dirtSimple.org

Forgive Us Our Struggle

2009-06-01T18:27:56-0400

Wow. Took a quick break to get a snack, checked my email, and found a really emotional comment on the Thinking Things Done site. An anonymous reader is really really upset with me for not having the book done sooner, and calls me a fraud, among other things. Ouch.

I fire off a smiling-on-the-outside, hurting-on-the-inside response. He (she?) hit me right smack on one of the buttons I was just starting to write about in this article: the guilt of not having done more, and the fear of never doing enough.

Click here for the rest of the story... before and after this point...

Later vs. Better

2009-05-31T13:18:35-0400

When I was a professional programmer, I never used to miss deadlines. I'd cut features instead. In fact, I used to be insanely paranoid about defining deliverables so that I had total freedom to cut, and about arranging development strategies so that after a relatively short duration, there was always a "shippable" project... precisely because I dreaded missing deadlines.

So there's a part of me that freaks out every time I think about how much longer I've been working on the book than I thought I'd be, and the part where I'm living on savings while I do this, in the middle of a not-so-good economy where some of my long-time customers have been dropping subscriptions due to their not having jobs, either.

And sometimes it seems like, the more I work on this thing, the more work I discover I need to do!

Click here for the rest of the story.

How We Get Stuck

2009-05-07T17:22:04-0400

A little while ago, Leslie called me into the kitchen for some help. The kitchen cabinets she was putting together didn't come with enough cam locks -- the little metal things you use to lock the boards together with.

She showed me how many holes there were for the cams, and said that 16 were needed to fill all the holes. But the instructions said that only 14 were provided, and there seemed to only be 12.

I puzzled over it for a few minutes, trying to figure out what was wrong. There were indeed as many holes as she said... in fact, there were more.

Finally, I decided to verify the instructions by checking them for the opposite part: the posts that went into the locks. There were 14 places for those to go, and 14 of them. Logically, then, there should only need to be 14 cam locks for them to go into.

A few minutes later, we both sighed with relief as we verified that four of the places where she'd put cam locks, were not places where the instructions said to put them, even though they were cam lock holes. The problem was that those four holes were for camlocks that came with the countertop, not the cabinet!

So we got it all sorted out, and Leslie thanked me for my help, saying I was "smart"... but I had to decline the compliment.

Because, as I thought about it, I realized that I would've done exactly the same thing in her position. There were camlock holes, there were camlocks, what else would you do but put them there?

And when I later realized there weren't enough camlocks left, I would also have blamed the manufacturer, and complained that the instructions weren't specific enough... even though, in retrospect, it's easy to see that they never said to put camlocks in those holes!

And if our positions had been reversed, Leslie would've done the exact same thing I did, too: she'd have rechecked every step and instruction, trying alternate theories and starting from an assumption that there must be some way to make it work.

Now, there are at least two morals to this story. The first, of course, is that if you look at something as though it must have a solution, then you are already well on your way to finding it. And conversely, if you're seeing the world through an experience of frustration and defeat, you'll find only more of that, too.

But the second, more interesting moral to me, is that whenever you substitute your own expertise in place of following directions, you can easily go off track. (Especially if it's something you're adding to the directions given!)

And when I think about the number of self-help books I read, but whose advice I never really took, or that I misinterpreted because I was seeing it through the filter of what I already believed -- like always starting a furniture project by putting camlocks in every camlock hole! -- I can see just how much time I wasted.

Because nowadays, I see that the things naturally successful people wrote about in their books, really are as useful and meaningful as they claimed. It was me who didn't understand, and who didn't act, because I thought I "already knew" what they were saying, or that I "knew better".

When really, I didn't have a clue!

Now, it certainly would've helped if the instructions for the kitchen cabinets had at least put big X's over the holes that didn't need camlocks, just as it would've helped if more self-help books listed what likely preconceptions would keep you from being able to understand what they're talking about.

But ultimately, the responsibility for doing what the directions say -- and more importantly, not doing what they don't say! -- lies entirely with ourselves.

Now, I'm not saying you have to blindly follow anybody or anything. You absolutely have to use your own judgment, to decide whether to try something. But if you've gone so far as to buy somebody's book in the first place, it might actually be a good idea to try whatever it is they suggest!

Without altering it, and without second-guessing it.

Because, surprisingly enough, the skill of "not second-guessing" turns out to be pretty central to confidence, commitment, and concentration as well.

Heck, I just recorded a CD about that earlier this week, for Mind Hackers' Guild members. It was called, The Secret of Single-Mindedness, and on it I taught three simple mental strategies to turn "second guessing" into "single mindedness", instantly bypassing most mental blocks and routine procrastination.

(You can download a sample track here, or you can press the play button if your browser shows one here.)

Anyway, I explained on the CD how, if you critique and second-guess your plans or your writing while you're still trying to create them... if you're too busy questioning what to say to someone to really pay attention... or if you're thinking "I can't do this" when you really should be thinking about what you're doing, instead... you're not going to do very well at it.

And the trick to fixing all this is not about "believing in yourself" or "having confidence" or some other thing that you have to do.

