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Dueling Mindsets:
Productivity vs. Creativity

March 8, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Is it better to have an uncluttered desk or a messy desk? Does it depend on your personality? Or does it depend on the job you have—or on your habits or circumstances?

We all have our own tendencies in regard to clutter and organization (which may or may not be associated with personality), and we’ve also developed habits that we probably have opinions about. But whether an uncluttered desk is better than a messy desk depends on whether you’re aiming to be productive or to be creative.

Note: Sometimes create is used in the sense of produce or make, so the terms are often used interchangeably. That’s not what I’m talking about. Nor am I using creative as a synonym for artistic.

In the Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World, David Eagleman and Anthony Brandt write:

We master what is and envisage what-ifs.

If we place productivity in the domain of “what is” and creativity in the domain of “what-if,” that can give us a sense of the distinction between the two. Both mindsets are equally powerful—meaning they provide us with the ability to do something or act in a particular way—but only when we apply them appropriately.

Productivity Mindset

Mastering what is: sometimes velocity is power.

The productivity mindset is all about making the most efficient use of your resources (time, energy, effort, etc.). It is associated with speed, performance, output, and production. It is the mindset of getting things done: finishing projects, completing tasks, meeting deadlines, and reaching goals. The productivity mindset is effective for achieving measurable results.

It is the best mindset to have when:

You know what you’re doing.
You know how to do it.
The tasks or objectives are clear (understandable and unambiguous).

It isn’t necessarily a good mindset to have when:

You aren’t sure what needs to be done.
You aren’t sure how to do it or if you can do it.
You haven’t clearly defined the problem or you’re trying to solve the wrong problem.

Some things to remember about productivity and the productivity mindset are:

It makes use of the brain’s attention network. That kind of focus requires System 2 attention, which is limited.
Because System 2 attention is limited, your productivity will be greatly enhanced by organization, preparation, and delegation.
Practice saying no. Distraction is detrimental to both focused attention and productivity. Eliminating distractions and interruptions and setting boundaries can boost productivity.
Acting deliberately—thoughtfully, carefully, and intentionally—can help ensure successful results or outcomes.
Pitfalls to over-use or inappropriate use of the productivity mindset include: doing for the sake of doing (checking items off a list), absence of reflection or awareness, failure to develop a vision, a tendency to lose track of the vision, and taking action when stopping or pausing would be a better choice.

Creativity Mindset

Envisaging what-if: sometimes wandering is power.

The creativity mindset is all about seeing existing ideas or objects in a different light, generating new and better solutions to new or old problems, and connecting the dots in novel ways. Whether in business, the arts, science, or your personal life, the creativity mindset requires flexibility, imagination, originality, and inventiveness. The definition of a satisfying end result may be more subjective than objective. The desired outcome may be altered or transformed as you wander toward it and your perspective changes.

It is the best mindset to have when:

You aren’t following—or don’t have—a blueprint, set of guidelines, or format to go by.
You haven’t yet determined or defined the full scope of the project, idea, or problem.
You are either open to, need to, or want to arrive at an innovative solution.

It isn’t necessarily a good mindset to have when:

The best outcome amounts to reinventing the wheel.
You’re facing a deadline and the existing system or guidelines are good enough.
It’s a ploy to help you avoid making a commitment, taking action, or making a mistake.

Some things to remember about creativity and the creativity mindset are:

It makes use of the brain’s default mode network, which includes mind wandering, free association, spontaneous cognition, and other System 1 processes we’re not consciously aware of.
System 1 processing is non-linear and doesn’t produce results according to an external time frame.
Practice saying yes. Distraction—and even daydreaming (what’s called “positive constructive daydreaming”)—can be more helpful than harmful to the creativity mindset.
Pursuing ideas, interests, or trains of thought that seem far-fetched or disconnected may turn out to provide the missing link or lead to an aha!
Pitfalls to over-use or inappropriate use of the creativity mindset include: drifting and dreaming (losing your way), continually second-guessing yourself, not meeting deadlines or being unresponsive to others, focusing on vision to the exclusion of action, and failure to contribute anything useful or meaningful to the world.

