Unconscious Archives - Page 16 of 19

U Is for Unconscious

July 31, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 3 Comments

Three things we don’t like, all beginning with u: uncertainty, unsolved problems, and urgency. Combine the three and we’re likely to encounter another u word: uncomfortable. Actually, uncomfortable is putting it mildly. Our discomfort with the triumvirate of uncertainty, unsolved problems, and urgency is so strong we will go to great, sometimes absurd, lengths to avoid experiencing or even acknowledging it.

That’s…unfortunate. For at least two reasons.

First, in our haste to return to the illusory state of certainty, we tend to do things like jump to conclusions, accept the first answer or explanation that comes to mind (consistent with our preexisting beliefs), make a mess by acting prematurely, or immobilize ourselves in endless rounds of rumination. Rumination feels like problem-solving but it’s the opposite.

Second, by refusing to let ourselves experience—and appreciate—the discomfort that accompanies uncertainty, unsolved problems, and urgency, we deny ourselves another experience: the pure joy of the aha! moment when a solution presents itself. It may take a while, but suddenly what was murky and inchoate becomes bright and clear. The path ahead becomes obvious. I say the solution “presents itself” because although we tend to take credit for coming up with the brilliant idea or flash of insight, the part of our brain we identify with had little to do with it. It’s the unconscious that figured it out and then clued us in.

One of the reasons waiting it out while the unconscious does its thing makes us squirm is that we have no control over the process. It isn’t going to occur by the force of our will or on our timetable. When we try to make it happen we usually just end up getting in our own way and muddling the process.

Something that’s helped me develop an appreciation for—if not a wholehearted embrace of—uncertainty and the other u states is recognizing the times when I’m unclear or don’t have enough information. No matter how desperately I might want to act, if I’m not sure which action to take, I wait until the next thing to do becomes apparent.

That still makes me uncomfortable, and certainly no one would describe me as a patient person. But I’ve had enough of these experiences that I’ve come to expect an answer or a solution to show up. A pattern will be seen. Dots will be connected. I’ve learned to trust the unconscious part of my brain in these situations even though I can’t observe what it’s doing.

I’m learning to give credit where credit is due. After all, the hamster with the rudder (the conscious part of my brain) would go nowhere at all without the hamster on the wheel (the unconscious part of my brain).

It isn’t easy, but rather than trying to get back to comfortable and certain as quickly as possible, we can develop a tolerance for the discomfort. We can even learn to appreciate the uncertainty, the knottiness of an unsolved problem, and the urgency of the situation. Whatever is on the other side of our current distress is unimaginable to us now, but it could be amazing—even awesome. Why take the chance of missing out on something awesome just to avoid feeling a little uncomfortable?

Habits of Behavior vs. Habits of Attention

July 10, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Last week poetdonald responded to my post What Do Your Habits Say About You? with this comment:

The following came to me as I was reading this post as well as your post on Mindfulness vs. Habits.

Let’s call this thinking out loud, Joycelyn. I’m going to pose 2 questions. I’m not ready to answer them, and I’m not sure if you are able to comment at this stage, but I feel it is important I ask and begin to explore them now.

For my Writing in Nature project, I am repeatedly going to sites and learning how to really see and thus write haiku. Eventually, I want to use what I learn to help others write haiku and connect with nature (for many, many reasons). Mindfulness is very important, as I need to pay attention—and at the same time be open—to my surroundings.

My two questions relating to this project…

1. Should I try to create habits to help with this process?

2. If I am not consciously creating habits, will I unconsciously be developing habits that will affect my seeing and writing?

These are such great questions! They got me thinking, first, about the distinction between habits of behavior and habits of attention. After that, I gravitated to looking at when we can best “use” habits to our advantage and when to avoid habits by focusing our attention intentionally. I hope this response will shed some additional light on the subject of habits.