In fact, it's the exact opposite: it's all about what you don't do.

And how you don't do it!

(Indeed, this very same bit of "not-doing" is what would've let me succeed at dozens of things I tried from other self-help books, if only I'd known about it beforehand!)

But even if all I'd done was to "not do what the instructions don't say", I'd still have been much further ahead, much sooner.

See, self-help books don't tell you to think, "I can't do this," while you're doing what they say to do. They don't say to think, "I'm no good at this," or "this is no good, I can think of something better."

They don't say to think, "this is too much trouble", and they don't say, "if you don't do this, you're a loser."

And while it's true that they also don't say not to do these things, to list all the things that you should not do when using a self-help book...

Would make for a very, very long self-help book!

And even then you could still -- upon reading it -- think...

"Well, but that doesn't apply to me. I'm different."

And there is no way to make a book or recording that can fix that.

So think about it.

And then do something.

--PJ

Stumbling On Success

2009-03-31T19:29:25-0400

For the last year or two, I've been trying hard to understand the real difference between naturally successful people and naturally struggling people. That is, why do some people seem to have so few problems getting things done and going after their goals, while others (like me) tend to spend so much time going in circles and going nowhere?

At first, I noticed a lot of individual distinctions. For example, naturally successful people aren't fazed by setbacks -- in fact, they can't even think about failure for long, without automatically refocusing on success.

They set goals, not because they're supposed to, but because they like it. And they tend to view education costs as easily recouped: their attitude towards spending thousands of dollars to attend a seminar is that if they get just one actionable idea out of it, they'll make a profit.

But just understanding differences like these doesn't really help much. It's just a list of random characteristics, no different than you'd find in any profile of a successful person.

And that just wasn't enough for me.

Click here to discover the crazy secret I just found out about this weekend...

Spock's Dirty Little Secret

2009-03-25T15:37:03-0400

I just wrote my first article for LessWrong.com: Spock's Dirty Little Secret.

It's about how I learned the limits of logic, and the importance of emotion to actually making decisions or getting anything done. I wrote it more for the current audience of OvercomingBias.com and LessWrong.com than for my own blog audience, but you might find it interesting anyway.

So feel free to check it out.

Rebel Without A Pause

2009-02-16T16:54:39-0500

So a couple nights ago, it's Valentine's Day, and Leslie and I are talking about what -- if anything -- we're going to do that evening. Eat out, eat in? Go to a movie? A show? What?

And as we're lying there in bed, throwing options back and forth, it's beginning to occur to me that nothing is really going to happen. Because even though we're talking about possibilities, neither of us is really proposing anything.

Neither of us is saying, "Hey, let's do X." We're just saying, "Well, what do you think about X?"

And so we get to talking about that, and about how we're actually pretty passive in most of our lives, not just figuring out dates with each other.

So we both did a little mind-hacking, to see what we could do...

To Fix It!

And in my case, I started with a little "installation conflict" test -- a procedure I use to find out what existing mental "software" installed in my head, would conflict with any attempt to install new attitudes and behaviors.

Specifically, I wanted to find out if it would be okay for me to take a more active role in managing my own life -- and at the same time, be more okay with accepting proposals made by other people. (Like my wife!)

Now, a few weeks ago, when I found and got rid of my superhero complex, I mentioned how I thought an easy life would be boring. This time, though, thinking about my ideal life came back, not as being boring, but rather as being painful... in some vague and unclear way.

I felt a sense of deep loss, almost as if living the way I wanted to, would in fact be a fate worse than death! As if I were losing my soul, or my sense of self.

And when I thought about it, I realized I'd had that feeling...

Many Times Before!

But every time I'd encountered it in previous mind-hacking sessions, I'd ended up shying away from it, to deal with less-central issues. And even when I got rid of my "superhero" ideal, I only skirted the edge of this feeling.

This time, though, I was determined to face -- and understand -- what was causing it.

Now, more than once before, I'd asked myself about it, trying to get what it was I was afraid would happen if I actually became the organized and motivated person I claimed to want to be. Not just some of the time, or most of the time...

But all of the time.

And always the answer came back, "because then I won't be me anymore."

And every time I'd gotten that answer before, I'd always been stumped by it. Where, exactly, do you go from there? I mean, I could hardly claim that I would still be me, could I?

But this time, it occurred to me that there was another angle I could approach the issue from. And so I shot back, with one of my classic mind-hacking questions:

"What's bad about that?"

Now, if someone were to do a study on what things I do most when I'm helping my clients and students, this question is probably one of the top five things I say or ask.

Because its function is to uncover cached thoughts. Or more precisely, stale cached thoughts.

You see, the brain, like a computer, uses "cache memory" to store previously-computed answers. That way, it can get results faster, by looking up old answers, instead of doing all the work of thinking up new ones!

But a key side effect of this caching process is that we end up doing most of our reasoning, on the basis of unthinking prejudice. Because literally, that's what prejudice is: pre-judgment, or using already-thought-of answers.

And we can then go on to reject entire lines of thinking -- entire pieces of our possible selves, lives, and personalities! -- on the basis of conclusions we jumped to with outdated evidence!

