Mindset Archives - Page 2 of 2

Time to Let Go of the
Myth of the True Self

May 18, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

The True Self is a fantasy version of you. It’s who you were meant to be—who you should be or who you could be if you hadn’t lost your way or if life hadn’t messed you up. Your True Self contains all the best qualities and potential available to you. If you could reconnect with it, you would be able to make a different choice. You would always do the right thing.

But the True Self doesn’t exist. There’s no alternate version of you to compare yourself to.

When the present doesn’t measure up to what you imagine it could be, you might have the feeling that something is missing or wrong. You might conclude that what’s wrong—or broken—is you.

If you see the problem as something being wrong with you, you will likely try to solve it by finding a way to fix what’s broken or not working. You might attempt to construct a bread-crumb trail backward to figure out why you do the things you do instead of the things you’d prefer (or think you should prefer) doing.

You might try getting in touch with your True Self or discovering your life purpose or passion. But you are many selves, rather than a single self, so what does authentic even mean in that context? And if you don’t have a True Self, there’s no point in searching for the life-purpose cheese because whose life purpose would it be?

Belief in a True Self Isn’t Harmless.

If your status quo includes such a belief, consider the implications:

You need to fix yourself before you can determine who you want to be or what you want to do. So some aspects of your life are either on hold or have been abandoned altogether as you attempt these fixes—sometimes energetically, sometimes halfheartedly—usually repeatedly.
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Your ideas about how you should be are based on looking backward rather than forward.
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Your ideas about your True Self come from your Broken Self. (Where else could they come from?) Your concept of your True Self is most likely based on what you don’t like about your current self.
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It is hard to trust your Broken Self to restore you to your True Self and to believe you have sufficient personal agency to do it.
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Trying to fix yourself is hard work, and it’s neither inspiring nor motivating: the best you can do is get back to where you should have been all along. That is unlikely to be compelling enough to generate a sense of urgency.
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If you erased the experiences and beliefs that have made you who you are, you would no longer be you. Who would you be then? And what would you want? As Julian Baggini says:

I am my baggage. I am the layers that have grown on the onion, not the tiny core at the middle. We are precisely all the things we’ve accrued, the memories, the experience, the learning. If you strip away what you call the baggage, you’re stripping away precisely the things that make us…that fill us out.

Belief in a True Self reflects a static, deterministic, mechanical perspective that is at odds with the dynamic nature of our existence. It keeps us going round and round on the hamster wheel instead of creating change or moving forward.

You Are Here.

You happen to be functioning exactly the way all human beings function: you can—and do—generate multiple possible alternatives to what’s so. Not only can you imagine many scenarios that are quite different from the present, you readily and frequently compare the actual to the imaginary—and often find the actual to be wanting. That’s only a problem if you interpret it that way.

Yes, imagination is a double-edged sword. Our ability to imagine things that don’t yet exist sets us apart and has led to our continued survival thus far. It’s an essential element of creativity and invention and without it we would be unable to formulate plans or goals or even think about the future.

Imagination is also the primary source of dissatisfaction. Without it, you would be much more content—but you also wouldn’t be you.

If you’re not satisfied with the present, but there’s nothing wrong with you, you will need to redefine the problem before you can attempt to solve it. Consider that you are just who you are: the current version of you, neither broken nor exactly as you would like to be. Instead of fixing yourself, which is not only uninspiring but also impossible, how about imagining what you want to create and moving forward into that?

Based on an article published in lucidwaking on 1/21/19.

Scout vs. Soldier
(more on mindsets)

April 18, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Do you want to be right or do you want to get it right?

You might manage to do both at the same time, but the question isn’t about your result. It’s about your underlying intention or aim.

It’s an important question because the answer determines how you process information. And how you process information can have a considerable influence on how well you succeed at accomplishing what you set out to do.

Soldier or Scout?

Julia Galef, president of the Center for Applied Rationality in Berkeley, has come up with a great metaphor to describe these two different mindsets: the soldier and the scout.

She says that when you operate from the soldier mindset, your actions stem from reflexes rooted in a need to protect yourself and your side and to defeat the enemy, whoever or whatever it may be.

On the other hand, when you operate from the scout mindset, your actions are based not on attacking or defending but on understanding the terrain and potential obstacles. You want to know what’s really there as accurately as possible.

Confirmation or Feedback?

