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Inside Week 2 of What Do You Want?

May 15, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

This is the second guest post by Jean S., who is sharing her experience of participating the 6-week What Do You Want? course. She wrote about week 1 last week.

Inside Week 2 of What Do YOU Want?

Continually look backward asking why?—as we so often do—is sort of like picking at a scab. Does it really help us to heal? Can it take us anywhere new if it’s just a “tired rehashing of the fragmented, misremembered past?” Asking why? forward instead of backward can be much more fruitful.

The handouts for week 2 of the What Do You Want? course were on looking forward vs. looking backward, which shed more light on the way our brains work. Can we get new experiences in life if we so often ask why? about the past? What matters more: exploring a past we can’t change or exploring what we want for the future so we can get clearer on the changes we can effect.

We think maybe it will help us put the past to rest if we make up “answers” to our why? questions about it. That’s all we can do about it, after all. On the other hand, we can be energized by looking at and probing for what we want to have ahead of us. There is a forward thrust toward truth when we ask why? forward.

Think of a 4-year-old child’s drive to ask why? Children at this time discover the power and vastness of that word why. Sometimes we may suspect that they persist with their why? questions just to annoy us. Yet, really, it’s all new to them. Maybe the only intelligent thing for them to do in their “new to the planet” situation is to keep asking why?

WE are in a “new to the future” situation. It is a vantage point for discovering what we really want our future to look like by asking of each answer we give—or is it get?—why?! If we probe for an answer to each why? that will allow us to deepen our understanding of ourselves and what DOES really matter most to us.

As Joycelyn says, “If you keep asking why? forward, you’ll eventually get to the ultimate answer…to the heart of what’s at stake.” One thing that is clear to me is that I have not yet asked why? enough times. If I find it intimidating to start, once I begin, I find it surprisingly interesting and exhilarating to do. Try it! It’s great for getting to clarity.

The Illusion of Choice

May 13, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

You always have a choice.

Isn’t that what everyone says? No matter what happens, you can choose how to respond. And if you want things to be different, well then just make different choices.

Making a different choice sounds so simple. And it’s appealing to believe you can do it if you really want to. But if you don’t make a different choice, does that mean you really don’t want to? Does it mean you lack self-control or will power? Does it mean you’re trying to sabotage yourself?

If you believe that you could make a different choice but don’t, why don’t you?

When we believe we could make a different choice, but we fail to do so, we’re forced to explain ourselves—at least to ourselves. So we get busy rationalizing, making excuses, or berating ourselves. It’s the start of a vicious cycle, one that can go on for years or even decades. Not only is this a waste of time, it’s also counterproductive to changing behavior.

The truth is that we don’t always have a choice. In fact, we rarely have a choice. We keep doing the same things we’ve always done because that’s how our brain is wired. It conserves precious energy by turning as many behaviors as possible into routines and habits. Once those routines and habits are in place, they’re extremely difficult to disrupt. When faced with a familiar situation, you and I and everyone else will likely as not do what we’ve always done in that situation, even if we want to make a different choice.

Minute by minute, second by second, the unconscious part of your brain is absorbing and processing an unbelievable amount of data, all but a small fraction of which you’re not consciously aware of. So at the moment you’re faced with that familiar situation, your unconscious is picking up on signals, making connections, and initiating the usual response long before you can consciously entertain the idea of doing something different. When it comes to routines and habits, consciousness is simply no match for the speed of the unconscious brain.

As long as you don’t recognize what’s going on, you’re up against an unseen enemy. The challenge is to use the brain’s labor-saving mechanisms instead of being used by them. That’s where intention comes in.

The time to decide how you want to respond in a familiar situation is not when you’re in that situation but when you have some distance from it and can think clearly about it. If you know what you’re up against, you can come up with a plan to outwit your unseen enemy and even turn it into an ally. The plan involves IAP:

Intention
Attention
Perseverance

The IAP process is based on the way the brain actually works.

(1) Plan ahead. Formulate a clear and specific intention.
(2) Don’t count on remembering. Come up with a way to keep your attention focused on your intention.
(3) Assume you won’t be perfect out of the gate. Your unconscious brain is stubborn and set in its ways. With perseverance, however, your desired response will become the automatic one.

Patience: Learn to Play the Waiting Game

May 12, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Whatever it is we want, we want it right now! We are primed for immediate results and instant gratification to a greater extent than we have ever been before. Remember when we had to travel to a theater to see a movie—and we could only see it at certain scheduled times? Wasn’t it great when we could rent or buy VHS tapes or DVDs and watch them in the convenience and comfort of our own homes? Netflix made that even easier by sending DVDs to us in the mail. We only had to travel as far as the mailbox to pick them up. Now streaming a movie is just one of many things we can do instantly. Only a quarter of Netflix customers opt for receiving their movies in the mail. Imagine: by comparison to live streaming, overnight mail delivery of DVDs requires delaying gratification.

The expectation of immediate results comes with a decrease in impulse control and a low tolerance for delays. We don’t want to wait in line—any line. In fact, some of us will pay quite a bit of money to avoid waiting in line. We don’t want to wait to get an appointment. We don’t want to wait for a page on the internet to load. We don’t want to wait for a store or business to open. We don’t want to wait till after dinner to have dessert. We don’t want to wait till we have enough money before we buy something. We don’t want to wait more than two days to have a purchase delivered.

