The best solutions always solve two or more problems at once. Usually for the idea to not have materialized yet it requires for one of the problems to not being properly defined – this way the win-win connection remains hidden, almost impossible to spot.
In ImpactMindset we believe to have found the largest such win-win solution in modern times – one that will transform self-improvement, therapy, entrepreneurship and even politics for the entire world.
Problem 1: There are not enough therapists, coaches and councilors anywhere in the world, especially in developing countries. Therefore the mental health support everyone receives is of varying quality as random-skilled people (eg. friends and family) step into these roles.
Problem 2: There are 1+ billion people in the world with great intentions who don’t give society even close to their full potential. The “SuperMoral” people.
Problem 1 is well identified but its scale makes it seemingly difficult to solve. Becoming a licensed therapist requires:
- A stable, healthy mentality (so we don’t involve the patients in our own coping mechanisms) – ability;
- The right mindset of serving others – intention;
- Years of training to learn the methods of therapy – skill;
These years are a significant bottleneck as only financially stable students can afford to study for so long, rather than work, reducing the pool dramatically – even more so in developing countries.
From the three conditions two are more or less binary – ability and intention. Those we cannot be allowed to fuck up.
However, we believe that we should consider a well planned and executed compromise on skill.
Unskilled therapists on purpose!? WTF?
Well, consider what a nurse is – a less skilled doctor. This does not make nurses less valuable, right? We need doctors and we need nurses, each for their relevant skill areas.
Actually in almost any occupation you have different levels of skillsets built into the job structure. Tech support has level-one support that is trained in months or even weeks and can solve the 15 most common problems that consist 80% of the workload. In the other 20% of cases they escalate to level-two support who are experienced sysadmins. It would be pointless for a qualified sysadmin to deal with forgotten passwords or accounts suspended for non-payment.
It’s actually worse than that. The high demand for “therapy” of any quality results in people using family and friends in such a way, regardless of their emotional capacity and psychological skills. There is also a huge disparity when accessing help:
- A wealthy person can always access therapy from a qualified licensed professional with years of training and practice by just paying privately;
- Meanwhile someone contemplating ending their life on a bridge calls a suicide prevention hotline, staffed by a volunteer with an average 50 hours of training;
Moreover there is no mandatory training whatsoever required to become a parent, even though a lack of skills can greatly harm the child.
So as a society we either:
1) don’t give a fuck about children and the poor, stressed, depressed and/or addicted people,
or
2) consider therapy to be a thing for the grown up elites first and foremost,
or
3) just don’t have an idea how to increase the supply of therapy to match demand.
We really hope it’s mostly the latter.
How to increase the supply of therapy?
In ImpactMindset we have a deep concept about how to increase the supply of therapy without significantly compromising the quality.
In order to understand our idea, you need an introduction to the most hidden large-scale psychological problem in the world – excessive morality.
This problem is so hidden because for а non-excessively-moral person it’s impossible to understand how an excessively-moral person functions. Because:
- Excessive morality is not just having strong moral values (you can have ones and not be “SuperMoral”);
- Excessive morality is not just having the best intentions (you can have ones and not be “SuperMoral”);
- Excessive morality is not the same as people pleasing (the pressure comes from within, not from the validation of others);
Excessive morality is a deeply rooted identity, yet fragile by definition – we think of ourselves as morally pure, resulting in the ever persisting fear of losing our moral purity.
To put it in simple terms: Morality is great. Fears are destructive. A fear, based on morality, is also destructive.
Someone with no fear of heights (or any specific fear) can never truly understand what it’s like to have fear of heights. It’s not like you go to The Empire State Building on the 4th day of your NYC vacation and have a brief scare. The thought of going there will be with you while you plan the trip and on days one, two, three and four. Fear creeps everywhere where a connection in time and space is visible or even hypothetically possible.