Both Mindsets

Of course you undoubtedly use both of these mindsets, sometimes on the same project or process. You may have a preference for one over the other, or you may simply have more experience with one of them. But it’s much easier to achieve the desired results or outcome if you identify what you’re trying to accomplish and which mindset is the best one to get the job done.

Both the productivity mindset and the creativity mindset function best when they have a target: a clearly defined—and juicy—desired outcome or vision. You can move the target, but you won’t get anywhere satisfying without one.

Both mindsets also function best when you:

Develop supportive habits and routines—and maintain them.
Take breaks throughout the day and get enough R&R and sleep.
Move! Exercise, walk, dance, or hike.

As for your desk:

A messy desk is distracting and can hamper your ability to focus and process information. So if you want to be productive, clear your desk.
But a messy or disorderly environment can help you “break free of tradition,” according to researchers, which can lead to fresh insights and a free flow of ideas. So if you want to be creative, don’t clear your desk—or maintain a “creative” space to work in.

Light Up Your Brain with Gratitude

November 27, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Thanksgiving is the one day a year we set aside to reflect on the people and the things we’re grateful for. At least that’s the idea. The reality of feast, family, friends, fun, and football isn’t entirely off the mark. All those warm, festive feelings are good for us and good for each other. At least they have the potential for keeping us out of trouble. But the giving thanks part of Thanksgiving can easily fall by the wayside, especially in light of another characteristic of the holiday: frenzy.

Yes, it’s nice to have a day that’s focused on people getting along, eating good food together, and thinking about what we’re grateful for. But it’s hard to stuff a year’s worth of gratitude into a single day. Gratitude is more powerful and more effective when undertaken as a regular practice than when treated as an annual event.

Multiple studies confirm that gratitude can improve your health, happiness, and wellbeing. Among other things, a regular gratitude practice can help you:

Sleep better and longer
Exercise more
Be more optimistic
Decrease aches and pains
Lower anxiety and depression
Increase resilience

How? Well, researchers at the National Institute of Health (NIH) observed that people who felt gratitude had higher activity in the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is an area of the brain responsible for controlling such bodily functions as eating, drinking, and sleeping, as well as influencing stress levels and metabolism.

Gratitude also activates the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is involved in the brain’s reward system. The release of dopamine fills us with a feeling of pleasure. It’s the reward we get for the behavior we just engaged in. The purpose of the brain’s reward system is to help ensure that we learn—and remember—behaviors that enhance our chances of remaining alive. That’s why so many of the things we naturally find rewarding are related to food and reproduction. In addition to food and sex, lots of things trigger the release of dopamine, including social interactions, generosity, and—as it turns out—gratitude.

Dopamine plays a role in:

Movement
Memory
Behavior and cognition
Attention and alertness
Motivation
Sleep
Mood
Learning

It’s part of a brain circuit called the mesolimbic pathway, which connects behaviors to feelings of pleasure, resulting in the formation of habits. When dopamine is released, emotional and learning circuits are activated to increase the likelihood we will remember what we did so we can repeat the behavior. The hit of dopamine we get from feeling grateful engages our brain in what neuroscience researcher Alex Korb calls “a virtuous cycle.” Once we begin practicing gratitude, our brain actively looks for things to be grateful for. How cool is that?

Find a Gratitude Practice that Works for You

There are several different ways to practice gratitude. You can choose one, mix and match, or modify one or more to suit yourself. The keyword is “practice,” which means doing it on a regular basis.

Gratitude Journal: Keep a gratitude journal in which to record things you experience that you’re grateful for. You can do it by hand, on a computer, or with an app.

Gratitude List: Think of—or record—one or more things you’re grateful for, either every day or once a week. Interestingly, there’s evidence that doing this weekly is more effective than doing it daily.

Expressing Gratitude: Create a daily practice of conveying your gratitude to other people—friends, family, co-workers, service people, even strangers—verbally or in writing.

