“Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”

–Gilda Radner

I submit the following points:

• Most of the particular details of your situation came about by chance.
• Most of your belief about your control of outcomes is simply an illusion of control.
• People have different kinds and different amounts of natural talent
• Despite all of the above, success is not just “dumb luck”.  There is a reason why some people are successful and it has nothing to do with dumb luck.

Steve Jobs was in the news a lot lately because of his tragic death which was the result of a chance event, pancreatic cancer – really bad luck.  But what about his incredible success in life?  Was that just luck too?  In my opinion the answer is both yes and no.

If Jobs had not come of age about when he did, if he had not met and become friends with Steve Wozniak in high school, or if he had not visited a Xerox lab and have seen the idea he used to create the Apple computer interface, we probably would never have heard of him.  We might have anyway but in my opinion likely not.  That is what I mean by the first bullet point that the particular details of your situation are the result of chance.  If you met your lifelong partner at a party that you only went to because bad weather cancelled other plans, then but for that chance event you life would have been very different in its particular details.

Most of what happens are things we don’t control.  They are just a series of contingent occurrences in our life.  After the fact and in hindsight we compose narratives to explain the events and how we were in control of it all. Gurus tell their story of success and use it to convince you they have discovered the true path to success and that you should buy into it – literally.  The control over the outcomes that these stories describe is illusory.  It is in this sense that much in life is driven by chance events.

I think it is incredibly important to accept the uncertainty of life – that you don’t control outcomes and that conditions will constantly change. By believing we are in control of these events we set ourselves up for failure. When things inevitably depart from our plans we are disappointed by failure or see ourselves as victims of circumstance.

Accepting you don’t control the outcomes, which you don’t, allows you to roll with the punches with a much better attitude. Shit happens so just deal with it.  You control what you can control and then accept whatever happens and move on.

Are Some People Lucky?

Richard Wiseman who has made a specialty of studying luck says that lucky people are just much more open to possibility.  Unlucky people are stuck in routines and are afraid to take chances when opportunities present themselves.  I think he has completely nailed the issue.

Lets say something about Steve Jobs’ life had happened differently and he had not “lucked” into those chance events I mentioned above.  Would he have been a success at something else?  I think it is highly likely he would have been because he was the kind of person who looked for opportunities and took advantage of them.  He might not have become a famous multi-billionaire but probably by any standards he would have been successful.  Other people were in similar situations and saw the same things Steve Jobs did but not create Apple computers.

The one thing that will guarantee you remain stuck in “bad luck” is to be afraid of uncertainty and change and to play it safe.  Life changes too rapidly and too unpredictably for that to be a successful strategy in today’s world.  You might not like it and it may scare you but that doesn’t change the fact that is the way the world works.  Successful people are opportunistic chance takers.  Eventually they find something that works and all the complainers are still sitting around whining about how unlucky they are.

I do not believe we are all equal in talent either.  I watched a documentary called Bobby Fisher Against the World yesterday.  Malcolm Gladwell was on their spouting the 10,000 hour mantra and making it seem like luck had nothing to do with Bobby Fisher.  I completely disagree.  Bobby Fisher had an IQ of 180 which puts him a category that only something like one in a million are lucky enough to be born with.  Certainly without his obsession with chess (he spent virtually all his time with it from age 6 on) he would never have achieved what he did.  On the other hand had he not been born with a brilliant and very unusual mind he wouldn’t achieved it either.  There is luck involved here but in one respect Gladwell and I are on the same page; it’s what you do with what you are lucky enough to be born with that is most important for YOU.

There are some genuinely undeservedly lucky people and some genuinely undeservedly unlucky people.  However, in general I think over time most people create their own luck by either taking advantage of whatever circumstances life delivers up or by failing to do so.  That choice is yours to make.

The Keys to Luck

• Accept that life is uncertain and can’t be predicted and planned out
• Accept that what happens is not under your control
• Be resilient so you can bounce back when life smacks you on the head
• Be open to see the opportunities chance delivers to you
• Be flexible so you can take action on those opportunities
• Don’t be afraid of doing something

“So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don’t sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we’ve satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.

–Lee Iacocca”

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I now believe that much of the current propaganda about positive thinking is at minimum misguided and likely counter-productive for many people.  It amounts to self-help snake oil.  This represents a change in my own beliefs brought about by my own experience, my observations of others, and a lot of reading and thinking about it.

