Recognize Your Emotional Sleight-of-Hand

For a couple of years, my partner had to have periodic allergic desensitization shots. He found it very unhandy to administer the shots to himself, so he enlisted my help. I became his unofficial shot-giver. Although I'd never done anything like that before, I followed instructions, practiced first on an orange, and bravely accepted my assignment. Before long, I realized that, if I applied pressure just above the injection site with the alcohol-soaked cotton swab, it would distract the pain sensors and he wouldn't feel the injection at all. It was a simple, but very effective ploy. And, it works very well in all sorts of other situations.

Magicians Penn and Teller have a famous routine that they perform, talking the audience through the seven basic steps of a sleight-of-hand trick: palm, ditch, steal, load, simulation, misdirection, and switch. The element that makes sleight-of-hand work as well as it does is misdirection: directing the focus of attention away from what's really going on. I used misdirection when I was giving Craig his shot, causing the nerves in his arm to focus away from what was really happening.

You can also use misdirection to distract people from things you don't want them to perceive, whether it's done innocently or otherwise. Clearly, misdirection can get you in trouble either when a perceptive person 'blows your cover' or when you're using it to try to fool . . . yourself.

Although midlife provides you with entry into what should be the happiest and most fulfilling period of your life, that transition can also inflict the most pain. After all, your whole life vision falls under the scalpel of your re-evaluation of what's most important to you: your purpose, your values, and your goals. It also brings home to you the often-painful realization that much of what you've spent your life doing up until this point has been wrong-headed. It hurts to face the probability that 'doing it my way' has led you to somewhere you didn't really want to be. Along comes misdirection to the rescue! So long as you're focusing on something else, maybe you won't notice that the life vision that you've so carefully constructed for yourself has become empty and meaningless. So, off you go, busily loading up your life with pleasant distractions.

One of the problems that arise when you use misdirection on yourself comes down to the fact that, in order to be truly effective, the misdirection has be hidden from your conscious mind, endowed with a 'cover story' or rationalization that, at least on the surface, makes your behavior seem reasonable, if not absolutely necessary. Listen to the words that you use when you're talking to other people, and especially when someone challenges you about your behavior. If you hear yourself saying, "I have to . . . " or "I can't . . . " then you can be sure that you're using a misdirection. If you truly believe that you either 'have to' or 'can't', then you're indulging in self-deception. It's your own personal, private 'magic trick' — a self-defeating sleight-of-hand — that's enabling you to avoid looking at what's really going on.

The truth is that nobody's forcing you to do anything. The things you do (or don't do) are all of your own volition. You either want to do something or don't want to do something, and that's the end of it. Nobody's holding a gun to your head; nobody's holding your family hostage. You're nobody's victim. Whenever you play that role, you can be certain that you're misdirecting the world's attention (and your own) away from what's really going on, how you're really feeling, and your own deep-seated and hidden motives. Anyone who is involved in the midlife transition is faced with a tough job: to become so personally aware that s/he can foil his or her own misdirection. Here's where the 'best friend' is most helpful: when you can secure a trusted friend's help in confronting your BS head-on, the 'magic' of midlife fades away. In time, you get used to seeing the tricks you're trying to play on yourself to avoid having to change.

That's the essence of what's going on, isn't it? It's a fear of change and a reluctance to do anything about it that gets you stuck. On top of that, you'll find a sort of insecurity that wants you to believe that if you change directions you're somehow less capable as a person. In fact, the opposite is true: the more willing you are to accept the person you've become with all your strengths and weaknesses and the more capable you are to change direction in response to changes in your environment and situation, the easier your midlife transition will be. Misdirection is nothing but a tool of arrogance; acceptance and willingness are the results of real humility. That's one of the hardest lessons to learn in midlife, but, once learned, it becomes your greatest strength.