Gratitude Meditation: Begin your meditation by acknowledging what you are grateful for in the present moment.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. —Albert Schweitzer

Gratitude is an appreciation for what is meaningful and valuable to us. Simply experiencing feelings of gratitude can enhance our wellbeing by changing our brain. But since we’re social animals, it makes sense that sharing those feelings by expressing our gratitude whenever possible is even more rewarding.

Civil Discourse, Critical Thinking…and Facebook

October 9, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 8 Comments

I’m going to tell you about my abortion, but first some background. Facebook has only been accessible to the general public for about 10 years, but it’s hard to remember life before it—probably impossible for those of a certain age. As a social networking site, it started out as a place to share personal information and photos and to meet like-minded others. It developed a reputation for focusing excessively on “what people had for lunch,” which is how those who disdain it still think of it.

Honestly, I can’t remember why I joined Facebook, and there have been periods when I haven’t paid much attention to it. It’s a curious phenomenon. At my Monthly Meeting of the Mind (& Brain) last month, I asked everyone to share the first word or phrase that came to mind when I said “Facebook.” The responses varied; mine was information. That’s primarily why I use it now, and why I would be loathe to give it up. So many educational, scientific, and just plain thought-provoking sources update their Facebook feeds on a regular basis that it allows me to keep current without having to spend hours going to individual websites or searching the internet for what I might not even know is available.

But more and more Facebook is also becoming a place for us to let everyone know where we stand in matters political, social, religious, moral, dietary, and in regard to the age-old question: which makes a better pet, a cat or a dog? I guess this is only natural, a logical outcome of the sharing we do of our favorite movies, the books we’ve read, the sports teams we follow, and the posts we “like.”

The cat vs. dog argument rarely gets ugly. The same can’t be said for our stances in those other, more highly charged, areas. That’s because we don’t simply want to let others know our position. Kind of like chest-beating apes, we want to proclaim our superiority. We want to demonstrate how right we are and how wrong those who disagree with us are. As a result, many such posts amount to a whole lot of signifying, righteous indignation, and extreme disdain for those on the other side. Because if we’re on one side, there has to be another side. And if we’re right, those others have to be wrong.

This cognitive bias is known as black and white thinking. It’s a simplistic way of viewing an issue that doesn’t allow for shades of gray. Imagine two groups of people shouting at each other across a vast chasm. Neither group is listening to the other; no difference is being made. But everyone has a sense of satisfaction as a result of expressing their opinion.

The problem is that although no practical difference is being made, this state of affairs is not innocuous. If one person proclaims his or her position and implies that those on the other side are misinformed, mentally challenged, or flat-out evil, you can bet those others are going to react. It’s like throwing a metaphorical hand grenade into a crowd. Most likely, those on the receiving end are going to respond as if they’re being threatened. How do you react when you’re being threatened? Do you stop to evaluate the merits of your aggressor’s point of view?

On the Other Hand…

I have this crazy idea that Facebook could be a possibility for civil discourse between people of opposing views, so every once in a while I attempt to engage with someone who clearly doesn’t see things the way I do.

One of my friends shared a recent meme suggesting that men who want to purchase guns should be required to go through the same hoops women seeking abortions have to go through. One of her Facebook friends commented that most people who buy guns never kill anything, but every woman who has an abortion kills a human being.

I had an abortion many years ago, and this woman’s assertion hit me hard. After taking a deep breath, I decided to respond. I replied that what she’d said was a generalization that wasn’t true. Her response was that regardless of my opinion, abortion was MURDER (caps hers). She also indicated she had children, who had been “valuable human beings from the moment of conception.” At that point I realized it was the ideology talking, so it was futile to pursue a dialogue. I told her she was fortunate to have been able to conceive and bear children, which wasn’t the case for some of the rest of us. And I ended the interaction.

But it was painful to have this woman who knows nothing about me or my experience make unwarranted assumptions about me and obliquely, at least, cast me in the role of a murderer. Every woman who has an abortion kills a human being. Based purely on the fact that I’d disagreed with her, she determined I was on the opposite side, and therefore in favor of abortion. Since, in her mind, there are only two sides (you’re either with us or against us), that meant I was wrong and she was not interested in hearing anything I had to say.