But by asking questions like, "What's bad about that?", we can force our brain into a "cache miss": computer terminology for a situation where the desired answer isn't available in the cache memory.

And as a result, a cache miss forces the computer to calculate the answer directly, or to at least fetch it from another, slower (but more up-to-date) layer of cache memory.

And on Saturday, the answer came back as:

"That would be giving in!"

Hm. Interesting. "So what's bad about that?", I ask, forcing a miss through to the next layer of cache after that one.

And bam! -- just like that -- the entire story starts pouring out, a string of previously-unconnected childhood memories.

And before I can even think to ask one of my other top 5 questions (i.e., "And what does that say about you?"), I already have the answer:

"Giving in" means I'm weak.

A wimp.

Pathetic!

Because I despised myself for not standing up to bullies. Not just of the schoolyard variety, mind you, but also those adults who shamed, demeaned, or objectified me as a child.

And in compensation, I created an ideal of holding to my beliefs under pressure. Of emulating the christian martyrs I heard so much about in church, who suffered diverse tortures and death rather than "give in" to their oppressors.

And so I'd decided that, even if parents and teachers and bullies might be able to force my physical compliance, I would never give in to them mentally! Never would I change my own mind to agree with them, nor would I ever allow their efforts to so much as influence my own values.

Even if they were values that...

I Wanted To Develop!

And I saw the insanity that resulted from this decision: decade upon decade of struggling with myself, unable to develop any kind of self-discipline, for the simple reason that I interpreted all my attempts to change as giving in to the enemy!

Because, even if what I sought was not a value that parents or teachers tried to force on me, I still seemed to find the very idea of giving in so distasteful, that even giving in to my own decisions was off-limits for me!

Indeed, for most of my life, the only sure way I'd gotten myself to do things, was to arrange them so that I had to do them, with sufficiently bad consequences that I could obtain my grudging -- and merely physical! -- compliance.

Meanwhile, the idea of actually enjoying working hard (or even on a regular schedule!), was the very height of betrayal, as far as my inner rebel was concerned!

And I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So many years... so much wasted effort and pain... for no real benefit whatsoever.

Because it was all just another classic "ideal-belief-reality conflict" -- a fear of weakness, covered up with a compensating ideal of strength. But fortunately,...

It Also Had A Classic Solution

In his books, Robert Fritz suggests that a simple way to get rid of such a conflict is to just admit whatever it is you're afraid of, and/or to state that you are that thing a few times. So, I said to myself a few times, "I'm afraid I'm weak"... and then I also said, "I'm a wimp," a few times.

And around the third or fourth repetition, I felt a sudden easing of the tension and terror that had initially gripped me.

"...And that's okay," I added.

Now, not every conflict like this goes away with just a few short statements, of course. Both I and my clients have occasionally had situations where stating the fear just makes it worse in that moment. But, in such cases, we simply use other techniques to break the conditioned link between the statement and the feeling, first.

In my case on Saturday, though, no additional measures were required. I just felt a remarkable sense of relief, as though I'd just put down a very heavy weight, that I'd been carrying for a very long time!

And I began to see all the ways that this conflict had driven me to passive-aggressive behavior, and other negative patterns.

How it affected my ability to let go of control in some situations, and to go along with the ideas or suggestions of others.

Hell, I could even see how it affected my sexual development! Because, when I was a teenager, living in the Caribbean, I was aggressively pursued by local girls... to a point we'd call sexual harassment today. And of course...

I Never "Gave In"!

...no matter how much I wanted to, at times.

(Which means I stayed a virgin for several more years than was strictly necessary. Oh well!)

Now, I wish I could tell you that after making this change on Saturday, I went on to live happily ever after, with all my "passivity" problems solved.

In reality, it has taken some considerable additional "cleanup" work over the last couple of days, tracking down another half-dozen or so interrelated beliefs and blocks like, "If I fall behind, I can never catch up" and "I'm no good at anyhing that's difficult."

But, even as early as last Saturday night, I found I'd already become much more comfortable going along with my wife's suggestions, now that I lacked the subconscious need to find things wrong with them, in order to justify my knee-jerk objections to them.

And I think Leslie would have to agree...

That it's probably the best Valentine's Day present...

I've ever given her.

How Mind Hacking Really Works

2009-02-10T22:19:17-0500

I was in the middle of planning another revision of Thinking Things Done's chapter 7, when I stumbled across a year-old email from Mind Hackers' Guild member Mike Brown.

In it, he mentioned an article he'd run across, talking about how some scientist had found that each time a memory is used, it has to be stored again as a new memory, in order to be accessible later, because the old memory is either not there, or because it becomes inaccessible.

Now, when Mike first sent that to me (over a year ago), I didn't give it much thought. For one thing, it sounded like another one of the many quirky or over-reaching interpretations that journalists often give to scientific topics. (I read a lot of those, especially on topics related to procrastination... and sometimes the scientists themselves are the ones with the quirky or over-reaching interpretations!)

But for some reason, that old email caught my eye this evening, as I was skimming through a folder of un-answered and un-followed-up-on emails. So I followed the link he sent to here, and then did some follow-up research via Google.

