Not comix (which are quite a different thing, much more intellectual and anarchic). Comics. Superhero comics. (Various webcomics, too, but I’ll talk about those another time.)
This surprises even people who know me well. For one thing, I’m more or less a feminist (if a man can be a feminist, and I know this is fiercely debated), pretty nearly a pacifist, and have a master’s degree in English, whereas superhero comics are full of women in skintight costumes whose breasts are bigger than their heads, contain pretty much wall-to-wall fighting, and are generally considered not too intellectually demanding. (That last point has a lot to do with why I like them, actually.)
As Walt Whitman said, though, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Somewhere deep down inside me there’s some kind of consistency. (I can only assume.)
Anyway, here are three life lessons I’ve learned from superhero comics.
1. With great power comes great responsibility
photo credit: Eneas
Spider-Man has been through a lot of changes and reinventions since his creation in the 1960s, but at the core he’s always a decent, human guy who is continually crapped upon by life from a great height, but (with a few exceptions, which only serve to humanise him further) does the right thing anyway.
His Uncle Ben’s wisdom – that with great power comes great responsibility – is familiar enough to seem trite. But when you really think about it, especially in the context of Spidey’s life, it’s all about living up to your potential and using what you have in the service of others.
Great power inherently carries the risk of exploiting others. When you’re really powerful, you can do what you like because very few people will try to stop you. Glance at the celebrity news from time to time (then look away quickly) to see how well that generally works out for people.
I’m white, male, middle-aged, middle-class and heterosexual. To have any more hegemony I’d have to be dead. I’m also a hypnotherapist, which is kind of a low-level superpower – not over other people so much (that only works inside the comic books), but over my own body and mind. It’s up to me how I use all that. Great responsibility.
What great power do you have that you can use for others’ benefit?
2. You can’t beat a good team-up
photo credit: Willrad
One of the most popular formats for comics is the “team-up”, where two or more superheroes join together to face a threat that they can’t defeat individually. There are also some great team comics – the Justice League, the Avengers, the Teen Titans, the Fantastic Four.
Team-ups work much better for heroes than they do for villains, and there’s a simple reason. Villains are always out for what they can get, while heroes have a higher purpose, a dedication to the welfare of others.
I can’t always triumph over my challenges alone, either. Sometimes I need to team up. That’s one reason I’ve been doing a lot of guest-posting lately. I also get coaching from several other people, because there are things they see (and know) that I don’t.
Who could you team up with?
Everyone has a weakness
photo credit: Randy Son Of Robert
I thought a lot about this last one. Should I use “No truly important character ever dies permanently?” “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry?” “You’re a person if you act like a person, regardless of your appearance?” All good lessons. But I went for “Everyone has a weakness” because it’s so fundamental to comics that it’s just silently assumed.
No matter whether the character is an Olympian god, the Last Son of Krypton or an immortal being who eats planets, there’s always some way to defeat them. There’s always a balance, always a solution, always a way to carry the day. (And it’s not just because someone who just automatically won all the time would be unbelievably boring. Life’s really like that.)
And the inevitable consequence is this: Great power or not, there’s some way in which you’re vulnerable, and only by connecting up with your team are you going to be able to overcome that and then find the inevitable weakness of your opponent. (You see what I did there?)
One of my weaknesses is that I enjoy thinking about things more than doing them.
What vulnerability do you have?
If you’d like to team up with me for any purpose, including to work on your weakness or develop your great power and its responsible use, contact me and let me know. I’d love to partner with you.
I’ve known this story for years (I can’t even remember where I first heard it), and yet I learned something new from it just last week. It’s my favourite teaching story of all.
Many years ago, there was a young Chinese boy who was fortunate enough to be given an apprenticeship to a famous jade master.
On his first morning, as he hurried to the old man’s house, the boy looked forward eagerly to his day. “Today,” he said to himself, “the master will begin to teach me about jade.”
But when he got there, the master handed him a pebble of jade to hold and began to talk about everything under the sun – except jade.
The boy was disappointed, but as he walked home he consoled himself. “The master was just getting to know me today,” he thought. “Surely tomorrow he will begin to teach me about jade.”
But the next day came, and it was just the same as the first. The old man gave the boy a pebble of jade to hold, and began to talk about all of the Ten Thousand Things – except jade.
Day after day this happened. The boy began to despair. “Did I fail some test?” he thought. “Does the master not want me as his apprentice? Will he ever begin to teach me about jade?”
He was a well-brought-up Chinese boy and had been taught not to question his elders, but one day, as he trudged to the master’s house, he had had enough. “Today,” he thought, “I will ask the master when he will begin to teach me about jade.”
But when he arrived at the house, before he could say anything, the master, as his custom was, put a pebble into the boy’s hand. And without thinking, the apprentice cried out, “Master, that’s not jade!”
So what did I learn last week? (You may be wondering.)
Well, when I told that story to myself, I always thought I was the master. You see, people come to me for help with very mundane, ordinary things. They eat too much, or they smoke, or bite their nails. They’re not confident, or they’re stressed and worried. And I help them with those things, but at the same time I give them simple tools and resources and techniques that, if they stick with them and use them as I suggest, will help to turn them into stronger, more integrated and happier people over the long-term. For example, I recently posted a video interview with one of my clients who came to me to give up smoking and ended up becoming kinder to herself, a better mother to her boys, and someone who could start to live out her creative dreams with confidence and enthusiasm.
I’m like the master who had begun to teach about jade without the apprentice even realising it.