Action Is More Important Than Attitude

What matters is not your attitude but your actions.  When I looked in the mirror 18 months ago I didn’t see a body I thought was perfect. I saw an aging body that was overweight without being obese, but flabby and out of shape. I was angry at myself for letting myself go like that and risking my future well-being. Should I have looked at myself in the mirror and said “You’re beautiful” (when I knew I was not) and “You’re perfect just the way you are”? I don’t think so. My negative and honest thinking spurred me on to do something about it. I’m still out of shape but I’m 45 pounds lighter and I’ve kept it that way for over 6 months. I didn’t say daily affirmations. I didn’t “manifest” a perfect body.  I didn’t imagine a body I would never have. I simply changed my diet and stuck with it, even though at times it hurt a lot.  I substituted positive and determined action for positive thinking.  I thought negatively and lost the weight, but far more importantly made a permanent change in my diet that improved my health.

We Are All Different

We humans are very different from one another in our personalities and in general about 1/2 of that difference is genetic.  This is also true for the trait of optimism and researchers have linked some of that to a gene for oxytocin.  It seems absurd that some general advice that is so hardwired into people can simply be changed by “Thinking Positive” and that the results would be “positively” the same for all our dramatically different natures.  How much harm has been done to people who think they are defective in some way because they have failed to change themselves into a positive thinker; something that may be very difficult if not impossible for them?  It’s easy for some people to maintain low body fat and it is next to impossible for others.  It’s no different for personality including an optimistic or pessimistic outlook.

I have never considered myself a generally optimistic person and in every test I’ve ever taken my results show a pretty pessimistic personality type.  I’m cynical and sarcastic by nature.  I get angry, especially at stupidity in myself and others.  I’m sure some of this is learned but some of it is also just the way I was wired from birth.  I’ve tried to be more positive and to some to degree I’ve been successful.  But at bottom I can’t simply change my personality and I’m not sure I want to anymore.  I don’t see how it helps me or anyone else.

Looking on the Bright Side

Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here.  I’m not telling you it’s healthy to be negative about everything, and who likes to be around someone who is constantly bitching and complaining?   I’ve done a lot to shut off my negative self-talk and rumination.  I’ve mostly stopped constantly replaying things that piss me off over and over in my mind.  I’ much more accepting of what is without lying to myself about reality.  I’m much calmer, more relaxed, and more satisfied than I’ve ever been before.  But I’m not a fake positive thinker and I never will be.

I think it is good to not be attached to outcomes.  I think it is wise to accept what is without necessarily being satisfied with it.  It’s critical that you don’t become a victim of circumstances that are out of your control.  It’s a great learning experience to extract lessons from your failures.  But…

If You Are a Real Person, Life is Not Perfect

Sometimes things just suck and are not perfect regardless of what Leo Babauta says.  It’s OK to not be positive when life throws you a screwball.  I don’t think it is healthy to say otherwise and I notice this usually comes from people who have reached a point in their lives where it is easy for them to say that to others.  Everything wasn’t perfect for Leo when he was in debt, out of shape, overweight, smoking, working multiple jobs etc.  Now that he changed a lot of that he tells us that everything is always perfect and we should think the same way.  Well I disagree and to insist otherwise is to lie to yourself.

A Little Optimism Goes a Long Way

I’m pretty sure that optimistic people have less stress and live longer.  I’m not sure they are more successful in other ways.  I’m also not sure that a naturally pessimistic person who tries to be positive all the time would live any longer.  The stress of going against his nature may kill him sooner.  This is the part that is missed in a lot of the bull that is peddled nowadays.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the best approach is to kill the unnecessary negativity, but to live within your nature.  It’s probably a good idea to be a little more positive than you should be given your situation, but not so much that you lie to yourself about anything important.  If I’m going to die from pancreatic cancer it doesn’t help me to pretend that everything is perfect.

Like everything else I’m not really sure about all this.  However, I think the positive thinking approach has gone too far.  I’ve tried it and it didn’t work for me.  I think I’m happier (?) being the crank I was born to be without being overly obsessive or ruminating on the negative.  I get over being upset much faster than I used to and I don’t get upset nearly as often either.  I’ve learned that shit happens and that I should just move on.  The very best thing I ever did was drop my attachment to outcomes.  If things don’t work out the way I wish (and they almost never do), then I try to take it in stride and just go on after making the appropriate adjustments.

It’s OK to be negative if that’s the way you are, just don’t over do it.  Try to use those negative feelings as motivation to do something different.

Happy Thanksgiving to all you Americans who are celebrating today.