In the same way no one can truly understand “SuperMoral” people. We just think we do but the only thing we can conceive is the brief scare on day four. We cannot fathom how the fear of losing their identity touches everything in their life, essentially turning it into a prison. A prison where the only movements allowed are the ones that never ever, under any circumstances, will lead to messy situations where we might have to abandon our moral purity in the likely case that every option we have harms someone.
We tend to think only prisoners are trapped in a prison. But the SuperMoral is not in the role of the prisoner. They are a guard.
Our metaphorical guard can in theory leave the prison, but in practice the fear of evil escaping is so strong in them that they stay. Potentially forever.
A guard may be respected and admired by others for doing a good job. But crucially, the guard doesn’t feel they are doing a good job. Their perspective is that they don’t have a choice. If they leave the prison, evil comes out and the world as we know it ends. So it becomes their own prison too. There is no joy in being a guard.
SuperMoral people are guarding their imaginary dark sides our of subcounscious fear that they could one day destroy their identity of a 100% moral person. Even (and especially) if they have never actually seen themselves being immoral for anything significant, ever.
This trap is a silent curse not only on the individual SuperMoral but also on society at large.
The SuperMoral people are the key factor for the functioning of a social group as their honesty checks and balances potential free-riders. They do not stand lies and intrigues and would rather suffer than be corrupted.
The problem is over the the history of humanity, groups scaled. The tribe council became a village council, then a city council, then a municipality, then a country, then the G7 and Davos meetings.
The SuperMoral are unable to scale. Their fear of incidentally harming others even a tiny bit leads to avoiding messy situations at all cost. They cannot support turbulent flow, only laminar. Speed and scale in their lives are a major challenge that many never overcome. They are in town halls at best, not in G7 and Davos meetings.
And just like that, we lost most of the best politicians, administrators and business leaders that we could theoretically have had.
How can we improve the situation for everyone – the SuperMoral individual, their peers and society at large?
In our I Grow Younger self-improvement system we see mental problems as boxes and search for flows that destroy these boxes and free people up.
Being a guard is a box. Its corresponding flow is being a guardian.
While sounding similar and having similarly good intentions, The Guardian has completely different behavior, one that is way more healthy for them and everyone around.
The Guard protects everything (including broken systems and projects destined to fail) since fear is extremely bad at differentiation. The Guardian only protects what is worth protecting – conscious beings and working systems.
The Guard is driven by fear and justifies their actions with logic. The Guardian is driven by love and intuition and does not need justification. They already know.
The Guard plays a finite game and is terribly afraid to lose. If they ever do, they feel overwhelming guilt. The Guardian plays an infinite game in which there is no winning or losing – only love, joy and the fulfillment of taking responsibility.
Every one of us has to be a Guard sometimes. Not letting your 3-year old eat a Lego brick is a Guard job. Yet once they grow up, we need to transition to Guardian parenting and let the child flourish in their own way, even if it means taking sensible risks.
Society has already figured out that being too much of a Guard is dangerous for mental health and a problem in general. In all possible guard aspects except one. SuperMorality.
No one understands SuperMoral people other than other SuperMoral people. So don’t they form support groups and communities and talk about it? Well, no. It’s the only major type of identity that is somehow not culturally an identity. This is where the potential lies!
We have 1+ billion people who have yet to discover *what* they are and the huge potential they are missing on because of a single internal barrier… and a very fragile one at that.
SuperMoral people don’t want to change. For them what they do it’s the only way to live.
Most other psychological challenges include some desire for change. Addicts want to overcome addiction and have an internal struggle.
SuperMoral people have no internal struggle. They cannot imagine a different way of living. Like at all! When you fight your identity, it’s not a fight, it’s a surrender. Your brain surrenders your behavior to protect your identity so you keep it together.
How do we stimulate SuperMoral people to leave the Guard role and assume a Guardian one?
The identity of being SuperMoral is extremely fragile. If you do just a single “bad” thing you cannot reverse, you can no longer completely hold onto this identity since it’s defined by its purity.
