Farther to Go!

Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

12 Years After

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Twelve years ago this month, I headed off on the path I came to call Farther to Go! I was on a path of sorts at the time—well, on a sidewalk, anyway, heading west on Academy, into what I tend to refer to as the (expletive deleted) New Mexico wind—when I experienced a profound moment of ferocious dissatisfaction. It’s true that the wind had something to do with it, but the wind was also emblematic of my then current state of affairs and my feeling about it.

I wasn’t entirely sure where the new path would lead, I had no idea what I would find out along the way or who I would encounter, and there was certainly no inkling of Farther to Go! on the horizon.

During the past 12 years, I’ve read an insane amount of information about the brain and behavior. Many, but not all, of the books are identified on the Reading List page on my website. That list doesn’t include all the articles and other materials I’ve accessed. All my bookshelves and file drawers are maxed out. There’s been a lot of input into the system (me, that is; into my system).

In addition to applying what I learned to my own life, I’ve written hundreds of blog posts, articles, and newsletters, produced countless handouts and exercises, and created workshop and course materials galore. The 36 3-ring binders lined up on the desk behind me can attest to my output.

I was armed with a small amount of knowledge about the brain and behavior when I managed to look up at exactly the right moment to take advantage of the explosion of research in this arena. It was serendipitous to a great extent.

What kind of surprises me now is how well what I’ve learned has held up. Over the course of these 12 years, I have significantly revised my perception of only the four key elements outlined below.

Dopamine

Dopamine was long considered to be the pleasure neurochemical. A “hit” of dopamine was thought to be like a hit of a drug such as cocaine or heroin (more metaphorically than factually). This was still the prevailing view when I first learned about the brain’s reward system. Many people haven’t yet let go of this mistaken idea, which has led to some really silly concepts like dopamine detoxing.

Fortunately, I encountered the work of Kent Berridge early in my exploration and research. He’s an expert on dopamine and rewards and his work set me straight and helped me understand how essential rewards are in regard to behavior, whether we’re aware of them or not.

Dopamine is the wanting neurochemical. It’s associated with anticipation or craving or desire. When we attain what we anticipate, crave, or desire, other neurochemicals referred to as liking neurochemicals are released. Liking neurochemicals such as serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphin generate feelings of pleasure.

Dopamine motivates us to move (physically as well as psychologically), to pursue what we want, to take action. This wanting system is considered to be robust, while the liking system is considered fragile. Our experience of pleasure waxes and wanes, but wanting is always with us. This isn’t a personal problem or a design flaw; wanting is absolutely essential for both surviving and thriving.

Rewards

In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg described what he calls the habit loop, which consists of a cue, a behavior, and a reward. This was a bit of a revolutionary idea because we tend to think of a habit strictly in terms of behavior. Duhigg’s research led him to see that all three parts of the habit loop had to be in place in order for the brain to initiate, run, and end the habit.

That means that if we want to create a new habit, we need to determine what the cue will be, what the behavior will be, and how we will reward ourselves. I think this is accurate.

But Duhigg says that if we want to change a habit, we have to identify the reward we’re getting from the current behavior and substitute a new behavior that will give us the same reward. He makes a compelling case in his book. The problem, though, is that as far as the brain is concerned, liking neurochemicals are the reward, while to us a reward is something tangible or meaningful or perhaps symbolic.

Trying to identify a reward we’re getting for an existing behavior is like trying to figure out why we have a tendency to react the way we do to rain or a particular type of music or stray dogs or umbrella thorn trees. We can’t possibly figure that out with any degree of certainty—and even if we could, it wouldn’t make any difference.

In the case of changing a habit, what’s important is to be consistent about providing a reward for the new behavior until the brain takes over the job of releasing liking neurochemicals without the added stimulus.

Berridge is helpful here, too. He points out that our conscious perception of the reward we’re getting is essentially a story that may or may not have anything to do with what’s going on in the brain. The purpose of a reward is to get the brain to pay attention to a desirable behavior we just engaged in to increase the likelihood we will do it again. It’s positive reinforcement, plain and simple. It doesn’t matter if the reward we supply is related in any way to the behavior. It just has to be something we like so the brain will release liking neurochemicals. (I’ve done two consecutive 30-Day Challenges based on the same behavior, each with a different reward. Neither reward has anything to do with the behavior; both rewards have been extremely motivating.)

System 2

Although he didn’t come up with the terms—and dual-process theory was not a new idea—Daniel Kahneman did popularize the concepts of “System 1” and “System 2” in his best-seller, Thinking, Fast and Slow.

