesty
Another facet of maturity is not manipulating others. There is a depth of honesty and facing the uncomfortable and difficult truths of how our actions may have been based on deception and lying and a subsequent act of bringing those actions into greater alignment with integrity such that less manipulation happens over time.
I’ve made the somewhat controversial point on my podcast that every single person on this planet manipulates to some degree or another, even if this manipulation is of extremely subtle degrees. There are ways that we get our needs met that are based on not fully telling the truth. This manipulation, as Cory Katuna pointed out in our podcast together, can even be as subtle as smiling at someone. If we don’t fully agree with what someone is saying or we’ve checked out and aren’t present but choose to put on a smile to make them feel like we’re listening to them and to make them feel better, then this is a manipulation. It’s a subtle manipulation yet manipulation nonetheless.
It can also take more overt forms like blaming, scapegoating, and lying. One of the examples that I’ve been tracking lately is the use of crying to get people to show love and care for oneself. If I fake a cry, then I can receive love. Once someone realizes this, sadness can be co-opted to the point that one can even lie to themselves about why they’re sad in the first place. Said another way, if I feel deeply unlovable, I can internalize the pattern that crying and being emotional is how I get others to love me so deeply that sadness can arise in my system for that manipulative end without me even being conscious of why the sadness is arising in the first place. This is not to say that crying is inherently manipulative, just that it can be co-opted for manipulation. As always, discernment is key.
The mature person finds higher quality ways to get their needs met, which often require working harder and experiencing more emotional and psychological difficulty. For example, to realize that I feel unlovable and to sit with the pain of that until eventually I find a way to inhabit a different story where love is not veiled, all so that I’m not unconsciously engaging in manipulative tactics to try to pry love out of people. This is a psychologically difficult process, but one that must be done in order to overcome the subconscious drive to subtly manipulate in order to get other people to serve our emotional needs in a roundabout way.
Let’s go through another example. If I can’t meet my survival needs through ethical ways, then I will work an unethical job that externalizes harm and suffering.
Another example of manipulation is this. If I have fear of another person and the way that they could react and hurt me, I may try to get my needs met in a different way — passive aggressiveness. If someone did something that I didn’t like but I’m scared to tell them, my fear of direct confrontation and communication of the thing that is bothering me IS manipulation. In other words, being passive aggressive and people-pleasing are two of the most common examples of manipulation. You learn that what's in your head can't automatically be understood by other people. You must express it to other people in order to be understood. To be passive-aggressive based on the assumption that they should know what’s going on in your head is just plain unhelpful and deeply manipulative.
To not manipulate requires that we’re honest enough with ourselves about what our intentions are, where we acted from, what we needed to say, and what actions we need to take in order to maintain deep integrity with ourselves. It requires that we face painful truths (re: facing reality fully). There will be difficult truths about your relationships and self that must be faced to develop maturity.
Another example that I’ve been sitting with recently is whether I can respect the sovereignty and agency of others. That any time that I impose my projections, agendas, and perspectives on others, I’m in some way not respecting their own sovereignty. Which is related to respecting their capacity to handle reality. If I withhold some amount of information from somebody because I don’t feel that they can handle it or that it will hurt them too much, then this is a manipulation. Every action that I take from then on out will be based on me withholding something truthful, all because I’m not respecting their agency and capacity to handle reality.
Reflection Questions
In what ways do even small actions reflect subtle manipulations in your interactions?
How can you meet your needs without unconsciously engaging in manipulative tactics?
In what ways might your actions to meet survival needs inadvertently involve manipulation?
How does fear of confrontation contribute to passive-aggressive behavior, a common form of manipulation?
How can facing difficult truths about your relationships and self contribute to your development of maturity?
Discerning of Dishonesty and Manipulation in Others — They’re Non-Manipulatable
Part 2 of manipulation is not being able to be manipulated by others. It’s one thing to be honest with yourself and be conscious of your intentions to ensure that you’re not lying or trying to get your needs met in roundabout ways. This is difficult enough.
On top of that, the mature person learns to see this manipulation happening in others and chooses not to support it. They choose to see that others are trying to get their needs met in roundabout ways, and the mature person is discerning and chooses not to buy into the facade of others trying to get their needs met in roundabout ways.
