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Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

Giving the Unconscious a Makeover

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Humans have been aware for quite some time that the unconscious—a powerful yet mysterious force that exerts some degree of control over us—must exist. But what exactly is it? It can’t be accessed directly, and the technologies for observing brain activity are relatively recent. So over time, numerous theories about the unconscious have been proposed, including concepts for what it does, what its purpose is, and what’s actually in it.

The various, often competing, theories of the unconscious have clouded our current understanding of it.

Some earlier theories have been proven to be partially (even surprisingly) correct, while others appear to be far off the mark. The current perspective of the unconscious has challenged many cherished and long-held beliefs. For one thing, it has added considerable fuel to the debate about free will, which is normally the province of philosophers and religious scholars.

There remains some disagreement, mainly within different branches of psychology, about how the unconscious functions and what it does. But although there is much left to discover about the unconscious—and about the brain, in general—we have learned quite a bit about it in the past few decades.

The Freudian View
It’s a jungle down there.

The idea of the unconscious existed before Freud, but his model is the one most closely associated with the concept.

He came up with the “tip of the iceberg” view of the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind.

Freud was correct in regard to the powerful impact of the unconscious on our thoughts, feelings, and behavior: we are not entirely aware of what we think and often have no idea why we do some of the things we do.

He based his model of the unconscious on case studies involving “abnormal thought and behavior.” It was not arrived at by scientific experimentation, many of the tools of which were unavailable to him.

Freud thought the unconscious contained repressed thoughts, feelings, and memories, which were too disturbing to admit to consciousness. He didn’t think people repressed things intentionally. He thought the unconscious, at least in part, determined what was repressed.

Over the years, empirical tests have not been kind to the specifics of the Freudian model, though in broad-brush terms the cognitive and social psychological evidence does support Freud as to the existence of unconscious mentation and its potential to impact judgments and behavior. —John A. Bargh and Ezequiel Morsella, The Unconscious Mind

He believed there was an aspect of consciousness called “preconscious” that contained thoughts, ideas, memories, etc. that were not in conscious awareness, but that could easily become conscious—meaning they were not repressed.

He also considered the unconscious to be the source of anxiety-provoking drives that were unacceptable to the individual for one reason or another.

He proposed that the unconscious was divided into the id (primitive; the source of drives), the ego (regulator or satisfier of the id; referee between the id and the superego), and the superego (censor of the ego, source of guilt, moral monitor). These concepts are not generally used outside of psychoanalysis, one of the aims of which is to make what is unconscious conscious.

Freud believed we can become aware of some unconscious motivations indirectly through dreams (“the royal road to the unconscious”), slips of the tongue, and free association.

The Jungian View:
It’s a mystical, magical place–but what does it all mean?

Jung believed it was possible to link consciousness to the unconscious through the process of individuation (self-realization). According to Jung, we have a persona—a mask or a false self—that we present to others and to ourselves, but which is not our true or authentic self. Only by “becoming conscious of the unconscious,” which includes facing our shadow—or dark side—can we become who we are meant to be and “fulfill our unique promise.”

Jung believed that “the unconscious had in mind” this process of individuation or self-realization.

James Hillman, who studied with Jung, authored The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, in which he wrote, “[T]his book is about calling, about fate, about character, about innate image. Together they make up the ‘acorn theory,’ which holds that each person bears a uniqueness that asks to be lived and that is already present before it can be lived.”

However, psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists currently hold the view that we are not one self, but many. Rather than having one persona, we have several personas we present at different times and to different people. Philosopher Julian Baggini endorses a shift from thinking about ourselves as “the thing which has all the experiences of life” to thinking of ourselves as “simply that collection of all experiences in life.”

The true self, as it were then, is not something that is just there for you to discover. You don’t sort of look into your soul and find your true self. What you are partly doing, at least, is actually creating your true self.

While Freud was a religious skeptic, Jung studied a number of different religions and believed in the soul—an immaterial, immortal aspect of a person.

In addition to the personal unconscious (which is unique to each individual), Jung believed there is another layer he called the collective unconscious which contains elements that do not develop from our personal experiences but are inherited by everyone. The components of the collective unconscious, according to Jung, include symbolic motifs, especially in the form of archetypes.

Dream interpretation was central to Jung’s theories, as it was to Freud’s. He considered dreams an important element in the process of individuation, believing they drew on contents of both the personal and the collective unconscious.

The Jamesian View:
It’s not a place or an entity; it’s a set of processes.

