No matter what our circumstances may be, from time to time we’re all prone to experiencing dissatisfaction, unhappiness, or discomfort.
Those feeling states create psychological tension, which we’re driven to mitigate.
System 1 responds by suggesting actions to relieve psychological tension in the short term. But the fix is always temporary, so the pressure eventually builds again, which leads to more System 1 attempts to relieve it, and around and around we go.
That’s why mastering the art and science of change begins with understanding this basic fact about how we operate: In the absence of a more compelling desire or aspiration, we default to System 1 (unconscious) drives and directives.
And System 1 is focused on maintaining the status quo, which it sees as the key to our survival.
As I’ve said before, I believe the world runs primarily on the desire to relieve psychological tension, which is why positive, sustained change (both personal and social) is so incredibly difficult to create. The process, as it exists, serves almost exclusively to maintain and even strengthen the status quo while giving us the false impression we’re doing something to change it.
Tension is a prerequisite for creative living. —Agnes Meyer Driscoll
In order to disrupt this process, we have to generate creative tension instead of psychological tension. That means we have to consciously determine what we really want and where we’re headed. In order to do that, we have to use System 2, which requires expending cognitive effort. It’s much easier to take short-term action that makes us feel better in the moment.
But the alternative to consciously determining what we want and where we want to go, is to automatically fall back on System 1. It means defaulting to our usual way of operating because that’s easier and feels more comfortable even when doing so is not in our own best interest.
Creating vs. Eliminating
We can only generate creative tension by identifying juicy desired outcomes that are more compelling than System 1’s compulsion to keep psychological tension at bay.
Consciously generating creative tension is the opposite of reacting to perceived psychological tension.
Creative tension arises in the gap between what we want and our current status quo. It propels us into action to create or accomplish something that really matters to us—even if we’re not sure we can do it or get there. It is focused on the future and on what we want. Creative tension motivates us by activating dopamine, which is part of the brain’s reward system. The greater the gap between where we are and where we want to be, the more motivation we will have to bridge it.
If we focus on generating creative tension, we set ourselves up to create satisfying and meaningful lives.
Psychological tension drives us to eliminate our negative or unpleasant feelings—not in order to transform the situation, but in order to return it to the status quo. When we’re driven by psychological tension, we aren’t focused on identifying what we want or where we want to go; we’re focused on what we don’t want and where we don’t want to end up.
If we focus on relieving psychological tension, we set ourselves up to maintain the status quo.
If you pay attention, you can catch yourself in the act of maintaining a status quo you may not want any part of. It isn’t self-sabotage. It’s the human default. We think not wanting something is the same as wanting something else. But it isn’t.