One doesn’t have to be harsh about it; in fact, one can gently nudge others to step up into maturity themselves. If someone is manipulating, a response may be, “I get that you’re experiencing X, and I feel open to giving you Y, but I’m unsure if that’s what you want, and if you want it, then I’d like you to ask for it,” or something along those lines. It may feel cold at times, but it’s in service of not being manipulated and beckoning others into deeper levels of maturity and agency with you.
The mature person has interacted with enough people that are engaging in emotional manipulation that they see the trap and can perceive what is happening more clearly than the immature person.
On a more meta-level, the mature person sees how many of the institutional and cultural systems in society function as a result of how susceptible many of us are to being manipulated. If our soft spot is for wanting more status, money, power, or fame, then there will be multiple systemic in-routes that will draw these behaviors out of us. To the mature person, these cultural systems of manipulation are no longer appealing. They don’t get as easily seduced by products claiming to solve their XYZ problem because they see that the only reason they want to buy XYZ, in the first place, is that they feel insecure, weak, wrong, not enough, etc.
On top of that, when someone is trying to manipulate them, the mature person has the courage to assert themselves to stop themselves from being manipulated. Sometimes the manipulations of others are imposing and cross boundaries, and the mature person isn’t scared to be forceful to ensure that they don’t get manipulated and that something good within themselves isn’t exploited for the selfish gains of another.
Reflection Questions
Can you recognize manipulation in others and choose not to support it?
What soft spots make you susceptible to manipulation, and how can you guard against them?
How do you courageously establish and
enforce boundaries against manipulative behaviors that cross lines?*
They’re Okay With Not-Knowing
The mature person is okay with uncertainty. They’ve sat with the totality of reality that not having a concrete worldview is okay to them. The immature and deeply frightened person can’t stand not having all the answers, so therefore they cling to a certain worldview with all of their might. Then, if someone criticizes their worldview, they become aggressive. This aggression arises out of the deep, and most unconscious, fear of having to confront reality without certainty. Of having to NOT-KNOW what is true. Perhaps, to be forced into the existentially frightening parts of reality. Facing the absurdity of what it means to be alive at all and then die and have no clue what will happen on the flip.
The mature person is unbiased. They’ve introspected and had others point out the limits of their perspectives enough that they've begun to relate to reality with less bias. They see how their own selfish attachments create biases in their perception of the world. These biases are inherently harmful to others and cause conflict-based dynamics with others and reality distortion fields.
Reflection Questions
How comfortable are you with not having all the answers in life?
How do you react when your worldview is criticized, and what does this reveal about your relationship with uncertainty?
How might embracing not-knowing force you to confront the existential aspects of reality, including the uncertainty of life and death?
How can a willingness to embrace uncertainty help break free from harmful conflict patterns and distortion fields in your interactions?
Multi-Perspectival — Can Inhabit Different Worldviews Fully
Building on the importance of uncertainty and not-knowing, the mature person, as a result of being comfortable with not-knowing, is able to take multiple perspectives on reality. They can inhabit different worldviews fully. They aren’t scared of losing themselves in a different worldview. In fact, the goal of the mature person is to lose themselves in as many worldviews as possible such that they can see themselves through the eyes (worldviews) of others. Because our worldviews are our eyes. They’re the glasses through that frame the world we live in. Therefore, to lose ourselves in a worldview that we currently oppose is to fully see how and why the person on the other side of us is relating and acting in relationship to us.
The immature person simply has access to fewer lenses through which to view the world. They have a false certainty that the lens they’re currently using on reality is the right one. Their tight grip on their worldview only causes them more suffering, conflict, and pain in life. Although there is nothing intrinsically “wrong” with having psychological defense mechanisms (like getting mad when someone disagrees with our worldview), one of the consequences is that recognizing the validity of other belief systems means unleashing the very terror and dread that our own beliefs serve to suppress.
A sidenote: the development of being non-judgmental is very useful for developing this characteristic. In fact, to not judge others requires that we aren’t afraid of their world. That we’re secure enough in our own ability to lose ourselves in their worldview and still be okay is what is required to be less judgmental. To loosen the grip on what we think is right. To be open to other possibilities and to notice what subtle payoff we get from putting others down and judging others.