Habits Are Habits

When we think or talk about habits, we’re usually referring to habits of behavior. Those are the habits that are the most obvious for us to see in both ourselves and other people. In fact, most advice about habits seems to assume those are the only kinds of habits we’re interested in changing. But after having explored this subject in considerable depth, I’ve concluded that behavioral habits are actually the easiest ones to deal with. There’s not much doubt as to whether we’re doing something or not doing it. We may not like what we see, but we can keep track of our behavior, either in the moment or after the fact.

Habits of attention, however less apparent they may be to us, are no less habitual than are habits of behavior. In both cases the unconscious brain (System 1) rather than the conscious brain (System 2) is directing us. System 1 takes in about 11,000,000 bits of information at a time, of which System 2 can process about 40. System 1 decides what information is important for us to notice and attend or respond to. It does this at a speed System 2 couldn’t hope to keep up with or replicate. So unless we make a conscious decision ahead of time as to where to direct our attention, System 1 will be making that decision for us. It can do so all day long, without much intervention from System 2.

So in response to poetdonald’s questions, I have two thoughts.

First: Develop as much of a routine as possible for going out to the sites in nature. Focus on creating the habit of doing so. That means identifying a trigger or cue (time of day, for example), following the same routine (although that doesn’t mean always going to the exact same place), and rewarding yourself for doing so. If you turn going out to these sites into a habit, you won’t have to waste any System 2 attention on the mechanics, whereas if you attempt to be flexible or spontaneous about going out to sites, you’ll be expending System 2 attention unnecessarily. Also, creating the habit of doing this will actually get your brain ready to pay attention and to write haiku.

Second: The kinds of habits you might unconsciously develop in regard to this venture are habits of attention, which are not the kinds of habits you want here. Habits of attention train the brain to always pay attention to this but not to that. You want to be conscious (using System 2) rather than unconscious so you can determine what to pay attention to. We all have the ability to train ourselves to be able to focus our attention, rather than allowing it to go wherever System 1 takes it.

Here are some excerpts from a very fine book on the subject, Rapt, Attention and the Focused Life, by Winifred Gallagher:

Paying rapt attention, whether to a trout stream or a novel, a do-it-yourself project or a prayer, increases your capacity for concentration, expands your inner boundaries, and lifts your spirits, but more important, it simply makes you feel that life is worth living.

Not only how you focus, but also what you focus on can have important neurophysiological and behavioral consequences.

Just thinking about paying attention affects your brain, revving it up for the actual experience.

Your neuron populations can represent pretty much anything, but not everything at once. You have to choose—or they do. (John Hopkins neuroscientist Steve Yantis)

New research…shows that what you pay attention to, and how, can actually change your brain and thus your behavior. This extraordinarily practical scientific breakthrough shows that like physical fitness, the mental sort that sustains the focused life can be cultivated.

To give yourself an opportunity to make the most out of your Writing in Nature venture, you might want to put System 1 to use to create the behavioral habit, which will then free up System 2 attention for you to focus intentionally. Recognizing the distinction between behavioral habits and habits of attention is important for any creative pursuit. It’s a waste of time and attention to have to think about and decide whether or not to perform an activity we’ve already determined we want to do. That attention is limited and could be put to much better use!

Poetdonald, thank you for asking such great questions. I’d really like to hear more about how this works out for you.

I’m also interested in hearing anyone else’s thoughts on the subject.

What Do Your Habits Say About You?

July 3, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Riding a Bicycle

Once a behavior or routine becomes a habit, it is subsequently initiated by the unconscious, usually as a result of something in the environment—a cue or a trigger. Our resulting behavior is no longer intentional or volitional. We’re operating on autopilot.

We think behavioral habits are just something we do, but in spite of what we think, our habits reveal more about us than our intentional acts do.

Why We Have Habits

The brain creates behavioral habits, with or without our conscious participation, in order to operate more efficiently. It chunks repetitive behaviors and turns the chunks over to the basal ganglia so we don’t have to waste our precious and limited conscious attention on them. Habits are an energy-saving device.

When we’re learning something new (or creating or changing a habit), we have to focus a lot of conscious attention on what we’re doing. Anything that requires conscious attention uses energy, and in any given day we have a limited amount of it. It’s not an easily renewable resource. But once a habit is in place, little or no conscious attention is needed.

