Farther to Go!

Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

You Are Here. What Do You Want?

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Imagine if you will a store directory at any shopping mall. Imagine you are at the spot marked “You Are Here.” Why are you here? Are you going to a particular store? Or are you here to meet someone, just to browse, or to “kill time”? Is it cold or warm? Are you in a hurry? It’s not a covered mall; what happens if it unexpectedly begins to rain?

Loud music is coming through the open door of the record store. People swarm past you and might accidentally bump into you. You smell coffee brewing. The colors and shapes in some windows attract you; perhaps you stop to look at things you weren’t intending to buy. And everywhere you go, “You Are Here.”

Someone figured out that we process about 126 bits of information per second or 7,560 per minute or almost half a billion per hour. [Note: The current estimate is closer to a third of that, or 40 bits per second.]

Who is the “You” who is here processing these bits of information? As near as I can tell, you’re a somewhat chaotic conglomeration of elements that fall into two categories: 1) what you came in with and 2) what’s been added since [aka nature and nurture].

The first category includes things like gender, birth order, ethnic orientation, basic human instincts, and your own individual abilities and handicaps.

The second category is comprised in part of what you have learned, your social conditioning, your religious or spiritual convictions [or lack thereof], various thoughts and feelings you’ve had, and the particular beliefs you’ve evolved [or that have evolved you].

Some of your parts are probably operating smoothly, some are undoubtedly a mess, and there are many others of which you are more or less unaware.

Now here “You” are, in the middle of the shopping mall of life, bombarded with more stimuli than you can ever hope to process, trying to get what you came here for. What’s a poor shopper to do?

Well, there are many techniques available to help you get “what you really want in life.” One method specifies that you don’t have to “get better” to get what you want. But another claims to only be effective when “used in alignment with [your] highest goals and purposes.” A book titled You Can Have It All reminds us that the universe is perfect and that whatever you have you must want or you wouldn’t have it. Therefore, to have something else, you must change what you want.

What Do You Want?

Some people seem to know right off, while others freeze at the very question. You can simply make up what you want. Or you can work through exercises that help you sort through all your layers to find out what you really want.

Once you decide what it is, there are various approaches you can take to get it.

But the juice here is not the “what” in what you want. It’s that identifying what you want enables you to set goals, and goals are an excellent tool [an affordance, one might say] to help you focus your awareness and make some sense of all the bits of information coming at you.

I’m inclined to agree with those who say the universe doesn’t have the slightest interest in what we want.* So even if you do all the right things to get what you want, you might get it or you might not get it.

*In fact, I’ve said that if the universe cares about my personal affairs, it needs to get a job.

This is an article I wrote exactly 33 years ago (the bracketed text indicates an edit or editorial comment) for a column called Random Access.

I knew almost nothing about the brain and behavior because most of what I know now hadn’t been discovered yet. Farther to Go! wasn’t even a pipe dream, and I had no concept of being on a quest of any kind. Yet the concerns I had then are the same concerns I have today. Am I…are you…up to something? Or are we hanging around the mall trying to “kill time”? Are we on the aspirational superhighway or are we still window shopping?

What do you want? The shopping mall directory can tell you where you are, but if you haven’t identified a destination it can’t tell you how to get anywhere else.

What [Else] Is It Telling Me?

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In 2018, Jim Allison and Tasuku Honjo won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their “discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation.”

As a scientist, Allison has pointed out that you can’t really prove anything with science. All you can do is disprove. He says that the data from an experiment may be consistent with your hypothesis, but it might be consistent with another hypothesis, too. So you need to ask, what else is it telling me?

Allison covered similar ground in an interview he gave after winning the Nobel Prize:

[Being a good scientist] takes discipline but [also] creativity, you have got to learn how to view your data as a crystal or something, you know when you look at every facet of it, get to know it from every direction. Look at what it tells you beyond the reason you did the experiment and figure it out. And so I think that’s pretty much it; it is the ability to really study the data and really learn what it is telling you.

As an aside on creativity, Allison is also a musician. He plays harmonica in a band composed of other scientists. This isn’t unusual. It turns out that Nobel Prize laureates are three times more likely than other scientists to have a creative hobby (performing, singing, acting, glassblowing, writing, painting, etc.). You could say they themselves have multiple facets. Knowing that people are Nobel Prize winning scientists doesn’t tell you everything about them.

