VISIBILITY

November 2nd, 2018

Imagine being out at sea when it is perfectly still, like a glassy mirror from every point on the horizon beneath a clear blue sky.  The visibility couldn’t be better in this sort of situation.  We can notice anything for as far as the eye can see.  Even the tiniest blip at the edge of the horizon could be seen.

Now imagine the same ocean in the middle of huge storm.  Even if we have never been at sea in a storm, we can close our eyes and imagine gargantuan waves, like mountains scraping across the face of the world.  Imagine being in the middle of that terrifying place.  Perhaps on a small boat, sliding down into the deep troughs, being overcome again and again by the next wall of water.

What’s the visibility like in the place?

Perhaps for the briefest of moments at the crest of a wave we are high enough to look around and see the ocean like a mountain range of grey walls moving with hissing wind.  But at best this is only for the briefest moment, and most of the time we are stuck tumbling down into a trough between waves, where the only visibility is up, into spitting rain.

It’s a ripe analogy to see the mind as this ocean of water.  The emotions we feel are like the motions of that water.  When we are caught up in some welling, intense emotion, it’s as though we are deep in the trough between waves, and each new one is not seen as an opportunity to perhaps get a little more visibility, but an ordeal to try and survive.  On the contrary, when we are calm, and our minds are still, we can see much more clearly.

It may be widely believed that it’s our emotions that make us human.  Some like to point out our compassion and empathy as core to our humanity, but anyone who has ever had a kind pet, like a cat or a dog can recognize similar lovely emotions in such animals.  Unfortunately, our emotions are a shorthand system for analyzing and reacting to the world, and just as a dog can snap at someone if pushed too far, so too is the case with humans.  It’s not our emotions that makes us so human, but our ability to put emotion aside, and notice important details that we are blind to while in the throes of emotion.  Having clarity of mind simply expands our field of mental vision.  Such calmness gives us the space to notice a small thought, barely audible that has been trying to nudge us in a better direction, a more interesting direction.

It can easily be argued that such big emotions may be very useful.  They might be described as large attempts on the part of some sort of subconscious to alert us to some sort of problem or inequity in life that we need to deal with.  But most of us get too caught up in the sounding of the alarm to actually understand what the alarm is for.

Calmness and clarity of mind is the place we should always strive to return to.  It’s unrealistic to expect it perpetually all the time, but it’s not a fool’s errand to try, because trying gets us there more often than not.  More importantly is how do we handle ourselves in the storm?  Do we just tumble into troughs? Or is there another way? Can we compose ourselves to deal with such whims of fate, and take advantage of those brief moments at the high crests of waves when we can gain some visibility and perhaps notice something that might help our situation.

THINK AGAIN

November 1st, 2018

How good is your first impression, your first thought, your first conclusion? How often does our first thought lead us down an unwise path. How often do we find ourselves needing to revisit our thinking?

Perhaps this is because we are rarely thinking during that first impression or coming to that initial conclusion. We are using a shortcut to thinking. We are feeling things out. Going with our gut. And while going with one’s gut is perhaps rightfully touted as good advice near and far, it is not always the best thing to do.

Often we would do best to

think again.

But we shouldn’t think again in the same exact way. Doing so is either a form of practice, like trying to play a piece on the piano as well as we did last time. Or it’s insanity. Like trying to get through a brick wall by banging our head against it over and over and over.

To, think again, is a akin to backing away from the wall and looking for a door, or gauging whether it’s possible to climb or dig under or, oh hey, here’s a box of dynamite.

This is the two-hundredth episode of Tinkered Thinking. It now spans over 150,000 words which is about as big as a 600 page book, and all of it is geared towards exploring ways to think again. Or perhaps, considering our first impression and our initial conclusions are really based on feeling and not thinking, the advice to think again, is really to think for the first time.

We are on autopilot for so much of our day and so much of our life, being pushed around by our own feelings, to chase this future or resist that past, and so much of this ragdoll treatment that we experience at the hands of our days could be soothed by changes, often startlingly simple changes, in thinking. Think of an orchestra with a grand piano that has one particular note central to the piece that is out of tune on the instrument. It throws the whole experience off, and yet the fix is just a tiny bit of tinkering, a small tweak needed in just the right spot, and then suddenly everything good that was going on with the rest of the orchestra is noticeable. While this analogy for our mental worlds is absurdly simplistic in the face of all that we have to deal with as thinking, feeling humans, it should not go without some utility to our way forward. So many quaint motivational sayings hinge on a similar chord, whether they be accurate or not. We’ve all had the experience of walking around with a small jagged pebble in our shoe and for whatever strange reason we can go a surprisingly long time enduring such pain before our executive brain gets the picture and we stop, take off the shoe and shake out the annoyance. The difference can be immense, and so too can the difference of effect be immense if we think again, or simply give our minds space to think in a different way, down a different path, exploring a different experience.

That famous advertisement to ’think different’ might very well be a call to think for the first time since our emotions are usually guiding us through our day, and consequently through life.

