It Doesn’t Matter If My Articles Are Research-Backed

Publications have been rejecting my articles a lot lately for not being science-backed.

These major publications, be they major Medium publications or major magazines in general, are all looking for the same sort of thing: research-backed articles that deliver a clear and tangible reward to readers.

I have nothing against research-backed articles that deliver clear and tangible rewards. They’re delightful and educational to read. They teach me much about how to achieve my goals or get the results I want. And they’re worlds better than most of the articles available on the internet, half-assed productions which provide incomplete scientific backing and paint a simplistic picture of the world (some of which I’ve written).

My problem is that’s just not what I want to write.

I know it’s what makes money. I know it’s what people want to read. And I’ve read the how-tos by successful writers who tell me over and over and over to stop just blabbering on the internet about what I love and start paying attention to what readers want to read.

But I can’t do that. You see, the words that have changed my life the most weren’t research-backed. They didn’t have clear and tangible rewards for readers. Become What You Are, Alan Watts’ value proposition is far from clear, and The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew Crawford has lots to say about the composition of human identity and almost nothing to say about how we can use that renewed sense of self to construct a better world. Even Eat, Pray, Love, an international bestseller, doesn’t have much of a value proposition beyond illustrating fundamental truths about human existence through story.

Value propositions are for people looking for a return on their investment, but the words that touch our souls often don’t have any clear value proposition other than exposing us to something true. You can’t make a marketing promise based on enlightenment.

None of this is to malign that kind of writing. If your heart calls to you to write research-backed stories about psychology and productivity, please, do not let me stop you. The world needs those articles, and the publications that write them are doing important work.

This is only to say that for me, to write these kinds of words would be to sell out. And I can’t sell out, not when my heart is telling me I’m supposed to be writing about something else, even if I can’t find the words to describe it.

I’ll be the first to acknowledge this journey is going to cost me. It’s going to cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars of passive online income, high-budget clients, a dream career. It already has. But I just can’t bring myself to do anything else. And after a lifetime of beating myself up for laziness, and sloth, and stubbornness, and incorrigibility, I’m forced to acknowledge the possibility that maybe I can’t bring myself to do these things because these things are not what I’m supposed to do.

I don’t know where this road leads and I don’t know where it ends. All I know is what my heart is telling me, and it’s telling me this: If I stopped now and tried to enhance my career by writing research-backed articles for major publications, I would be wasting my time.

I haven’t been thinking about research-backed psychology much lately anyway. After years of devouring every psychology book I can get my hands on, I’m starting to run up against the limits of this way of thinking.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a powerful intervention, but there are only so many blockades that good cognitive habits will blast through. There is only so much ground that productive communication techniques can cover. At some point, we need to lay down our communication techniques, our psychological initiatives, and our productivity techniques. We need to admit that our prefrontal cortex can’t solve every problem.

Case in point: my boyfriend and I have been arguing a lot the past few months. Like, a lot. As people close to me know, we are seeing a couples counselor. This counselor sits down with us every week and furnishes us with fabulous communication advice. Wait until the other person is finished before speaking. Avoid globalizing statements. Use “I” statements instead of “you” statements.

These interventions help… some. When we follow all the “rules,” our arguments aren’t as difficult, but they still happen. What I’m finding helps more is being still, asking my spirit “what does this moment need?”, and then unconditionally doing whatever it tells me to do, even if it doesn’t make any rational sense. If I do that — if I courageously follow the small voice inside me, wherever it leads — things always turn out okay. And when I don’t, they are always difficult, even if I follow all of our couples counselor’s well-intentioned rules.

I see this pattern play out again and again. Even my father has a tendency to over-intellectualize human experiences, leeching the humanity out of an interaction and reducing it to a series of scientifically propositioned action-reaction sequences. (I’ve inherited this tendency). When we allow our prefrontal cortices to overreach and start taking responsibility for things it shouldn’t, the result is intellectualization, emotional distance, and inability to be interpersonally effective.

So yeah. I’m done trying to figure out the psychology and human reflexes behind everything. I’m done trying to solve the problem of human existence, because it doesn’t need to be solved. It’s not a problem. Existence is a joy, not a burden.

We exist. All we need to do is allow ourselves to.

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