Over the past few decades there has been a vast wave of pseudo self-esteem washing over our culture.  Pseudo self-esteem has displaced true self-esteem and created a nation of the entitled and narcissistic, especially in the less than 45 age group.

True self-esteem is based upon an a self-appraisal of one’s own competence and worthiness.  Pseudo self-esteem is based up feeling positive about oneself just because one exists or shows up.  Please don’t misunderstand me.  I believe that every individual deserves the benefit of the doubt.  Every human has some basic worthiness as a matter of simply being a human.  That is an intrinsic worth that is part of everyone.  What this article is about is what goes beyond that.  It is the result of personal action and intention.  That true self-esteem can be high or low as a result.  It is not a free-pass given by society.

Pseudo self-esteem arises when we heap underserved praise on others or on ourselves.  I’m sorry but you don’t deserve a gold star just because you showed up.  You don’t deserve credit just because you exist.  Simply repeating affirmations that you are good doesn’t mean you behave in a way that could be called good.  There has to be some basic values to which you strive to feel true self-worth. You must strive for accomplishment to feel true self-competence. 

True self esteem comes as a result of actions and intentions.  It is not something bestowed upon you by well meaning others.  The culture of the self-esteem movement tells us that self-esteem leads to accomplishment.  They have it exactly backwards.   It is accomplishment that leads to true self esteem. You develop the sense of self-worth and competence because you strive for and sometimes achieve results.

Telling your child he is smart is not going to make him successful.  In fact studies show it will make him avoid challenges that might shatter that illusion.  Telling your child you are proud of his effort will encourage him to continue to strive.  I feel I am good because I strive to be good and not because my mommy or my teacher told me I was good.  You can tell a group of children “everyone wins”, but that simply strips all meaning from the word.  At some level everyone knows whether they deserve the praise others have heaped upon them or that they heap upon themselves.  When it is undeserved it doesn’t lead to true-self esteem.  It leads to narcissism and entitlement.

I believe we should praise effort in others and ourselves.  I can feel some sense of accomplishment if I tried hard and failed, but I will feel a greater sense if I tried and succeeded.  I can feel some sense of worthiness if I try to be good (whatever your definition of “good”) and failed, but I will feel a greater sense of worthiness if I succeed in acting in accordance with some basic values.

If you want to feel good about yourself then try acting in a way that will lead to that feeling automatically.  Staring at a mirror like Stuart Smalley and repeating affirmations to yourself is not going to do it.  If you want to develop self-esteem in your children teach them to behave in a way which will lead to its natural development.  Those American children who have been told daily how smart and good they are suck at math compared to the rest of the developed world.  And yet they have lots of false self-esteem; they rate number #1 in confidence about their math abilities.

I think the following sums it up very well:

“Most feel that a sense of competence is strengthened through realistic and accurate self-appraisal, meaningful accomplishments, overcoming adversities, bouncing back from failures, and adopting such practices such as assuming self-responsibility and maintaining integrity which engender ones sense of competence and self-worth.”

– Robert Reasoner

Amen.

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Note from Stephen:  This is a guest article from Dr. Sean Sullivan.  Dr. Sullivan has a book and online course available called “The Mind Masters Silent Journey” which I am currently evaluating.  I will be writing a review of them when I’m finished.  The last part of this article is an excerpt from his material.

As a psychologist who spends his days focused on researching and teaching (and living) the characteristics of “peak performance,” studying the influence of the “unconscious” on our lives is a primary area of my work.

To properly honor www.ratracetrap.com with this year-end guest post I’m giving a nod to a most popular post from the beginning of this year. Not surprisingly, Stephen’s article Unconscious Influences on Our Behavior, and the 3 influences below in particular, attracted me…

#1

People exposed to stories about moral indiscretion are twice as likely to choose cleaning products as gifts as those exposed to stories of moral virtue. It seems they feel the need to “clean up” (Unconscious Influences on Our Behavior).

Ring a bell about any holiday gifts you gave this year? I bet there are some funny stories out there. Leave me and Stephen a Comment if you have a good one!

The somewhat ironic-sounding trend of the unconscious part of our minds getting a lot of conscious attention in our best scientist’s labs lately seems only to be gaining momentum. Each passing year, cutting-edge science demonstrates with increasing clarity that our unconscious processes account for even more of our behavior than previously thought.