I’m pro-choice. That doesn’t mean what anti-abortionists think it means. In my case, having an abortion was not only the last thing I wanted to do, it didn’t actually involve much choice on my part.

Failure to Conceive

I’d always assumed I would have children—that it would just happen when I was ready to start a family. I don’t recall ever thinking otherwise. Both of my younger brothers had married and had children by the time I got married. But it never happened for me. I spent more than two years going through fertility treatments, seeing different doctors, taking my basal body temperature every day, having to show up at the gynecologist’s office at the crack of dawn, and facing the same disappointment month after month. I joined the subculture of women who are consumed by their attempts to get pregnant. And I mean consumed. Getting pregnant was the number one focus of our attention, the main thing we read about, talked about, and thought about.

Finally, as a result of the most painful medical procedure I’ve ever had, it was determined that my Fallopian tubes were blocked, which meant all of my efforts of the previous two years had been futile. I could not get pregnant. There might have been further treatment available. I can’t remember. I do know I was worn out from the ordeal by then. So I came to terms with the situation and settled into my childless life. No one had told me it was possible for Fallopian tubes to become unblocked all by themselves—which is what happened to me a few years before menopause.

I’d been feeling tired and run down, but didn’t think anything of it at first. I wasn’t nauseous. I just didn’t feel like myself. Then I noticed I hadn’t had a period for two months. A couple of friends kept asking me if I’d had a pregnancy test, and I remember being quite irritated. So late one Friday evening, I drove to a drugstore and bought a test solely to be able to prove they were wrong. The insert that came with the test showed a pale pink “positive” response. What I got was hot pink—closer to fuschia. I was stunned.

I wasn’t working at that time and had no health insurance. I was also in my mid-40s, and my then partner (the same person I’d been married to previously—another story altogether) was 14 years older than me. But after the shock wore off, I immediately started trying to figure out how I could do this thing. I checked out every pregnancy book the local library had on its shelves. I told several of my friends—and everyone I spoke to offered to help me any way they could. One person gave me the name and number of her gynecologist, and early on Monday I called for an appointment. They got me in within a couple of days, by which time I already knew there were potential problems and risks associated with having a first pregnancy at my age.

Happy Valentine’s Day

I had an amniocentesis. My fingers were crossed for the better part of a week. If the baby was OK, I would have it. I would be a mother! But that wasn’t the way this story played out. When the doctor called to give me the test results, he told me that I would eventually miscarry, and if I waited for that to happen, it could be dangerous, even life-threatening. He wanted me to have the abortion procedure as soon as possible. In fact, he had a cancellation that week. It was on Valentine’s Day. I took the appointment.

I’m sure the Facebook commenter who thinks all women who get abortions are murderers is quite confident she is in the right. For my part, it’s hard to imagine how someone who was able to have children—something I may have spent more time, attention, energy, and money attempting to do than she did—could possibly have anything but sympathy for me. It’s true she doesn’t know the particulars of my situation. But that’s exactly my point. When you’re shouting (MURDER) across the chasm at the other side, you don’t need to be bothered by particulars. There are no shades of gray.

It doesn’t matter what the issue is or what side of the political spectrum we’re on or how confident we feel about our beliefs or positions. If we’re participating in this shouting match, we’re part of what’s wrong in the world. It’s so easy to share things on Facebook or to dash off a righteously indignant comment that we don’t even have to think about it. But we ought to think about it. We ought to engage the conscious part of our brain for a few seconds to ask ourselves what we’re doing. Do we really need to keep shouting and lobbing metaphorical hand grenades at each other? Is that the best we can do?

Are You Chasing Squirrels?

September 11, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 7 Comments

If a dog spots a squirrel, it will automatically chase the squirrel. The dog may have been involved in some other activity, but once a squirrel arrives on the scene, the dog’s attention is redirected to chasing it. Dogs don’t have to be trained to chase squirrels. They have to be trained to not chase them.