According to dual process theory, the unconscious part of the brain, System 1, is “fast,” meaning it processes 11 million bits of information at a time, while consciousness, System 2, is “slow” by contrast, as it can only process 40 bits of information at a time. There are many other significant differences between conscious and unconscious processing.

Kahneman, who died recently, won a Nobel Prize. He was considered a genius. I think that’s why it didn’t initially occur to me to question this binary division of thinking processes. But doubts started creeping in quite a few years ago. The characteristics attributed to System 2 thinking simply cannot be applied across the board to conscious thought. (There are even some researchers who question whether or not there is such a thing as “conscious thought.”)

After grappling with the problem for a while, I concluded that System 2 is a part of consciousness—a very, very small part of it, one that we access quite infrequently, possibly never. If we use Freud’s iceberg to represent consciousness and the unconscious, with consciousness being the tip of the iceberg, then System 2 is the tip of the tip. I’ve come to refer to the rest of conscious thought as ordinary consciousness. It has some attributes in common with System 1 and some attributes in common with System 2. Most of the time the stream of consciousness just flows through our minds, carrying us along with it.

Ordinary consciousness can be extremely useful and it has a role in creating transformational change, but accessing System 2 is essential for it. If we believe we’re accessing System 2 thinking just by being awake, we’re missing the boat entirely.

Autopilot

It seems hard to believe that the scientific estimate for how much of our behavior is outside conscious control was once a mere 40%—and that 40% was hard for a lot of people to swallow. Neuroscience has now concluded, logically, that 100% of our behavior is generated by our unconscious.

“Autopilot” is the short-hand term for this. It’s somewhat of a misnomer, though, because it was intended to contrast with the supposedly conscious “pilot” that makes intentional rather than automatic choices. But consciousness can’t and doesn’t make moment-to-moment choices.

Accessing System 2 can provide us with some ability to steer our personal ship in terms of determining direction and affecting future outcomes. But it can’t affect the choices we’re making now or the outcomes we’re getting as a result.

Duhigg’s conception of what happens at the end of a habit loop is that the brain is returned to conscious control. This is a perspective from the point of view of ordinary consciousness. It implies, first, that the brain is normally under conscious control, which it isn’t. Second, it fails to take into consideration that the unconscious is attending to multiple things at the same time, which means it is generating multiple action sequences, not just one. So the idea that the brain is “on autopilot” for the duration of a habit and then returned to the control of the pilot is both inaccurate and simplistic.

Habits are a bit different than the rest of our so-called autopilot behavior, but the fact remains that all of our behavior is initiated by the unconscious. If that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t survive long enough to get to the point of contemplating thriving.

Provisional Assessments

There are bound to be other conclusions that will be overturned by the ongoing research into how the brain works. So it’s useful to consider the conclusions we’ve arrived at thus far as provisional assessments. Provisional assessments are essential because they give us something to work with and to test, and they indicate new directions for further examination.

I’m excited to keep learning in this area. I don’t think there is any other exploration as challenging and potentially rewarding as this: humans investigating our own internal operational systems from the perspectives of our internal operational systems. Some contortionism required!

Here’s to many more years of learning—and of overturning.

Everything Is an Interpretation

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In the world in which we live:

  • everything everywhere is in motion all the time
  • everything is a process
  • everything is an interpretation

These three facts are interrelated, but they tend to be descriptive of what’s occurring at different scales.

The fact that everything everywhere is in motion all the time is a somewhat abstract concept that has significant practical implications. In and of itself, though, it’s difficult to grasp or experience directly.

The fact that everything is a process, while less abstract, can also be a bit slippery. We’re used to thinking of things as . . . things. It’s easier to recognize organic processes—or processes that involve people—than it is to recognize inorganic processes. Nevertheless, there are no things, only processes.

The fact that everything is an interpretation has moment-to-moment, immediate impact. Interpretations are the foundation of every single one of our experiences. But that doesn’t mean this concept is any easier to grasp.

The limited capacity of ordinary consciousness—aka the 40-bit brain—makes it much too slow to catch any of the interpretations the unconscious is making as it is making them. It wouldn’t be particularly useful to be able to do so. The unconscious has to interpret everything, from the most basic incoming audio and visual signals to your heart rate to the responses of strangers you encounter to the results of an election in a foreign country.

The unconscious makes these interpretations—which neuroscientist Anil Seth and others have called “best guesses”—so quickly that ordinary consciousness accepts them as reality. Even when we know or believe this to be the case, we have an extremely difficult time distinguishing between the facts of an event and our brain’s interpretation of it.

Several clients who have completed multiple iterations of the What Else Is This Telling Me? exercise can attest to this difficulty and were willing to share their experiences.

Donna

Something happened.