Thinking deeply, or differently can lead to some surprisingly counter-intuitive places, meaning that something that seems to make sense might not feel right, and suddenly we find ourselves rationally compelled to go against the flow of everyone else, including who we were before we paused to think about things.

Much recent research in behavioural economics seems to point out that our intuition is very often quite wrong. This doesn’t mean that it can’t get better. Quite the opposite, our intuition can get better, but only if we thoughtfully pause when we discover it is actually is, instead of plowing ahead like some dumb beast going over a cliff.

While this platform finds more value exploring concepts at a remove from current events, it is hard not to wonder how much rhetoric would never see the light of day if the tweeter, or newscaster, or politician thoughtfully paused before speaking or clicking or tapping, or whatever means of communication has them by the throat.

So often, that is the either the cure to a present problem, or the first step to finding a solution: thoughtfully pausing.

It is in essence, taking a break from our impulse system to actually think.

Like a muscle, its one of the few things that actually gets better and stronger the more it is used.

Best to think again about leaving it on the backburner.

This episode references Episode 23: Pause, Episode 44: Autopilot, Episode 73: Plow Ahead.

STRESSFUL SITUATION

October 31st, 2018

Do we admire other people who can handle stressful situations.  Do we look at their job and listen to stories from their life and sit back in relief that we do not have to deal with such things?  Do we shudder at the idea of being subjected to such a life?

When it comes to such stressful situations, where exactly is the stressful part?

Stress is something we feel.  In fact the subjective experience of stress is created primarily by a steroid hormone called Cortisol.

So where exactly is the stress in a stressful situation?  It’s in the body and the mind.

It’s not that a situation is full of stress, it’s that we become full of stress while in a particular situation.

Such a distinction is perfectly obvious, but there is a subtle shift we must note.  By describing an external circumstance as stressful, we are defining our experience as one that is controlled by external circumstance.  This is unwise, because it leaves our wellbeing to the whims of circumstantial fate and denies our own agency with regards to deciding exactly how circumstances are going to affect us.

Even though they might seem like equivalent statements, saying ‘I am stressed while in this situation’ and ‘this is a stressful situation’ are actually worlds apart.  The difference in perspective contains within each a different source of agency and power.  ‘I am stressed while in this situation’ can turn into ‘I am calm in this situation’ much more efficiently and quickly than if we try to change the outside world to be less stress inducing.  It’s also much more difficult to perform to any degree while stressed and therefore our efforts to change a situation so that it does not stress us out will take longer and be less efficient than compared to if we were go to the root of the problem and try to mitigate the stress within ourselves first, before turning our attention to a situation that might benefit from our efforts. 

At the end of the day it’s simply an inaccurate description to describe a situation as stressful.  Such a situation would have to have cortisol spilled on the ground or something ridiculous like that.  Such an image might seem eye-rollingly ridiculous and the distinction might seem small.  But, is the distinction between two sides of a coin small?  Certainly they are very very close together.  We could theoretically have an extremely thin coin and say that the two sides are insanely close to one another, but does this in any way effect the fact that such sides face in completely opposite directions?  If a coin is flipped to see who goes first in a sports game or who wins a bet, we certainly don’t expect the loser to claim a tie because the sides of the coin are so close together.

This is why we would do well to be a little more mindful about the way we narrate our experience to ourselves.  And indeed, mindfulness meditation is a clinically validated way of down regulating the production of cortisol, that hormone that makes us feel stressed during certain situations.

Whether it be a daily practice of meditation to influence our hormonal production, or a tinkered way of thinking about reality in order to completely strip all situations of any intrinsic stressfulness, we cannot leave our future emotional states to the whims of fate, like some coin toss.  We would do well to think of who we will become tomorrow, or next week, next month or ten years from now.  Will that person look back on our actions today and feel loving gratitude?  Best to pick the right side of practice and perspective, and start nailing that sucker down as a gift for tomorrow.

THE DOOR AND THE DARK STAIRCASE

October 30th, 2018

Imagine for a moment an old two story house, like one you might find in a quaint town in the Midwest of the United States, or perhaps New England.

Often in such houses, on the second floor, often in the guest bedroom or the second bedroom there will be a door that seems at first glance to be a second closet.  But open it and directly behind it is a dark staircase.  A staircase that leads up to a dark attic.

If this sounds like something out of a Stephen King novel, then perhaps that is appropriate.  Ascending to a dark and unknown place is bound to be fraught with a sense of fear.

Picture something else for a moment: a long corridor of doors.  Open a door and perhaps it leads to another room or corridor filled with doors, but every once in a while, we open a door and there is a dark staircase.

This is a simple architectural analogy for opportunities in life.  Opportunities are often spoken of with the allusion of doors.  We’re all familiar with the adage: “one door closes, another door opens” but our image of the eerie staircase right behind the door perhaps paints a more accurate picture of the experience of an opportunity.  Real opportunity in life comes with a signal of fear>.  Often it is couched in the possibility of our failure, or the idea that everyone will think our idea is stupid or silly.  The whole gambit of human dread is available and almost always frames the doorway of real opportunity.  And so the menacing Stephen king-esque stairway to some unknown height is perfectly placed.  A staircase as an analogy is a literal levelling-up.   By climbing a staircase we literally level up from our current level to the next one.  So why shouldn’t the doorways of opportunity be coupled with the looming staircase behind?