In regard to chasing the squirrely things that capture our immediate attention, humans are not very different from dogs. Chasing is the default response to squirrels—be they real or metaphorical. We don’t have to be trained to chase those ideas or objects or trivial pursuits. We have to be trained to not chase them.

One of my clients has created a goal action plan to clear away the accumulated clutter in her home so the house can be cleaned before her best friend comes to visit next month. She’s done a good job of identifying both the desired outcome and all the steps that need to be taken, and she’s been able to check some items off the list.

But last week she reported that instead of proceeding to the next step, she spent several days rearranging the furniture in her living room. Rearranging things, especially furniture, is something she finds highly gratifying. Indeed, engaging in this kind of activity makes her feel good because it provides her with hits of dopamine. Given an opportunity to chase squirrels (rearrange furniture) or proceed with clearing clutter, her automatic response will probably always be to go after the squirrels.

As a result of the diversion, she fell behind on her goal action plan, and now she’s anxious about being able to finish everything in time. Nevertheless, an opportunity to plan a fun new trip just presented itself, and she has begun chasing after that squirrel.

Other members of the class she’s in didn’t understand why there was anything wrong with taking time to rearrange the furniture as long as she felt good as a result of doing it. And although she was aware of how chasing that squirrel had negatively impacted her, her awareness didn’t carry over to the next squirrel that presented itself (planning the new trip).

We’re Wired to Chase Squirrels

She’s hardly unique in her compulsion to chase squirrels. We all do it, and we all rationalize it, too. We have great, sometimes elaborate, explanations and justifications for why chasing some particular squirrel was absolutely, positively essential at the time we went after it. We don’t all chase the same squirrels, but most of the time our explanations for why we’re chasing our particular cute, furry rodents are highly fictionalized. So I give her kudos for paying attention and recognizing the cost.

We’re wired to respond to those things that will gratify us right now, not the things that have long-term payoffs. And we’re wired to do what makes us feel good. In other words, we’re programmed to chase squirrels, but that doesn’t mean we should just go ahead and do it. Chasing squirrels can get in the way of all kinds of things, including relationships, careers, projects, health, and both medium- and long-term goals. If we can’t resist the attraction, we’re at the mercy of whatever squirrel happens to shows up in our neighborhood. Squirrels are hardest to resist when System 2 is depleted. And if we aren’t committed to something that’s both compelling and urgent, the squirrels will get us every time.

But if we are focused on something bigger, farther down the road, that’s more satisfying and meaningful than the quick hit of dopamine we get from immediate gratification, we need to stop the compulsive squirrel chasing. To do that, we can apply the same techniques to train ourselves to follow through on our goal, habit, or project as we would to train a dog to stop behaving badly: repetition, persistence, and treats (rewards) for good behavior.

It can be helpful to identify the squirrels that are most likely to attract our attention so we can set some guidelines or limits as to when and how we want to respond to them. It really does come down to the sometimes painful fact that we can have what really matters to is or we can have the freedom to not have it, but we can’t have both.

What kind of squirrels do you find impossible to resist? And how do you resist them (when you do)?

Buddhism, the Enneagram, and Neuroscience

July 24, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

I got up so tight I couldn’t unwind
I saw so much I broke my mind
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

—words by Mickey Newbury, vocals by Kenny Rogers

The “human condition,” according to at least three sources—Buddhism, the Enneagram, and now, neuroscience—is that we’re all operating on autopilot, asleep at the switch, in a “consensus trance,” staggering through life like zombies. We humans have been advised as to what condition our condition is in for 2,600 years or more. There’s not much left to debate about it.

But if that’s the human condition, why can’t we just go with the flow? Why not simply accept things as they are? Why should we care or make the effort to become more aware? Buddhism, the Enneagram, and neuroscience, while in agreement on the nature of the human condition, have slightly different answers to the question of why we might want to do something about it.

Buddhism: We Want to Get Out of Jail

We’re stuck inside this prison we ourselves constructed, and we want to locate the exit.