William James refuted Freud’s concept or model of the unconscious, but he was well aware of the existence of the unconscious—and of its importance. He was also an excellent observer and without the benefit of any of the tools now available to researchers he arrived at several conclusions about how our minds and brains function that have since been confirmed.

His book, Habits, written in the late 1800s, is worth reading today. He says, “[H]abit diminishes the conscious attention with which our acts are performed.” And, “[N]ot only is it the right thing at the right time that we thus involuntarily do, but the wrong thing also, if it be an habitual thing.”

William James defines the term “ahead of his time.” Before neuroscience gave scientific backing to concepts such as “automaticity,” James was already writing about them. His astounding intuition concerning why we think as we think and act as we act has never been eclipsed and has few parallels in any field. —David DiSalvo, Brain Changer

James is one of the first proponents of the dual-process theory of thinking—the idea that our thinking consists of associative thinking as well as “true reasoning.” In that regard, he drew a pretty accurate bead on the unconscious (associative thinking).

The Neuroscience View:
It’s a web of vast, intricate, processing modules.

Because early theories about the unconscious were primarily (or purely) psychological or philosophical, they did not include an understanding of brain “mechanics”—synapses, neurons, neurotransmitters, etc. So those explanations were incomplete and unscientific.

Beginning about twenty-five years ago, the fields of psychology and neuroscience underwent a revolution. Psychology was primarily using decades-old methods to understand human behavior through things that were objective and observable, such as learning lists of words or the ability to perform tasks while distracted. Neuroscience was primarily studying the communication among cells and the biological structure of the brain.

The psychologists had difficulty studying the biological material—the hardware—that gave rise to thought. The neuroscientists, being stuck down at the level of individual neurons, had difficultly studying actual behaviors. The revolution was the invention of noninvasive neuroimaging techniques, a set of tools analogous to an X-ray that showed not just the contours and structure of the brain but how parts of the brain behaved in real time during actual thought and behavior—pictures of the thinking brain at work. The technologies—positron emission tomography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and magneto-encephalography—are now well known by their abbreviations (PET, fMRI, and MEG). —Daniel J. Levitin, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload

Consciousness is the reasoning, rational part of the brain we’re aware of that makes decisions; it’s what we think of when we think of who we are. The unconscious consists of all the activity behind the scenes that keeps us alive and maintains our model of the world. The unconscious contributes to our conscious sense of self much more than we are aware. But because the operations of the unconscious are invisible to us, we tend to dismiss or discount them (or in some cases, invest them with magical superpowers).

The unconscious keeps us alive; if it intends anything for us, it intends for us to survive.

Many of the operations of the unconscious are universal—they work pretty much the same for everyone. But since one of the jobs of the unconscious is to create our particular model of the world, other elements in it are unique—or at least not identical—for each individual.

Our unconscious programs are constantly being tweaked, usually without our being aware of it. That programming initiates our responses to what happens to us, which is why we often react in ways that surprise us. It’s also why habits get formed without our intending them—and why they are so hard to change even when we want to change them. It’s why we can—and do—do, think, and feel so many things on autopilot.

The new model of the unconscious is a more mechanical model than the models of Freud or Jung. But this model more accurately describes and explains how and why we do the things we do, think the things we think, and feel the things we feel.

It’s also an enlightened model that offers a straightforward and practical approach to understanding ourselves and others, changing undesirable behavior, and creating more of the life we want to have and a world we want to live in.

Are You Thinking Outside the Box Yet?

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boxIf you’ve ever felt stymied by the prospect of thinking outside the box, you may be relieved to find out that you can’t actually do that. The box is the mental model through which you view and interpret the world. You are always inside the box, in one compartment or another. The box constrains what you see, what you think, how you feel, and what you do. And the less aware of them you are, the more power these constraints have over you.

The concept of thinking outside the box comes from what is called the Nine-Dot Problem, first used by psychologist N.R.F. Maier in 1930. The task is to connect all of the dots by drawing four straight lines without retracing any lines or removing your pencil from the paper. The solutions to the Nine-Dot Problem all require you to extend your lines outside the “box” created by the dots.

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The box has come to represent all of the things that limit our thinking, so thinking outside the box means being able to transcend those limitations. In the 1970’s, thanks in part to psychologist J.P. Guilford and his study of creativity, thinking outside the box became a popular metaphor for unconventional and original—i.e., creative—thinking.

Your Mental Model:
Don’t Leave Home Without It.