Reflection Questions
Explore your comfort with uncertainty: How does being okay with not-knowing open you up to multiple perspectives on reality?
Consider worldviews as lenses: How does seeing the world through various perspectives deepen your empathy and compassion for others?
Evaluate your lens collection: How many worldviews are you comfortable inhabiting, and how might expanding this collection enrich your life?
Reflect on false certainty: How does clinging to one worldview limit your ability to navigate life's complexities and conflicts?
Explore psychological defense mechanisms: How does recognizing the validity of other beliefs challenge the defense mechanisms that may be causing you suffering?
Consider the consequences of a tight grip: How has holding onto a specific worldview led to conflict and pain in your life?
Explore the subtle payoffs: What do you gain from putting others down or judging them, and how does this impact your ability to embrace different perspectives?
Deep Caring and Listening
Maturity is the ability to really listen. It’s about seeing how not fully being with another person is a disservice to that person’s being. The other person can feel it when you’re not fully present with them. When you’re lost in thought about your career, work, a fight from last night, how to make money in the stock market, or your fear of the pain that could come later from your boss finding something out that you did wrong. Any thoughts not directly related to and arising out of deep presence with the person across from you are expressions of immaturity. Being lost in thought while another person is talking expresses a lack of deep care and love for the person you’re with. To be lost in thought and not ‘fully there’ with a person expresses to them that there is something more important in your mind and life than listening and being with them right now. This inevitably causes the person you’re with to feel lesser of themselves, reinforcing whatever false core assumption they have about themselves (I am wrong, I am not enough, I am bad, etc.).
To be rooted in your depth of being and embodying a profound force of presence in your gaze, breath, and being communicates to the other person: "You Are Enough; you are worth my time, you are beautiful, and you matter." This requires that we feel everything, love achingly, and be okay with pain. Anything that we haven’t fully felt and been with will only get in the way of our mature existence in a relationship with others. Open up to the possibility that you may never feel financially secure; you can be present nonetheless. That you may never completely overcome emotional pain; you can be present nonetheless. You may never completely overcome fear and anxiety; you can be present nonetheless.
To not show up in service of deep care and listening only makes the world a worse place to be in because your lack of care is infused into the other person and shows up as their lack of care for others as well.
Reflection Questions
Consider the possibility of perpetual challenges: How can you still be present and caring despite ongoing uncertainties, whether financial or emotional?
How can you enhance your presence in conversations today?
What false core assumptions might be hindering your deep connection with others?
In what ways can you embody a profound force of presence in your interactions today?
How can you communicate worth and truth through your gaze today?
In what areas of your life can you be more okay with discomfort or emotional pain?
How can you be present, even if you may never feel financially secure?
How can you show up with presence despite not completely overcoming fear and anxiety?
They Strive for Multi-Dimensional Health In Support of Deepening Service
The mature person sees that everything is inter-related. If they put junk into their body, it will not only harm them but also everything they’re an intricate part of. The junk will decrease their cognitive functioning and make them less clear about how they can serve their life purpose. Every piece of junk food they buy at that store is essentially a vote to the store to keep selling it and a vote to the company that they’re buying it from to keep growing. Furthermore, if they're not healthy, they don’t feel well, and they’re often sick, which decreases their ability to embody the character traits of maturity. For example, they’re not as present and fully there caring for the people they’re listening to, they can't discipline themselves as well because they’re sick, their cognition is foggy, and so they can’t do as effective long-term visioning for their life. They’re more irritable, and so they, therefore, end up being passive-aggressive and manipulating others in subtle ways.
If their excuse is that “healthy food is too expensive,” essentially what they're saying is that “It’s too hard to take more responsibility for my life such that I can afford this healthy food and take care of my health.”
On top of that, the mature person puts higher values, like holistic health, above other values like status. How this is coming up for me right now is the vaping epidemic. Essentially it starts out, for many, as a status symbol. It has become cool to vape. A teenager that chooses to vape to look cool is acting out of immaturity and valuing status above health and long-term holism. I know because I’ve been there; I used to be addicted to vaping, and the only reason I started was that I was insecure and valued status above health — albeit unconsciously.