And it turns out that the basic idea, called "reconsolidation", has effects that have been studied by neuroscientists for quite some time now. And the basic idea, explained quite well in this paper, is:

When you retrieve a memory,
it becomes changeable!

Now, that might not seem particularly important or significant, and indeed, a year ago I didn't make the connection that I made tonight. But in the last year, the variety of mind-hacking techniques that I use and teach, had gotten quite a bit more varied. And I was starting to notice a lot of commonalities.

In the lead-up to writing Thinking Things Done, I had been studying the predictive function of memory, and the role of surprise in my work. Because frankly, when people change quickly and easily, it surprises them. (Not to mention their friends and family!)

But more importantly, it had seemed to me that the emotion of surprise itself was a key part of the process of change. Because people who failed to surprise themselves, failed to change.

Now, this is where things get interesting. The reason that some people fail to surprise themselves, when first using my techniques, is because they're thinking about the present....

Instead Of Experiencing The Past!

Because most of my work involves using questions designed to provoke certain memories or thought patterns, in order to "access the code" that makes a person feel or act in a certain way. So the people who have difficulty, are the ones who go into analytical and conceptual thoughts, instead of emotional/behavioral experiences.

And when I ask a question like, "And where do you feel that in your body?", they'll give a non-answer like, "I think I must be afraid of success," or "it must be my low-self esteem."

Of course, working with such people 1-on-1, I can usually get them to stop doing that after a little bit of prompting. But when people just read what I write, or listen to my recordings, there's no way for them to get that kind of feedback! (And to date, I haven't managed to write or say anything that gets 100% of people to not do this.)

Now, I've always known that directly accessing the relevant memory or belief was critical to what I do; heck, I was writing about that as far back as 2005! After all, every technique I use and teach is essentially just a different way of locating, activating, and then altering different kinds of memory patterns.

So I knew, from direct experience, that you had to access your mind's "code", in order to change it.

I just didn't have a good explanation for why!

But now, reading about how memory reconsolidation works, I see a new way to explain this principle.

Not just from a motivational perspective, (i.e., "you have to do it this way because Science says so").

And not just from a teaching perspective (i.e. "this is why you need to be as specific and sensory-based as possible, so as to access the precise memories").

But now, I also have a better way for someone to test whether they're doing it correctly!

See, up till now, I've only been able to point to their analysis and thinking, and say, "stop doing that", until they learn to do the right thing.

But now, I can more clearly describe what they're supposed to be doing in the first place!

Specifically, in order to perform a successful mind hack, you must be either:

Remembering something,
Expecting something, or
Experiencing something.

And if you're not doing one of those three things, then you're thinking, and therefore doing it wrong.

Because, while reconsolidation applies to both "declarative" memories (concepts and abstract thinking) and "procedural" memories (emotions and behaviors), it only affects the currently active system.

And that's the real reason why...

Abstract Ideas Can Never Change You!

Anyway, this reconsolidation concept doesn't actually change any of the techniques I use or teach in any meaningful way, and I certainly don't need to rely on it for "scientific" validation of what I do.

But, it does seem like it could have some profound influence on how I teach people to do what I do, and that it has some potential to make the learning process a little easier... especially for people who get too bogged down in abstract thought to be able to actually apply the techniques.

And that's precisely what I needed, for the rewrite of chapter 7.

So thank you, Mike. And thank you, Science!

Everything I Needed To Know About Life, I Learned From Supervillains

2009-02-01T17:41:54-0500

When I was a kid, I thought superheroes were awesome. And I wanted to be one, 'cause then I could wear a cool costume, fight for the right, protect the innocent and all that kind of thing.

But in the last few years, as I've been studying the characteristics that make people successful in "real life", I've come to realize that fictional "heroes" (whether they're comic-book superheroes, or action-movie leading men) aren't quite what they appear to be.

And I started noticing something really odd about the messages that Hollywood was sending, in nearly every TV and movie.

Because in them, the people who are successful in life...

Are nearly always the bad guys!

I mean, think about it. In the movies, the villains typically:

Have a vision and goals, for how they'd like things to be in the future
Believe that they deserve -- and are capable of obtaining -- everything they want in life
Proactively seek the fulfillment of their goals, and persistently work towards achieving them
Are willing to plan and prepare for years, then execute that plan in a well-disciplined manner, having anticipated as many issues as possible, with well-thought out contingency plans
Are very willing to delegate most tasks to their staff of loyal, highly-motivated employees... who they somehow managed to recruit, train, and persuade to follow along with their shared vision.

Meanwhile, the heroes tend to:

Be reactive, rather then proactive -- they wait until something bad happens, then try to solve the problem afterwards
Be reactionary, rather than progressive -- they try to put things back the way they were, instead of changing them for the better
Rarely promote a shared vision, preferring to work alone or with only a partner or two... who they don't trust with anything really important!
Rarely anticipate the possible failure modes of their plans, to the extent that they plan anything at all!
Use their talents and abilities rarely, for emergencies only, instead of keeping them in top condition or proactively using them to improve things
Not believe they personally deserve anything good out of life, or that things will ever get better for them

Ouch! I mean, if the bad guys weren't hurting innocent people, and the good guys weren't rescuing or protecting said innocents... we'd probably be calling them "go-getters" and "losers" instead of bad guys and good guys!