Examples:

driving a car
playing an instrument, if you’re trained
raiding the refrigerator in the evening
brushing your teeth before going to bed
checking your email first thing in the morning

Good habits, bad habits, they’re all the same to the brain. It doesn’t care about our opinions of our habits. All it cares about it is being efficient. Do something—anything—often enough and it will become a habit. And habits, by their nature, are hard to change. Trying to exert will power, using positive thinking, engaging in deep soul searching, or looking for the underlying cause of a habit are all fruitless endeavors. Unfortunately, you can’t have a heart-to-heart with your basal ganglia.

But Aren’t I in Charge?

The common assumption is that behaviors are preceded by conscious intentions. We decide what we’re going to do and then do it. But only some behaviors are preceded by conscious intentions, far fewer than we’d like to believe. Estimates are that from 50% to 80% of what we do every day we do on autopilot, which means without conscious intention or volition. We may be operating a 4,000 pound vehicle on a busy highway at a speed of 65 miles an hour or more while our minds are somewhere far, far away. This is especially likely to happen if we’re familiar with the route. We don’t need to pay conscious attention to our driving if nothing out of the ordinary occurs. We can zone out and our unconscious can generally get us to our destination just fine.

But since we tend to identify only with our conscious brain and not with our unconscious, we identify with our wandering mind instead of with what we’re actually doing. And because we’re under the illusion that most of what we do is the result of conscious choice (behaviors are preceded by conscious intentions), we’re not aware of how pervasive habits are in our lives.

When we find ourselves doing something we’d rather not do (or not doing something we’d rather do), we’d prefer to believe we’ve willfully chosen the behavior just so we can maintain the illusion of being in control. But it’s not very satisfying to think that we’re intentionally and repeatedly doing something we have an intention not to do. We don’t understand why we can’t simply will ourselves (or, in some cases, beat our lazy selves into submission) to get the desired results. We end up feeling inadequate, ashamed, guilty, and possibly slightly crazy. The obvious and easy way out is to dis-identify with the behavior. That’s not the real me. That doesn’t reflect who I am. It’s just something I do.

Just as the brain has a habit of generating habits with no regard for our judgments and opinions about them, we have a habit of thinking less of our habits than we do of our intentional acts regardless of what that behavior actually amounts to. It’s not what we do that matters so much as whether we did it intentionally or as a result of a habit.

Not only do we think intentional acts define us more than habits do, we also think that what we think and wish and want is more important than what we actually do. (Rene Descartes would be proud.)

We think that what we think is of supreme importance. Next most important are our intentional acts. At the bottom of the list, getting extremely short shrift, are our habits.

But we have it backwards. It’s what we do that ultimately matters, not what we think or want. And what we do is primarily habitual (unconsciously generated) rather than intentional (consciously determined). Habits actually say more about us than intentional acts do.

Still Don’t Think Much of Habits?

In a study of habits vs. non-habits,” reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers found that participants thought habits weren’t as important as non-habits in reaching goals and were relatively uninformative about themselves and others.

Given the percentage of time each day we spend engaged in habitual behaviors, this is stunningly wrong-headed.

Another odd finding that came out of the studies on habits vs. non-habits was this:

Feelings of stress increased with the deliberation involved in a single non-habitual behavior rather than as a result of multitasking. According to Roy Baumeister (Professor of Psychology, Florida State University), the act of decision making about a single behavior can deplete self-control mechanisms and impair subsequent acts of self-regulation such as decision-making and performance.

Habits, however, do not drain self-control resources to the same extent as non-habits. Once a behavior becomes a habit, it frees up our conscious attention

There is less emotion associated with habitual behaviors than with non-habitual ones. There is a decreased sense of volition, as well, but that is accompanied by less stress, burnout, and feeling out of control.

It’s a little confounding that we fail to recognize the many benefits habits confer.

We Are What We D0

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

This is actually a paraphrase of Aristotle by Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy. One thing Aristotle did say, though, is “these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions.”

