Beliefs, Values and Habits

Happiness is an experience, it’s something we feel.

At base, it’s pleasurable feelings as opposed to painful feelings.

On one pole, we have a spring of pain that flows out into rivers, streams, and tributaries. The various streams acquire distinct flavours, and we have different words to differentiate between them; Frustration, anger, embarrassment, jealousy, etc.

At the same time, from the other pole flows pleasure, which also divides up into distinct flavours such as joy, love, pride, etc.

Separately but simultaneously, we experience pleasure and pain via our nervous system; for example, if we break a leg, or get ill, we’ll feel pain, and that pain will also motivate us.

So we exist seeking to avoid pain and experience pleasure, just like all advanced life forms.

Where we differ from other animals, and where things start getting camouflaged, sophisticated, and complicated is that, armed with our relatively powerful intelligence, we also have an understanding regarding the larger context we exist within. We’re not limited to just the present and our immediate environment. We understand that we’re going to experience many more future moments, and we are aware of some of what exists over the horizon. In other words, we’re conscious that we have a future and that we have options, which endows us with the ability to act relatively sophisticatedly compared to other species, but the core motivations remain the same. The subsequent layers of sophistication, added late in our evolutionary journey, do not change the underlying universal hardwiring/instincts - they've just given us more flexibility and potency to satisfy our instincts. As the emotions of status and pride are pleasurable, we typically don't like to think of ourselves in this way. Models that paint a more noble, glorious, and special picture of ourselves are obviously preferred, and if the orientation they provide leads us to the life we want, then all is good. Ultimately, it's all just recipes, and if the recipe we're cooking by produces the taste we're happy with, then why change anything?

What’s relevant here (trying to stay on track), is our awareness that we’ve got many more moments to experience in the future, tempers our urge to grab instant gratification. But this only happens if our brain understands that sometimes the more pleasurable option actually translates to less pleasure overall when our long-term happiness is also considered. So we have the willingness and ability to choose the painful option if we understand cause and effect and if we are able to endure the relative pain involved. We can deny ourselves that donut, even though it tastes good (pleasure), if we believe the long-term benefits are worth the sacrifice.

Which brings us to the main points here:

We need relevant knowledge to become orientated so we can make fruitful decisions, and we need the ability/willingness to endure the short-term pain such fruitful actions often, at least initially, put upon us.

For the smiles we will make

A tear must first fall someplace

If we have plenty of self- discipline, but are disorientated, we’re just as helpless as the other pole - knowing what to do but being unable to resist instant gratification.

No wind is favourable for those with no destination, or the wrong destination.

Similarly, we’re impotent if we do not have the ability to sail against the winds of instant gratification

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Both the weak yogi and the stupid saint are brought to a standstill.

Neither the one nor the other can develop further.

Ouspensky 'In search of the miraculous'.

But the original version is from an ancient yogi book. I wrote the quote down decades ago, but I don't have that notebook with me in Bali, and google can't provide the original.

We don’t exist in a vacuum. We’ve had a childhood, we were born within a particular culture, we’ve sat in classrooms for many years, and we have our existing embedded habits. This is on top of our instincts and our unique set of individual innate characteristics.

So, as adults, we’re already preprogrammed with scripts (beliefs and values), most of which we didn’t choose ourselves. If that ‘recipe’ produces the desired taste of happiness, then all is good, no need to change anything, and we just dive into life and enjoy our fortunate bounty. But if the recipe doesn’t produce the taste desired, then, somewhat obviously, we need to change the recipe, we need to run a comb through our beliefs, values, and habits to get rid of the negative and/or useless ones.

Rationally, this makes complete sense, but emotionally, we often struggle to change, and so we keep trying to squeeze a round peg into a square hole, instead of just selecting a round hole or just cutting out our own one to fit snugly. This reluctance makes the easy hard.

In the game life

The winners are the happy, and the losers the unhappy

Yet

There's no opposition, and we can make the rules.

2018

We can make the rules, but we usually don't understand that we can, and we're emotionally integrated with many of our existing beliefs, values, and habits. This comes back to us being social primates, with the need for status via hierarchies. We have to pretend/ believe the hierarchy we subscribe to is the right one for us to experience the ample pleasure available via status. The hand that feeds us also chains us. But I've gone through the status/respect thing already in other blogs, so I won't rehash it here. I will just add that we're also motivated via empathy, and this is beneficial when it comes to living within groups as we also feel, to an extent, what others feel, and so we're motivated to alleviate their pain, increase their pleasure if they're on our side, and the opposite if they're our enemies.