Most traditional spirituality and religion, including Buddhism, really, is really about … How do we get the hell out of here, and how do we get away from the Earthly mess, or the limitations or the conditioning? How do we rise above it, how do we go through it, move through it, how do we evolve beyond it? —John Welwood

This is more or less an attempt to escape the human condition or at least escape the suffering and unhappiness it gives rise to. In Buddhism, you escape from this prison by achieving Nirvana, either in life or after death. The perspective is that much of “the Earthly mess” is illusion and we can free ourselves from its pull—and from the cycle of life and death—by waking up to that reality.

You are already enlightened. All you’ve got to do is stop blocking yourself and get serious about attending to what’s going on. You are not lacking a thing. You only need to stop blocking or interpreting your vision. —Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple

Buddhism gets it right that we create much of our own dissatisfaction, suffering, and unhappiness. But it gets it wrong about why and how we do that, as well as about how much power we have to stop doing it and to get in touch with so-called reality. Perception is not reality. Our inherent and limited perceptive abilities constrain us from making direct contact with “reality,” and there’s nothing we can do to change that no matter how enlightened we may be. That’s also part of the human condition.

There is a lot more to Buddhism than this, of course. Perhaps its greatest contribution has been the attention it has given to developing awareness, both self-awareness and awareness of the world around us.

Enneagram: We Want to Be Authentic

We’re at the effect of our compulsions and aren’t acting freely or making free choices and we want to locate our true selves so we can act authentically.

The wisdom that is foundational to the Enneagram propels us out of that stuck place where we are caught in the cares and anxieties of life, and it guides us toward our souls. The Enneagram reveals the relationship between our souls (or true selves) and the experience we have of ourselves daily, which we usually name personality and which, in reality, is a combination of our true personality with our false personality (emphasis theirs). —Kathy Hurley and Theodorre Donson, Discover Your Soul Potential

According to most teachers, writers, and practitioners of the Enneagram, operating on autopilot keeps us out of touch with our essence. When we’re at the effect of our type-related compulsions, we’re not acting authentically. But if we can recognize and transcend the automatic behavior of our Enneagram type, we can get in touch with—and act from—our essential nature.

By helping us see how trapped we are in our trances and how estranged we are from our Essential nature, the Enneagram invites us to look deeply into the mystery of our true identity. It is meant to initiate a process of inquiry that can lead us to a more profound truth about ourselves and our place in the world. —Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson, The Wisdom of the Enneagram

This is an attempt to strip away the veneer of the human condition (our false personalities) to get at something that’s deeper and truer, but a bit hard to describe and contact. What is our true identity? Is it our soul or is it something else altogether? And what profound truth are we being led to? How will we know when we’ve found it?

Searching for our true, authentic identity seems to be a bit of a fool’s errand, given that in recent decades, psychologists, philosophers, neuroscientists, and people in many other fields have reached the conclusion that rather than being one self, we are actually many selves.

The esoteric elements of the Enneagram seem to fascinate the majority of people who work with it. It hasn’t been around—or at least hasn’t been known—as long as Buddhism, but it has given rise to a number of variations just as Buddhism now takes many different forms.

The Enneagram tends to be spot-on when it comes to identifying the thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and even motivations of the different types. In that regard, it’s an incredibly practical and useful tool for identifying our autopilot, asleep-at-the-wheel behavior. But things quickly become muddled when we start trying to identify and home in on that nebulous thing called essence or soul.

Neuroscience: We Want to Understand How Our Brain Actually Works (or Do We?)

Regrettably, some people want to understand how the brain works in order to manipulate people into doing one thing as opposed to another or into buying whatever they’re selling. But that isn’t unique to this day and age. And some are hoping brain research provides evidence to support their particular beliefs and positions so they can be proven right.

