IMPOSTOR SYNDROME

January 8th, 2019

Hopefully, we’ve all felt this.  It’s when you find yourself in a position that feels uncomfortable because it broadcasts an identity and ability that is beyond what we think ourselves capable.  Like a fish out of water, there is an uneasiness, perhaps even downright anxiety about this state of affairs. 

Growth and progress require a change, and we might benefit from wondering whether all parts of our psychology get onboard with changes at the same time.  There does appear to be two conflicting urges that plague all people.  On the one hand we want things to stay the same and on the other we crave novelty, stimulation and growth.  The first of these is denial rooted in a kind of fear.  To want things to stay the same is a fantasy given a long enough timeline, but a craving for novelty, stimulation and growth is an engine to strategically deal with the fact that nothing stays the same. 

Regardless of how these two urges might be mapped in the brain, it’s possible to highlight the guilty party as that urge that wants things to stay the same.  Perhaps part of this mechanism is to simply assume things are still the same.  This is also a bad mental tendency that people have, another area where denial comes in.  So often when things are slowly getting worse, we deny any change and simply believe that things are still as they’ve always been.  Until perhaps a heart attack devastates our reality and we have a big wake up call to the changes we’ve been ignoring.  This instance is a sort of impostor syndrome in reverse.  Generally, someone with an impending heart attack probably thinks they are healthier than they really are.  Changes have been taking place, but they still identify with a younger, healthier self that never even thought about heart attacks.  And then boom, wake up call.

Impostor syndrome, as it’s usually used, implies something good.  Our efforts are paying off, other people see the fruits of our labor and see us more for what we are than we ourselves do.  It’s almost as though when it comes to problems and work we have to do, we have our focus correctly faced forward, but when we think of ourselves, we look backwards and spend that whole time looking in the rear-view mirror.  And yet, such a perspective couldn’t be more incorrect.  Each day we are a slightly different person.  This is true on a physical biological level as our cells constantly multiply and die, but it’s also true on a mental level if only for the fact that after yesterday, we have one more day of memories and information to incorporate into how we see and understand the world.

Impostor syndrome at it’s most basic is a fairly harmless phenomenon that shows why it’s a poor idea to cling to any identity too much.  The Identity Danger can keep us locked into patterns of behavior that make us vulnerable to the changing nature of reality.  It’s an instance that reminds us that identity is fluid.  Identity evolves as a function of our understanding of reality. 

As we gather more information, and unlock further information by taking action, our understanding of reality changes, and thus, our identity changes.

To cling too tightly to any identity is to shut out new information and underestimate the complexity of the world.

Luckily impostor syndrome is fairly harmless, and with the right understanding, we can see that it’s a good sign.  It’s proof the we are changing, because our effect on the world has changed.  If anything we should seek out situations the evoke impostor syndrome.  At the very least, the discomfort of such an uncertain situation will make us more likely to grow.

This episode references Episode 32: Rear-View, Episode 17: The Identity Danger, and Episode 18: Fluid Identity.

STARVE FASTER

January 7th, 2019

What is the difference between an individual who says they’re starving and someone who says their fasting?

Both are presumably in much the same state: they haven’t eaten food in a while.

The only difference is the intention and emotional disposition of each person.  The person who claims to be starving did not plan on going so long without eating, nor are they enjoying it and remain blind to any good the experience could be doing.  Such a person’s only focus is almost always to end it.

A person who is fasting on the other hand has quite a strong intention with regards to not eating food, and many who have not tried this exercise nor read any of the literature on the subject might be quick to assume some kind of religious reason.

Because, why wouldn’t you eat some food if you have it available?

Like many of the things that are good for us, the answer and the process of experiencing that answer is counter-intuitive. 

The question: why wouldn’t you eat some food if you have it available? is a similar inverted form of this question regarding exercise:

Why would you do something that’s kind of painful if you don’t have to?

While we’ve come a long way from the 1960’s when doctors would endorse certain brands of cigarettes on television commercials and we now generally acknowledge that the difficult experience of working out is very good for us, there is still much that has yet to be incorporated into our cultural understanding of healthy living.