Beyond controlling all of the vital functions necessary to allow us to remain alive, for example, scientists are bringing to light new details of our unconscious world. These details suggest that the unconscious aspect of our lives is actually ushering real materiality into our lives…

#2

“People ate 69% more jelly beans when all the colors were mixed together than when they were separated by colors.  Along the same lines, presenting 10 colors of M&Ms instead of 7, increased consumption 43%” (Unconscious Influences on Our Behavior).

Now, that’s a fairly literal example of the unconscious creating actual “materiality” in our lives (i.e. our bodies).

Thankfully, we can apply all this emerging knowledge to our advantage as well. By better understanding the unconscious mind we are also learning how we can make conscious decisions to prime our unconscious mind to behave in ways that benefit us. Take a look at the following example of how you can make use of the power of your unconscious mind by consciously priming it to grow your “material” life in ways that you desire…

#3

Reading stories about money making will actually improve your performance on tasks where you can earn money” (Unconscious Influences on Our Behavior).

Simply acknowledging that we are being influenced by the stimuli we encounter each moment helps us recognize the importance of making conscious choices about how and where we focus our attention.

During my latest explorations while writing and creating The Mind Master Journey, I discovered my newest favorite examples of how our unconscious mind ushers materiality into our lives. It turns out that how much we influence the people we are in direct contact with is difficult to overstate.

It is now clear that our choices about exactly who we choose to spend our time with, and exactly how we spend that time, has a undeniable influence on our material lives.

The piece that follows comes directly from The Mind Masters Journey. It describes exactly how our relationships often have a significant impact on how long we live. The piece is a great reminder of how intertwined our lives are with others.

I hope the segment inspires you to honor the importance of your relationship to yourself and to your loved ones this holiday. It certainly does for me. From my family to yours, here’s to hearing, reading and most importantly, writing your own story of health, happiness and wealth in the New Year!

Where Your Inner and Outer Worlds Collide

Today, the view that your inner world is separate from your outer world, or that your inner world functions independently from the inner worlds of the people you are surrounded by, is as scientifically bunk as the notion that the earth is flat. Over the last several decades, our growing scientific understanding of the scope of influence that the invisible dialogue occurring within you has on your outer world has been complemented by an explosion in our scientific understanding of the impact of the invisible communications that occur between individuals and groups.

As it turns out, your story and your body, and other people’s stories and bodies, are so intertwined and interdependent that scientists have now identified and documented a broad range of physiologically based, empirically documented health benefits associated with the non-material transactions that occur in a type of relationship that researchers call an “empathic relationship.” An empathic relationship is a relationship in which at least one person in the relationship experiences and mirrors the emotional state of the other.

We now know that being involved in an empathic relationship provides a range of benefits to your body that extends way beyond simply “feeling good.” The value of an empathic relationship extends well beyond having a vital influence on your emotional development. Researchers have now demonstrated over and over that empathic relationships play a significant role in physical health improvements ranging from better immune function to shorter post-surgery hospital stays to a stronger response to placebos to fewer asthma attacks and even to experiencing a shorter average duration of the colds we catch.

The physical health impact of the non-material transactions that occur in any one of your relationships does not tell the whole story, though. It turns out that the web of relationships you maintain may be the most significant predictor of your future health. The social web that your inner world inhabits, and your outer world manifests, has a direct effect on the duration of the life of the cells that comprise your vital organs. Hopefully, it goes without saying that you require the health of your vital organs to live a long, healthy life!

Even if you experience a good deal of daily stress, having a network of people you can turn to for your emotional needs mitigates the risk of your stressful lifestyle. Conversely, if you don’t have a web of dependable people in your life (and in your head), the emotional stress can profoundly raise the likelihood of your death as compared with people who lead a calm life. Your social web is a vital aspect of your non-material story that determines the health of your materiality—the cells that comprise your body.

Dr. Sean Sullivan is a performance psychologist who teaches how to clearly see the details of your “inner world” by creating your own Mind Map. Dr. Sullivan has written and spoken for ESPN properties. His work has received endorsements from top performers including USA TODAY’s David Weiss and NFL Quarterback, Mark Sanchez.

The Mind Master’s Guided Journey is a 21-day online course that details step-by-step how to create a precise personal map of your “inner world” to follow to becoming an expert creating at whatever “outer life” you choose. “Once you can actually hear and see your “inner world” with clarity, you can’t help but to create and follow your own map that will lead you to the “outer life” you choose to live.” – Dr. Sean Sullivan

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I’ve always thought more money buys more freedom but I’ve also accepted the money / happiness correlations, or more properly the lack thereof that have been the subject of quite a bit of recent research.  I recently reviewed a copy of a forthcoming book that makes one think real hard about whether or not one really wants to be wealthy.  It’s did not paint a pretty picture of the lives of the rich.

