The Zen Actuary Installment 20: The Praise and Blame Game
By Rich Lauria
The Stepping Stone, September 2022
Author’s note: This is the continuation of a series[1] adapted from the book Awake at Work by Michael Carroll, covering the application of Buddhist teachings to situations encountered in a modern corporate workplace setting. This series addresses challenges frequently encountered by practicing actuaries.
Let me start with a confession: I have spent a lifetime struggling with a compelling desire for praise and approval, and paralyzing fear of blame and disapproval.
After all of these years of quieting my mind and learning to let go, I still find myself easily raised to new highs when someone praises me and irritated when receiving criticism. I find it difficult to criticize others, even when I believe it may be constructive to do so, partly because I so easily empathize. I would not want to be hurt by another person, so why should I deliver a message that may hurt their feelings?
This attitude comes from an upbringing where criticizing was not OK. I was frequently admonished as a child, summarized by the directive “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing.”
Although I still sometimes lack control of being swayed by the ups and downs of praise and blame, I at least have better awareness of it happening than I did earlier in life. From that perspective, I hope to share some useful techniques for dealing with praise and blame.
What I have learned is that it is not for the faint of heart. It requires courage to be humble and admit that my own sense of self-worth is wrapped up in the opinions of others and that I spend a disproportionate amount of time seeking external validation. From observing others, I am certain I am far from alone in feeling this way.
It has only become too evident in an era of low cost social media where opinions are as common as water is to the ocean. It is easy to get caught in the undertow of likes and dislikes expressed by the masses. Being a public person in the age of the internet requires one to have the skin of an alligator to deal with the constant barrage of varying viewpoints on your virtues and villainy.
How do Praise and Blame Tie into the Zen Actuary Theme?
The zen part is straightforward, so I will tackle that later. The actuarial tie comes from the responsibilities implicit in being part of a profession. Passing actuarial exams, satisfying experience and continuing education requirements, meeting other credential requirements, and paying annual dues allows one to use an actuarial designation such as FSA or FCAS. However, truly feeling part of the actuarial community requires acceptance and validation from actuarial peers. Much effort goes into taking on and executing actuarial tasks and projects at a sufficiently high level. And while much of that goes towards meeting a team or organizational objective, part of it also establishes one as a functioning and valuable actuarial resource.
There is no escaping this reality. Peer and supervisory evaluations of what one produces and how one comports oneself in meetings and informal conversations are part and parcel of organizational behavior. Going beyond the immediate workplace, volunteering for committee work and other endeavors (such as writing articles for profession-sponsored newsletters) provide additional modalities for professional acceptance. Exercising occupational mobility by successfully landing new job offers further confirms that one belongs.
The nature of actuarial work requires significant judgment, and different actuaries will have different takes on a given set of assumptions. As the architects of financial security programs throughout the world, actuaries hold enormous influence over the fortunes of many people’s assets. These two conditions open actuaries to significant amounts of praise and blame, much of it based on results rather than the process.
Praise for an actuary arrives when he or she gets it right, meaning that the model projections predict reality within a reasonable tolerance, preferably erring on the side of modest conservatism. Understating claims experience or required reserves results in undesirable reserve strengthening and poorer than expected results—never a good look for a management team. Yet releasing massive amounts of reserve margins does not sit well with investors, because that capital could have been redeployed or returned to investors sooner. Excessive conservatism in pricing often results in uncompetitive products, also drawing the ire of marketing executives and the C-suite. As a pricing actuary early on in my career, I observed that if I received equal amounts of criticism from marketing and financial management, I was probably doing my job right!
This professional tension and validation never ends until one finally calls it quits.
Interestingly, I have become even more attuned to the praise and blame syndrome since becoming an academic. Student evaluations of program lecturers are taken very seriously, with both numerical scores and written feedback reviewed carefully by program and school leadership. Students frequently share their opinions about classes and lecturers on social media. Classes are routinely monitored by faculty and school leadership to ensure high quality consistency is maintained across program offerings. There are faculty information files that contain detailed records of teaching performance, activities and service outside of the classroom, publications, and speaking engagements for all full-time faculty. I feel I am continually being evaluated, being told how well I teach one minute and then how much I confused a student the next minute.
