Is the grass greener on the other side?

In front of my house, adjacent to our driveway, is a small grass area. It is probably no bigger than 2 square meters, or the area a small car might occupy (I know because my brother-in-law once parked his car on it), and we pay our neighborhood gardener a small amount to look after it. This small grass area is adjacent to an equally small grass area of my neighbor’s. We have lived in this house for almost 7 years, and during those years we have employed the services of four different gardeners to look after this tiny plot of grass. Why so many? For one simple reason: our neighbor’s grass always seems greener than ours!

Of course the reality is that grass goes through cycles. Sometimes ours is greener and sometimes the neighbor’s is greener. But we only take notice when it appears that we’re losing the grass war, and we judge that our grass has never looked that green. We must therefore have a terrible gardner who doesn’t know the first thing about grass maintenance, whereas the neighbor’s gardener is clearly an expert who comes from a long lineage of master gardeners. It is at that point that we start asking friends for the numbers of new gardeners. Then, a year or two later, the cycle repeats itself.

This scenario plays out in so many different ways in our lives. For example, we imagine that another startup has the perfect team, or that our competitor signed the ideal client. We might compare lifestyles and think about how much more fun others are having, or how much more understanding and loving their spouse is. Or we might believe that another country might be the idyllic paradise where we will find adventure, or finally feel we belong.

And so we make the change we imagine will solve all our problems, and we soon find that it didn’t turn out as great as we had expected. Why is that so?

To answer that question, we need to look at how our minds develop. Preeminent psychologist Melanie Klein, in her work in child analysis, was able to observe how children developed ways in which they related to significant people in the world. This became known as objects relation theory. Early in their development, children would experience something called splitting: they would divide objects as being either totally good or completely bad. At this stage, children are unable to understand that something can have both good and bad qualities. For example, a child is unable to understand the complexity of a parent’s personality, and that they might make good or bad decisions. From that perspective the mother is perfect and the father an ideal role model.

Klein also observed how children gradually outgrew that perspective. As they matured, they were better able to  integrate the good and the bad parts, and began to understand that someone can have both good and bad qualities at the same time. Many coming-of-age books have been written about the experience of the son discovering that his father is not the perfect man he once imagined him to be. 

But what does that have to do with grass being greener?

Well, splitting, as described above, doesn’t disappear in adulthood. It becomes a defense mechanism that we use whenever we feel we’re unable to sufficiently deal with the situation that we’re in. For example, if we’re treated badly by someone, one way that we deal with that pain is by identifying them as a bad person. They are no longer a person with good and bad qualities, they become completely evil. In other words, we split off the good parts. This helps us justify to ourselves what they did to us.

You know that you’re splitting when you think or speak in exaggerated terms. If you find yourself talking about things in extreme terms of good or bad, that’s a sign that splitting is taking place. Splitting is also happening if you catch yourself comparing two things as complete opposites, for example “the employees in [competitor] are smart and hard working, they are really innovating, unlike the team we have here who can’t even get the basic things right.” In this example, a CEO who is having a hard time admitting to himself that he is the source of poor performance in his organization might use splitting as a defense. Another common example: “if we purchase this CRM/Project Management/other-fancy-technology system, our team will become much better organized and our performance will skyrocket”.

The reality, of course, is that things are never so extreme and usually somewhere in between. Even though it might be inconvenient at times, it is important to integrate the different parts of the whole. In any given situation there are good elements and bad elements, and all of these should be carefully considered before you make a decision.

So next time you catch yourself splitting, stop yourself from going any further and try to reintegrate the parts you’ve split off. Ask yourself whether you’re missing a part of the object that you’re looking at. If you’re unable to do that yourself, ask others for their perspectives and listen carefully. Less emotionally invested in an specific outcome, they will share with you observations that you may have been blind to.These observations might seem inaccurate at first, but, upon reflection, you will come to see them too.

I should remember that next time the grass is greener on my neighbor’s side!