WYSIATI

I included Allison’s comments at the end of an article on Daniel Kahneman’s concept of WYSIATI or What You See Is All There Is. (Kahneman is another Nobel Prize winner, but I don’t know anything about his hobbies.)

WYSIATI means that when you’re determining the meaning of something or constructing a story about it (i.e. interpreting it), your brain can only use the information available to it at the time. What it sees is all there is. The less information you have, the easier it is for your brain to construct a convincing story. You don’t cast about looking for information you don’t currently possess. What am I likely to be missing? How am I misconstruing this? What else is this information telling me?

Similarly, if the data from an experiment is consistent with your hypothesis, why go looking for trouble by asking if it could be consistent with another hypothesis, too.

The unconscious part of your brain is looking for a good enough answer right now that adequately fits your model of the world. Accuracy is not its highest priority. You need to get a move on. No straggling allowed.

We think we have a clear idea of what’s happening. We think we understand why things happen or happen the way they do. And we feel pretty certain about our assessment of events and situations.

But certainty, like confidence, is a feeling and has nothing to do with the accuracy or lack thereof of our interpretations and beliefs. The more we proceed through life assuming we are correct, the more likely we are to be wrong and the more difficult it becomes to change—our perspectives, our behavior, the trajectory of our lives.

Look at All Facets of an Experience

One way out of this predicament is to ask a lot more questions—not just random questions: hard questions. As a species, we have a unique capacity for self-awareness, but we’re not particularly good at accessing it. As a result:

  • trying to disentangle our interpretations of events from the events themselves is hard
  • trying to identify the unconscious beliefs that could underlie our interpretations is even harder
  • attempting to separate fact from fiction in perceiving events or situations in order to come up with alternative interpretations is extremely hard for some

But if we want different outcomes, if we want to get off the rock we’re on and get on a rock that offers a different perspective, or if we want to think different thoughts, we need to ask the hard questions. We need to be able to explore the facets or components of our experiences and recognize the roles played by our interpretations and our beliefs.

Here’s an exercise to try. But first, some definitions:

  • An event is something that happens (the data, if you will).
  • Your interpretation is the meaning you make of the thing that happens.
  • Beliefs are convictions you have about the nature of reality (the way the world works).

Part One

  1. Describe an event.
  2. Describe your interpretation of the event.
  3. Ask yourself, what is this interpretation telling me about my perception of the way the world works?
  4. Identify one or more beliefs that could underlie your interpretation.

Part Two

  1. Take another look at the event (the data) and ask yourself, what else is it telling me?
  2. Describe two possible alternative interpretations based on the data (facts) of the event.

Part Three

  1. Identify your emotional response to your interpretation of the event and ask yourself, what is it telling me?
  2. Identify the action you took in response to your interpretation of the event and ask yourself, what is it telling me?
  3. Identify your emotional response to the action you took and ask yourself, what is it telling me?

Keep asking yourself what is it telling me? And then what else is it telling me? We can’t access our beliefs directly because they are part of the mental model our brain maintains of what things mean and what is normal for us. But the beliefs that make up our mental model affect our perceptions and interpretations of everything we experience.

We can’t create significant, sustained change unless we change our mental model. In order to do that, we have to learn more about it. We have to be curious. We have to ask the hard questions.

Part two of two parts. Part one is here.

A Work of Art in Progress

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This is a guest post by Regina Clarke, a beautiful, open-hearted, loving, curious, and determined, woman who is both up to something (or, in her case, many things) and committed to creating transformational change. We were out of touch for several years and I’m delighted she is back in my life. Regina wrote this piece in response to a writing prompt (you can find out more about it here) and generously agreed to let me share it.

I am a photographer. I see SO many beautiful things that inspire me and I want to capture them on film. I want to remember where I come from; my past, my history and my lineage. Each photograph is a memory, a piece of me, my life unfolding as a child into adulthood. My essence is captured in the photographs.

The lens through which I look dictates what I shoot. Everything is up for inspiration, beauty, interest and of course change. It all happens in my sight, the lens through which I look, and the development of the film. My eye is drawn to many things, what do I want to capture? What piece do I want to highlight or where do I want to edit?

Do I underexpose the film so that the picture of my life is unclear, not really taking shape? Or, do I overdevelop, do I overexpose my life’s film, taking too long so that the image – my results are blurry and of no significance?

Every so often it all comes together! I am inspired to look at something, anything really; a sunset, a flower, a person, a mountain or an idea and the lighting is just ideal. The shutter closes, the timing is right, and everything in my world comes together to make the perfect picture, the perfect experience. It is captured and admired until it is time for the next photograph.