Being in the front of a class means having the spotlight clearly on me. I have to accept the slings and arrows as well as the bouquets from students, as they are the customers and teaching is primarily a customer service job. Students sometimes question the value of what is being taught, and periodically challenge how their own academic performance is being evaluated by their instructors. As with any service provider, I must be open to criticism and willing to make changes in how I deliver subject material and administer class logistics if warranted. The key is being able to block out the noise of self-doubt and narcissistic self-congratulations to properly incorporate the abundance of feedback into an improved product in the classroom. This is much easier said than done.
How Can Buddhist Philosophy Help?
Fortunately, Buddhist philosophy takes this matter head on in its teachings. Praise and blame are two components of the eight worldly dharmas. The teachings recognize the human tendency to run towards praise and avoid blame. They further state that the underlying issue that creates so much suffering has nothing to do with the nature of the praise or blame itself. Rather humans suffer because of the running and avoidance. We somehow believe that if everything always came out on the praise side and we never experienced any blame, we would live in a perfect utopia.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The only way humankind can grow and progress is by embracing all valid feedback. All great human achievements have involved properly recognizing what works well and what does not. Running from valid criticism deprives one of an opportunity to improve. Never facing one’s flaws and flat sides results in distanced relationships and stagnant career trajectories. This behavior comes from the belief that one must be perfect and above reproach to be acceptable. This thinking defies the basic reality that to err is to be human. Only by facing this truth can one move forward. We are all continual works in progress and there is an opportunity to learn each and every day.
Some of the best things that have ever happened to me have been the result of valid criticism.
I might not have made the decision to become an actuary without critical feedback from my brother. As a college sophomore I was contemplating whether to continue pursuing an electrical engineering degree. I had worked hard to get into the program and many students were more than willing to trade places with me. My brother, who has enjoyed a highly successful career in the field, advised me to consider another path because I had never showed any interest in working with my hands and playing with electronic kits, as he had done. It did not feel good to hear that in the moment, but I realized that he was right. I was toiling with studies where I had interest in the math and scientific theory, but no inclination to lift a finger in the lab. I always partnered with someone who could put together the experiments while I recorded the data meticulously, crunched the numbers and produced the reports. It was crystal clear that I needed to find a course of study that embraced these skills.
Another example was as an actuarial student, when I was working on a very interesting project evaluating a large life insurance company’s preliminary HIV/AIDS mortality experience. My report included a number of sweeping conclusions based on the limited data I sliced and diced. I was incredibly proud of the report and received a number of kudos from my immediate boss and co-workers.
One of the senior actuaries in the department had the good sense to pull me aside to gently point out that several of my conclusions were far from definitive due to a lack of credibility in the data set I used. While I initially felt anger and resentment towards this veteran actuary, in time I realized that he was doing me a favor and I became much more aware of the potential limitations of data analysis and more cautious in drawing any firm conclusions from it. This lesson has served me well to this day.
What Strategies Can Help Mitigate These Issues?
Thankfully, there are mindfulness practices to help better manage the highs and lows that may come with praise and blame. Those shifts occur because we define ourselves by what we do rather than who we are. Clinging to an externally driven self-image is a fundamental ego protection strategy. I have found five strategies to be particularly helpful in mitigating this tendency.
I hold a lot of tension and stress in my hips, which manifests as tightness and discomfort, particularly in my hip flexor and inner groin area. I have observed this gets worse when I am struggling with incorporating negative feedback. There are many yoga asanas that are useful in relieving these symptoms. Two that I have found particularly helpful are butterfly and pigeon. While each focuses on different parts of the hip and groin area, both have the option of incorporating a forward fold as well. This characteristic is vitally important in dealing with ego-clinging.