Most of us are satisfied with our theories about ourselves and accept them with confidence, but we rarely see those theories tested. Scientists, however, are now able to test those theories in the laboratory, and they have proven astonishingly inaccurate. —Leonard Mlodinow, Subliminal

All these theories were based on an assumption—that human behavior was the product of knowledge and conscious intention. We believed that if you educated people, and provided them with accurate information, and offered them the right incentives, and threatened them with suitable punishments, and appealed to their better natures, and marked the exits clearly, the errors would vanish. Bad outcomes had to be the product of stupidity, ignorance, and bad intentions. —Shankar Vedantam, The Hidden Brain

Inevitably, what we have learned from neuroscience in the past few decades has undermined a lot of what we previously thought and believed about the mind and brain. I think the biggest revelation has been the discovery of the extent to which we are quite irrational yet fail to see and acknowledge this basic fact of life. Blinders firmly in place, we operate as though we are rational and we expect other people to be rational, too. But rational acts are the result of conscious (System 2) thinking, which is generally in short supply and often misapplied. Our belief in our rationality is not supported by the evidence.

This isn’t just opinion; it has now been repeatedly demonstrated and the reasons for, and the underpinnings of, our irrationality have been explained in great detail. No matter how much we want to believe otherwise, we are not rational animals. We do not act rationally. We do not think rationally. It’s not just that guy over there who’s irrational or the members of that other political party. It’s you and me, too.

The preface to the book Beasts by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (ex-psychoanalyst and former director of the Freud Archives) is titled “Can the Human Species Wake Up?” It begins with this quote:

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. —Stephen Hawking

Moussaieff’s book is an examination of human nature, particularly in regard to our propensity for cruelty, violence, and war. Whereas we often describe people who behave badly as “beasts” (of the animal kingdom), no other animals demonstrate the type and degree of violence humans do, to each other and to other creatures. Yet we continue to see ourselves as rational beings, superior to those “beasts.”

The main thing we can wake up to, according to the findings of neuroscience, is the full extent of our limitations. This is quite a different message from the ones we get from either Buddhism or the Enneagram. It doesn’t feel like good news. It’s not easy to accept. But the fact that, bottom line, we are all irrational beings explains quite a bit about humans and human nature. And the implications for us as individuals, groups, nations, and the entire human race are nothing short of enormous.

The second part of the quote from John Welwood (in the section on Buddhism) is this:

And I think the problem we’ve seen over time, over the centuries, is that spirituality then is completely cut off from daily life, and our spirituality and religion is not transforming daily life. You can see after thousands of years, we’ve had thousands of years of Buddhas, people who’ve been waking up and having beautiful, transcendent realizations, but how much of it percolated down into daily life, and into the human realm of our lives and what’s going on on the planet? Not very much, I have to say. So I think the time is calling on us to say, if we want to survive as a species here, you’re going to have to really bring the largest truth down into the very heart of how you relate to other people and how you relate to yourself in a personal way as well.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the “largest truth” turns out to be the one now being illuminated for us by neuroscience?

What Can We Do?

Buddhism, the Enneagram, and neuroscience all have practical tools to offer us for approaching and dealing with the human condition. Each tool is certainly useful by itself, but combining them creates a synergistic effect, enhancing all of them, and giving us the best chance of transcending those limitations—at least a little.

Buddhism: Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a great practice for increasing awareness and quieting the mind. Instead of being completely at the effect of what is going on around you or inside your own head, you can stop for a period of time to simply be present and aware of those things, non-reactively.

Mindfulness meditation has a slew of physical, mental, and emotional benefits, including:

Lowering stress
Reducing chronic pain
Improving sleep
Treating heart disease
Alleviating depression and anxiety
Improving recovery outcomes for substance abuse

It can even change your brain for the better.

Mindfulness is a specific application of System 2 attention, and since System 2 attention is limited, you can’t be mindful either all or most of the time. It’s not so hard to maintain a mindful state if you live cloistered or in a monastery. The fewer things you have to mind, the more mindful you can be. But if you live in the world as we do, and have the brains we have, you simply can’t be mindful all the time.

If we attempted to be mindful—that is, pay conscious attention—to every single thing from the time we woke up in the morning, we would quickly deplete our reserve of conscious attention. Then, if a situation arose that required conscious attention, we might not be able to think clearly because we wouldn’t have enough attention to devote to it. That’s an example of being “brain dead.”

We have to allocate our System 2 attention to various activities throughout the day, and there’s no point in allocating it to insignificant activities we can perform on autopilot given that we do need to use it for more complex activities.