But what? No, not that, that’s an interpretation. No, not that, either; that’s probably a hidden belief. So what happened?

This is a question that’s been bouncing around in my brain for the last several months. I always thought I knew what happened. And what my interpretation was. And what my belief behind it was. I mean, I’m a licensed counselor. I’ve taught this to graduate students. Maybe I was wrong?

It’s been interesting and exasperating to break down to the grain what happened. I don’t think I have a firm grasp of it yet, but I’m getting there—a grain at a time. Wysiati (what you see is all there is)!

Kelly

What was that event? It just tumbled into interpretation and took flight. It seemed as though I was tangling with a bucking bronco that did not want to be tamed or understood. It seems to me that all these pieces of me don’t get out much. I’m trying to pry them open, if only a little: event identification practice . . . interpretation practice . . . it’s been part of the conversation I hope to keep having. I want to know what’s running the program.

Leslie

I think the idea that has become the most clear for me is that the mental model cannot be changed without changing a belief or beliefs that create it. Since we’re mostly unaware of our beliefs, the exercise is a way to expose some of those beliefs. And it has taken all those iterations for me to see how the interpretations, the actions, and the beliefs have to relate to each other.

Adam

It’s powerful and surprising how deep simple reactions go and how hard it is to isolate events, interpretations, and beliefs!

Additionally, it has been hard to ask questions about it for me. I didn’t seem to form the questions, much less make the next step to pursue what the questions might bring up. I had my doubts about how clear I was about how I was doing the different parts of the exercise, but I didn’t clarify my doubts until after about three times trying to complete it.

Debra

In my cohort, on our fourth go round, I finally thought I’d nailed what an interpretation of an event was. I mean, it just has to be simple, right? Nope. I was frustrated. Wanted to quit. Almost started to cry. Even raised my voice a bit.

My cohort leapt in to support me to keep going, asking questions with genuine curiosity—not just for me to see something, but because they were also getting closer to understanding.

When I broke through the frustration, I felt like I/we had made it over a big chasm together. My cohort had not only cheered me on, but they’d jumped into the trench with me. And we made it to the other side victorious.

Why?

If this is so hard to get, which it is for everyone, why go through all the blood, sweat, and tears? If everyone’s brain operates this way—interpreting events so swiftly that, consciously, we conflate the interpretation with the event—why not just accept it and move on?

Our interpretations determine both our emotional responses and our actions. If we’re always satisfied with our actions (and reactions), we can just carry on and not concern ourselves with these matters. But if we’d like to react differently or take different actions in the future, we need to understand what’s driving both our emotional responses and our behavior.

The bottom line is that if we want our brain to make a different choice in the future, we first have to modify our mental model. This is called structural neuroplasticity. Otherwise, all the brain has to go on to interpret events is the connections made by our existing mental model; therefore, we are bound to keep getting the same outcomes over and over again.

Check out Something’s Happening Here and What [Else] Is It Telling Me? for additional information. More to come on this topic.

In the Groove: Meta Mindsets

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Our brain looks out at the world through its own unique lens, which is called a mental model. The brain creates our mental model to quantify and qualify what’s normal in the world for us so it can determine the actions we should we take.

Our mental model is unconscious, so we can’t examine it directly to find out about it. We can only gain information from inference—by observing our actions in response to different situations and then reasoning backward a bit.

We do know our mental model consists of several different mindsets that operate together or separately under various sets of circumstances. A mindset is a set of ideas, beliefs, or attitudes with which we approach situations or through which we view them. Mindsets have something in common with habits since they tend to be habitual, which means they are mostly unconscious.

Some mindsets are:

In all three examples, one mindset isn’t automatically better than the other. It would be great if we readily shifted between, say, Be Good (focused on mastering a skill or body of knowledge and demonstrating that skill) and Get Better (focused on continued improvement of skill or knowledge rather than on performance) based on the mindset that was most appropriate to the situation. Unfortunately, we don’t tend to do that. The brain likes certainty and ease and so it prefers to lean in one direction or the other.

In the Groove

Furthermore, leaning in one direction in one area generally leads to leaning in that same direction in other areas. So we’re more likely to find Soldier, Be Good, and Productivity mindsets clustered together in one person and Scout, Get Better, and Creativity mindsets clustered together in another. One mindset reinforces the others. That’s what makes shifting back and forth between them so much more difficult.

Other mental processes and ways of thinking also tend to lean in the direction of one cluster or the other. All this clustering results in what I call the Meta Mindset: an overarching perspective that influences not only our responses to the events and situations we encounter but also our general attitudes and our beliefs about what’s possible for us to do, be, have, or create.