I find that folding forward during one of these hip openers invites me to surrender energetically and let go of what is going on in my overactive mind. This allows me to stay present with the stretch and simply breathe. There is no effort in the typical way we think about it; the effort comes from making a conscious choice to allow the muscles to lengthen and the body to find additional space. I find that my mind follows the body and mental space is created to separate from the churning sequence of thoughts I have been grappling with. Occasionally the resulting emotional release is so intense that I begin to cry, and the subsequent relief when I exit the pose is palpable.
If you are new to the physical practices of yoga, work with a professional instructor initially as you get to know your body. Do modifications of the poses and use props such as blocks, bolsters, and blankets to make the poses more accessible. For example, when practicing sleeping pigeon, I often place one block under my front hip and another under my forehead to rest upon; this provides sufficient support so that I can breathe more fully into the posture and maximize its benefits. The hip is a ball and socket joint that is easy to injure if one is not careful when practicing.
There are two contemplation meditations I have found useful in reducing the delusion of self-grasping brought on by praise and blame. The first can be used on its own or as part of a deeper exploration into the Buddhist concept of emptiness. The practitioner asks himself or herself the following two questions:
- Who is the one who feels so good when receiving praise?
- Who is the one who feels so lousy when being criticized?
This may seem like a trivial exercise at first. After all, isn’t the answer obvious? But I encourage you to stay with these questions and focus on your breath. With time and consistent practice, the answer will become less trivial and you will begin to contemplate the “me” that is hanging on to all of these accolades and criticisms. Does it exist and does the praise and blame of “me” really matter?
A more immediately accessible contemplation meditation involves evaluating the nature of criticism in an objective fashion so that it can be either acted upon or dismissed without further obsessive worry:
- If a criticism I receive is valid, useful and can be acted upon, then I should give it no further thought and take actions to remediate the fault.
- If a criticism is valid but cannot be acted upon at the current time, then there is nothing I can do and the best course of action is to acknowledge this imperfection, learn from it and move forward. A classic example of this is spilled milk, which can be cleaned up but not undone.
- If a criticism is either invalid or not useful, it is not worth dwelling on as it will not help me to grow.
Of course, there may be false criticisms that are so inflammatory that they threaten my reputation and livelihood, but those are in the vast minority for most people. I have found that practicing this meditation has helped me to move on from many trivial slights that I previously carried for days if not weeks.
The last practice I use is a very straightforward one and the most easily accessible: talk to a trusted family member, friend or colleague. I have found that one of the best ways to get out of my own head is to listen to someone else. By conversing with another human being, one is now no longer talking to oneself but instead getting another perspective.
This external lens is critical to receive periodically, no matter how comfortable one is with one’s own company. I have found family and friends to be incredibly helpful in shaking me out of my fantasy world and providing a more realistic light on my strengths and weaknesses. The social isolation resulting from the pandemic has only further highlighted this fact for me!
Conclusion
Praise and blame are an inevitable and pervasive part of the human experience, both in the home and the workplace. Whether one works as an actuary, teacher, or another occupation, someone else will have an opinion about how one is performing. Buddhism teaches that there is no escape and that allowing both positive and negative opinions to be integrated into our lives in a constructive way is the key to being liberated from the ego-clinging that creates so much unhappiness.
The vital importance of actuarial work necessitates continual feedback on the processes actuaries use to serve their clients and employers and how well they are being executed. The reduction of identification with an actuary’s work can best serve to maximize that actuary’s ability to objectively evaluate the feedback so as to improve performance and reach his or her potential. Thankfully, there are many mindfulness practices—some discussed here—that can be helpful in achieving this desired state of mind.
Namaste!
Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the editors, or the respective authors’ employers.
Rich Lauria, FSA, CFA, is associate director and lecturer in the Enterprise Risk Management program at Columbia University in New York City. He can be reached at rl2764@columbia.edu. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rich-lauria-6555a425/.