Or so I thought.
Last week, I realised I’m the apprentice.
You see, I’ve been struggling to figure out how to present what I do so that people will want to buy it from me (so that, in turn, I can do it all the time). I was expecting that the marketing courses I’ve taken would tell me, like the jade master, all about how to do this. I was expecting knowledge at the level of words.
But through a half-hour talk with Catherine Caine, whose ability to ask just the right questions borders on the uncanny, I realised what I’d been feeling all along, what the pebbles were that I’d been given to hold. What I really want to do is help people – ordinary people, people with kids and mortgages and jobs who do the dishes and mow the lawn – to find depth and meaning and resourcefulness in their ordinary lives, to live skillfully, to make the world a noticeably better place for them and those around them to live in. That’s the work I love. That’s jade. It starts with addressing the obvious symptoms: smoking, overeating, various kinds of “bad habits” and self-harming behaviours. But the point is not to stop doing those things, but to become the kind of person who doesn’t need to do those things any more.
So what I’m going to start doing is talking about what I do in those terms. I’m not sure about the exact language yet, and what I’ll end up calling what I do, but I’m going to give up pretending that I’m here to offer the quick fix and then slipping the things that people are really missing, the meaning and the self-belief and the integration of all the parts of themselves, in through the side door.
Over the weekend I came across a remarkable post on writer’s block, resistance and inner dialogue by the talented LaVonne Ellis. I suggest you go and read it and then come back here, because the story I’m going to tell will make a lot more sense if you do.
Read it? Good.
All right. This is a true story, and I often tell it to my clients. You’ll see why.
Towards the end of World War II, a Japanese soldier got separated from his unit on one of the Pacific islands – one large enough to have a jungle that he could disappear into. And that’s exactly what he did – for several decades.
Eating what he could find, sleeping in improvised shelter, his uniform becoming rags, his rifle rusting, he kept on faithfully fulfilling his last orders. He was still fighting the war.
Meanwhile, though, back in Japan, there was a new government with a new agenda. Instead of approaching other nations as enemies, this Japanese government approached them as allies and trading partners. It was a new era for Japan, an era of increasing prosperity – and they wanted all their citizens to participate, not only in creating but in enjoying the new way.
But off on his island, here was this man, alone, still following the old orders – because nobody could reach him to tell him that the war was over.
If you’re experiencing a conflict within yourself, what’s likely to be happening is that there’s a part of yourself that’s still fighting an old war, still trying to protect you – faithfully – from a threat that doesn’t really exist in your current situation. What you think of as “yourself” is like the post-war Japanese government, headed in a new direction, connecting to the world in a new way, but there’s another part hidden away somewhere that doesn’t realise that the war is over.
And by bringing that part of yourself into dialogue, finding out what its critical agenda is that it’s pursuing so faithfully, and helping it to discover how to pursue that agenda without sabotaging the agenda of other important parts, you can reincorporate that faithful passion into yourself and align it with your highest goals. At the moment, that part is using its energy to struggle against another part of yourself, which is using its energy to resist – and all that energy is going to waste. Imagine what would happen if they were pulling together towards your main goal.
This is the kind of work I can help you with: re-integrating those parts of yourself that passionately want to protect you, but have an outdated way of showing it. At the moment I have a few spaces open for people to work with me (and yes, we can do it even if you’re elsewhere in the world). Email me for details: mikerm at hypno.co.nz.
What might that part of you be protecting you from?
When Sarah James is famous, you’ll be able to say that you saw me interview her, back when.
Sarah is one of my clients, and she very kindly and completely spontaneously offered to let me interview her about her personal growth journey from disintegration to integration, and how working with me has contributed to that journey. She originally came to me to stop smoking, but (as you’ll hear) it turned into much more than that.
I’ve split the interview into 4 short videos, totalling about 20 minutes. If you want just the audio, you can download it here.
In part 1, you’ll hear:
why a 38-year-old single mother-of-two and aspiring actress thinks it worthwhile to spend her scarce time and money working on personal development,
how smoking was a way for her to avoid herself and the circumstances of her life,
how she didn’t want suffering and stuckness and hating herself to be her only story, and
why she came to me to find ways to cope, become stronger and find out who she really is.
In part 2, you’ll hear:
what you should do if you start smoking (or whatever) again after you’ve stopped,
how important it is to do it for yourself and nobody else,
how to get beyond powerlessness and being stuck to be at home in yourself,
how “negative integration” can stand in the way of being your whole powerful self,
about motherhood, grace, ease and perfectionism, and
what happens once you take away the smokescreen.
In part 3, you’ll hear:
how facing things and speaking to yourself more kindly can flow over into better mothering,
how deep love can be hidden under feelings of incompetence and overwhelm,
how getting out of your own way improves your relationships,
how much difference 6 weeks can make,
how powerful it can be to work with a single metaphor over an extended period, and
about finding the “resonant core of your deep self” and persisting in following your heart.
In part 4, you’ll hear:
what to do if you feel stuck,
how to get your self back and find joy, and
what I do and don’t do to help you change.
If you are in a similar place to where Sarah was at the start of our work together, contact me and let’s talk about how you can follow her great example. (And yes, I can work with you remotely over Skype.)
I'm Mike Reeves-McMillan. I help people change thoughts, feelings and behaviours that have got stuck on automatic, so that they can live freer, more satisfying and healthier lives.
If you're interested in tools, tips and techniques for triumphing over life's challenges, join my mailing list for free resources and special offers on my online courses.
photo credit: Eneas