Effectively, beliefs and values are off limits in modern psychotherapy, as it’s a can of worms few want to open, and it’s not worth the hassle as relatively few people are willing to accept that maybe, long ago, they chose the wrong path, and that’s why they’re here in the clinic now. Instead, it’s ‘ Doc, I’ve ticked all the right boxes, jumped the hurdles, I’m a good, righteous person (high fives), but amazingly, I’m not happy. Obviously not my fault, Doc, what could it be that is stopping me feeling the elation and contentment I so obviously deserve?’

What can the Doc do, even if they have the required knowledge, other than just hand over antidepressants?

When you set your life course

You did not pause, nor a compass did you see

That's a shame

As it would of shown 360 different degrees.

This is getting a bit off track but;

One of the big problems with modern psychotherapy is how narrow and limited the model of human behaviour that therapists are orientated by is. Unhappy people need to change some things, they need help getting out of the rut they are in. They need help to broaden their horizons, to understand there's other possibilities, other paths available but many therapists themselves are on basically the same path the client is on. Most have simply stepped from the classroom to the clinic and have no idea about the possibilities that exist. They're taught, and their genuine belief is, that humans become happy via following the 'right' recipe, and their job is to help the person squeeze into that one box. Here's a tweet that I saw recently that sums up this perspective.

Um, what? I've left the person's name out as that's not relevant, but what is relevant here is the 'should'. The 'should' presupposes the existence of a template that we all will fit comfortably into, and if we don't fit snuggly into that particular template, there's a problem with us. Then, if they can't find and fix what is 'wrong', the problem is deemed unfixable aside from medication.

That's morbidly upside down. Almost by definition, if we don't fit one template, we change the template, not the person. If the recipe we're cooking by produces something that tastes like shit, we change the recipe, not try and force ourselves to like it. Sure, if we can't change anything, if we have chains on us, then ok, all we can do is try and make the best of things. But this idea that there's just one template/path/recipe available or 'right', and that, unless there's something wrong with us, we'd be joyfully skipping along with the herd, is both wildly inaccurate factually, and also destructive as a therapeutic paradigm.

While we're all one species, the individual variation within our species is massive, both genetically and as regards our individual experiences. That we'd all find happiness the same way is obviously incorrect, and one would hope that psychologists, out of all people, would know this. But again, we run into human nature and the ever present allure of status. When we have status via one hierarchy, we're naturally reluctant to dilute our status by accepting other hierarchies are just as valid. Also, a one template therapeutic model is simple to operate. It's uncomplicated, easy to teach and it keeps the money coming in. Advising someone to quit their job and/or leave town and do something else is self-defeating from a business point of view.

To be fair, the author of that tweet was probably trying to convey the message that sometimes depression/anxiety have a innate physiological cause, and, if so, there's no point in people adding to their woes by 'pacing the cage'. Ok, but even here, the percentage of unhappy people who would still be unhappy if they were physically healthy, and got to live exactly how they wanted to, is very, very low. Furthermore, they can't know if they are in that very rare group until/unless they get themselves into shape and take themselves to the reality they desire. If they do, and they're still unhappy, hand out the medication, but till then, the help they need is to systematically build their happiness - to understand they're in a rut and they need to get out. Pushing them deeper into the rut; telling them it's not a rut because most others are happy enough in it, and anyway, no other paths exist, is morbid.

That some people might not particularly enjoy spending the prime of their lives in traffic every day, going to and from a job they don't particularly enjoy, is really not so surprising. Who would rationally decide they want to spend their life working instead of playing? I gave that the thumbs down a long time ago, which added to the motivation to try and figure things out well enough so I didn't get caught in that rat trap. Sure, we've all got expenses, we all need to exchange time and energy for resources, but it's better to work smart than hard and long. We've only got so much time to live, so we need to prioritise.

Surfer.Hawaii 1890.

Does anyone think that guy could be depressed? They wouldn't of even had a word for it....

Anyway....back on track;

In short, we’re hardwired to be able to experience a certain amount of empathy, and the pleasure and pain we experience via empathy, along with the pleasure and pain we experience via status, motivates us to consider other people's perspectives and wellbeing in our decision making process. Without such motivations, we couldn’t live in groups, especially not groups much beyond an extended family, as we’d lack any motivation to cooperate. It would be anarchy.

If we can understand the forces at play within us, then we’re able to give ourselves flexibility and slowly evolve our hierarchies to make them more pragmatic. In practice, the less dependent we are on our sense of status - happy people are naturally more of the live and let live variety - the easier it is to adjust our hierarchy. But happy people don’t need to change their hierarchy, it’s the unhappy that do, and they’re inherently more dependent on that source of pleasure. But, by evolving our habits, we invariably raise the level of our happiness, and then it becomes easier to evolve our hierarchy into a shape that aligns our motivations to serve our actual interests.