Of course the concept of thinking outside the box has spawned some contrarians who suggest there are benefits to thinking inside the box. The assumption in both cases is that we have the option of thinking either inside or outside the box and can choose the location from which we think. But that’s not the case, since we don’t have the option of getting outside our mental model.

Just as the unconscious part of our brain monitors our breathing and heart rate to keep them in the normal (for us) range, it creates a model of the world that represents what’s normal in it for us. Our particular model of the world determines what we pay attention to, how we interpret and explain what we pay attention to, and the meaning we assign to events.

Our mental model is created and (mostly) maintained by the unconscious part of our brain, which is always running. We can’t access it directly to find out what’s in it. The contents are a combination of genetics, experiences, information, beliefs, skills and talents, and assumptions. Some of it is coherent; some of it isn’t. Some of it is stuff we want to have in there; some of it isn’t. In general, the best word to describe it is functional.

Although we’ve had a hand in programming our mental model over the course of our lives, it is being continuously updated according to our brain’s set of survival-based criteria. The unconscious part of our brain processes around 11,000,000 bits of information at a time, while we can consciously process only about 40 bits. If we had to rely on consciousness to get through the day, we would be in big, big trouble.

Fortunately, our mental model, operating outside our awareness, helps predict what’s going to happen next and “readies” us to respond appropriately. In fact, many researchers have referred to the brain as an anticipation machine. When the brain’s expectations aren’t met, it actually “protests.” That’s what underlies the feelings of surprise we experience.

As long as things are going according to plan, the brain can operate at a lower level of energy, which is what it prefers to do. When something unexpected occurs, it has to shift into a higher energy consumption mode.

Aha?

Since our mental model is the lens through which we view and interpret the world around us—and even ourselves—we can’t think outside it. Some theorists on the subject claim that insight is the result of thinking outside the box, but it isn’t. No matter how mind-blowing they may be, our insights still depend on what’s already in our particular box. This seems obvious when you consider it. Someone whose mental model includes a vast amount of experience and knowledge in a particular area is likely to have more and bigger creative insights than someone else who only dabbles in the field.

When we’re learning something new (e.g., a language, how to get around in an unfamiliar city, a new artistic technique), we have to rely heavily on the conscious part of our brain. But as we continue learning, more and more information is turned over to the unconscious part of the brain. We develop greater facility. We become faster and better in part because our brain is making associations and anticipating what is coming next. As this occurs, our mental model expands and we are able to see things differently, think different thoughts, and do different things.

The physical brain has a great capacity to be plastic, which means it can change, and in some cases, we can actually see what those changes look like.

In violin players’ brains, the neural regions that control their left hands, where complex, fine motor movement is required on the strings, look as if they’ve been gorging on a high-fat diet. These regions are enlarged, swollen, and crisscrossed with complex associations. By contrast, the areas controlling the right hand, which draws the bow, look positively anorexic, with much less complexity. —John Medina, Brain Rules

Complexity is the key. The more knowledge and experience we have in a particular area, the more complex our mental model will be. Experienced violin players can not only play more complex tunes, they can also identify more complex musical problems to solve. And they can solve them faster. The situation is the same whether we’re talking about an artist, a musician, a performer, a movie-maker, a chef, a businessperson, an athlete, a hobbyist, a writer, or a world leader.

If we want a brain that can think more complex thoughts and solve more complex problems, one thing we can do to help make that happen is get in the habit of moving.

Physical activity is cognitive candy. Exercise stimulates one of the brain’s most powerful growth factors, BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor). According to Harvard psychiatrist John Ratey, “It keeps [existing] neurons young and healthy, and makes them more ready to connect with one another. It also encourages neurogenesis—the creation of new cells.” The cells most sensitive to this are in the hippocampus, inside the very regions deeply involved in human cognition. —John Medina, Brain Rules

Build a Better Box

Our brain can change, which means our mental model can change, too. Instead of trying to think outside the box, we’re better served by deliberately stretching and expanding it via physical activity, learning, exposing ourselves to new situations and different viewpoints—in short, by challenging ourselves.

New ideas are not spun from thin air. Creativity involves synthesizing, remixing, and re-envisioning what’s already inside the box.

Buddhism, the Enneagram, and Neuroscience

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lebowski
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.

Feedback Loops: Use Them or Be Used by Them

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driver feedback signIt isn’t too much of a stretch to say that feedback loops make the world go round. Among other things, feedback loops keep machinery—both digital and analog—running smoothly, moderate our weather, and maintain homeostasis in our bodies. Feedback loops also function to either maintain or disrupt the status quo within businesses and other organizations, in politics, in the economy, in interpersonal relationships, and even in regard to our own behavior.