It’s easy to see how this works—that is, the positive, productive role of habits—in the development of a skill or craft—that of a musician, an artist, a writer, a quilter, or a cook, for example. We generally expect that the more a musician practices her instrument, the more dishes a cook prepares, the better they will become at doing those things. A musician is unlikely to attain excellence if she only practices when she’s in the mood for it. Skillful musicians develop the habit of practicing regularly whether they’re in the mood for it or not. And they don’t have to be in the mood for it precisely because they’ve developed the habit. They don’t have to waste conscious attention or drain self-control resources by thinking about or deciding each time whether or not to practice.

If a musician’s sense of identity includes her musicianship, then her habit of practice says quite a lot about who she is—as opposed to who a non-musician might be. When she shows up onstage to perform a violin solo, for example, her habit of practicing ensures that her fingers know what to do with the violin. Her habit of practicing certainly contributed to her reaching her musical goals. Without it, she might still be thinking about becoming a violinist or wishing it were so.

Habits and routines make achieving goals considerably easier. Habits and routines can free our conscious minds for greater things, and they are actually essential to people who need to be creative on a regular basis.

Habits Really ARE Us

Our conscious intentions are not reliable when it comes to predicting what we’ll do when well-entrenched habitual behaviors are involved. In such cases, environmental cues and triggers are much more influential and, therefore, much more reliable predictors. What we have done before is what we are likely to do again. (Intentions, however, are more predictive of future behavior in new or novel situations.)

Because habitual behaviors are cued by situations, events, or other people instead of by our conscious prodding, we feel somewhat disengaged from them. It seems that there’s a continuum between intention and habit. It doesn’t much matter whether the habit in question is one we intentionally set out to create or one that was created when we weren’t paying attention. A habit is a habit is a habit, and the further a behavior moves from the intention end of the continuum to the habit end, the lower our opinion of it becomes.

There is an important role for consciousness to play in regard to our habits. If we understand and accept the enormous usefulness of habits, we can use the conscious part of our brain to decide which habits we want to create or change. That’s where the “I” we identify with comes into play. It sets the agenda for which behaviors to chunk and turn into habits.

That requires paying attention to what we’re actually doing. (It turns out that one of the very few ways we can get some idea of what’s in our unconscious is by observing what we do—not by observing what we think, dream, or wish for.) We also need to have some idea about what we want and what it will take to get it.

In any case, we would do well to give more credit to the unconscious part of our brain and recognize that it is just as much a part of who we are as is the conscious part, probably even more so. Then we might be able to start using it instead of letting it use us, which it does in this case by chunking behaviors without our awareness and consent.

Here’s a Question

If you identified with your habits, as much as you do with your intentional acts, how might that change your sense of yourself? And how might changing your sense of yourself alter your relationship with your habits?

Think You’re Thinking?

May 26, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

Much of what passes for thinking consists of unconscious, not conscious, mental processes. When it comes to taking in information and deciding what to believe and what not to believe, for example, we are appallingly predictable. We are most likely to believe:

What Is Familiar

Information that feels familiar is easier to absorb and believe than information that is unfamiliar. The information could be familiar because it’s associated with other beliefs we have or it could come from a trusted source. On the other hand, it could simply be something we’ve come across before—especially if we’ve come across it multiple times. Frequent repetition can be enough to convince people to believe things that are not true because familiarity generates a sense of cognitive ease. Called the mere-exposure effect, advertisers make use of it, but they aren’t the only ones.

Even if we’re aware of the mere-exposure effect, we probably think we’re immune to it because we’re more sophisticated than that. Believing we’re immune to it, however, might make us even more susceptible to it than we would be if we simply recognized it.

What Is Easy

Information that is easy to understand gives us a sense of cognitive ease. Information that is difficult to understand requires greater cognitive effort to process. Our brain prefers to chill out, so it just says “no” to exerting additional cognitive effort.