Reflection Questions
Consider your diet as a vote: What does each food choice communicate to the store and the company, and how does it shape your role in the larger interconnected web?
Examine your daily choices: How does what you consume impact not only your health but also your ability to serve your life purpose?
Confronted Death / Existential Terror
Confront death. It’s as simple as that. So much of our actions are subtly informed by the root-level fear of death. Everyone knows on some level that they’re going to die, but very few people really believe it. I’m talking about the real, emotional, visceral understanding of the fact that one day, you will cease to exist. It means that all of your future possibilities will remain unrealized, and everything that you have come to know will come to an end. It also means that the moment of death is the last time in eternity that you will be able to feel something; to experience all there is to experience, to love everyone who’s around to be loved.
Ernest Becker masterfully points this out in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Denial of Death.
“If a person admitted this utter lack of control, that death lurks at every breath, and let it rise to consciousness, it would drive him to fear and trembling, to the brink of madness.” — Ernest Becker
This implies that to fully act out of agency for our lives and not be constantly driven to reject and react against the fear of death that is at the core of our being, we must go to the brink of madness and come out on the other side.
It was clear to Becker that we build culture and personal character in order to shield ourselves from the devastating awareness of our underlying helplessness and the terror of our inevitable death. Just as we embrace our views more strongly when confronted by the idea of our death, we use wealth, fame, and status (among other things) as “proof” that we are not merely human animals, destined to decay and die.
Ernest Becker’s words are beautifully poetic, so I’m not going to attempt to summarize them here. Below is Becker’s beautiful writing on what it means to be fully with the fear of death.
“The aim of life is to live it intensely, to be fully born, to be fully awake. To emerge from the ideas of infantile grandiosity into the conviction of one’s real though limited strength; to be able to accept the paradox that every one of us is the most important thing there is in the universe – and at the same time not more important than a fly or a blade of grass. To be able to love life, and yet to accept death without terror; to tolerate uncertainty about the most important questions with which life confronts us – and yet to have faith in our thought and feeling, inasmuch as they are truly ours. To be able to be alone, and at the same time one with a loved person, with every brother on this earth, with all that is alive; to follow the voice of our conscience, the voice that calls us to ourselves, yet not to indulge in self-hate when the voice of conscience was not loud enough to be heard and followed. The mentally healthy person is the person who lives by love, reason, and faith, who respects life, his own, and that of his fellow man.”
And that:
“The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.” — Ernest Becker
That being said, the immature person is so afraid of death that they let it rule their life. The mature person has sat with the deep anxiety and existential dread that death procures and has reconciled it. This doesn’t mean that the mature person stops feeling deep anxiety and dread, but just that they’re familiar enough with it that it no longer rules their life.
Maturity = facing the void.
Reflection Questions
Confront your thoughts on death and ask yourself: How does the fear of death subtly influence your daily decisions and actions?
Contemplate the quote: "To be able to love life, and yet to accept death without terror." How do you currently navigate the tension between loving life and fearing death, and what changes could you make to find a healthier balance?
Not Taking Things Personally
I believe that maturity imbues a sense of not needing to take things personally. And this trait of not taking things personally doesn’t arise out of a brute force rejection of the parts of ourselves that care about what other people think. But rather arises out of a realization that the bad behavior of other people most often comes down to fear and anxiety rather than evil or idiocy. The world is then no longer populated by monsters or fools and is instead inhabited by other people just like you and me. Scared, insecure, fearful, anxious, depressed, grieving human beings that are just trying to get by.
Reflection Questions
Consider a relationship in your life where you tend to take things personally. What would happen if you viewed the other person's actions through the lens of fear and anxiety rather than personal attacks? How might this change your interactions with them?
If you’ve gotten this far, thank you truly for reading.
I hope that this resource has helped you to reflect on your life and deepening into your own maturity on many different levels.
If you liked this consider diving deeper by reading my full-book The Depth Equation.
I love you.
You got this.
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Very well-written, comprehensive, and inspiring. Well done, Mr. Nelson, this is a great work.
Truly a masterpiece , thought provoking and insightful, you are a gem!