But I didn't really think all that much about it, until this past week. It just seemed like an amusing, cynical observation about Hollywood: that movies are designed to make people feel better about their crappy lives, by allowing them to subconsciously identify with the "good" guys.

But that was only because I didn't realize just how much this applied to me.

Or that on the inside, I was still trying to be the hero.

And that it was perhaps the single biggest source of pain in my entire life!

But now, I'm getting a little bit ahead of my story...

This Time, It's Personal

Earlier this week, I was working with some of my Mind Hacking 101 students on the subject of getting rid of the emotional blocks and negative beliefs that keep them from succeeding.

One of those students had posted to our private forum, talking about his determination to rid himself of all these obstacles... but fretting a bit about just how many of them there seemed to be.

And both I, and one of the more experienced mind hackers in the Guild, were cautioning him not to turn block-removal into some kind of crusade. Because one of our principles is, "What pushes you forward, holds you back."

In other words, anything you feel you must do (because of negative consequences) tends to put your brain into the "pain mode", decreasing motivation and creativity.

And so we showed him how to identify and fix the real issue -- self-hatred! -- that was making him turn the self-improvement process into a self-destructive crusade.

But, the inspiring and enlightening discussion between the many Guild members who joined that thread, got me to thinking more deeply about my own motivations for doing this stuff in the first place.

Because even though I was talking the talk... I wasn't sure I was really...

Walking The Walk!

I mean, I knew just what to say to my students, but was I actually practicing what I preached?

My wife had even mentioned, on occasion, that I seemed to treat my own mental and emotional blocks as something to struggle with, instead of approaching them from the same "no big deal" state that I use when I hack other people's minds, or that I teach them to use themselves.

Hm, I thought. I guess it's time for a change.

So I fired up my trusty mind-hacking toolkit and started the process of installing a new mental program: doing everything -- block-fixing included -- easily.

First, I checked my brain for any possible installation conflicts with the new program. (After all, the number one reason why most people fail to change established behaviors, is that they don't look for -- or handle -- these conflicts.)

But the conflict report that came back from my brain was this:

If you do things too easily, life will be boring!

Now, you've probably already guessed that this has something to do with superheroes and supervillains...

But only because I already told you.

For me, though, not having any "spoilers" to clue me in, I had to spend a day or so wondering off and on what the heck the problem with life being boring was!

I mean, on one level, I felt like I could definitely use some more "boring" around here. But on another level...

It Just Felt Wrong!

So I used a few RMI questions to probe for more information. What's bad about being boring? "You'll be like everyone else." What's bad about that? "You won't be special." What's bad about that? "It just is."

Turnaround. What's good about being special? "I'm better than everyone." What's good about that?

I don't remember all the questions I asked, or precisely how I got there, but at some point in all this, the idea of being a superhero popped into my mind. And then I started getting some real answers to my questions:

If I'm a hero, I won't get hurt
If I'm a hero, it's okay that I'm alone or have few friends
If I'm a hero, it's okay that people look down on me, because that's just my secret identity
If I'm a hero, I'm strong on the inside, even if I seem weak on the outside
If I'm a hero, it's okay for me to strike at those who hurt others, the way they hurt me

All in all, the superhero fantasy was more attractive to my 7-year-old self (the approximate age where these thoughts originated) than I'd ever realized. And consciously, it had never even occurred to me that they were anything but idle daydreams and escape fantasies.

I had no way of knowing that, when I adopted this superhero ideal, the following personality traits would come along with it:

If you're a hero, you're just strong and successful and equipped... automatically -- you don't have to practice or work out or really do anything at all to become successful (Impatience with details and implementation)
If you're a hero, you should never use your powers (talents and abilities) for any personal gain... unless it's an emergency. (Procrastination, not to mention failure to pursue non-work goals)
If you're a hero, it's your job to right wrongs... not to make good things. (Perfectionism!)
If you're a hero, it's your job to do the impossible, or at least the extraordinary... so leave the ordinary things to ordinary people (More perfectionism, not to mention elitism!)
If you're a hero, you have to rely on yourself... so don't share your secrets with anyone, or expect anyone to be able to help you with your problems... frankly, it's laughable that they'd be able to understand your issues, let alone help. (Arrogance, closed-mindedness, and other a**holery)
If you're a hero, everything is serious business. Deadly serious. All the frickin' time. You can enjoy other people being happy, but don't expect to have any free time that can't be interrupted for something more important. (Recipe for struggle, suffering, and general life imbalance.)

So even though I never donned a pair of tights or stalked the night in search of evildoers, I still managed to adopt all these negative traits!

My seven-year-old self also had a bit of confusion about how "right" and "wrong" can refer to correctness as well as good and evil... thus starting a lifelong crusade to correct other people's mistakes, too! (Which didn't help much with the whole "I work alone" thing, not to mention my ability to trust or rely on other people!)