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The other day I went to a blog I regularly read and I was dumbfounded by the subject of the new article on display.  It was something like “How To Read More”.  I thought he has to be kidding right?  But no, in all seriousness the article was about how to read more with 10 strategies to accomplishing this amazing feat.  I’m not naming the blog because this celebration of the trivial is not unique to that blog.  It is widespread and I’ve been guilty of similar things myself.  I’m sure the author thinks he is writing something valuable.  But what struck me was wondering how many of the hundreds of thousands of subscribers to that blog thought it valuable?  Is anyone besides me thinking this is useless trivia?  I doubt it, at least not many.  Other than to actually pick up more reading material and turn more pages, I’m not sure exactly what it is I need to know.

I ended my dance with Facebook for the same reason, the celebration of the trivial.  Other than being a place where people perform for public consumption, the trivia was simply mind-numbing to me. We have got to a point in our culture of trivia that we think it is normal that one of the most popular blogs in the world needs to tell us how to read more.  Our culture is so saturated by useless trivia that we don’t even notice it anymore.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve read on some blog or elsewhere about how to declutter.  But seriously who needs it?  The one time I did a significant decluttering I went to my closet with a bunch of giant bags.  I went through all my clothes.  I think I eliminated about ⅔ of my clothes from my closet.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t use any advice from all that reading about decluttering but instead just used my common sense.  If I no longer wore it, I got rid of it.

I don’t like to watch TV much but my wife usually has it on and I can’t help but pick up on what is being said some of the time.  One of the most common phrases that comes out of my mouth any more is “And that is considered newsworthy?”  I live in the huge metropolitan city of Houston, TX.  One of the network stations here on the local news was telling us the other day that health inspectors found a cockroach at some restaurant I’ve never heard of.  Really?  In a city of this size that kind of trivial nonsense is what earns a time-slice of the airwaves?  Even without watching TV intentionally I seem to know way more than I want to about Ashton Kutcher’s and Demi Moore’s marital problems.

Don’t misunderstand me.  Everything does not have to be serious.  I’m a big fan of smart humor and I spend a good amount of time joking around.  I’m all in favor of relaxing and enjoying life.  But seriously do we need Gurus to tell us how to read?  Are we so freaking helpless we have to take a class in how to relax or buy a self-help book on the subject?  Can we not figure this simple stuff out for ourselves?  I guess I’m just becoming a cynical old crank, but good grief.  Let’s spend our time on more substantial things.  Do you really want to look back over the last few years of your life and think about how much time was spent on such useless trivia?  Try reading instead, and I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you how to do that.

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Life is made up of a whole set of package deals.  It’s the nature of a package deal that you have to accept or reject the whole package, you don’t get to cherry pick the parts you want and reject the others.  The good usually comes packaged with some bad.  It’s part of the nature of the world we live in.

This is the problem I see with those gurus or spiritual leaders who claim everything can be great or perfect if you just look at things differently.  There is something to what they say and I agree with much of it but they over do it.  We think we have the right to demand life be great just because we exist or that it will be that way if we just imagine it.

I’m all for making the best of every situation, looking for something you can get out of each challenge or struggle and learn and grow from them.  I have said as much many times here on this blog.  However, I’m getting a little tired of people in general and gurus in particular acting like everything can be wonderful and perfect all the time.

One of the most important aspects of a good life are its relationships and this is one area where many people seem to not get the package deal concept.  If there ever was a package deal it is people.  Young people especially don’t seem to get this package concept of their romantic partners.  As soon as the move in together or get married, they set about constantly griping about the things, big and little, that they don’t like in the package they selected.  What’s worse is they think they can “change” them.  Sorry, but you bought a package.  Same with your friends.  Make sure you select carefully because a package you will get and not a piece of clay you can mold.

I choose to live in the burbs because I like the space and green surroundings.  I appreciate the peace and quiet most of the time.  But I bought a package deal.  I’m not surrounded by the cosmopolitan atmosphere of a city center and I crave that sometimes.  Instead, I get the burb culture and it definitely can be bland.  It’s a package deal.

Guess what happens when you elect a politician?  You get a package, much of which you aren’t going to like.

When you work for someone else, especially a corporation, you are trading independence and freedom for at least some level of stability and security.  When you work for yourself you are buying a different kind of package.  It doesn’t help to constantly bitch about the parts you don’t like because they come with the package.  Everything is not wonderful and great all the time.

I watched the U.S. Open Tennis Men’s finals earlier this week.  Novak Djokovic definitely experienced the thrill of victory while Rafael Nadal experienced the agony of defeat.  But even Djokovic suffered through the grueling and painful match with a back injury.  He had what many consider the greatest year ever in the history of tennis for a men’s single player.  That greatness came packaged with a great deal of mental and physical stress.  What about all the other players with less spectacular (or any) success?  Most elite performances are preceded by a great deal of not so thrilling practice and drills and yes even the agony of defeat.