In the process, I take lots and lots of photos. I try on many angles, distances, and ideas. It seems the work is never done, it’s NEVER over because there will always be another image to capture or another idea to follow. As the photographer I change, my perspectives change and so the picture changes as well.

Clarity – Color – Image – Timing …

What I see right now will change, I will want to view that, and capture the new idea, the new image to see what gets developed. What is preserved as my ME? How am I remembered? Who will hold the scrapbook of my life?

Anticipation or Apprehension?

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In his bestselling book Behave, Stanford University’s Robert Sapolsy says that anticipation requires learning. (That appears to be more the case for some personality types than others, but casual observation suggests that quite a few people have some degree of difficulty with anticipation.)

I think the learning needs to begin with making a distinction between anticipation and expectation, two states that are oriented toward a future event and tend to be used interchangeably, thus muddying the waters considerably.

Expectation is the sense that something is about to happen. We can expect positive, negative, or neutral things to occur. The unconscious part of our brain, System 1, is continuously predicting the immediate future so it can determine what actions we should take next, and those predictions sometimes give rise to conscious, System 2, expectations. Of course sometimes the predictions bypass consciousness and go directly to motor neurons that control movement.

For our purposes, it makes sense to view expectation as essentially a functional process.

Anticipation, on the other hand, is a feeling of excitement and pleasure about something we expect will occur, especially in the near future.

The opposite of anticipation would be apprehension, also a feeling, but one of fear, anxiety, unease—even dread—about something we expect will occur in the future.

Anticipation is associated with excitement; apprehension is associated with anxiety. While excitement has positive connotations and anxiety has negative connotations, these two states are not as different from each other as they might appear. In fact, the difference is primarily a matter of interpretation.

Name that Emotion!

Both excitement and anxiety are what are called high-arousal states with similar neurological and physiological symptoms, such as increased heart-rate, restlessness, rapid breathing, difficulty concentrating, and nervousness or tension. Certainly context (the circumstances surrounding a particular high-arousal state) contributes to our interpretation of it. But some of us are more inclined in general to interpret this set of sensations as anxiety and some of us are more inclined to interpret it as excitement.

So the first thing to focus on in learning how to anticipate is your experience of this emotional state and your interpretation of it.

Central to both experience and interpretation is the concept of emotional granularity, which means putting feelings into words with a high degree of complexity. But as psychology professor Lisa Feldman-Barrett, who coined the term, says:

Emotional granularity isn’t just about having a rich vocabulary; it’s about experiencing the world, and yourself, more precisely. 

The more precisely we can identify and recognize our emotions, the faster and more accurate our brain will be in assessing circumstances to determine the most appropriate response. The payoff for the brain (System 1) is efficiency. The payoffs for us (System 2) are numerous, including more nuanced interpretations of our feeling states, greater ability to identify our desired outcomes, enhanced experience, and improved critical thinking and decision-making.

Your Mental (Conceptual) Model

How does the brain figure out what any collection of bodily sensations means? Most likely it does the same thing with internal sensations that it does with external sensations: it makes something up, i.e. it constructs. The brain is continually constructing our experience in—and of—the world based on our mental model, which determines what we pay attention to, how we interpret what we pay attention to, and what it all means.

In every waking moment, your brain uses past experience, organized as concepts, to guide your actions and give your sensations meaning. When the concepts involved are emotion concepts, your brain constructs instances of emotion. —Lisa Feldman Barrett

Although we operate under an assumption that emotions have some sort of independent existence and are “triggered” by events and experiences, this does not appear to be the case. The brain, which always goes for the path of least resistance, is merely making the easiest and fastest interpretation it can make so it can determine what action to take. We are not passive experiencers of our emotions even though we may believe ourselves to be. In actuality, the more often we interpret a set of bodily sensations as a particular emotion, the likelier we are to keep interpreting it that way.

Get Granular

I don’t need to reinvent the wheel here. In addition to her book How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman-Barrett has a great article and TED talk on how to increase emotional granularity, which I highly recommend.

But as a quick example of the concept, here’s an excerpt from a 2018 article in lucidwaking that involves moving from the non-granular general feeling bad to the first distinction of angry/mad (as opposed to sad or anxious, for example), and then fine-tuning that feeling to a permutation of angry/mad, such as:

resistant … belligerent … offended … agitated …  indignant … resentful … irritated … furious … cranky … annoyed … perturbed … enraged … hostile … huffy … wrathful

You can also check out this feeling vocabulary chart to train yourself to detect more nuanced emotions.