And this entire scenario was also a classic example of Robert Fritz's "ideal-belief-reality conflict" pattern:

I was afraid of being (morally) weak, so I sought an ideal of (moral) strength.
I was afraid of being disliked, so I clung to an ideal of independence.
And I was afraid of being laughed at, so I seized on an ideal of seriousness.

This then set me up for plenty of installation conflicts down the line, with everything I ever tried to improve about myself.

Because, even in the last few years, when I made so much progress on so many individual blocks, I never saw this bigger picture of how they all fit together... or why, in certain areas of my life, there always seemed to be new blocks to replace the old ones!

Because the catch in every school of self-improvement, is that there is no way to be 100% sure you've fixed the real problem... any more than you can prove that a non-trivial computer program is...

Free of Bugs!

And so sometimes, you can end up fixing the part of the program that merely displays the wrong answer... instead of the part that calculated it in the first place.

I do have some hope, though, as the methods I teach the Guild are definitely improving. For example, when I first created my Procrastination Cure course in 2006, I mainly emphasized removing the individual blocks holding you back. But these days, I focus much more on fixing whatever is pushing you forward in the first place. And techniques like the Gateway questions ("What's bad about that? What's good about that? What do you get if you have that?") do an okay job of establishing context for a lot of issues.

But even the gateway questions can be hit-or-miss when it comes to identifying whether you've actually addressed the overall system, or just one part of it. So maybe we need some new questions like, "What larger patterns in my life is this an example of?", or "If I had another problem with things like this, what would it be?" (Definitely something to experiment with in the future.)

For now, though, I just went ahead and used the rest of the Gateway method to eliminate the conflicts behind my need to be a hero.

And as soon as I did, I realized that...

Superheroes Are Idiots!

Take Superman, for example. Instead of using his powers to feed the hungry, stop wars, or fix global warming, he goes around beating up crooks. What the??? Way to be helpful and positive, superjerk!

Now, the only reason I'm mentioning this is that (Watchmen and Miracle Man aside) these kind of thoughts had never even occurred to me, before I deleted the superhero "ideal" from my brain. Superman and other heroes were simply good by definition. (To my brain, at least.)

But as soon as I dropped that ideal out of my head, the very first thing that popped into my mind was that superheroes are actually a bunch of neurotic, paranoid, and depressed individuals, full of suppressed rage that they've channeled into an obnoxious self-righteousness. Nobody sane would willingly go out and do what they do... at least not with that kind of attitude!

And I couldn't believe I'd actually been crazy enough to model my life on them... even subconsciously!

So, from now on, my role models are all going to be supervillains instead... 'cause they sure do know how to enjoy life!

Nah, just kidding. I don't really need the management hassles involved in finding replacement henchmen, after I slay them for their incompetence. And have you seen the rent on secret island volcano hideaways these days?

No, what I've really decided to opt for, is the basically ordinary life of a basically ordinary person... who just happens to be focused, motivated, and enjoying their life, while achieving their goals.

And so, in the days since I dropped that old ideal, life has become a lot more "boring"... or as I prefer to think of it now:

Relaxed.

And drama-free.

You Should've Known Better

2009-01-17T20:50:42-0500

I wasn't real happy with myself this evening.

The MindShift workshop -- the first one of the new year -- wasn't going as well as I would've liked. We had a lot of new members, but the topic I'd chosen was a rather advanced one, and I found myself backing up and sidetracking a lot, to make sure that everyone could follow along.

That seemed to be working okay, but then the downside was that the workshop was running over its allotted time, and I wasn't going to be able to fit in everything I'd planned to.

Worst of all, just as I was getting close to finishing a working demonstration of how to change "have to" feelings into "choices", my DSL connection cut out and dropped everybody off the seminar before I could get back online.

Ouch!

It took a while for me to clear my head afterwards, and to realize that -- irony of ironies -- my own negative reaction to the problems was itself an example of the subject I was teaching!

You see, the workshop was about modal operators: words like "can", "should", "have to" and so on. More precisely, it was about the frames of mind that underlie these words, and how our beliefs and "rules" determine which frame of mind we use for different tasks.

In particular, we were looking at rules like, "If I have to, I don't want to" and "If I put it on my to-do list, then I have to"... and I was in the middle of showing how to change them into more useful rules when the connection went out.

Anyway, what I realized was this: my reaction to the workshop problems was being created by a rule. One that worked something like, "If I was able to prevent it, then...

I Should Have!

Because as I was going back over how things went, I was second-guessing everything I did, seeing how I could have made different choices that would've improved things.

Like, if I'd called on more experienced students for examples, I could've finished a simple, successful example first, and then backtracked for the newbies later. Or, if I'd not sidetracked at this one point, we wouldn't have had this bit of confusion later and had to backtrack.

And, if I'd signed up for cable a couple weeks ago when the first DSL outage happened, I'd have had another way to get on the internet.

Yeah, I know, it's all a bit silly. And yet, a big piece of my career in computers has been about being good at preventing bad things from happening!

However, just because a compulsion can cause you to develop a skill, it doesn't mean you need to keep the compulsion around! So, it's time to get rid of this one.