In reality, of course, most people, especially as they get older, have momentum in their lives. For example, in their career, plus they have responsibilities. Not everyone can, wants to, or would be well advised to leave that web completely. Sure, those factors need to be juggled as well. I'm not denying their existence, nor their importance, but an individual's specific situation, in this regard, is unique and something only they can judge and juggle.

As regards beliefs and values; Detoxing helps a lot here, as it prunes back our overgrown web of motivations. It clears a lot of the clutter from the mind, and we can connect with what is actually innate and important. It simplifies our existence, and less is more in this regard. Simultaneously, by feeling better on a physiological level, our sense of well-being rises, and this leads to two positive developments.

Firstly, we’re experiencing positive change, so we know it’s possible (this generates motivation and hope), and we’re experiencing positive change from less, which automatically causes us to adjust some of our beliefs and values to align with the new reality.

Secondly, and as mentioned above, a higher level of happiness gives us the buffer needed to be better able to release our firm grip on the beliefs and values that our sense of status depends upon. Again, understandably, someone unhappy desperately needs to cling to whatever solace they have available; they're not in a position to let go, as there’s a dark hole waiting for them if they do. Therefore, the first step is to increase the level of happiness they’re experiencing by other means, working with their beliefs and values, even if some are wildly inaccurate and negative, until they’re secure enough to be able to run a comb through them.

In practice, often there’s no need for any outside assistance in evolving someone's beliefs and values, as they’ll do it themselves organically ,and in their own time, if they’re just able to gain control over their basic habits. It all starts there. We are what we do, and the quality of our tomorrows depends on what we do, and don’t do, today.

Which brings it all back to our actions, which essentially means our habits - what we train ourselves to like and dislike.

What tastes like lemons today

Will taste like honey someday

If we just do it.

This is another quote from one of the old yogi books (paraphrased) that I can't find atm.

Ultimately, it comes back to having the ability to understand what current habits are positive - move us towards our oasis - and what are negative, and then to suffer the short-term pain as we swap out the negative for the positive. Once the new set is installed, we no longer miss the old pleasures but instead enjoy the new. This is something many struggle to understand; they think the pain they initially feel will always remain, and so they recoil from pressing ‘refresh’.

A destination is reached via a series of steps. Be reasonably well orientated and in control of one's steps, and the rest is easy as we automatically gain momentum in the fruitful direction. Habits are our momentum, and so this has to be the focus. We don’t have to have a specific destination; all we need to know is what is healthy and head towards that. Do this, and the landscape will change; options and choices that never appeared before will start to. Have fun, experience, and enjoy - we learn what we like and don’t like, and we adjust our course accordingly. Gain control over the basics first, and then add layers of sophistication on top over time. We can’t go from zero to hero in one glorious bound; it doesn’t work like that.

But again, detoxes help because we can free ourselves from many of the influences that control us in one go. But, as mentioned above, people are different. Some have the ability to hold a firm, disciplined course over time, so perhaps they don't really need a psychological detox. Others, like myself, lack that kind of discipline and instead find it much easier to just step outside my web periodically and have most of the pruning done at the same time. Without detoxing, I don't know what life I'd be living now, but I am sure I wouldn't be as happy as I am.

Again, I'm not at all a disciplined person, and in a sense, I don't want to be - why deny myself anything? Why would I hand over my autonomy? Others have their beliefs and values - cool - but what's that got to do with me? Different cultures, and sub cultures, have different sets of beliefs and values. I can choose the one that naturally fits me well, I can mix and match, or I can just decide for myself. This perspective is core Taoism, btw. It's also why Taoism can never be big and popular - it would be like trying to herd cats, as the moment Taoism is defined into something rigid, 'right' and 'correct', it's no longer Taoism. Taoism seeks to sidestep the allure of hierarchies, and the predetermined path to 'happiness' they dictate, and instead go directly to happiness. They don't take the long, heavily trodden, and dubious path to the oasis, they just go directly to it. Tomorrow is tomorrow, and while we need to consider tomorrow, what good are a lot of tomorrows if we're not healthy and happy when tomorrow arrives? Sort out the basics, take control, develop the capacity to experience joy, and the rest is very easy as we're now already in the oasis, or it's just a few steps away. As we're all different, there's no one right oasis, there's no one right path, and so there's no commandments or hierarchies within Taoism. Without these ingredients and lacking any desire to tell anyone else what to do, how can Taoism ever be prominent? It's the form of Buddhism that will always stay out of the spotlight.