Fasting has decades of research showing a host of positive benefits.  One way of understanding some of these benefits is through this analogy:  If you were running a business and suddenly had a decrease in profits, perhaps due to a recession, and you had to cut some staff for this business, who would you cut first?  Would you let go of your best people?  Absolutely not.  You would let the least effective workers go first.  If, for a moment, we regard the body as a system like this business, then it behaves in much the same way when the resource of constant food suddenly disappears.  The body turns on mechanisms that start analyzing and deconstructing poorly made proteins and cells in order to reuse the material.  Organs become smaller but benefit as a result and grow back healthier after the fast.  While this platform does not purport to be any kind of medical authority and advises anyone interested to do their due diligence before trying anything, there are non-medical benefits that we can also analyze.

For example, we might ask how much time is spent dealing with food during a given day.  We prepare food, eat the food, clean up afterwards and then of course there’s getting rid of what we’ve eaten.  All of these things take time.

A few years ago the Bureau of Labor Statistics released some metrics for this.  Apparently, during workdays, a little over an hour is spent eating and just under 40 minutes is spent in food preparation and cleaning.  For our purposes here we’ll lowball the number and say that an hour and half is spent solely with regards to food each day.

Fasting just one day a week would give us an extra 78 hours a year. That’s more than 3 days.  Imagine for a moment what you could do with 3 days?  How many books could be read, or projects started or finished?

And of course, time is not the only thing we save.  Without eating, less money is spent, and while the cost of a meal is going to vary greatly depending on location, eating habits and whether we go out or cook at home, it’s undeniable that the cost of between 50 and 150 meals is going to be substantial.  And all of this comes with health benefits.

Like anything, it’s very difficult the first time it’s attempted.  Much like going for the gym after a long hiatus from physical activity, the beginning is very rough going.  But also like going to the gym, it gets much easier every time we fast.  And if fasts extend beyond a day, many people report increasing energy and mental clarity on the 3^rd day onward.  Further gifts of an underutilized practice.

This practice also equips us more robustly for times when there are no good food options around.  Perhaps we find ourselves at a conference that only has junk food.  Having fasted a few times gives one a much greater chance of resisting the emotional logic that makes us give in.  Instead, we know we can survive just fine for a few more hours or even a few more days.

While the wisdom of mothers and grandmothers is usually on point, their ubiquitous insistence that we eat… pretty much all the time is perhaps an area where the wisdom falls short.

Culturally we have removed all restraint when it comes to food.  We use food as emotional therapy far more than we do to nourish our bodies, and fasting can also be a way to remove a guilty vice and confront the reasons we wish to retreat into short term pleasure more effectively. 

While there are loads of reasons to start playing around with fasting, whether it be intermittent fasting or longer fasts, it does well to remember the case of Angus Barbieri who in 1965 fasted for 382 days, consuming only water, tea, coffee and vitamins.  At the beginning of his fast he was 456lbs, and a little over a year later he was 180lbs.  The guy went more than a year without eating solid food.  Just let that sink in today as you have your next craving and hear yourself say “I’m starving!”

Chances are, if you can grab a love handle on your side, you aren’t starving, you’re either lacking in real nutrients, or your just addicted to the foods you’ve been eating.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: PERFECT PLAN

January 6th, 2019

Once when Lucilius was a young boy, he fell and broke his leg and was confined to his room while the bone healed.  But while lying in bed and remembering the pain when he fell, Lucilius began to fear the future.  The boy’s anxiety rose to such a pitch that even after his body was healed, he remained secluded in his room. 

He became completely obsessed with a future he could not see, and such unknown terrified him.  Days turned into months and the days had become all alike as Lucilius resolved to do absolutely nothing. 

An old man, long revered in the community, was caring for him during this time, kindly bringing him meals at regular times, knowing full well that the regularity only helped to entrench young Lucilius’ thinking about the future.

One day the old man entered Lucilius’ room with lunch a little early, and Lucilius remarked,

“You’re early! You’re not supposed to come in for another 10 minutes.”