The problem is this fragility escalates the fears and makes them “predictive”, sending the SuperMoral into exhausting spirals of overthinking and “proving” they never were and never ever will be immoral, even for minor stuff. And I kid you not, as a former SuperMoral person, all of this needless suffering happens in complete silence and generates at least a bit of righteousness and pride. No one truly regrets being SuperMoral, ever. People may complain about its “projections” in life like being easily taken advantage of by others. Yet they will question the interaction or their behavior, eg. “I cannot set boundaries”. They never really question the purity-based identity that is the foundation of their fears, overthinking and lost joy.
There is only one way forward for the SuperMoral – Chaos.
Chaos destroys the fear-based predictive models and sends us in random directions, leading to the fragile identity being ambushed before defense mechanisms can activate, challenged and eventually shattered and replaced with a more balanced one where we do our best to be moral, without going to extremes. At first there is guilt when we fail but the relief of ditching the constant background fear and overthinking is eventually so profound that we ultimately realize this is the better way to live… and never look back.
There is only one problem. The SuperMoral avoid Chaos at all costs. This avoidance is a major driving force in their lives. There is however an even stronger force – serving people.
If a SuperMoral has the opportunity to help someone in need right now, they will not refuse. This is who they really are – beautiful, caring human beings.
Yet if they have to wait a day before helping someone in a messy situation, so much fear and doubt will creep up in the day and overthinking will result in so many thoughts like “Is it possible to harm the person I’m helping because I’m not qualified?” that they may back out of helping altogether.
This is why most SuperMoral people have the best intentions but rarely act upon them at large scale. The fear of unpredictability usually gets in the way, given time.
So we need to find an activity where the SuperMoral person:
- Helps someone in need!
- Fills a high responsibility role (so they cannot easily back off if things become messy).
- Is not given an easy opportunity to delay or cancel the scheduled activity.
- Doesn’t need to organize a lot for it to happen. Ideally can even practice it online.
- Communicates with someone as part of the activity, not giving their brain space for overthinking.
- Makes a gradual transition from Guard to Guardian mindset so they can leave their own internal prison.
The answer is obvious – Loving, Caring, Responsible and of course Highly Moral humans are perfect to provide first-level therapy! In this way certified therapists can focus on the more complex cases, just like nurses and doctors do.
The SuperMoral are Guards, destined to be Guardians.
Even though in therapy it’s generally accepted that you have to have fixed our own shit before helping others, this is much more of a grey area than most people imagine and is never completely the case in practice. The identity and character of the SuperMoral are built in such a way that even if they are a confused, overthinking mess inside, they only give the world their love and care. Harm is only pointed inwards. This is not healthy but it’s noble and sufficient for the mutual trust we need in therapy.
Giving love and care is a flow that pushes us further from being a Guard and closer to being a Guardian. It’s a win-win for the SuperMoral and whoever they are helping, a bi-directional process with all of the benefit, growth and joy that this brings!
So, what is the “Guard to Guardian” plan of ImpactMindset?
- Try to identify as many SuperMoral people as possible. As they tend be hang out with each other, this is possible via viral effects.
- Give the SuperMoral their best possible cultural identity – that they are a Guard on the way to become a Guardian.
- Provide the structure for communities and support groups all the way along the Guard to Guardian spectrum.
- Invite any SuperMoral people to join a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for basic therapy skills based on the I Grow Younger system.
- Collect feedback and improve the MOOC indefinitely, including making it accessible in every developing country and major language.
- Support any Guardians who want to become certified therapists to continue their education after the MOOC.
- Support any Guardians who want to scale with additional education and support in taking up leadership positions in corporations, NGOs and government.
The Guard to Guardian project is the single largest change we can achieve within a decade on planet Earth.
The ripple efects from a billion people assuming the Guardian identity will transform mental health for them and everyone else. The structural changes in how companies and governments are managed and how people are led by their leaders will be monumental.
The best part is that the dominoes are already set up. If you would like to have the honor of making the first push, you can donate to this project here.