Blog on mind and brain research and advice

Seeking the One Right and Perfect Choice

February 21, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

It’s good to have options. It’s good to have choices. The more the better, right? But maybe we can actually have too many of them. Maybe having so many things to choose from complicates our lives rather than enhancing them. It’s been suggested that having so many options has two negative effects. The first is that it produces paralysis: we can’t decide which thing to choose, so we choose none. The second is that it escalates our expectations so that even if we do make a choice, we aren’t really satisfied with it. What if there was a better choice? What if we made the wrong choice?

A lot of the research in this area has been done in regard to product choices, but the principles apply to all kinds of choices. Maybe our choice-making behavior carries over from—or at least is reinforced by—our shopping experiences.

[I]t seems that as society grows wealthier and people become freer to do whatever they want, they get less happy. —Barry Schwartz, The Tyranny of Choice, Scientific American, December 2004

Maybe the abundance of choices we have impacts our ability to create meaning in our lives. How much time and mental energy do we spend trying to decide: what to do on our vacation, where to go for dinner, which item to select from the menu, what to wear to this or that event, whether or not to redecorate the kitchen (or bedroom or bath) and then what colors to use and which things to replace, whether to get this book (or CD or DVD) or that one, which movie to go to, what kind of car to buy, which area to major in in college, which job to apply for or accept, and—for many—what the heck to do with the rest of our lives.

Some of the choices we have to make are far weightier than others, but I wonder if we’ve become so bad at making day-to-day choices—so hung up on the process—that it’s impaired our choice-making ability. If it’s true that we have escalated expectations about the effect a particular brand of olive oil or car or kitchen appliance is going to have on our lives, imagine what our expectations are about the really significant things, such as who we choose to spend our lives with, whether or not we choose to have children, and what career path we choose for ourselves. How can reality meet those heightened expectations? The research says that it can’t and doesn’t.

The secret to happiness is low expectations. –Barry Schwartz

The grass is always greener somewhere else as long as we think there is one right and perfect choice and we need to find and select it from all the options available. How will we ever know whether or not we made that one right and perfect choice? It’s not a game show where we’ll find out at the end that Door Number Three was the one with the biggest prize.

Freedom from Choice

February 17, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 7 Comments

The concepts of freedom and choice seem to belong side by side. What is freedom if not freedom to choose? The idea that we could be free, experience freedom, without also having and exercising the ability to choose is difficult to contemplate. But Krishnamurti believed otherwise.

We think that through choice we are free, but choice exists only when the mind is confused. There is no choice when the mind is clear. When you see things very clearly without any distortion, without any illusions, then there is no choice. A mind that is choiceless is a free mind, but a mind that chooses and therefore establishes a series of conflicts and contradictions is never free because it is in itself confused, divided, broken up.

In Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert relates the results of a study involving photography students who were put into two groups, the escapable group and the inescapable group. After developing their two best prints, all students were told they could keep one print, but the other print would be kept on file. The students in the escapable group were told they had several days to change their minds about which print they kept. The students in the inescapable group were not allowed to change their minds.

The results showed that students in the escapable group liked their photographs less than did students in the inescapable group…. Apparently, inescapable circumstances trigger the psychological defenses that enable us to achieve positive views of those circumstances, but we do not anticipate that this will happen.

I got a taste of this recently when some blood test results turned a couple of things that had, until then, been desirable to do into things I have to do. When I merely wanted to do them, they were actually a much bigger issue. I was invested in figuring out the best way to do them. When I was presented with this new information, I gave up trying to figure it out and began doing them just like that. It took me a couple of days to come to terms with the situation. I briefly bemoaned my perceived lack of choice in the matter, but I’m no longer struggling with it. My mind isn’t at all confused about the situation. And the truth is that I do feel a much greater sense of freedom than I did when I believed doing or not doing those things was a matter of choice (escapable).

The costs and benefits of freedom are clear–but alas, they are not equally clear: We have no trouble anticipating the advantages that freedom may provide, but we seem blind to the joys it can undermine. –Daniel Gilbert

Is It Too Late to Turn Around?

February 14, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

A fork in the road Which way should i go? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are headed. –Lao Tzu

It doesn’t matter how old we are, we can still find ourselves traveling on the wrong road heading straight toward something we know isn’t—or is no longer—right for us. Or maybe we don’t yet fully know it, but we’re definitely beginning to suspect that something about this road isn’t right. The older we are, however, the harder it can be for us to pull up, take stock, and change direction. Depending on how far along the wrong road we’ve traveled, it may seem easier to stay in denial rather than acknowledging we’re on the wrong path. Maybe we have a heavy stake—financial, time, or otherwise—in continuing along that road.