Life has its ups and downs.  The downs make the ups that much sweeter.  Life is jam-packed with a bunch of small (and some not so small) packages – packages that bring both the good and the bad.  Accept that and life can be wonderful.

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The ability to easily share information has led to rapidly advancing knowledge in many fields.  At the same time the average person now has available what seems like an infinite amount of information at their fingertips.  The ability to discover and take advantage of all this information may be the key to thriving in 21st century.

Take health as one example.  One can find endless amounts of information on the Internet about diseases, symptoms, drugs, traditional solutions, alternative therapies, nutrition, exercise, and supplements.  You can dive into anyone one specific topic in very deep detail and get every opinion and idea imaginable.

The problem with all the information available is that much of it is worthless and some of it may be seriously harmful.  While we do have some high quality reliable information fed to us through the mainstream and while there is an enormous amount of good information available at our fingertips, most of what we consume is false or simply trivial junk. Unless we practice some good habits of mind in dealing with that information we are liable to be misled; high quality information is buried under a mountain of crap.

Who we are at what we do ultimately comes down to how we process what we take in. There is a computer term called GIGO which stands for Garbage In = Garbage Out.  It’s becoming more important every day that we develop the skills needed to filter out the garbage; to learn critical thinking skills that help sort through what is important and what can be trusted to have a reasonable probability of being true.

This article serves as an introduction to a series of articles that will provide some ideas on critical thinking skills to help you sort through all this information.

A Skeptical Attitude

I think the best approach to take is the skeptical approach.  Being a skeptic doesn’t mean you aren’t open to new ideas; quite the contrary.  I consider myself a strong skeptic and yet I’m fascinated by new ideas and hold quite a number of them that would not be considered mainstream.  I’m always on the lookout for the new and unusual in the hopes that I can learn something and thereby grow.  I don’t mind being on the leading edge, but I want to be on the correct leading edge.  Truth as best we can determine it is very important to me.

A skeptic doesn’t accept received wisdom on the basis of authority or tradition.  We don’t accept things because our parents, our teachers, a minister, or a guru says so.  A skeptical attitude is a “show me” or “prove it” attitude.  It is one that depends on the methods, not the authority of reason, logic, and science.  A skeptic can be very inquisitive and curious (I am), but he simply cannot be credulous towards the unproven claims made by others.  We are swimming in a modern sea of information and a credulous person is going to be a sucker for those peddling nonsense.  Life is too short to waste your time on nonsense.

cred·u·lous (krj-ls)

• Disposed to believe too readily; gullible.
• Tending to believe something on little evidence

If you make a claim that I find interesting and relevant to my life, I might choose to consider it, but I’ll usually remain uncommitted unless and until you provide some good reasons, in other words evidence, for me to believe it.  The burden is on you to prove your claim, it is not mine to disprove.

More to come…

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The Internet was supposed to expose us to many new viewpoints, broaden our horizons, generate new ideas, and so on.  To some degree it has but there is a very serious hidden danger in the fact that we are always connected to others.  It’s not just that we are connected to others, it’s who and how we are connecting.  We  participate in groups through the Internet or other media technologies to a degree unimaginable just a couple of decades ago.  So even though the impact of groups on individual thinking has always existed, its impact is much greater today.  We are losing our ability and opportunity to think independently and in my view this has serious consequences.

How Groups Impact Our Thinking

Recent research involving fMRI brain scans appears to show that when we are in groups we are conforming unconsciously and are less thoughtful.  We are not carefully considering other viewpoints; we are simply thinking less and conforming automatically.  So just the fact that we are so easily exposed to the opinions of others carries the danger we will stop thinking for ourselves.

There is something called the availability heuristic that causes us to think something more likely the more easily we can bring to mind examples of it.  That’s why we worry about very rare events like airplane crashes, school shootings, stranger abductions, etc.  Dramatic exposure to these in the media seriously skews our beliefs about the likelihood of these events.  It also means you will think your ideas are more reasonable and common simply because you know other people who agree with you.  No matter how uncommon or loony your ideas, you can find like-minded people online.

Do people consider the merits of a proposal or its source?  Evidently the source can be more important since Israelis will actually prefer a peace solution proposed by Palestinians and Palestinians will prefer a solution proposed by Israelis if the proposals are mislabeled as to which group is the source of the proposal.  The same phenomena has been demonstrated for Democrats and Republicans.

When you’re in a group you look to see what other people are doing and you do the same.  It’s called social validation.  Groups create polarity naturally and a group will display a more extreme position than would be expected by examining the views of the individual members.  Groupthink inhibits alternatives, minimizes conflict, and enforces conformity.   The need to maintain consistency will push you to continue with the same position once it is articulated.  This is especially true once you make your position known to others.  Group participation makes your thinking public and so you will be more motivated to maintain that position in the future.  Group brainstorming has actually been shown to be less effective than individual brainstorming.

