People in general and women in particular have great difficulty telling people, “No.” As a result, we get worn down, stresssed out, double-booked and overwhelmed. It’s not good.

In the book Be Careful What You Pray For, author Larry Dossey tells about an interesting study involving AIDS patients. Researchers found that some of the patients were living well beyond their anticipated life-span. Their secret - a common  personality pattern - was found in the answer to a single question: If a friend asked you to do a favor and you didn’t want to do it, could you refuse the request?

All of the long-term survivors said that, yes, they could refuse a friend.

Perhaps part of true authenticity is allowing a little of that God-given selfishness and self-preservation to bubble to the surface. Children (such as six-year-old girls) do this quite well and quite naturally, too. Grown-up girls, don’t do this so well. But extra-grown-up girls (middle-aged women) sometimes re-learn that a little selfishness can be good.

Women, as they age, start to shed the many layers of fake personas that the world (and/or society and/or parents, etc.) have forced them to cultivate. Buried underneath all those layers of regret and coulda/shoulda/wouldas, you’ll find a woman’s authenticity. And as that true self emerges, women start to find a little peace and a little joy and a little contentment. And that’s when their real beauty starts to shine. And that’s also when their self-esteem starts to recover.

And this helped me to understand another question that plagued me: Why are women so unhappy with themselves? Maybe it’s because they’re so busy playing so many roles for so many people that they have utterly forgotten what made their once-six-year-old heart sing with joy. While countless self-improvement books urge women to get outside of ourselves and focus more on someone else’s real needs, I know plenty of women who need to focus more on themselves, and less on the rest of the world.  As Dossey’s example shows, selfishness has salutary benefits too.

Today’s headlines report that major marketers are withdrawing their prime-time ads featuring Tiger Woods. And the rest of the media headlines crackle with excitement over the man’s quick fall from grace. Comments posted at blogs and news sites are not especially kind either. In fact, some of them are downright ugly.

There’s a word for this:  schadenfreude.

It’s a German word that means delighting in the misfortune of others. I had never heard of this word until I was doing some research for my book The Ugly Woman’s Guide to Internet Dating: What I Learned From 70 First Dates. Before this, I’d heard it described as “The Crab Theory.”

Put one crab in a five-gallon bucket and Mr. Crab will do everything in his power to scale its smooth wall and crawl out of that bucket. Put two or more crabs in a bucket and when one starts to climb up, the others will grab him and pull him back down into the bucket. Unfortunately, humans sometime exhibit the same tendencies as crabs.

In my own life, I’ve struggled mightily with envy, and I’m sorry to say that too many times, I had a decided leaning toward the crab/schadenfreude side.

And then one day, I read a story in the Christian Science Sentinel about a woman who’d spent a lifetime cultivating the habit of gratitude. She said that her mother had taught her to feel sincerely joyous and grateful for the good things that happened in other people’s lives, and to take it as a personal promise from God that, if it happened for them, it could happen for her, too.

The Buddhist have a word for this: Mudita. It’s the practice of finding joy in other people’s success and happiness.

Tiger and people like him are human beings. And we’re all cracked pots and fallible and prone to foibles and missteps and mistakes and even lapses in good judgment. Who among us hasn’t lost our temper and said something we deeply regret? Who among us hasn’t surrendered to temptation when we could have done better? My point is, maybe the real need is to stop staring so hard at other people’s sins and take a better look at our own shortcomings and work on improving those.

Maybe we need to stop cultivating the habit of schadenfreude and work on mudita.

We’re all doing our best and we all make plenty of regrettable mistakes.  Why not let Tiger slip off the front page and give him some privacy to work out his many problems and shortcomings?

Speaking of which, time for me to slip into the closet of prayer and work on my own mistakes and problems and shortcomings and sins. That’ll keep me plenty busy.