Say you’re faced with choosing between two concepts, ideas, or explanations. Idea A is easy to understand, while Idea B is more difficult. Statistically speaking, you’re much more likely to accept Idea A instead of Idea B simply because Idea A is easier for you to swallow. This is especially likely to be the case if you are already experiencing some degree of cognitive strain or if your conscious (System 2) attention is depleted. You’ve undoubtedly had the experience of feeling “brain dead” following a mentally fatiguing effort. That’s when you’re most susceptible to believing what is easy.

What Validates Our Preexisting Beliefs

Information that confirms what we already believe to be true makes us feel right and certain, so we’re likely to accept it uncritically. On the other hand, we’re more likely to reject information that is inconsistent with what we already believe. At the very least, we hold inconsistent information up to greater scrutiny. So we have different standards for evaluating information based on the level of cognitive ease it generates. And evidence has precious little impact on us if it conflicts with what we believe simply because the cognitive strain of processing it is too great.

The easy acceptance of information that validates what we already believe is a result of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias causes us to selectively notice and pay attention to what confirms our beliefs and to ignore what doesn’t. For example, people who favor gun control pay more attention to stories about injuries and deaths resulting from gun use; people who are against gun control pay more attention to stories about people using guns to defend themselves. Confirmation bias underlies the discomfort we feel around people who disagree with us and the ease we feel around people who share our beliefs [see What is Familiar and What is Easy, above].

It’s easy to believe what’s familiar, what’s easy to grasp, and what validates our pre-existing beliefs. No critical thinking or cognitive effort are required. On the other hand, actual thinking, as Dan Ariely says, is difficult and sometimes unpleasant.

Embrace Uncertainty

May 19, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

Embrace Uncertainty

We are wired to crave certainty. For some of us, that means focusing our efforts on getting and maintaining safety and security. For others, it means hedging our bets in regard to anything we undertake. For still others, it means not even starting something without a guarantee of a satisfactory outcome. And for many, it means not stepping out of a narrow and well-worn zone of comfort and familiarity.

We’ve come up with a lot of explanations for the behaviors that go along with trying to fulfill our craving for certainty. In fact, one of the reasons we like explanations is that they make us feel like we understand, and that feeds our craving for certainty. A lot of our explanations are stories spun by the interpreter in our brain. They may be quite wide of the mark in terms of accuracy, so what they’re really giving us is a false sense of certainty. Unfortunately, as far as our brain is concerned—which means as far as we are concerned—a false sense of certainty is almost always preferable to any amount of uncertainty.

Yet people do take enormous risks and undertake challenges and ventures where the outcome is very much in doubt. I’m not talking about the compulsion for engaging in thrill-seeking high-risk behavior. I’m talking about doing something that’s never been done before—like the Wright brothers did—or doing something to bring about change—like Nelson Mandela did. Or doing something we’ve never done before. I’m talking about creating something: a piece of art, a business, a different approach, a change in one corner of the world.

When you start out to do something you have never done before, you can’t know what the outcome will be. Our unconscious causes us to pay more attention to what we might lose than to what we might gain. In trying to avoid loss, we shy away from taking risks or accepting challenges even when the potential payoff might be magnificent. But our unconscious is also notoriously bad at calculating odds, and it doesn’t take randomness and luck into account—both of which are far more significant factors to any outcome than we’d like to believe.

Certainty itself is an emotional state, not an intellectual one. To create a feeling of certainty, the brain must filter out far more information than it processes, which, of course, greatly increases its already high error rate during emotional arousal. In other words, the more certain you feel, the more likely you are wrong. –Steven Stosny, Ph.D.

Life, by its very nature, is risky and enormously uncertain. The truth is that there are no guarantees for any of us for anything. If we want to do more than survive, we might have to step out on a limb once in a while. We might even have to take a leap.

Last week, I was at a luncheon where one of the participants went around the room offering everyone a chance to take one of the tiny cards inside a wicker basket. The card I pulled had “success” on the front. Inside it said:

Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile…initially scared me to death. –Betty Bender

If there’s something you want to do and the only thing holding you back is uncertainty, try imagining a world where all is preordained, everything is known in advance, and there is no possibility of surprise. Is that really a world you’d want to live in?

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