Could such foreboding darkness that we look up into be more appropriate for the fear that comes along with trying something new?  I think not.

Such darkness may simply symbolize our inability to see the future.  Relative to bright daylight, we are virtually blind in the dark. 

But if we can gather courage and take the first step.  Perhaps our eyes will adjust ever so slightly. 

We might not be able to see the future, but the next step we can take might become a little more clear.  Like a stepping stone emerging in the fog, even if we cannot see it, we can reach out with our foot and feel around for a secure place to step, and perhaps with luck, it’ll be a step up.

The fascinating thing about courage is that it functions like a muscle.  The more we exercise it, the better it performs, and with enough training the whole concept of ‘having courage’ can feel like a habit, like a routine – we can grow so comfortable with tempting fate with our resolve and hard work that when scary staircases or monstrous obstacles present themselves, we don’t simply get to work, we can smile, and laughingly lean into such situations, to feel out this dark and unknown path or hurdle this monstrous obstacle. 

As with anything, the first time is always the scariest and most difficult.   Not because of the actual task at hand, but because of how it exists within our mind.

Fear, as we’ve explored before here on Tinkered Thinking is simply the price of entry for engaging with the unknown.  But as with anything that we might engage in, whether it be buying in bulk or being a loyal customer, the price of entry gets less and less the more we engage.  Simply put,  the more fear you face, the less fear you feel.

The reason why we are stimulated by horror movies along side dramas and comedies is that some parts of life can be as scary as a horror movie, like when we wake up, go about our day and some opportunity comes up, and for a moment we freeze, like opening a door and finding behind it some dark staircase.

With doorknob in hand, we would be best to thoughtfully pause, and look up into the darkness.  We might want to remember the heroes from our favorite stories and movies.  We might even be bold enough to grow curious about such darkness and think..

“I wonder what’s up there.”

Perhaps we might even respond to our own question.  We might think….

“There’s only one way to find out.”

This episode references two foundational episodes of Tinkered Thinking: Episode 63: The Etymology of Fear and Episode 42: Level-Up.

THAT'S STRANGE

October 29th, 2018

It’s often reiterated that most scientific breakthroughs arise from a moment when a scientist or researcher get’s an unexpected result, and pauses, thinking to themselves “Huh, that’s strange.”

Such is the reaction when something counter-intuitive happens, and here we would do well to note exactly what counter-intuitive means.

Intuition in this case really just refers to our feelings.  How we feel about a given choice, what we feel a given outcome will be, or which set of outcomes are most likely.   Without much of a second thought, we rely on a feeling to divine an answer.  Such divination is, of course based on our whole life’s experience, but then it’s exactly this sort of reason that makes our intuition systemically blind to unexpected results.  Unless, of course, we have given substantial thought and practice to the difficult art of tempering our intuition with a knowledge that unexpected and even unimagined things can happen.  Even with such tempering, our intuition is still largely responsible for most of our decisions, which is unfortunate: because it leaves us far less likely to entertain possible solutions that might actually solve some of our problems.

Take the common difficulty of being tired.  The solution might seem like drinking coffee, or some other caffeinated drink.  We might do so without realizing that the half-life of caffeine is 12 hours, meaning that 12 hours after drinking a cup of coffee, half of that caffeine is still floating around in our system having an effect.  This is bound to have an ill effect on how we sleep, and inevitably lead to feeling tired the next day.  In the same way that alcohol is joked as being both a problem and it’s cure, a cup of coffee slides into the same position as yesterday’s coffee keeps our sleep from properly rejuvenating our body and mind.

It seems counter-intuitive to get rid of the intuitive solution.  I.E. get rid of the coffee altogether.  If someone were somehow able to convince us of entertaining a strategy that just doesn’t feel right, but ends up working better than our previous solutions, we might reflect on the situation and thinking “huh, that’s strange.”

If we experience this enough times, or even hear about such things happening enough times, we might be able to foster a very healthy doubt to combat our all-too-flawed intuition when it comes to certain decisions.  Whenever there is an opportunity to systematically and safely try different strategies, we would do well to scrap any input from our intuition altogether.  It is our feelings and intuition that can keep us stubbornly tethered to a bad line of thinking and behaving for years and years, and without the useful tool of skepticism applied to our own intuition, we can remain slaves to our past, which is, at the end of the day, a fairly limited data set about what is possible and what works.

Like the scientist who does not even realize the impending breakthrough when she says “huh, that’s strange,” we should eagerly seek such situations and revelations about our own life.  Each time we try something counter-intuitive that produces a result that we never anticipated, we are indeed growing the data set we carry around about what’s possible, and the more things we are aware of that are possible, the more agency we can evoke as people in the world. 

It’s counter-intuitive, but fostering a determination to hunt down the areas were you are wrong actually makes you more accurate and precise in the long term.