Confirmation bias will cause you to readily dismiss evidence that disconfirms your view and overvalue evidence that confirms it.  Amazingly, experiments have shown that simply evaluating or considering balanced pro and con evidence will cause your position to become more extreme and hardened due to confirmation bias.  So engaging in debate and discussion doesn’t necessarily make you more objective.  In fact it likely will have the opposite effect.

There are mountains of evidence in psychological research documenting these phenomena.  It’s a miracle we can even think in groups at all.  Maybe we can’t and the group effects simply overpower individual thought.  Almost everyone will protest that they are immune to this; that it may be true for other people but not for them, but as we have seen these effects may be unconscious.  Whether you realize it or not you are being influenced heavily.

Once upon a time if you had a unusual or extreme view you would have difficulty finding that comforting group confirmation.  Nowadays no matter what you think you can find comfort and confirmation online.  It’s like a drug hit for an addict.  It makes you feel good.  You think X and you want to find out if it is true so you do a Google search and confirmation bias does the rest.  We are self-sorting ourselves into groups that allow us to avoid thinking for ourselves.

Difficult, reflective, self-challenging, and careful consideration of opposing evidence and arguments are almost impossible when participating in groups whether physically or virtually.  Once we start moving in one direction, these group dynamics will push us powerfully and unconsciously into more hardened and extreme positions regardless of the merits of the arguments.

Those self-organizing internet movements may be powerful, but complex thought is not part of them.  People watch FOX News or CNBC because they tell them what they want to hear.  We all go to the internet to get confirmation and feel good whether we realize it or not simply because we can.  Information availability means we inevitably will suffer from confirmation bias.  We are not becoming more objective and open minded, we are becoming more committed to our existing beliefs.

What Can You Do?

The real world is not clean.  It is messy, complex, and difficult to get our minds around.  Issues are rarely anywhere near as simple and clear cut as we often see them.  These black and white positions are mostly fantasies created by our own minds.  I’m guilty of this myself.  It’s not a matter of simply exposing yourself to all sides and viewpoints.  As research has clearly demonstrated, confirmation bias and group dynamics will inhibit your ability to think independently.

You must physically, or more commonly now virtually, get out of the debates and rallies and off the stages and put down the bullhorns and signs and think for yourself.  It is nearly impossible in those situations to consider or appreciate nuances and complexities of the situation or see the legitimate aspects of other viewpoints.  You have to get out of all the polarizing debates and groups and away from your fellow devotees and do something that doesn’t feel natural.  You have to do some hard thinking primarily by yourself; without your standard arguments ready and waiting.  This is not easy or natural.  This kind of deep thinking is very difficult in our distracted world.  Here is a recent example of mine where I tried to do this.

A few weeks ago I picked up a book in the library that I could see was going to come from a perspective far different than mine.  It was written by a professional philosopher but it dealt with real-world practical implications of a particular viewpoint that I have written about multiple times on this blog.  Deep consideration of book length discussions is something I enjoy, but it is fundamentally an alone process.  It’s you alone with your thoughts and the thoughts of another person that you cannot in any way interact with.  I got lost in this book for several hours at a time in a flow experience.  This book seriously challenged my ideas.

I think my understanding is much deeper and my appreciation for the complexity of the topic has strengthened considerably.  I haven’t fundamentally changed my mind, but my nonetheless I believe I have a much richer understanding of my own position and it has softened and changed to some degree.  If I had chosen to participate in some type of forum or debate or group activity with others, it is likely the opposite would have happened; I would likely have hardened my viewpoint.

This type of growth can happen to me with surprising frequency.  Multiple iterations of experiences like this have caused me to completely change my mind on some very fundamental philosophical issues in my life.  Mostly though it usually just results in a more nuanced and complex perspective.  Sometimes I end up more convinced I was right all along.  I’m convinced it happens because I’m all alone.

My suggestion to you is to disengage from your special interest groups and discover the fine art of thinking for yourself.  Human nature makes it almost impossible to think for yourself while part of a group.  Social contact and interaction is important.  Intellectual and philosophical discussion is important, but the group dynamics of the modern world are making independent thinking increasingly rare.  As long as you understand both the power and danger of groups and act accordingly, you can enjoy the benefits and mitigate the dangers of this new connected world.  The only thing have to gain is your own independent mind.

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If you haven’t read  Part I please do so before reading Part II.

I’m going to use health as an example to illustrate some principles I think are important in balancing short and long term thinking.  With slight changes these same principles can be applied to almost anything.