The old man smiled and left the room with the food and sat down to wait.  When he came back in to give Lucilius his food, he asked:

“What do you think about all day in bed?”

As Lucilius pulled his bowl of soup close, the boy said, “I’m planning my life.”

“You are?”

“Yes, if I can plan everything, then nothing can happen that I don’t like.”

The old man thought for a few moments.  “And how is your plan coming along?”

“I’m almost done,” he said.

“When does it start?”

“I haven’t planned that yet.”

“Don’t you think that’s a good place to start when planning something so big?”

Lucilius looked at the old man with a suspicious face.  “Yea, maybe, but I have to finish it first before I know when it starts.” he said.

“But doesn’t the plan change depending on where you start?.”

“I’ll start right here when the plan is finished.”

The old man paused for a moment.  “I guess I meant to say ‘when’ the plan starts. Doesn’t the plan change depending on when it starts?”

“I don’t see why.”

“Well let’s say you start your plan in the middle of the night, but in order to do the first thing in your plan, you need to be able to see outside.  You won’t be able to do that at night as well as you can in the middle of the day.”

“I’ll just wait till the next day,” Lucilius said.

The old man thought for another moment.  “Well, that does work for some things that repeat predictably like night and day, but what about things that don’t repeat everyday like sunrise and night time?”

“Like what?” Lucilius asked.

The old man smiled.  “Like your next good idea about what to do.”

“But that’s what I’m doing.”

“Wait,” the old man exclaimed, “You’re telling me you even planned when you would get the good ideas for your plan?”

Lucilius looked down for a moment, puzzled.  “No, I just wait for them.”

“But that means you’ve found something that’s impossible to plan!”

Young Lucilius frowned at the old man, and turned his concentration back to his soup.  The old man smiled and got up, and as he was leaving young Lucilius’ room, he said “You know I’ve found that I have my best ideas while walking through the woods or climbing mountains.  Can’t claim too many good ones while sitting in bed.”  He didn’t need to look, but could feel how young Lucilius’ face crunched in displeased confusion.

The old man closed the door, and turned around to look where he had affixed a booby-trap to the wall above the young boy’s door – a bowl filled to the brim and carefully secured and balanced on a swivel so that it could tip and dump it’s contents.  He double-checked the date, and muttered,

“just about time.” 

He set up the trip wire for the booby-trap and then sat back down near the warm fireplace where he had a good view of the young boy’s bedroom door.   The trap was set, and he smiled thinking back to that time long ago when he had finally been curious enough to leave his room and the surprise and joy he felt when he was showered in candy. 

How he had come to wake up an old man in the town where he had grown up, he had no idea.  

ZEROING IN ON ZENO

January 5th, 2019

I say ‘Marco’, you say ‘Polo’.  And based on what I hear, which direction it sounds like ‘Polo’ comes from and how faint or loud it is, I move in that direction a certain distance.  I repeat it and call out ‘Marco’ again, and hopefully the response sounds a little closer. 

A basic search algorithm for a set of numbers that seeks to find just one number will query the half way point to see if that half way point is smaller or greater than the number it seeks to find.  Having done this, the search algorithm has eliminated half of the dataset from it’s search.  It then performs the same function on just the remaining half, and it repeats this until it finds the number.

Each time it queries whether the halfway point is larger or smaller than the sought after number, it’s somewhat like calling out ‘Marco’ in the game of Marco-Polo.

Then there is Zeno’s Paradox, which states: if you are travelling from point A to point B, then you have to pass the halfway point between A and B, and while traversing the second half, you have to pass the halfway point of this segment, and in order to traverse the second half of this segment, you again have to cross the halfway point.  And since we can always cut something in two in theory, we never arrive at B because we are busy slicing the remaining distance in half.    Zeno’s paradox holds if there isn’t some kind of smallest possible distance that cannot be divided into two, but this is beyond our scope, and question of large debate among physicists.  Clearly we can get from point A to B but this does not some how negate the usefulness of Zeno’s paradox.