The bottom line is that you aren’t entirely at the effect of your brain’s habitual interpretations of your emotional state. Sometimes apprehension is an apt emotional interpretation of a situation or set of circumstances. But if apprehension is always your interpretation of that set of sensations, you are letting your brain off easy, which may feel comforting but limits your options and your possibilities. (Bad brain!)

OK, one more post on anticipation and delayed gratification.View the previous two posts here and here.

Embarking on a New Year

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January. The start of a new year. An occasion for new beginnings. I dislike the winter months, but I’ve always had a soft spot for January for its sense of openness and promise—or at least potential.

But the promise or potential of January can be illusory because we cannot predict the future: none of us can know what it holds for us, good, bad, or indifferent.

I think back to January 2005, when I was commuting five days a week to a job in an office downtown. My partner was retired, tending cacti, composing and recording music, writing, and doing the vast majority of domestic chores. He was an excellent cook, and he didn’t mind grocery shopping or cleaning up the kitchen. My biggest gripe with him was the clutter of partially read magazines and books everywhere.

We’d lived in Albuquerque a little less than three and a half years. We were humming along in a groove. Dealing with some car issues, a couple of chronic but manageable health issues of his, and my on-and-off-again dissatisfaction with my job.

In late March, he began feeling more tired and achy than usual, but neither he nor his doctor were alarmed. On the morning of the 30th, he said he felt much better. Before I left for work, he told me what he wanted to fix for dinner. Shortly after 9pm, he was dead. Whatever I had thought about what I might be up to in 2005 did not include responding to the sudden death of my partner of 30 years.

Double Troubles

I think back also to January 2016, when I was about a year and a half into “going public” with Farther to Go! The engine was revving; my sights were set; all systems were go. Patricia was my closest friend in Albuquerque. We had been going on day trips at least twice a month for a couple of years. In January, we drove up to Santa Fe, where we walked around the Plaza, had lunch at the San Francisco Street Bar and Grill, and popped into some favorite shops. I bought a really warm winter hat with tassels on both sides.

We went to the zoo early in February, an unusually warm day. Both of us had been experiencing some odd physical symptoms—sinus issues with me, stomach issues with her—but we were doing well that day. By the third week in February, though, I was having significant trouble breathing. On the 29th, a Monday, I asked her to drive me to the ER. I thought I had an upper respiratory infection.

Instead I was diagnosed with severe mitral valve stenosis, atrial fibrillation/flutter, and congestive heart failure. They admitted me to the hospital and kept me there for a week. I was told I’d likely need to have open heart surgery to have the valve replaced. Over the next year, several ablations attempts were made to stop the flutter. The last one gave me four flutter-free months.

That April, Patricia was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. Her doctor suggested she had about eight months. He was spot on. She died three days before Christmas.

It’s an understatement to say 2016 didn’t turn out the way I imagined it would. While I’m doing significantly better than anyone predicted, my energy level is permanently diminished—sometimes more so, sometimes less. And I miss Patricia.

When my partner died in 2005, I didn’t have the kind of focus I did in 2016. By the time I was diagnosed, I had determined exactly what was important to me. Vitality was at the top of the list, so I didn’t have to be persuaded to take care of myself. But Farther to Go! was just as important to me. And nearly five years later, both of those things are still at the top of the list.

Last January, none of us saw Covid-19 coming. I think it’s safe to say that the events of 2020 were not on anyone’s list of expectations. I know that wanting to maintain as much vitality as possible and being immersed in Farther to Go! has made it easier for me to cope with the drastic upheaval and uncertainty. It already seems quaint, doesn’t it, to think about how eager we were to change the calendar to 2021? In addition to the continuing ravages of the pandemic, here in the U.S., we have more civil unrest than we’ve had since the 1960s. And we haven’t yet hit the mid-point of the month!

January, I think, is a terrible time to create resolutions, which usually take the form of concrete objectives or self-improvement. But it’s a great time to clarify what’s important to us and to identify desired outcomes: how do we want to change our status quo. There is always more than one way to get a desired outcome. If—or rather when—we encounter the inevitable surprises life throws up, we can adjust course instead of being sidelined. As long as we know where we want to end up, we can keep trying different routes until we get there.

Here’s a virtual toast to what will be lost this year and what will be found.

Bon voyage!

Contact Me

joycelyn@farthertogo.com
505-332-8677