And how do I do that?

Mental Debugging and Disassembly

The trick to making any change in your brain's programming, is to remember that abstract ideas do not have any direct power to change you. Your brain is designed to build abstractions from sensory data -- not the other way around!

Thus, to change an automatic mental rule like "If I was able to prevent it, then I should have", I must first turn it back into sensory data. Because in its present, abstract form, it represents an analysis or summary of the "program's" operation, rather than being the actual code of the program.

You might say, that in programming terms, we want to "view source" or "decompile" the abstraction, by looking at where the rule came from.

And you do that by asking questions like, "How do I know X?", or "How did I learn X?", "What's the classic example of X for me?", or other, similar questions. Then, you pay attention to what responses come up in your mind.

In my case, the immediate response is an auditory memory of my mother yelling at my brother and I, about how we (or maybe just he) "should have known better" than to do something or other... and it's accompanied by a feeling of guilt and shame.

Now... here's the important bit about what happens next:

I Don't Analyze This!

It's not important for me to know if this is something that really happened, or whether my brother or I really did anything bad, or whether it's my mother's fault I'm messed up or any crap like that. None of that is in the least bit important, because it just leads to more abstractions.

And abstractions don't help you find the bug.

In fact, any programmer can tell you that in computer programming, the more abstract your view of the program, the less likely you are to find a bug that's right in front of your face!

So, I don't analyze this mental response. It's not important how it got there or whether it's logically or philosophically valid in some way. All that matters is that this is a piece of information my brain is using in its calculation of how I should feel about certain classes of situation.

And if I change the "program" so that this piece of information is no longer considered relevant in that calculation, then...

I will change!

My actual personality will change, because that's what a personality is: a collection of rules that define what is -- or isn't -- "you". And when those rules change, you change.

Automatically, and without effort.

So let's do this thing... I will change my personality, right here and now, for your edification and amusement (not to mention my own personal improvement)!

But it won't take long. (Heck, I could've been done changing this half an hour ago, if I hadn't been typing all this stuff!)

I recognize the general pattern in an instant: something my fellow mind hackers in the Guild would quickly assess as a "judgment" or "Fourgiveness target". Specifically, it's the sort of situation where you come to a general conclusion about what is or isn't acceptable behavior for you.

In my case, I came to the conclusion that if you don't prevent a problem that you could have prevented -- regardless of whether you were actually aware at the time your behavior might create that problem -- then...

You're A Bad Person!

Now, I could sit here and argue with myself that that's "not really true". I could call that kind of thinking childish and stupid.

But that wouldn't help. Again - it's just verbal abstraction, and that's simply not how the brain works, on the "gut" level where confidence and motivation -- or their opposites -- actually live.

I also sometimes explain it this way: just because I-the-40-year-old know that this reasoning is wrong, it doesn't fix the reasoning of I-the-8-year-old who created this rule in my head. My knowing that this rule is stupid, doesn't make him know that the rule is stupid, and thus the rule stays put.

No, there isn't really an "inner child" who must be convinced of anything here. It's just that this memory is structured in such a way that, once the threat has been logged as existing, it remains cataloged in my brain until it is specifically disconfirmed.

It's like, if you think you see a tiger stalking you, then you're going to worry about it... until and unless you get some specific indication that you were wrong, like seeing it was just a deer, or a branch moving in the wind.

But simply arguing with yourself that there's no tiger there, doesn't help, because...

It's Not Changing The Sensory Data!

So to convince my brain to let go of this rule, I have to present it with new sensory data regarding the subject of the rule. But luckily, this "new" data can be entirely imaginary... as long as it's also believable.

See, if I try to just "make up" an imaginary scenario in which it's perfectly okay to make mistakes that are stupid in hindsight, then this will not jibe with my brain's expectations. I will feel "incongruent" -- i.e., disbelieving, skeptical, etc.

So, what I do is this: I get my brain to come up with the scenarios for me, using various questions. (Like the ones in my "Seven Laws of Belief" handout over at Thinking Things Done)

And these questions are "leading" questions. Questions that (like "have you stopped beating your wife yet?") literally force my brain to imagine a world in which certain conditions are true... and generate the matching sensory data by combining other memories.

For example, I can ask something as simple as, "Does my mother saying it necessarily mean it's so?" And this forces my brain to...

Perform A Consistency Check!

You see, by default, our brains don't do any consistency checking on our beliefs. We just believe whatever we believe, until and unless circumstances require us to do such a check. But the machinery is there in our heads to do this checking, and it will automatically update any inconsistent beliefs...

As long as you ask it to.

And the checker works by comparing sensory data. So on a check like "does my mother saying it mean it's true", I'm basically asking my brain to pull up all the cases where my mother said things, and see which ones were true.

And if enough things turned out not to be true, then this could immediately lower my brain's credibility rating for this particular belief!

Now -- it would not necessarily update any other beliefs I got from my mother, because the consistency check machinery is very "local" in its design.

It appears to have been intended to update beliefs like "where the best place to find food is" -- if you go there and there's none, the mechanism notices an inconsistency and seeks to update it.