The two Meta Mindsets are Experiment and Production. Here are some of their qualities and attributes:

The Production mindset is the default because it requires less System 2 attention. It’s easy for all of us to fall back on it. Indeed, it’s difficult for some of us to ever get out of it.

There are definitely occasions when Production mindset is necessary and desirable. But the situation between these two mindsets is akin to the situation between System 1 (the unconscious) and System 2 (consciousness). Because we operate on autopilot approximately 95% of the time, both System 1 and the Production mindset are dominant. System 2 and the Experiment mindset require conscious attention which is costly in terms of energy and is also less available.

But System 2 and the Experiment mindset are what make humans unique as a species. They are also essential to the process of transformational change and creating and enjoying a satisfying and meaningful life. So it’s important for us to use them to harness the power and direction of System 1 and the Production mindset. It’s an important part of learning how to use our brain instead of letting our brain use us.

Note: Like most things, Meta Mindsets aren’t completely black or white (at least not for everyone). I’m developing a tool where you’ll be able to rate yourself on a continuum for each of the 15 items listed above. I’ll link to it in a future blog post.

Pandemic Pivot

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The Past: Some Context

We live in a vast country. We are people of different ages, different ethnicities, different genders, different levels of education and economic circumstances, different histories, different (or no) religions, different experiences, different beliefs, biases, and political leanings, and different personalities. And we are just one country among many different countries on this planet.

We humans have a need for other people (one of only six things we can genuinely call needs), and we desire to have a sense of belonging. So we identify ourselves with various others: maybe the citizens of the country where we live, but also with other groups, both large and small, including immediate and extended family, circles of friends, fellow-hobbyists, co-workers, spiritual or religious organizations, business associations, and political parties.

Sometimes our loyalty to the groups we identify with can lead to an attitude of tribalism: us vs. them (those others). It’s not a coincidence that tribal mentalities are strongest in wartime. Is it also possible that extreme tribalism promotes a wartime mentality? It’s a question worth asking for several reasons, one of which is that it doesn’t seem we can blame our Pleistocene-era brain for our tendencies toward either tribalism or violence—at least not directly.

It appears that our ancestors gravitated toward violence only after they transitioned away from a nomadic lifestyle to what is referred to as sedentism or sedentariness (the practice of living in one place for a long time). Their—and our—allegiance may be more to the territory we have staked out and less to the people we have staked it out with.

Here in the 21st Century, “territory” can have multiple meanings and associations, of course; it can be less geographic and more cultural, contextual, or even abstract. We are living in the digital age, as well as the nuclear age and the inter-connected age. That makes territoriality and tribalism more widespread and more dangerous than they have ever been—and a perfect breeding ground for the worldwide pandemic we’re experiencing now.

So this would be an excellent time to take a look around and acknowledge that there is only one tribe to be concerned about and that is the one we all belong to. This is certainly not a new or original thought, and it’s also clearly easier said than done. That doesn’t make the point less valid.

What makes the situation most pressing, even urgent, is that many of us are now quarantined, which means we are stuck in one place for a long time without knowing how long a time it will be.

The Present: A Plethora of Self-Soothing Advice

Remember the Eisenhower box? It’s that matrix with four quadrants:

  • #1: Urgent and Important
  • #2: Important but not Urgent
  • #3: Urgent but not Important
  • #4: not Urgent and not Important

Essentially, the purpose is to help us classify our to-do lists. According to its proponents:

What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.

The Eisenhower Box is widespread enough to have helped turn “urgent” into a dirty word. Could there be a link between our attitude toward urgency and our nearly pathological desire to avoid stress and so-called negativity?

The pandemic is, factually speaking, both urgent and important, so it falls into the first category. We don’t necessarily have a lot of experience dealing with such situations. And we’ve been sidelined, told to stay home if we can, for an indefinite period of time. Furthermore, we don’t know what the world is going to look or be like when we move back into it.

Responses to the situation vary: squirmy, angry, frustrated, worried, bored, depressed, content, etc. Some of us find ourselves with a lot more to do than before; others may be doing much less. But no matter our individual responses, the vast majority of advice being dispensed about how to cope encourages all of us to find calm, balance, and meaning (which hopefully are located within your home or at least on your property, since that’s about as far as you can go to look for them) and to treat yourself well.

Yes, these are trying times, disruptive times, uncertain times, in which we certainly do need to take care of ourselves. But this blanket focus on managing our feelings instead of solving the problems that contribute to them is absolutely not serving us. The world is in distress; bright-siding is not an appropriate response. Contrary to suggestions otherwise, lounging on the sofa watching Netflix is not actually contributing to saving the world.