And we are famously unwilling to turn down a smaller reward today in exchange for receiving a bigger reward later.

Getting something we want activates the release of dopamine in the brain. What we really want are those hits of dopamine. After repeated instances of instant gratification, impatience becomes a habitual response. In essence, our brain rewards us for being impatient. But while instant gratification obviously feels good in the moment, it isn’t conducive to the carrying out of long-range plans or the completion of long-term projects. It isn’t conducive to turning down the smaller reward today in order to wait for the bigger one tomorrow—or a year from now.

Impatience does have a place. There are lots of things in life that are not worth waiting for, worth putting up with, or worth spending time and attention on. But the part of our brain that rewards us for instant gratification—the unconscious—doesn’t make distinctions. It’s a stimulus-response machine. Making distinctions requires conscious attention.

Knowing when to delay gratification and being able to control the impulse to go for the immediate reward are crucial to the success of any type of venture—from starting up a business to maintaining an exercise program to cleaning out the garage to completing a course of study. But the strategic application of patience can improve the quality of life for anyone, no matter what their situation.

Giving in to the desire for instant gratification can lead to a short-attention-span theater approach to life, where we’re merely skimming the surface of things, of experiences, and even of other people.

Just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness. –Jennifer L. Roberts, Harvard Magazine

Being patient means being willing and able to wait for something instead of hopscotching from one thing to another. Being patient means giving something our full attention, which allows for a deeper and fuller immersion in whatever it is we’re involved in. Patience helps us stay focused on the goal, the prize, the long-term result we’re aiming for. Patience and clarity go hand-in-hand because a busy mind that’s hooked on hits of dopamine is not a peaceful, calm, or clear mind.

So if you find yourself having to wait for something—traffic, a line in a supermarket, equipment at the gym, the food you ordered in a restaurant—use these small opportunities to develop the patience you’ll need in order to accomplish the bigger, more meaningful things in your life.

[NOTE: This post is the fourth in a series. See also When the Going Gets Grueling, Fortitude: Don’t Leave Home Without It, and Focus: Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.]

The Scientific Power of Thought

May 10, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

I can attest to the power of mental training on increasing physical strength. At the end of January, my personal trainer at the gym suggested I start doing a new exercise. When I went over to the equipment to give it a shot, I struggled to do ONE rep. So I decided to try mental training in addition to the physical training.

Every other day, I sat down in my office chair, closed my eyes, and imagined myself going to the gym and using the equipment. I mentally did three sets of 15 reps for each mental training session. The first time I tried this exercise again at the gym after beginning mental training, I was able to do three sets of five reps. By the fifth session after beginning mental training, I was able to do a full three sets of 15 reps.

The trick to the visualization part of this is that you can’t imagine watching yourself, as if you were looking into a mirror. You have to imagine yourself using the equipment and contracting your muscles just as you would if you were actually doing it.

The next time I start a new exercise, I’ll definitely augment the physical training with mental training.

Inside Week 1 of What Do You Want?

May 8, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

This is a guest post by Jean S., who is sharing her experience of participating the 6-week What Do You Want? course. More posts by Jean will follow, on consecutive Thursdays, as she gives us her perspective on the rest of the sessions.

Nila's Mama (Left) Preforms with a Barbershop ... — Barbershop Quartet (Photo credit: Lea LSF)

I used to think there was something wrong with me because there are things I really, truly want and need to do before I die, and yet I haven’t gone after them, or even half-satisfied the need. In the first meeting of the What Do You Want? course, I learned that it isn’t a flaw in me. It’s System 1, the unconscious, doing its job, what it knows how to do, which is maintaining the status quo. That’s a biggie. As Joycelyn said, “The unconscious keeps you alive, but isn’t interested in enlivening you.”

There are always worksheets which we complete in class, and if not done in class would be harder to do on my own at home. We learn and expand our own thinking as we take turns sharing our thoughts and writing, which we could not do at home, alone. By writing in class, we are sure to get it done, or at least get the process started.

We are never asked to share things that we are not ready to, although sort of by the nature of this work, we end up sharing a lot and finding we have a strong, mutually supportive group.

The main assignment for this week was to fill out one 5″ x 8″ card per day, dedicated to completing the sentence that starts: “What I really want is…” I have gotten past criticizing my every entry. I hear when it starts to sound like a “what I don’t want is…” list. My entries can range from little things that have been bugging me in my environment, such as “What I really want is a new, hand-held shower head,” to somewhat more elusive goals such as “to be clear as much as possible about how to behave so as to be my best self.”

I don’t pay attention to whether it makes sense to put something on this list. I just keep writing. Day after day, many of the same things come up and this tells me they must really be important enough to me to do something about.

Then there are little surprises, like “What I really want is to sing in a Barbershop Quartet.”

The class is provocative, as Joycelyn has many ways to shift our thinking and our understanding about the way we work. This is a great investigation, and I see how exposing it all to light will help us make a difference in our “status quo,” even if we sometimes drag our feet in the process.

You always have a choice.

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