Get The Picture - Reality Check!
Reality and the Acceptance Thereof
Reality. It seems like a simple thing to grasp. But the funny part about reality is that the concept and even its very existence are highly debatable. Philosophers, psychologists, and physicists all have different takes on reality. Questions like, "What is consciousness?", and, "How does the mind interpret the outside world?", and, "How does your brain's functioning result in your behavior?", are all still being studied and considered. And, of course, the question, "If all mass is ultimately made of up decoherent quantum energy resulting from a disturbance of coherent quantum oscillators created 14 billion years ago that will ultimately re-cohere into chaotic diffuse energy and everything disappears, is anything really real?" is worth noting even in a book about goal setting since some people harbor a nihilistic "Why do anything if we're all going to die?" view about goals. Let's assume that since you have a life, and have chosen to read this book, that you think your life is worth doing something with and that it might make sense to set some reasonable goals for the short amount of time that the energy making you up remains in a decoherent state, making you a part of "reality". And let's skip the quantum stuff and stick to a somewhat more practical version of reality that includes only two domains: 1) things outside of your body, and, 2) your body, which includes your brain. We are also going to utilize an extremely simplified paradigm of brain function and behavior - your brain is what makes your decisions and causes your body's behavior to turn your decisions into observable choices. First, we'll dig into the brain, then scratch the surface about decisions and choices, later, we'll dig into behavior, and, lastly, we'll put it all together to create that hackneyed, but necessary, whole, the mind-body connection and its relationship to your goals.
A good friend of mine is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington in Washington State. In her TEDx talk (see link below), she asks the question of her audience, "How do you know you're not dreaming right now?" Philosophers have a grand history of asking simple (and complex) questions about the nature of reality and thinking very critically about them until they achieve very profound answers to them. It is an unfortunate reality that almost no one but philosophers does this as a regular part of their day. It is my goal to get you to do this. Sit and think about life, the universe, and everything for some period of time at least once a day so that you develop a solid, and wildly nuanced, understanding of the reality that is your own life and the world around you. So, if there is one thing that I really hope you will learn to do it is to use your brain really differently. And the way I'm going to get you to do that is to help you understand how your brain really works to perceive the world around you, your own body, and even itself.
The first mind-blowing thing you can start to think about is the fact that your brain does not experience the outside world directly but is, in fact, just an interpreter of all of the inputs it gets from your senses. Your eyes detect different wavelengths of light, your inner ear detects different wavelengths of compressed air, your tongue detects what you eat, your nose detects loose molecules in the air, and your skin detects pressure. Your senses are just different types of detectors that conduct electric and chemical information from the outside world to your brain. We experience things because the nerves embedded within the detectors transmit information to different parts of your brain, which then, send that information to other parts of your brain. Your experience is of anything in any given moment then, is created by your "mind's eye", a system that "decides" whether you like the experience or dislike it and whether the experience should be something that you pay close attention to or can ignore (cite). Your brain will then create memories and retrieve memories that will help you create preferences about your experiences for future reference.
Keeping it VERY simple, things that your brain puts into the "like" category in your memory banks, that is, things that give you pleasure (tasty foods, a hug from a family member, a funny joke...) by means of a shot of oxytocin or dopamine or some other lovely neurochemical, you will be willing to approach in the future, and things that you put into the "don't like" category, those that cause pain (physical pain and any other form of discomfort like foul odors, disturbing imagery, embarrassment...) via activity in the anterior cingulate cortex that emits cortisol or some other not-so-lovely neurocheimcal, you will avoid. In the interest of simplicity and energy savings, your brain ultimately stores memories in the form of "concepts" with two different sets of binary code: "pleasure/displeasure" and "pay attention/ignore". The degree and intensity of experience then depends on how much of each chemical gets produced and where those chemicals end up in your brain. In any given moment, inputs from the outside world trigger your brain to recall a concept it considers similar to what it is experiencing and pulls out one of four possible combinations: pleasure/ignore, pleasure/pay attention, displeasure/ignore, displeasure/pay attention. The cognitive experience is then "yes" or "no". The very interesting (or, if you're like me, wildly mind-blowing) thing is that your brain has essentially already made a decision for you without you're even knowing it. There are overlays and nuances that determine what set of responses get triggered, of course. Round, square, and triangle are "shape concepts", and chocolate bars and jelly beans are "delicious treat" concepts, but the ultimate category for information in your brain is double-binary, like or dislike, arouse or calm.
Behavior
The brain's basic input output system is, at it's most fundamental, an evolution-based system charged with keeping itself alive by keeping the body it's stuffed into alive long enought o reproduce.
information coming from any of your senes can be considered scary because your brain has to make some neurotransmitters and it would rather that you don't try new things in the interest of keeping you alive. In other words, your brain will literally make up a story for you about new things and potential new things. Lastly, your brain will make up stories about new and old things even in the absence of exterior stimulation or any relevant information based on the amount of chemical and electrical activity you have going on in your brain and the places where your brain "automatically" stores information. So if your brain is constantly just making up stories for you, how can you trust it? A great deal of research says that you probably shouldn't trust it as much as you do. Ever heard anyone say, "Question everything?" That should apply to every thought you have.