Much has been made of the fact that poor Latin American countries often rate as high or higher on happiness scales as rich countries like Japan or the U.S.  GDP and happiness are not generally well correlated above a certain level.  I have encountered claims that after a certain level of income was reached, generally pretty low and little more than enough to ensure you could afford the basic comforts of life, higher income doesn’t correlate well with more happiness.  I know the research is  unsettled and recently I’ve come across something that suggests things aren’t as simple as is frequently reported.

Two researchers, Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, analyzed a large amount of data from the 2008 / 2009 U.S. Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index and have produced some interesting observations.  This is U.S. data only but I suspect it applies globally as well.  The GHWBI survey measures two different psychological factors:

1. Daily emotional well-being (enjoyment, happiness, sadness, anger, worry, stress, etc.)
2. Overall Life Satisfaction

Interestingly income in the U.S. affects daily emotional well-being (enjoyment, happiness, sadness, anger, worry, stress) up to about $75,000 of household income.  That’s not exactly a subsistence level of income and is significant in that 2/3 of U.S. households are below that level.   This indicates an increase in stable income would positively impact 2/3 of U.S. households in their day-to-day happiness levels.

The other indicator of overall life satisfaction is even more heavily correlated with income levels.  Life satisfaction continues to show strong increases in the U.S. up to household incomes of at least $160,000.   To understand the difference between the two think about how you might report you’ve been stressed or worried daily for the past few days, but you are very satisfied with your life right now.  People who raise children have higher life satisfaction levels but they have lower daily emotional well-being levels than those who have no children.  Raising children makes you less happier on a daily basis, but makes you more satisfied with your life.  I don’t think that surprises too many parents.

I’m not sure what all this means but it should give us pause before unthinkingly repeating that money doesn’t buy happiness because clearly it does.  At least in some ways that are more nuanced than the simplistic claims some, including myself, have made.  I suspect a poor Costa Rican may be as happy as a middle-class Japanese but a middle-class Costa Rican is probably happier than a poor one.  Much of how we feel unfortunately is related to how we view ourselves relative to those around us.  It’s hard not to notice what cars your neighbors drive and what kind of homes they live in.

You have to be careful about assuming that a correlation means a cause and effect relationship.  Maybe happiness causes incomes to rise or something else causes both.

Also At the risk of being politically incorrect I will make an observation about Hispanics in my city of residence – Houston, TX, that may say something about Latin Americans and happiness.  There is a very large Hispanic population here and there is a very large park that is densely wooded and has large undeveloped areas (no roads or facilities) near my home.  I love to visit this park to get my nature fix in the more remote areas.  It’s best to visit during the week as there are very few people there.  However, when I go on weekends or holidays and as I drive through the picnic areas the park is usually packed with Hispanic groups that appear to be made up of extended families and/or friends.  I’m always struck by how happy they look and how much fun they are having while I drive by in my nice car – alone.  In the end I think they may be holding the most important key to real happiness.

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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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This article describes several methods of making quick decisions when you have a difficult time deciding or when you are dealing with a complex decision.  Our working memory can handle only a few bits of information at a time and many choices or many factors for each choice overwhelm it.  The four methods described here are:

1. Flip a Coin With a Twist
2. Compare Down a List
3. Conduct a Tournament
4. Let Your Unconscious Decide

I wouldn’t use any of these methods for a really important long-term decision like what home to buy except for the last one – “Let Your Unconscious Decide”.

Flip a Coin With a Twist

This method works best for deciding between two choices although it can be used in a series as well.  For example use it to choose A or B and then take the winner of that choice and choose between it and C and so on.

• Flip a coin
• If you find yourself hoping it comes out a certain way you have your answer
• If you find yourself wishing it had come out the other way you have your answer
• If neither then you simply go with the results of the flip

Compare Down a List

This is perfect when you have a medium number of items to choose from.  It is very accurate and it will order your choices.  For instance if you have six tasks you want to prioritize or six books to read it will order your items to your preference.  Here is how it works:

Say you have six tasks to complete A – F, and you want to prioritize them.

