Think of something you plan to do in the upcoming hours or days that involves other people. Agenda Cleanse Step 1: Pick an interaction, any interaction. Everyone else, please meet me at the next paragraph.
If, in light of all this, you’re hesitant to do the Agenda Cleanse, I’ll assume it’s because you’re either Lady Macbeth or Mother Teresa. Pretend to be perfect, and you risk being caught by folks who’ll abhor your pretense of perfection more than your imperfections themselves. Try to control people, and you lose control. As a result, impurely motivated actions tend to backfire. They find ulterior motives vaguely to intensely repulsive. People can feel the difference between a pure agenda (you kissing your baby) and a murky one (a politician kissing your baby). They’re also hell on relationships, both personal and professional. The problems may even show up in our bodies: Secrets and lies can weaken our immune systems. There’s less brain power left over for solving real problems, and we start to falter in other areas of our lives. The problem with hiding your real motives is that you’re essentially keeping a secret, and as neuroscientist David Eagleman has written, “The main thing that is known about secrets is that keeping them is unhealthy for the brain.” When we begin to weave webs of deception, we need to expend enormous mental energy to prevent them from tangling.
Why an Agenda Cleanse Is Good Life Hygiene Which is another way of saying welcome to the Agenda Cleanse. But even if we can’t be completely pure, it’s within our power to do what twisted sister Macbeth couldn’t: Clean up our act. To live a totally clean life is as rare in its own way as being a mad murderess. We tell little lies to get people’s approval, do things for acceptance that feel wrongish, soothe a friend’s feelings not out of unsullied love but because we’re hoping for a favor. Though few of us are in Lady M’s league when it comes to foul deeds, most of us at least occasionally act on motivations that are less than pure. She lives in a private hell, and as she puts it, “Hell is murky.” She’s constantly scrubbing at her hands, but that doesn’t help. Lady Macbeth is incomprehensible because after years of secrets, lies, and manipulation, her mind is such a mess even she can’t find her way around it.
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Bumbling my way through history’s worst rendition of that scene, I suddenly understood why actors are always asking, “What’s my motivation?” I had no idea how to portray Lady M because I couldn’t imagine what the heck made her tick.Īt the time, I blamed my abysmal acting skills, but now that I’ve lived many additional decades and watched 800,000 episodes of Law & Order, I realize my horrible performance wasn’t entirely my fault. One of my more embarrassing memories is the day in high school drama class when I was assigned to deliver the famous monologue in which Lady Macbeth loses her freaking mind. This article first appeared as “Interior Motives” in the May 2012 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. Martha Beck is the bestselling author of The Way of Integrity and host of the podcast Bewildered.
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