Ok, that was another tangent.... I was saying I don't need to do as others want me to do. But, I have to decide which flavours I want to generate within and thus experience -have to prioritise - and then which reality/path will reinforce that endeavour. Obviously, this means I have to consider the future, as that's where the vast bulk of my moments are. I know I can take myself in many different directions, can take myself to many different realities, but I have to choose, I have to select which one I want, otherwise I'm just wandering aimlessly. This means two things; Out of the pleasant flavours available, which ones are the best, and how do I define best? Then, once I'm reasonably clear about that, which reality is realistically achievable for a lazy, not very skilled guy, like myself?

The destination I choose, depends upon who I am when I'm making that decision - which motivations are present and dominant, along with previous experiences. 'Ok, I have this basket of motivations in me now, but I know that I'll be different depending upon what path I go down, as the path will feed some motivations/habits while weakening/deleting others.' Just because I might be craving 'a,b and c' at the moment, doesn't mean those habits/motivations are an innate part of me. I've had times craving their opposites. Then I need to factor in my age - it's a very different calculation later in life than it would be if I was young, as my appetite, energy levels and what is achievable is very different. Then, to get to the 'oasis', choices need to be made. I actually have to make the bulk of my steps in that direction, even if I sometimes prefer to do something else. Point is, even though I'm not endowed with much in the way of self discipline, I have no choice ultimately. If I can't make that step, if I can't overcome that hurdle, then my future reality will be shit, because even though I might have the knowledge regarding what to do, unless I can actually do it, the theory is useless. Also, I know that, in time, we get to the stage where it's all effortless anyway as our motivations are all pruned and aligned. An action today might be an effort, but in a month it'll be effortless as it's now a habit.

This is why experience, and even extreme experiences near both ends of the poles, can be useful, as we get to taste a wide range of flavours, both pleasant and unpleasant. This teaches us what we actually like, loosens and broadens the narrow concept of 'us' we had, and makes it obvious that different paths meander through different terrain. We learn to mix and match - a bit of this and a bit of that suits me. But, we may also learn that we can only mix and match to a limited degree as certain flavours are all clustered together. There's two distinct fountains, or springs, of pleasure within. One is serotonin and one is dopamine, and we tend to be drinking from one or the other. One of my other blogs goes deeper into this, but most people are stuck in the dopamine motivational reality and don't know there's an alternative. They don't know because they've never experienced it, which is understandable given most people operate at a higher intensity, and are more productive, in dopamine mode.

In my twenties, I lived a number of years in India, but I went to Alaska for 3 months of the year to work as a deck hand for the fishing season. I made good $$, and India has some lovely places and is cheap, so why work more when I already had enough $$ to last me till next fishing season? Switching back and forth between the very different worlds was always a little bit of a struggle until I'd exited the previous mode and entered the appropriate one. It was a struggle because, of course, my existing motivations weren't suitable for the environment I was now in. But, after a week or so of been back in Alaska, drinking with the crew and all that stuff I'd be realigned and it was fine. I just dove in and enjoyed the flavours on offer. No problem. Going the other way was always a bit more problematic as that was boring to my fired up dopamine receptors. But I learnt to anticipate this and just take myself to an isolated beach - normally in Thailand, as that was on the way - and just do a detox on my own for a week or so. Mostly, it was a gradual process - I'd switch over slowly - but one time the switch happened instantaneously. Bang, I went from one pole to the other just like that. It was a surreal experience because one moment I was grumpy, pacing up and down, ill at ease on this stupid, boring beach and the next moment the exact same reality was fantastic. 'Wow, this is so nice, why would I want to be anywhere else?' The thoughts that were buzzing through my head just a few moments ago seemed so weird to me now.

I was back connected with serotonin, though I didn't know about the dopamine/serotonin connection at the time. Instead, I put it down to my brain waves switching over from the fast and sharp beta into the slow and mellow alpha frequency. Maybe that has something to do with it, I don't know and I'm not really motivated to dig deeper into it because it's largely academic - I just know something does change, exactly what it is and how that manifests is less relevant and probably above my 'pay scale' to figure out anyway. Once I knew the serotonin based reality existed, and I knew that it was very pleasant, and certainly less effort, it was knowledge that I kept 'in my back pocket', and that I would return to permanently someday when the time was right. But till then, I had to make $$ like everyone else ( the Indian days eventually ended ) and hustling a living was easier in dopamine mode than serotonin. Also, by my late twenties, I was pretty well orientated, so I tended to be able to navigate the environment well enough to keep dopamine me smiling - all was good. The main point here is - we can change our internal reality just as we can change our external reality. What we want is for them to match up reasonably well. When they do, we are what we call happy. What should be obvious, is that less is more in this regard. Want 3 and have 4 and your cup is overflowing. You're happy and content. Want 6 and have 4 and your cup feels somewhat empty. You're frustrated and craving, yet the external world is exactly the same. This is where detoxing can help a lot.