I really didn’t even begin to cover the subject.  I had to cut out other really good ideas and compress the explanations.  Such is the problem with blog articles that people will read.  I hope I pique your interest enough to give some of this a try though.

I’m going to assume throughout this article that if you could snap your fingers and ensure a long and very healthy life without any cost, you would.  If you wouldn’t then you aren’t going to agree with much of what I have to say.

The other side of that is that being healthy does incur costs and to have a good life you must balance the ideal whole-life health state with the pain it creates to achieve.  Therein lies the problem for most people.

The future is unknowable.  I am a huge proponent of living and enjoying life now and I refuse to give up life’s pleasures so I can live to be a healthy old curmudgeon.  I say this because there truly are people who take this way too far and they will look upon the rest of us as inferior beings.

On the other hand I also refuse to destroy my long term health for the sake of fleeting and momentary pleasures.  I’m going for the optimal whole-life balance and there are ways to accomplish it.

Most people have a steep discount rate.  Discount rate is an economic term but it basically means we place a much higher value on the present than the future and the farther into the future we go the faster the discount rises.  This factor alone plays heavily into most short-term / long-term balancing decisions; it heavily biases us to short-term thinking.  Our ancestors were just trying to find food and avoid being eaten; they weren’t too concerned about how functional they would be in their 9th decade of life (which very few of them would ever see).  The genes they passed on to us reflect adaptations that made them successful in getting through their prime reproductive years and anything beyond that didn’t matter much.  For some reason knowing this makes me desire long-term benefits more. 

Our natural impulses weren’t designed for the 21st century. Our natural impulses are going to drive us to be sedentary, eat too much of the wrong food, and not be concerned about our old-age.  Since those are our natural impulses and we derive pleasure from them, it is reasonable to expect that there is going to be some discomfort required to avoid them.  That discomfort is highly variable among individuals.  Some people are going to have a much easier time being fit, trim, and healthy than other people.  It’s surely not controversial to state it is much more painful for some people to be healthy than others.

So aside from personality differences, there are going to be dramatic differences in what individual people should give up to achieve greater health.  It’s a highly personal decision and yet in general I think most people for the above reasons take a view that is mistakenly too short-term.

The obvious question then is how can we reduce the pain and discomfort of going against our natural impulses in the short-term?  That’s the only way most people have a chance.  What we really want to do is make the pleasurable bad things more painful and the painful good things more pleasurable.  Here are some of my techniques.

Deep Understanding Changes the Pleasure/Pain Balance. We all know exercise is good for you and it helps your muscles, lungs, and heart.  We know being fat is bad for you and we know too many calories make you fat.  We may know carbohydrates increase insulin which stores fat.  I knew all that stuff and it made very little difference.  Over the years though my natural curiosity led me to study much more in depth how all this fits together and it has had a surprising impact.

Yes, carbohydrates still taste delicious but I know a lot of the dirty details about what they do to me and that has created an offsetting pain that I feel when I’m eating too much of them.  Yes, green leafy vegetables are still bland and have a texture that sucks, but I know a lot in-depth as to what good they are doing in my body and that has created a offsetting pleasure in eating them.  I get uncomfortable when I don’t eat them.  Unbelievable!  I hate exercise but I can almost feel the extra oxygen and the sprouting neurons in my brain (exercise has a dramatic effect on brain health) and that makes a huge difference.  The more you know the bigger the change.  What a wonderful benefit in addition to the good feeling you get from simply being informed about something important.

Short-term pleasures are often very fleeting. Food seems like one of life’s great pleasures but I think if you evaluate it objectively it is mostly a very short-lived pleasure.  I absolutely love sugary deserts, especially those made with a lot of chocolate.  But moments after the last bite is gone it’s pretty much over.  It’s hard to get a long glow from something like that.

Achievement of Goals Provide Long Lasting Pleasure.  While impulsive pleasures fade quickly, achievement does not.  You can make use of this by creating health goals – a lot of them in small increments that you can achieve and reward yourself for conquering.  More than a decade ago I lost 70 lbs. in less than a year (I got quite slim).  It was fairly painful but not excessively so.  I can still feel the pleasure from that accomplishment years later while the pain was quickly forgotten.