In the grand scheme of things, both mindsets are valuable. Obviously there are times when you need to defend and protect—and maintain the status quo. But if you’re trying to change your status quo, you need to know how to distinguish relevant information from irrelevant information. You also need to pay attention to what happens when you take steps to achieve your goals. You can interpret what happens as either confirmation or feedback.

If you’re aiming to confirm and defend your pre-existing beliefs (soldier mindset), you won’t be inclined to examine what happens with any degree of objectivity. Instead you’ll be quick to jump to a conclusion and then build a case to support it by what’s referred to as motivated reasoning.

But if you view what happens as feedback (scout mindset), you tend to be curious about it. You want to understand it because the better you understand it the better you’ll be at making accurate course corrections. People with a scout mindset, Galef says, “are more likely to feel intrigued when they encounter something that contradicts their expectations.”

The soldier mindset is easier to access because System 1 is often more concerned with being right than it is with getting it right. Soldier mindset is automatic. You don’t have to do anything to slip into it. It’s easier to jump to conclusions than it is to be deliberate and thoughtful and willing to acknowledge doubt and uncertainty.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. —Voltaire

You can end up paying a very high price when you aim to be right instead of to get it right. It’s easier to dig your heels in than it is to admit you’ve made a mistake or have changed your mind. But if you can’t change your mind, you won’t be able to change your status quo.

Bias and the soldier mindset come naturally to us. But in order to master the art and science of change, we need to develop critical thinking skills and operate from the scout mindset more than we do from the soldier mindset.

How Your Mindset Sets You Up

April 8, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

A mindset is the set of ideas, beliefs, or attitudes with which you approach situations or people—or through which you view them. It determines how you interpret situations and respond to them. Mindsets have something in common with habits since they tend to be habitual, which means largely unconscious. They are a type of mental shortcut; they operate based on assumptions, and they generate expectations.

You can have mindsets about yourself, other people or groups of people, places, situations, events, political organizations, types of music—actually just about anything. A mindset can have surprisingly deep and far-reaching effects.

Mindsets Are Self-Reinforcing

You’ve probably heard someone described as having a victim mentality, which is the same as having a victim mindset. If you have a victim mindset you would tend to:

feel that others are to blame for your misfortunes
believe you are powerless to alter your circumstances
have a primarily external locus of control
be disinclined to take personal responsibility
distrust other people
fail to take positive action on your own behalf

The first three attitudes and beliefs lead to the subsequent three behaviors—which, in turn, confirm the attitudes and beliefs. Like any mindset, a victim mindset causes you to view situations, events, and interpersonal relationships through a distorted filter. It leads you to believe your perception isreality. That’s one of the ways your mindset sets you up.

A Few Other Mindsets (Labels)

I’ve written about the productivity vs. creativity mindsets. Here are some others to consider.

Survivalist
Globalist
Entrepreneurial
Lifelong Learner
Achiever
Maker
Activist
Liberal
Conservative
Libertarian
Progressive
Outsider

Recognizing and Changing a Mindset

When examining a mindset, it’s important to know what it is, when it’s in effect, and how it affects your perception, interpretation, and response. But trying to understand where it came from or how it developed is a side trip that won’t get you closer to altering it. (It doesn’t matter how you came to possess the diffusion filter for your camera lens. Once you install it, it affects what you see when you look through the lens.) Instead, focus on determining your mindset’s attributes: what beliefs, attitudes, personality traits, etc. are part of it?

One of the best ways to catch your mindset in the act is to notice when your expectations of a person or a situation are not met. Instead of pausing to consider the source of your expectations, your brain is more likely to jump into action to find a suitable explanation that will allow you to comfortably fit the experience into your ongoing inner narrative. Unfortunately, even when reality conflicts with your mindset, your brain’s tendency is to interpret what happens in a way that reinforces your mindset.

After you develop an understanding of a mindset you want to change:

Clarify why you want to change it.
Determine your desired outcome.
Identify one situation to change.

Remember that it’s easier to focus on and change a behavior (what you do) than it is to focus on and change a thought, a thought pattern, or a belief. Create an intention to change your behavior in one situation and apply repetition and perseverance until the new behavior or response becomes the status quo.

It isn’t easy to recognize or change a mindset, but if you focus on the mechanics (what, when, and how), you can do it. And it’s worth the effort to open your mind, shift your perspective, and learn how to adjust your personal camera lens filters so you aren’t stuck with whatever lenses you happen to have developed over the course of your life.