First list the items down a page in a column like this:

A
B
C
D
E
F

Now start with A and compare it to each item in the list below it.  So first you would compare A and B and choose between the two.  You choose A so put a tally mark beside it.  Then compare A and C and put a tally mark beside the winner of that choice.  And continue down the list until you compare A and F.

Then start with B and compare it with each choice only below it.  So you would compare B with C, D, … F.  Then do the same with C comparing it to each item in the list below it.  Your last comparison will be E and F.  When you are done you can use your tally marks to order you list.  It might look like this.

A   |||
B   |
C   ||
D
E   ||||
F   |||||

You now have a list prioritized as F, E, A, C, B, D

F was the big winner.  If you want to take the top three you simply choose F, E, and A in that order.

Conduct a Tournament

This method is very simple and fast and can be used to choose from a very large list.  I once used this to choose from a list of over 30 items because the choice was too overwhelming to analyze any other way.  Compare A/B, C/D, E/F, G/H and so on.  Then compare the winners A/D and F/G and so on until you have a winner

A
——–A
B
—————-D
C
——–D
D
————————F
E
——–F
F
—————-F
G
——–G
H

Let Your Unconscious Decide

This is not quick but there is research to show that in complex decisions it can be more accurate than other methods.  Experiments have been done with complex decisions with many factors that have objectively better answers and it was found subjects were more accurate going with unarticulated feelings.  I use this as a method in choosing a car for example.  There are many factors that can be used to judge a car such as safety, power, comfort, fuel efficiency, size, stereo sound, color, overall look, warranty, price, and on and on.  If you try to evaluate five different models with all those factors you will be quickly overwhelmed.  Your brain was not made to decide things like that.

If you try to reason it out on paper you will give undeserved weight to factors you can easily describe even if that is not what you really want.  Experiments have established this articulation effect.  People will be unhappy with decisions made this way and the regret will suck later.  For these kinds of decisions I think it is best to feed the data to your brain and let it percolate on the decision while you sleep or do something else to keep your mind busy on something else.  Then simply go with your feeling.

In the end, if you have that hard of a time deciding there must not be a clear winner so what difference does it really make?  Also, I’m a firm believer in we mostly don’t really know what we want in advance and so the idea that we can “accurately” decide is mostly a delusion.  It’s more important to be decisive and move on than it is to dither about these decisions.

You might want to check out a previous article How To Be More Decisive.

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In Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World, Sam Sommers argues persuasively that everyday situations matter much more for how we behave than we generally like to believe.  According to the author, we tend to believe character (inborn or acquired) is much more important than it really is.

I really liked this book partly because its subject matter is one of my favorite topics of interest – human behavior.  In addition the material was compelling, entertaining, and I think the thesis is important.  I recommend it to anyone who is curious about why we do what we do.

In the introductory chapter the author concludes with the following summary of what is to follow:

“The chapters that follow continue to flesh out lessons like these in specific detail, examining the overlooked impact of ordinary situations on a wide range of human experiences.  We’ll take a look at the contextual considerations that shape our private sense of self, that color our notion of the differences between men and women, that determine who we love and who we hate.  We’ll start by examining the circumstances that dictate when we’re heroic and when we’re cowardly, with particular focus on the very situational notion that when we are surrounded by others, we become very different people than when we’re on our own.”

That last sentence “when we are surrounded by others, we become very different people” is a key theme of the entire book.  It is very important that we stay aware of that tendency.  The following is a list of the chapters in the book and my extremely brief summary of what each is about.

Help Wanted

– Will you help someone in need?

Go With The Flow

– All about the power of social conformity

You Are Not Who You Thought You Were

– You really are a different person in different settings and at different times.

Mars and Venus Here on Earth

– All about gender differences and how they may not be as fixed as we think.

Love

– You don’t have a soul-mate, you have lots of them in the right situation.

Hate

– All about bias and how it affects us all even when we don’t realize it.

I do have a couple of problems with the conclusions in this book and I think the author overstates his case. This is true in particular to his conclusions on gender differences where it appears he lets his own personal feelings override his scientific objectivity.  On that subject I think he doth protest too much.

Also, throughout the book the author cites experiments where a situation in a lab led to a result that the author then concludes proves that certain behavior is not the result of inborn differences.  While that may be a possibility, I simply don’t agree that you can draw that conclusion as strongly as he seems to believe.