Anticipation is often better than the real thing and Peak end experiences matter most.  For more on the importance of the peak end experience click the link.  You can use these two factors to huge advantage in diet.  First plan guilty pleasures rather than eating them on impulse.  Say you will allow yourself a sinful desert twice a week on the same days.  This allows you to anticipate them and research has shown that anticipation is very pleasurable for most people.  Secondly you can almost totally eliminate the bad effects of sinful food by eating very little of it without loss of the experience.  The first and last bites are about all that matters.  I can anticipate that luscious chocolate fudge cake on Saturday.  When the waiter brings it I can cut off three nice size bites and have him take the rest away.  I savor the first bite and then wait a bit before eating the second bite building the anticipation.  I wait until we are ready to leave and then eat the last bite very slowly, letting it dissolve in my mouth.  This might sound ridiculous and silly but it works.  The pleasure is far greater than eating bite after bite and I get almost no ill effect from my small indulgence.

End your exercise routine with the most fun thing you can think of and it will significantly improve the overall experience of your entire workout.  It really does make a lot of difference; it’s the way your brain works.

Participation sports are very good for you and also very fun! If you can get past the inertia of sitting, summon the effort to play a sport with other people you will get incredible social benefit (which keeps your brain healthy) as well as health benefits.  This is something healthy that people enjoy if they will just DO IT!

You can get a lot of bang for small bucks.  For some of us exercise is painful but the good news is that it doesn’t have to last hours.  In fact short, intense, interval type exercise is better for you than long aerobic exercise.  There is plenty of research to back this up and I’m not going to argue it with anyone.  Dr. Sears Pace program is excellent but with some Google searches you can find all kinds of information about this kind of exercise.

I wish I could say a lot more but most of you probably quit before you got this far.  This stuff is pretty basic but most people just don’t stop to think about it.  If you spend time getting creative with these ideas you can significantly change the pleasure / pain scale of healthy living or about any other short-term / long-term problem.

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Should you save your money for retirement or spend it now?  Should you enjoy those sugary deserts today or should you forgo them so you will be healthier in your old age?  Should you work in a secure high-paying job you don’t like or be a starving artist at something you love?  These kinds of questions have no simple answer; they are different for everyone.  But even beyond that I submit it is next to impossible to even know the best answers for yourself.  The reason is that the time spans involved are simply too long, life is too unpredictable, and the the world is changing at a rapidly accelerating pace.

I’m sure that when you are suffering the consequences of diabetes when you are 75 you will wish you hadn’t indulged so much when you were 40.  Likewise when you are poor at 80 you are going to wish you saved more when you were 30.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean those would have been the “right” decisions.  Once you are no longer enjoying the short-term benefits and instead are suffering the long-term consequences you are going to look at the situation differently.  Who’s to say whether 30 years of eating pleasure and 15 years of poor health in old age is the wrong  balance?  Does the pleasure of smoking for 50 years make up for the lung cancer at 66?   Most people would say no but they are looking at it from the perspective of the 66 year old.  These are difficult questions even though I’m sure many of you think you know the answers.

I could save for a comfortable retirement and have it all wiped out in a currency crises (a likely possibility).  What if the people who didn’t save for retirement vote to take all the money away from the people who did and use it for the “greater good of all” (another likely possibility)?  I could eat an extremely strict diet and be wiped out by a bus when I’m 50.  That would really suck.  What if there is a pill in 30 years to fix all those health problems?

To say “balance” is the right answer is to say very little.  That’s the whole question – how exactly should I balance these competing goals?    How do we know?  Are there any useful guidelines?  Is there anyway to work it so you get both short-term and long-term pleasure?  There is no easy answer to all these questions but I’ll try to provide some some thoughts that I think may help.

I’ve decided to break this article up into multiple parts to keep it from being extremely long.  Tomorrow I’ll provide some ideas and work through a scenario in the area of health that will help clarify my suggestions.

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The other day on a workday about 2:00 PM, I went out to run a couple of errands.  The traffic in the shopping areas was a congested mess.  People were everywhere.  I could imagine that many of these people were stressed and impatient, hardly in the “holiday spirit”.  I buy very few gifts for Christmas.  My wife takes care of that “duty” for the most part.  Partly it’s because I’m lazy, but mostly it’s because I don’t know what to give people who already have more than they need.  It all seems so pointless.  I’ve seen the lines in the stores after Christmas too; people returning all those thoughtful gifts they don’t want.

As a child my family travelled to visit my maternal grandparents twice a year; once in the summer and once at Christmas.  I’m sure I loved tearing open the packages and getting all the stuff.  The funny thing is with very few exceptions I don’t remember what any of that stuff was.  What I do remember fondly are the experiences I had with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  The only gift I clearly remember was a go-cart (one that operated on gravity not a motor).  The reason I remember it was because I remember the experience of racing those go-carts with my cousins down the hill on the street in front of my grandparents home on Christmas morning.  That’s it.