If you’re OK, good for you. The more people who are OK, the better. But being OK is not an end, it’s a means.

These trying, disruptive, and uncertain times require something of and from us

The Future: Disturb the World

DREAM BIG

I’ve heard the optimistic belief expressed that we will somehow emerge from this better people in a better society. I have no expectation of a spontaneous occurrence of betterment. In fact, it’s more likely we will easily and quickly return to the situations and circumstances that led to this—or worse.

But I do believe we have the capacity to change that trajectory, or at least to begin the process—if we act intentionally and start now.

In order to do that, we need to use our imagination to generate a vision of what we want the world to be like, whether or not we have any idea how to make that vision a reality. We need a big, bold dream of a better world. We need a compelling vision we can share with others because it will take many people to create that kind of change. It will take many different kinds of people.

TAKE BABY STEPS

A big, bold vision generates creative tension. The bigger and bolder the vision (meaning the greater the difference between where we are now and where we want to be), the more creative tension is created. The more creative tension there is, the more dopamine is produced and the more motivated we are. Once we have a compelling vision of a desired outcome, we can begin to identify some objectives and then some actions we can take immediately. The best way to change the status quo is via repetition and perseverance—taking baby steps. Interestingly, taking action to make things better often has a side effect of making us feel better, but the reverse is seldom true.

As Serena Chan wrote in an article on complex adaptive systems:

Systems that are forced to explore their space of possibilities will create different structures and new patterns of relationships.

What new structures and patterns of relationships do you want to create for yourself? What do you want for the world? What can you contribute? What action can you take in that direction?

Maximizer or Satisficer:
How Do You Choose?

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I first stumbled across the word “satisficer” (had to look it up) in The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. In his book, he compares the way satisficers and those presumably on the other end of the spectrum—maximizers—go about making choices.

First, though, he claims that the two groups are defined by having different goals. Maximizers “seek and accept only the best,” while satisficers “settle for something that is good enough” without worrying that something else might be better.

Seeking and accepting only the best is not a goal, however; nor is settling for something that is good enough. Rather than being goals, seeking only the best and settling for good enough could be considered ways of operating, behaviors, attitudes, tendencies, or even drives. They play a part in how you go about trying to achieve a goal or accomplish something—and how you measure your success. But to call them goals entirely misses the point of what a goal (or objective) is. And that’s not inconsequential.

Maximizers Are Green

I’ve been revisiting this notion of satisficers and maximizers in light of a theory of personal operating systems I’m working on, as well as in terms of barriers to transformational change.

In regard to personal operating systems, of which there are three, I’m faced with another in a series of binary concepts. And once again, I don’t fit neatly at either end. Although I would generally and readily rank myself among the satisficers, there are areas in which I operate based on the high standards of the maximizers. The tyranny of the binary (I made that up, but it’s kind of a real thing) is probably a result of cognitive bias and the desire to oversimplify.

If the word didn’t already have sort of a definition associated with it, I would call the third way of operating “objectivizers,” meaning: deciding how to choose (what method to use) based on the objective—or, really, the desired outcome. It’s an accurate, if made up, way to describe it. And I’m not against making up words.

If you have been following the development of the personal operating systems, in general, those who have the teal operating system are most likely to be satisficers; those who have the green operating system are most likely to be maximizers; and those who have the purple operating system are most likely to be objectivizers.

What Works?

Maximizers, by striving to make the best choice—whether or not they can really be assured of having done so—are not focusing their attention on their objective or desired outcome as much as they are focusing it on the process and the end result of that process—getting “the best.” “The best” is an external frame of reference. It stands in, unsuccessfully, for a juicy desired outcome.

Schwartz points out how being a maximizer can lead to a lower level of satisfaction, for example, and a greater tendency toward rumination and regret. Satisficers appear to be happier than maximizers, but maybe they’re just in denial. I’m only partially joking. If satisficers really are all about “settling for good enough,” it doesn’t sound like they are focused on juicy desired outcomes any more than the maximizers are.

As a now self-identified objectivizer, I think I adopt the method of choosing that’s most likely to get me my desired outcome. The more focused I am on the desired outcome—and the more intentional I am about pursuing it—the more likely I am to shift between the maximizer-satisficer poles in order to hone in on it. That’s what works for me.

We all have tendencies to think in certain ways and act in certain ways; we all operate on autopilot much more of the time than we like to admit. But creating transformational change requires identifying a juicy desired outcome and pulling out all the stops to go after it rather than being attached to the way we prefer to operate.

Being a full-time maximizer won’t get you there, but neither will being a full-time satisficer.

Contact Me

joycelyn@farthertogo.com
505-332-8677