Sometimes we can look back and see a different fork we wish we’d taken. On the other hand, we may not have a concrete idea of where it is we actually want to go. In that case, it may seem like a waste of time to even think about whether or not to stay on the road we’re already on. What’s the point? Or maybe the very idea that we’re on the wrong road is kind of embarrassing, and that’s why we don’t want to admit it. But those are not good reasons to continue putting one foot in front of the other and moving closer and closer to a destination you no longer want to reach.

Is the path or road you’re traveling meaningful to you? Can you define what that meaning is? If not, or if you’re not sure, why not step back and at least clarify for yourself what it is you’re doing. If you know you don’t want what’s at the end of the road you’re on, do yourself a huge favor: stop. If you know where it is you want to go, start figuring out how to get there.

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight. –Jim Rohn

We won’t have the opportunity to change course after we’re dead, so if that’s what we need to do, the time to do it is now.

Yes, We’re All Going to Die

February 10, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

Last month, The New York Times ran an opinion piece titled, “You Are Going to Die,” written by Tim Kreider. In it, he said:

You are older at this moment than you’ve ever been before, and it’s the youngest you’re ever going to get. The mortality rate is holding at a scandalous 100 percent. Pretending death can be indefinitely evaded with hot yoga or a gluten-free diet or antioxidants or just by refusing to look is craven denial. ‘Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through,’ Conrad wrote in ‘Typhoon.’ ‘Face it.’ He was talking about more than storms.

Baby boomers are often accused of trying to become the first generation to escape death. But lots of baby boomers, including this one, have also read Carlos Castaneda’s books about Yaqui shaman don Juan Matus and remember don Juan’s suggestion that Castaneda take death—which is “always to our left, at an arm’s length”—as an adviser.

Death is the only wise adviser that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you’re about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you’re wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, ‘I haven’t touched you yet.’

Castaneda claimed don Juan also told him:

One of us here has to ask death’s advice and drop the cursed pettiness that belongs to men that live their lives as if death will never tap them.

I wonder if that’s true. If we asked death’s advice, if we took death as a “wise adviser,” would doing so allow us to drop our cursed pettiness?

Making Meaning Pt 2: Acorns?

February 7, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

In The Soul’s Code, James Hillman wrote that within the acorn exists everything the oak tree will “become.” “Each person bears a uniqueness that asks to be lived and that is already present before it can be lived.” We are the acorns.

Each person bears a uniqueness, sure. But the older I get, the less inclined I am to go along with the rest of that sentence. It just doesn’t map onto the world I see around me. How many people in this world are just not interested in the idea of living out their uniqueness, don’t understand the concept in the first place, or are in no position to devote any attention to it? The majority? That’s my wild guess. So what’s up with that? It seems as though you have to be born into the right set of conditions in order to grasp this concept and then be able to identify and live out your uniqueness. The game is definitely rigged.

Most people, I think, either allow or are forced to let other people or their circumstances determine what kind of life they are going to live. A vast number of people worldwide allow their religious or spiritual beliefs to determine the meaning in—and of—their lives. A far fewer number undertake the quest to discover the uniqueness they are here to live and then manage to live it.

Yet people do want meaning in their lives and they want their lives to mean something, no matter what physical/material conditions they’re living in. Whether or not they can articulate it, meaning is important to almost everyone. The lack of meaning can lead to all kinds of ills—personally, socially, culturally, and globally.

But must we have a supernatural explanation for the source of meaning and the reason it is important to us? I don’t think we do. I don’t think meaning is inherent in anything. I believe we create the meaning in our lives—or we fail to create it. When we create meaning and live lives that are meaningful, we and everyone around us are better off for it. When we fail to create meaning, we are dissatisfied no matter how well off we may be. We know something’s missing; we just don’t know what it is.

According to some sages, life is empty and meaningless—and it’s empty and meaningless that life is empty and meaningless. If that’s true, those of us who were trying to find meaning or figure out our unique purpose for being here have got it backwards. Instead of looking for meaning, we need to decide what is meaningful for us and then go out and create that in the world.

A Little Zen Story

I knew a zen master. I asked him about life. He said, “Life is empty and meaningless.”

I said, “That can’t be so!”

He said, “And it doesn’t mean anything that it doesn’t mean anything.”

And I still said, “No!”

Then he said, “And that gives you the freedom to make it up to mean whatever you want it to.”

And I said, “Ahh!”

Is determining what has meaning easy? No, not for most people. But it can be a much more fascinating, creative, and rewarding game than going on a metaphysical scavenger hunt to find meaning. When all is said and done, it may actually turn out to be the only game in town.

A Little Zen Story

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