I have many memories of Christmas dinners and endless games.  My mother’s family loved games and we played them all the time.  Not purchased games, but the standard card and domino games.  I remember playing tennis with my cousin who was the same age.  I remember my aunt always kissing me because she knew I hated it.  I remember endless hours of those experiences, but I don’t remember what Santa brought.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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This article is going to suggest that participating in politics at any level is generally not a good idea.  Many, maybe even most of you are going to disagree with this.  I also know that people will tend to take it as a categorical statement and offer counter-examples.  You will notice that I said “generally” because I don’t mean it in a categorical way.  I can think of scenarios or places where I would not apply my general advice, but those are increasingly rare.

I can’t help but absorb a little bit of what goes on in politics through the media (my wife watches the news and the morning shows) or through reading some political satire, but I treat it mostly as a little bit of entertainment.  I’m not participating in any real way.

Here is the basic question you need to ask yourself.  Is it worth your time, effort, money, and mental well-being to keep up with or participate in political issues?  For me, the answer is unquestioned no.  I’ve been there and done that and since I actually cared so much about the issues, it was a never-ending source of disappointment and frustration.  All the time I spent reading, listening, following, debating, wishing, hoping, and voting resulted in exactly ZERO difference.

Unless you are entertained or enjoy the process itself, I suggest that any time you spend in politics can actually be spent better elsewhere helping either yourself or your fellow man.

The reasons I’ve mostly chosen to withdraw from politics in all its forms are the following:

• I personally can’t make a difference.
• Even when my side “won”, nothing fundamental ever changed.
• Since I actually cared about the issues, it was a source of endless stress and frustration for me.  It made me ill.
• I decide I no longer want to lend “participation support” to the flawed process.
• I was wasting my life.

You will get a tremendous amount of advice this days about not fighting reality, accepting the things you can’t change, etc., but almost nobody applies that to politics and there is hardly anything that it is more appropriately applied to.  I think the reason is because we’ve been socialized into believing it is some kind of duty of a good citizen to be politically aware and active.  I used to buy that crap.  It is also because people will cook up scenarios where you can make a difference like a really close election, or with platitudes like “what if everyone thought that way”.  Well everyone doesn’t and even if they did I would no more be able to change their minds about that than I am about the issues themselves.

All this is just socialization and there is no real basis for it.  In fact the politicians want you to participate in the long run even if you don’t support them.  It gives legitimacy to the process.  P.J. O’Rourke has a book called Don’t Vote It Just Encourages the Bastards.  I haven’t read it, but I like the idea of the title.  I suggest you spend your time gaining freedom, peace, well-being, or whatever else outside the arena of politics.

The amount of mass media content that is devoted to the government or politics is overwhelming.  If you believe the media, the government and its activities must be the single most important area of all of our lives.  But it is simply a myth.  It’s just baloney that we’ve allowed ourselves to be caught up in.  Just because the media prattles on endlessly about Paris Hilton or Tiger Woods doesn’t mean I think they are important to mine or anyone else’s lives.

If you live in the U.S., Canada, most of Europe and Asia, and probably many other places, it’s simply not worth your time to engage in political activity.  The political environment is just a reality.  You personally can’t do anything about it unless you can convince millions of people that we are in need of radical change.  Good luck with that.

You can stop arguing with reality, stop trying to control that which you can’t control, and find freedom by taking actions you do control.

I look at the political environment like the sun.  It’s a basic fact of reality.  It comes up and it goes down.  I love the sunlight, but I can’t do a damn thing about the fact that every night it drops below the horizon and disappears.  What I can do is turn the lights on.  That’s something in my direct control and I don’t lose one second of my life worrying about or trying to change the fact the sun goes down or the fact that I prefer natural sunlight to artificial lighting.  I try to take the same attitude towards government and politics.

You have a choice and obviously it’s yours to make.  I’ve got to believe that the amount of national resources spent playing the political game are better spent elsewhere.  I’m not apathetic.  In fact I’m just the opposite, but I’ve made a conscious, intentional, and intellectual decision that politics sucks and is a waste of my life.

If you can accept the fact that the government steals a portion of your income and just get on with living you own life, the impact of the government on you will mostly disappear.  If on the other hand you constantly monitor, watch, participate in, or worry about what the politicians and the bureaucrats are up to, then the government is going to be a huge burden upon your life.  The key point is that the choice is yours.

Once I freed myself from the need to be worried about what the government was doing, the government became an incredibly insignificant, almost invisible factor in my life.  The same freedom is yours if you will simply make the choice to forget the government and be free.

Treat the government like the weather.  If it’s raining, put up an umbrella or go inside.  If it’s cold, put on a coat.  If it’s warm, take off your coat.  If it’s dark, turn on a light.

What do YOU think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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