Ok, that tangent has disorientated me. I added the biographical stuff after already writing this, so I'm not sure where I was going with the below. But anyway...

Knowledge is power simply because we become aware of cause and effect, and so the consequences become part of the calculation. This then changes the equilibrium of our motivations automatically. If there's some food available that you love and there's no reason, you're aware of, to not eat it, then you'll eat it happily. But if you believe that same food has been poisoned, you'll reject it immediately and easily, with no inner struggle at all. Our beliefs regarding an option dictate our choice. If we have wildly inaccurate beliefs, we'll be motivated to make stupid decisions, and we'll suffer the consequences. So we need to arm ourselves with relevant knowledge, and then, generally speaking, the rest is easy as our motivations shift and align automatically. There's adults out there who know next to nothing, or at least little that's accurate, about their own species. Then they wonder why they get confused and lost. Um, if our map is wildly inaccurate, how can we not get lost?

We can ignore reality, but we can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

Ayn Rand.

Let me see if I can explain this a bit better;

Using a donut as an example, lets say it represents 5 units of pleasure if I eat it. But if I believe that, over the long term, that donut will limit my future enjoyment by much more than a mere 5 units, then this belief acts as a counterbalance against the temptation. But this is not the only counterbalance, because I also know/believe that it's not just about that donut, it's also about what habits I form, and that if I can't resist this particular temptation - if I can't say no to the instant pleasure that is in front of me - then I'm in trouble, as there's always instant gratification available, in one form or another. If I can't handle a little bit of pain, then I'll go downhill and be in the swamp very quickly.

The more relevant knowledge we have, the more rational control we have over our lives, and if we're not utilising our brain to navigate us, then what are we using? If we're not feeding our brain with the knowledge it needs, then it can't do it's job. Rubbish in- rubbish out. But this is not really 'zero sum' stuff. You offer me a donut, I'll eat it no problem. A donut here and there is not an issue, but if I went and bought one myself the next day, that would make me raise an eyebrow. It's not about being strict, I'm not strict and disciplined at all, it's more about creating counterbalances to some impulses, as it's this that subtracts from the gross attraction, resulting in a net attraction that is less tempting. Then, as I know it's all just pleasure and pain, normally it's not a problem as I'm big enough, and ugly enough, to handle a little bit of relative pain.

In NLP terms, it's effectively reframing our challenges into a perspective, giving them a meaning that makes them much more manageable motivationally. We have our objective in mind; 'ok, I don't really want to get into the habit of eating donuts', and then we juggle and organise our beliefs (motivations) into a formation that supports that objective. I can talk myself into eating that donut, or I can talk myself out of eating that donut, depending upon what I tell myself. Hence, beliefs are tools. Understanding that they are all just subjective is important as we start to view them as such, and this leads to us valuing relevant knowledge and so becoming increasingly pragmatic and flexible. The focus moves to the objective - the taste - and the recipe is just another recipe. But, as mentioned above, we typically have strong emotional resistance to accepting that our beliefs are subjective. We can readily agree that other people's beliefs are just subjective, but we typically believe ours are magically the truth, given the dependence social primates like us have on the pleasure available via a sense of status. If we understand our perception of reality isn't actually the truth, that it's just what our brain believes from the limited information it's received via our mediocre senses and primate brain, then it's easier to not take it, or ourselves, too seriously. If we're inevitably wrong, to some degree anyway, then we don't focus on the 'truth', but on what is useful to believe. Useful correlates with reasonably accurate, only if reasonably accurate information is useful. If we're already in our lovely oasis, then what is useful information/beliefs is very different than it is for those still lost in the desert.

Anyway, I've spiraled off again on another tangent....But I'll finish with some lyrics from a Springsteen song that illustrates this ability to reframe temptations into a format that reduces the net appeal, making it relatively easy to walk away from. Obviously, the guy took himself to his oasis because, in part at least, of this ability. He didn't get caught in the rat traps.

Cynthia, you ain't the best thing

I've never had

And when you go, the pain that remains

Well, it ain't so bad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0F3hnkTAg4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrpXArn3hII

I'll throw this song in here too, as the video is about temptation and choices. That Springsteen has this awareness is a big reason why he was able to take himself to the exact oasis he chose. He's very well orientated, and in control of his steps. That's why he's known as the Boss.