David DiSalvo calls feedback loops “the engines of your adaptive brain.” He says research across multiple disciplines—psychology, sociology, economics, engineering, epidemiology, and business strategy, for example—has validated feedback loops as a solid governing principle.

Day in and day out, we make decisions based on the results of feedback loops that run in our minds without our noticing. None of us stops to think through each stage of the loop—how the data we’ve gathered is being processed to lead us to our next action. And yet, even without our conscious monitoring, the loops just keep moving.

Decision-making requires conscious thought. So it may be more accurate to say we react based on feedback loops rather than that we make decisions. In the same way that our brain has criteria for evaluating the data provided by physiological feedback loops (in order to, say, maintain our body temperature and signal when we need to eat or drink—or stop eating or drinking), it also has criteria for evaluating the data provided by our mental, emotional, and behavioral feedback loops. The problem is that these criteria are part of our mental model of the world, much of which is unconscious, which means we’re not aware of it.

If we don’t stop to think through “how the data we’ve gathered is being processed,” we’re more likely to maintain the very habits of thinking and behaving we’re trying to change.

What Exactly Is a Feedback Loop?

The four stages of a feedback loop as described by science writer Thomas Goetz in Wired Magazine are:

  • Evidence
  • Relevance
  • Consequence
  • Action
A feedback loop involves four distinct stages. First comes the data: A behavior must be measured, captured, and stored. This is the evidence stage.
Second, the information must be relayed to the individual, not in the raw-data form in which it was captured but in a context that makes it emotionally resonant. This is the relevance stage.
But even compelling information is useless if we don’t know what to make of it, so we need a third stage: consequence. The information must illuminate one or more paths ahead.
And finally, the fourth stage: action. There must be a clear moment when the individual can recalibrate a behavior, make a choice, and act. Then that action is measured, and the feedback loop can run once more, every action stimulating new behaviors that inch us closer to our goals.

When it comes to behavior-related feedback loops, such as changing an old habit or starting a new one, the sequence looks more like this:

  • Action
  • Evidence
  • Relevance
  • Consequence
  • New Action (or Reaction)

Just about any activity generates feedback of some sort. The result of an action can be large or infinitesimal, desirable or undesirable. Ideally, you notice what happens and use the feedback to determine what to do next. If you’re driving your car along a snowy road and it begins to skid, the skid is evidence that road conditions require you to make some type of adjustment to your driving. The evidence is relevant to you because you want to avoid an accident, which is a potential consequence of not paying attention to the evidence. Your reaction might be to slow down.

That’s a fairly straightforward example. Another driving-related example, one you may have encountered and which Goetz wrote about in Wired, involves “dynamic speed displays,” also called driver feedback signs. These speed limit signs include radar sensors attached to digital readouts that flash your vehicle’s speed once you get in range. Driver feedback signs have been so successful in decreasing speeding they’re springing up in more and more locations.

The basic premise is simple. Provide people with information about their actions in real time (or something close to it), then give them an opportunity to change those actions, pushing them toward better behaviors. Action, information, reaction. 
The Premise May Be Simple, But the Process Isn’t.

The apparent result of an action we’ve taken—the evidence—must first be interpreted before we can proceed through the steps of the feedback loop to determine how to react. A roadside sign that tells you both the speed limit and your current speed provides you with straightforward, unambiguous evidence. If all the evidence we were faced with was similarly unambiguous, our lives would be much less complex and our decisions would be much easier to make. Alas, such is not the case.

As stated above, DiSalvo says we make decisions based on the results of feedback loops, but even in cases where we’re making decisions rather than simply reacting, it would be more accurate to say we make decisions based on our interpretation of the results of feedback loops.

Because we perceive the world through our particular mental model, we’re predisposed to interpret the results of our actions in certain ways. This can be problematic in general, but it’s especially so when we’re presented with negative evidence. Things didn’t work out the way we planned; we did something other than what we intended or wanted to do; or we’re faced with unexpected obstacles. The most useful way to respond to such information is to look at it objectively. We tried something and it didn’t work. We can then try to figure out why it didn’t work and decide whether to try it again or to try something else.

Instead of viewing the negative results of our actions objectively, however, we’re prone to interpreting them as evidence of failure. Once we interpret the results as evidence of failure, we’re much less likely to try to figure out what didn’t work and what to do next, and we’re much more likely to give up. At that point, the habit or behavior we were trying to change becomes even more entrenched than it was before we attempted to do something about it. And the goal we were trying to achieve seems even more distant.