Mathematically, Zeno’s paradox is describing an asymptote.  We can picture a curve on a graph that is always getting closer to a particular number, but never actually arriving.  While Zeno’s paradox is always framed as a curious thought experiment about distance and space, it’s more accurately applied to finding, learning and strategizing.

We might think of a given skill that we can learn, like playing pool.  Our first hour playing might be awful, but as we figure things out, our brain is constantly pivoting back and forth in order to find a method of operating that works in closer concert to our goal.  Quickly the accuracy of our shot goes from not even hitting our indented target on the pool table to trying to get it to ricochet at just the right angle.  We are making smaller and smaller adjustments as we move forward.

Or we might think of a sculptor, whether adding clay or removing stone, large amounts of material are being moved to rough out a basic shape, and as the sculptor continues less material is moved with each action until the finishing touches are barely perceptible changes in the form and feature of the sculpture.

Or we might think of switchbacks that lead up a mountain.  At the base each switchback is long, but as we get closer to the top there is literally less room for each switchback so we pivot faster, more often but on a much smaller scale. 

In the case of pool, each shot being taken is slowly zeroing in on a better understanding of the geometry involved.  For the sculpture, the artist slowly zeroes in on just the right size and shape in order to convey the object they portray, and for the hiker, it’s as simple as zeroing in on the top. 

All learning incorporates a kind of search algorithm like this that helps us zero in our skills and fine-tune our efforts.  We start with large leaps, cutting half the dataset out of our perspective, and then slowly work our way towards tiny steps, until we are fine-tuning on such a small scale that there is nearly nothing left to cut in half, or certainly nothing we can easily perceive that can be improved upon. 

This is why, when a friend shows an impressive project, we might be astonished but the creator is likely to disagree somewhat and say that it could be better.  As a mere observer our ability to recognize the interaction of all details pales in comparison to the creator who is zoomed in to the project and sees it with a fine-tooth comb.

It may seem like Zeno made a mistake by applying a principle to the wrong domain, but it’s clear his creative command of concepts zeroed in on just the kind of brain teaser that would last for millennia.

This episode references Episode 8: Tiny Steps and Leaps, and Episode 54: The Well-Oiled Zoom and Episode 72: Perseverance vs. Pivot

IF YOU WILL

January 4th, 2019

This phrase is defined as being used to politely invite a listener or reader to do something or to entertain a fanciful term.

It’s fairly straightforward with regards to asking someone to do something. But why ask with a fanciful term?

Is this just a relic of earlier times when perhaps conventions in language were more formal in the same way that the word ‘please’ comes from the phrase ‘if it pleases you’?

Perhaps, but even so, the lingering linguistic tendency can be usefully interpreted regardless.

So much of the dialogue that goes on is a kind of battle where points are launched in debate against one another.  Arguments abound and a phrase like ‘if you will’ strikes a completely opposite tenor from the tone we often see, most particularly on social media and the news. 

‘If you will’, is an invitation, asked with kindness, to be generous.  Generous with what? we might ask? 

Generous with our perspective, if you will.

Our perspective is a kind of place in the conceptual and linguistic landscape.  If you will is a gentle request that we move – if only for a moment or two – out of our perspective in order to inhabit a different point and place in the conceptual landscape. 

It’s almost as if to say ‘if you will entertain my idea for just a moment, you might be able to see things how I see them, from the place that I stand.’

The suggestion to ‘walk a mile’ in someone else’s shoes seems to be under-used in the atmosphere of today’s divisively inclined world, but it fits in well here.  The phrase in focus asks,

“If you will step into my shoes”

The phrase is almost demure, and perhaps this attitude is more generous than submissive because it can be read to carry an implicit understanding that it’s difficult to abandon one’s own perspective in favor of trying to truly see and understand what someone else is thinking, feeling, experiencing, and ultimately what they are trying to express.  We are all too often trying to achieve this on our own terms, to express what we are thinking and feeling instead of going on the difficult quest of generously entertaining someone else’s point of view. 

Which is, perhaps, the tragedy of the age, if you will.