In Living the Mindful Life, Charles Tart says:

We can have levels of mindlessness, ranging from simple inattention to the immediate physical world through insensitivity to our interactions with others we care about to a deep and fundamental mindlessness about our most important values and real nature.

I think it’s a mistake to think of these as simply different levels of the same thing (mindlessness). What he calls inattention to the immediate physical world is simply System 1 doing its thing. There’s nothing wrong with it per se and there’s no way to stop it.

What we can do is aim for practicing mindfulness meditation (or any form of mindfulness) on a regular basis instead of trying to be mindful all the time. Practicing mindfulness meditation will allow us to detach from our monkey mind, at least a little, and allow us to slow down, breathe, and notice some of the things we usually tune out of our awareness.

Enneagram: Develop the Habit of Self-Observation

The Enneagram shows us how each of us is asleep by describing our automatic reactions (or compulsions). It’s possible to spend an inordinate amount of time in a fruitless search to discover the underpinnings of our recurring patterns of behavior. Why do I do this? What causes me to react this way? The antidote for that is to see ourselves described in a book by an author who doesn’t know us, and to learn that a multitude of other people we’ve never met, with entirely different backgrounds from ours, share those patterns of behavior with us.

While we can certainly observe our thoughts, feelings, and reactions without knowing anything about the Enneagram, knowing the characteristics of our Enneagram type can save us a lot of time by providing us with some direction as to what to focus on or pay attention to. If we want to stop being at the effect of our autopilot behavior, it’s helpful to have some understanding of what that behavior actually is.

If we know we tend to have a particular reaction or pattern of thought, we’ll find it much easier to begin recognizing it when it shows up. If we don’t know what to look for, we’re in the position of trying to find multiple needles in multiple haystacks.

When you strip the esoteric and spiritual elements away from the Enneagram, what remains is an extremely practical and valuable tool for seeing our own autopilot behavior clearly and understanding other people—without judgment. The danger from a little knowledge of the Enneagram is a tendency to use it as an excuse for our behavior and/or as a rationale for stereotyping other people. Combining mindfulness with self-observation puts the brakes on those tendencies.

What we can do is learn the particulars of our Enneagram type and then develop the habit of observing those thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and reactions in ourselves. The Enneagram doesn’t explain every single aspect of every person. It’s not a Theory of Everything. But it does give us a context for our behavior. By observing what we tend to do, we can begin to see some of our own limits and limitations. We have to know what we’re doing now before we can do something else.

Neuroscience: Face the Facts

This is our basic human situation. Most of us sense that something is amiss with our lives. But we haven’t any idea what our problem really is, or what we should do about it….All the pain we bring to ourselves and others—the hatred, the warring, the groveling, the manipulation—is our own doing. It comes out of our own hearts and minds, out of our own confusion. Furthermore, if we don’t see exactly what the problem is, we’re going to perpetuate it. We’re going to teach our children our confusion, and we’ll go on, generation after generation, doing more of the same to ourselves and to each other. —Steve Hagen, Buddhism, Plain and Simple

Although this quote is from a book on Buddhism, it applies just as well to what we’re learning about the human condition from neuroscience. As long as we don’t understand how our brain actually works, we’re going to keep doing the same things, making the same mistakes, and passing the whole mess on to the next generations.

Practicing mindfulness and developing the habit of self-observation can alleviate some of the pain and discontent. But that’s not enough. As long as we fail to acknowledge how irrational we are, our irrationality will color everything we do, both individually and as a species.

What we can do is get to know how our brain works and be mindful—non-reactively—of the limits of our perception, our control, and our rationality. We can loosen the reins on our craving for certainty and for being right. We can observe—non-judgmentally—our own cognitive biases, prejudices, and flawed reasoning. If we can accept these things in ourselves, we might have a chance of accepting them in others.

Continuing to operate under the assumption that we are rational beings—when, in fact, we are not—has consequences in almost every area of our lives and in nearly every problem we face on this planet. There may be nothing more important than coming to terms with this basic fact of life, the condition that our condition is in.