A student in one of my classes reported struggling for several years with a particular issue of having to document, in detail, time spent caretaking a family member. Every time she tried and failed to find a system that worked, she interpreted it as evidence of personal failure. One day in class, she outlined something new to try. When she returned the following week, she was very excited, but not because the new system had worked. It hadn’t. What she was excited about was that when she realized that particular system didn’t work, rather than viewing it as more evidence of failure she was able to view it objectively. Because she was able to view it objectively, she didn’t waste time beating herself up over it. Instead, she immediately decided to try something else and that new system did work.

Confirmation bias is very powerful. If we believe we’re lazy or incapable or don’t follow through on anything, we’re likely to view the negative results of our actions as confirmation of our preexisting belief and then behave as though that belief is reality. So it’s important to remember that our automatic interpretations can’t always be trusted; sometimes we need to slow down long enough to question them.

Not everything you try is going to go smoothly or work out the way you hoped it would. Sometimes the road is slippery, under construction, or takes a detour. Noticing that what you tried simply didn’t work will allow you to use the information as feedback to help you determine the best way to correct your course—or to chart a brand new one.

2 Prerequisites for Change

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changeThe Farther to Go! program is all about change-making. Change is what we want and what we struggle with because many of the things we’ve tried simply don’t work.

On the way to creating and developing Farther to Go!, I focused first on information about how the brain and mind actually function, which involved debunking quite a bit of conventional wisdom. Then I attempted to incorporate effective tools that had a proven track record and were based on what is now understood and widely accepted about the brain and the mind.

It didn’t take long before I recognized that something significant was missing. I could offer reams of information—and, believe me, I have reams of information to offer—and all the tools in the world, but by themselves information and tools don’t automatically result in change.

Direction!

I discovered that people don’t know what they want. Not only that, they often don’t even know how to ask or answer the question.  It’s hard to commit to, and follow through on, a path of action if you don’t know why you’re taking it.

Since the unconscious part of our brain (System 1) is focused on maintaining the status quo, you might say it’s allergic to change. So our path of least resistance is to keep on doing what we’ve been doing. Information and tools can tell us exactly what to do in order to get something different, but first we need to know what it is we really want.

That requires some prolonged dialogue, so to speak, between System 2 (the conscious part of the brain) and System 1 (the unconscious) to identify the things that matter most to us at this particular point in our lives. These are what I call Big Picture Wants. They provide the direction; the information and tools provide the navigation.

Not too long ago, I realized that I was missing another very significant piece of the change process.

Urgency!

System 1 (the unconscious) is powerful and compelling. Think of it as an extremely high-speed processor that keeps you humming along in your well-worn rut. You may know where you want to go, and you may have the information and the tools to help you get there, but still you may find yourself treading water or even falling back into your rut.

We need a force that is as compelling and powerful as System 1 if we want to counteract it. That force is a sense of urgency. Urgency propels us forward in spite of obstacles, delays, diversions, distractions, and the influences of System 1. When we have a sense of urgency, quitting or standing still just isn’t an option. Instead of being wasted on activities like second-guessing or weighing pros and cons, all of our energy goes into taking the next step, and the next, and the next after that.

Urgency doesn’t eliminate uncertainty or difficulty, but it diminishes the power those things have over us. When we have both a clear direction and a strong sense of urgency, we simply do what needs to be done—using the best information and the best tools available.

Direction + Urgency

Direction without urgency is a waste of time because it usually leads to giving up in one form or another. Giving up, especially repeatedly, reinforces the belief that we can’t or don’t want to change. And the status quo remains not only undisturbed, but even more entrenched.

Urgency without direction is a waste of energy because it usually results in running off in multiple directions without a plan or goal in mind. Because it, too, is ineffective it also reinforces the belief that trying to change is futile—and possibly also exhausting.

It’s important to bear in mind that urgency—which means crucial, pressing, great, compelling, and top-priority—is not the same thing as anxiety. Many people have varying degrees of anxiety about changes they want to make but have no sense of urgency about making them.

As long as you think you have a choice about whether or not to do something, you’re either unclear or uncommitted—or both. When you have urgency, you don’t exhaust time and energy trying to decide what to do next. You have direction; you know what to do. You can’t necessarily predict the outcome, but the path immediately ahead is clear.

Contact Me

joycelyn@farthertogo.com
505-332-8677