Just because you can create an artificial situation in a lab and get a result, does not mean that such results naturally flow in the real world.  For example it is entirely possible that situations out in the real world that the author is convinced drive behavior, may themselves be the result of inborn traits and thus influence our behavior indirectly.  Just because you can override those natural tendencies in a lab doesn’t mean they aren’t really there.

However, even with these differences his point is well taken and I think he is in large part correct.  I do think we are many different selves and that situations strongly influence which one of those selves wins the internal brain debate.  I give Sommers high marks for writing an interesting and entertaining book on an important topic. Even though I don’t agree with everything he writes, I do consider the book very well done.  I think you will agree.

Recommended.

Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World

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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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One of the most fascinating, and to me unnerving, results to come out of a lot of recent psychological research is just how much of our behavior is subject to unconscious influence.  I for one and I think most people like to believe we are acting deliberately when in fact we often are not.  This article will focus on a phenomenon referred to in research as priming.

Consider the following sometimes very large effects:

• Subjects exposed to words about elderly people walked more slowly and amazingly had worse recall (!) of the experiment than the control subjects.
• Subject exposed to words related to rudeness were much more likely to interrupt a discussion than those exposed to words related to politeness.
• Subjects primed with Albert Einstein performed better on trivia tests than those primed with Claudia Schiffer, but performed worse on general knowledge tests.  This is known as the contrast effect.
• People exposed to stories about moral indiscretion are twice as likely to choose cleaning products as gifts as those exposed to stories of moral virtue.  Its seems they feel the need to “clean up”.
• Subjects holding a cold drink rated others’ personalities much colder than subjects holding a warm drink.
• Students exposed to a faint odor of a cleaning product are 3 times more likely to clean up after eating a snack than those not exposed.
• African American students primed with racial stereotypes will perform worse on intellectual tests than those primed with examples of black achievement.
• Subjects given a word puzzle containing words like “strive”, “succeed”, “achieve”, etc., are more than twice as likely to continue working on other puzzles past the time they are instructed to stop.
• Reading stories about people seeking sex will make you much more likely to help attractive people.
• Reading stories about money making will actually improve your performance on tasks where you can earn money.
• People invested much more conservatively in a room with a briefcase than in a room with a backpack.
• You will eat a lot more week old crappy tasting popcorn in a big container than you will eat fresh popcorn from a smaller container, even though both of them are too large for you to finish.
• People primed with arbitrary numbers will anchor on that number when making subsequent decisions.  For example being primed with a low number will cause subjects to be willing to pay much less for an item than those primed with higher numbers.
• People ate 69% more jelly beans when all the colors were mixed together than when they were separated by colors.  Along the same lines, presenting 10 colors of M&Ms instead of 7, increased consumption 43%.

All of these effects are unconscious and subjects will often deny they’ve been influenced when told about them.  They will come up with ad hoc rationalizations rather than admit they have been so mindlessly influenced.

This small sample show wide ranging and hard-to-believe effects.  Thinking about old people causes my memory to be worse?!  See a someone behaving rudely will make me more likely to be rude?  If I meet someone new and they are holding a cold drink I’m doomed?

Whether we admit it or not we are heavily influenced by our environment and we are mostly ignorant of these influences.  The obvious conclusion is that the more you can control your environment the more control you will have over these influences. You can’t just assume you are in control and independent of such influences.

Another important point to make in this regard is that the priming trigger may be even more hidden than you imagine.  As an example, I could decide not to watch TV news because I don’t want to be influenced by all the negativity and trumped up scare stories.  However, what if the TV news is on but my attention is elsewhere and I’m not paying any attention to it?  What if I’m completely oblivious to the fact it is even turned on?

Our conscious attention capacity is very limited and what we can hold in working memory is very small compared to the amount of data entering our brains through our senses.  Research has proven that are brains are taking in information that we are consciously unaware of.  That means we are likely being influenced by the TV news that is on even when we are not watching or paying attention.  Our unconscious mind is still hearing it.

We are not simply automatons programmed by our environments, but neither are we the independent decision makers we like to believe.  For me, that’s a tough pill to swallow, but I accept the evidence wherever it may lead.

I find this kind of research fascinating from a purely intellectual standpoint.  From an emotional standpoint, I found it quite disturbing.  I think the takeaway is that the people we hang around with and the environments we expose ourselves to have a much more significant influence upon our behavior than some of us we would hope.  We can’t help that; it’s simply the way we are made.  Now what are you going to do about it?

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