But it doesn't go and wonder if you should reconsider where everything else is! After all, if anything else had moved...

You'd Discover That Pretty Quick, Too!

So this is the big reason why we don't do what we intend, or change the way we think we should, just by having an "idea" about something. Ideas don't connect to the consistency checker, which means they don't update your "gut-level" beliefs!

But I'm digressing a bit, as I said I was going to make this change now. While, "does her saying it mean it's true?" seems to have lowered the credibility level of this belief a bit, it wasn't sufficient to make a change in my gut-level reactions. I still feel like I "should have" done better.

So I'll try some other questions now, like "Is it really true that having a preventable problem means you're a bad person?" and "Do good people ever have preventable problems?"

In the first case, I'm asking for a general consistency check -- and the answer comes back, "Probably not." (But it still feels true.)

In the second case, I'm asking for specific counterexamples, which would provide good sensory data for the consistency checker to use in updating my beliefs -- kind of like seeing where the new best place to get food is, or noticing that the supposed tiger was really just a branch!

The second question brings up something interesting: I'm seeing that when good people do have preventable problems...

I've Tended To Treat Them Badly!

This is an interesting facet, by the way, of how belief systems work. The raw sensory data is used as a pattern template for behavior in more than one role. It encodes the roles of both the accuser and the accusee.

That is, it tells me not only what to expect if I fail to prevent a problem, but also how I should behave towards others who do the same thing! (A valuable learning-through-imitation pattern, that's found in many social animals besides humans.)

Okay, so I still have the pattern. And at this point, I've pretty much confirmed that these tentative probes (which have taken all of 30 seconds out of this last hour-or-so of typing) are not going to do the job, and that this meets all the criteria for the use of the Fourgiveness technique (a systematic way of dropping this kind of social-relations rule).

I'm not going to go into the whole thing here, though, because even though it'll probably take me less than a minute to do it, describing all the possible nuances (not to mention the theory) would probably take me hours more typing... and even then, it's better learned by practice and example.

But one of the questions I'll be using is...

"Can I Forgive Myself
(For Whatever My Mother Was Angry About)?"

Now, I wish I had the time and space to go into all the evolutionary psychology and biology behind that question and how it works, but I've already done that in previous workshops at some length, and this article is already a lot longer than I'd intended it to be!

So for right now, I'm going to stop all this typing, and fix the damn problem in my head already, then come back and only write down what I did. (This typing and hacking at the same time just isn't working very well.)

Okay. That took about a minute and a half -- because there were some complications!

The complicating factor was that this "memory" was actually two memories. One, of laughing at my brother for getting in trouble over something he could've prevented, and one where I was getting in trouble myself. And the earlier memory validated the later one, in the sense that, "I argued that he was responsible then, therefore I'm responsible now."

So this is what made the second memory seem "true" to me, which is probably why the consistency check on "reliability of statements by my mother" didn't have any real effect.

Because, it wasn't my mother's judgment that I was following to create this belief...

It Was My Own!

And in order to untangle this mess, I had to first step back and acknowledge that I was being a jerk for taunting my brother and gloating when he got in trouble... and then forgive myself for that.

Because until I did so, my brain simply wouldn't let go of the judgment that I was responsible in the second case, even when I tried to forgive myself for it. (And trying to sort all that out, while typing about it and trying to make it all into a nice neat linear story, just wasn't working for me.)

Now, I've never encountered a pattern quite like that before -- where a judgment made about someone else then cements the apparent "truth" of the reversed situation. But the situation still followed both the rules of the Fourgiveness process in particular, as well as those of the general mental troubleshooting methods I teach.

Because one of those rules is, "you follow what comes up". And in this case, as I tried to forgive myself for whatever I felt responsible for, the memory of taunting my brother kept popping up instead.

So I eventually took the hint, and realized that what I needed to forgive -- but first acknowledge -- was my jerky behavior.

Because after all, if I didn't acknowledge that busting someone's chops over theoretically-preventable mistakes was a bad thing to do, then of course it would only seem right to beat myself up for my own preventable mistakes!

My Work Here... Is Done

I've now done a few seconds additional follow-up, to install the more-useful pattern of thinking of the next time a mistake could happen, and focusing on how I'll prevent it in the future, instead of dwelling on the (unfixable) past.

That installation was easy to do now, of course, since the conflicting rule is gone. But right after the workshop, I had tried to think that way... but couldn't get myself to actually do it.

And when your brain doesn't obey you instantly in such a matter, it's a positive indicator that you've got a conflicting rule or belief in your head.

And it's time to go hunting.

So, I hope that this article has helped to illustrate for you, one of the least-known truths in personal development:

Fixing the bugs in your brain is easy.

It's finding them, that's the hard part!

Good luck in your searches.

Your Top 3 New Year's Resolution Mistakes

2009-01-05T19:16:05-0500

I was originally planning to write this as a regular blog article, but since one of my resolutions is to do more videos this year, here it is in video form: the top 3 mistakes that cause 88% of all new year's resolutions to end in failure:

If you can't see the video here, you can watch it here on Google video. And, if you want to get the ebook and other stuff I mention near the end, you can find it here.