The first mind-blowing thing you can start to think about is the fact that your brain does not experience the outside world directly but is, in fact, just an interpreter of all of the inputs it gets from your senses. Your eyes detect different wavelengths of light, your inner ear detects different wavelengths of compressed air, your tongue detects what you eat, your nose detects loose molecules in the air, and your skin detects pressure. Your senses are just different types of detectors that conduct electric and chemical information from the outside world to your brain. We experience things because the nerves embedded within the detectors transmit information to different parts of your brain, which then, send that information to other parts of your brain. Your experience is of anything in any given moment then, is created by your "mind's eye", a system that "decides" whether you like the experience or dislike it and whether the experience should be something that you pay close attention to or can ignore (cite). Your brain will then create memories and retrieve memories that will help you create preferences about your experiences for future reference.
Keeping it VERY simple, things that your brain puts into the "like" category in your memory banks, that is, things that give you pleasure (tasty foods, a hug from a family member, a funny joke...) by means of a shot of oxytocin or dopamine or some other lovely neurochemical, you will be willing to approach in the future, and things that you put into the "don't like" category, those that cause pain (physical pain and any other form of discomfort like foul odors, disturbing imagery, embarrassment...) via activity in the anterior cingulate cortex that emits cortisol or some other not-so-lovely neurocheimcal, you will avoid. In the interest of simplicity and energy savings, your brain ultimately stores memories in the form of "concepts" with two different sets of binary code: "pleasure/displeasure" and "pay attention/ignore". The degree and intensity of experience then depends on how much of each chemical gets produced and where those chemicals end up in your brain. In any given moment, inputs from the outside world trigger your brain to recall a concept it considers similar to what it is experiencing and pulls out one of four possible combinations: pleasure/ignore, pleasure/pay attention, displeasure/ignore, displeasure/pay attention. The cognitive experience is then "yes" or "no". The very interesting (or, if you're like me, wildly mind-blowing) thing is that your brain has essentially already made a decision for you without you're even knowing it. There are overlays and nuances that determine what set of responses get triggered, of course. Round, square, and triangle are "shape concepts", and chocolate bars and jelly beans are "delicious treat" concepts, but the ultimate category for information in your brain is double-binary, like or dislike, arouse or calm.
Behavior
The brain's basic input output system is, at it's most fundamental, an evolution-based system charged with keeping itself alive by keeping the body it's stuffed into alive long enought o reproduce.
information coming from any of your senes can be considered scary because your brain has to make some neurotransmitters and it would rather that you don't try new things in the interest of keeping you alive. In other words, your brain will literally make up a story for you about new things and potential new things. Lastly, your brain will make up stories about new and old things even in the absence of exterior stimulation or any relevant information based on the amount of chemical and electrical activity you have going on in your brain and the places where your brain "automatically" stores information. So if your brain is constantly just making up stories for you, how can you trust it? A great deal of research says that you probably shouldn't trust it as much as you do. Ever heard anyone say, "Question everything?" That should apply to every thought you have.
This view of the brain is supported by a lot of research in psychology, and neuroscience including work in happiness, memory, brain function, cognition, etc. The simplest and yet most profound description of decision-making comes from the work of Nobel Laureate, Daniel Kahneman, is that your brain "interprets" reality and is constantly putting its own spin on the occurrences out in reality. This occurs in the interest of expediency. You see, critical thought is "expensive" to your body. It requires a great deal of energy and, in pre-modern times, when our ancestors faced near-constant danger, taking time to consider whether that was just the wind or a saber-toothed tiger that rustled the brush may have cost you your life. But in modern times, in first world countries, almost no one's life is literally in constant danger, but our brains have a difficult time shutting down the fast-thinking system in favor of taking a longer-term view of life. Because of this, people live in a state of persistent stress and anxiety; a state of hyper-vigilance and cortisol-induced quasi-panic that overwhelms the "human" portion of your brain, the pre-frontal cortex.
In addition to the cortisal-addled state of our brains, most psychologists agree that your brain is really not all that good at interpreting reality. We suffer from a myriad of cognitive biases, poor recall, poor observational skills, cognitive enmeshment... Our brain's interpretation of reality is, essentially, almost always wrong. But since reality is the foundational substrate for goal-setting, gaining a solid grasp of reality is an essential part of the goal achievement process. If our brains are merely interpreters of reality, and tremendously flawed in doing so, how do we begin to get a true sense of reality? Like anything else, admitting you have a problem is the first step. We'll talk about why it's so hard to admit your wrong later, but let's begin to apply the idea that you are wrong about reality right now. Ask yourself this question, "Who am I?" Most of you began reading this sentence immediately instead of actually spending some time contemplating; the rest of you, please take some time to stop crying and compose yourselves now.
This, the most basic and fundamental question of existence, "Who am I?" is so actively and intensively avoided in any realm other than clinical psychology it boggles the mind that humanity has gotten this far. How accurate can your picture of yourself possibly be if you haven't taken any stock of yourself? What are you good at? What are you not so good at? And how do you know? This last question starts getting at something bigger than yourself - feedback from the world around you is a part of how you must determine what you are good at. This, in turn, begs the other of the most fundamental questions of existence; "How does the world really work?" Good answers to these questions take time to develop. Scientific studies show that most people suffer from overconfidence in their abilities and often have a cynical view of the world feeling that they are underappreciated and undervalued. Bringing the discipline of economic thought into the picture, economists would argue that competitive forces, that is, a combination of your observable choices and those of others, is how you end up exactly where you "belong" in society. If that explanation doesn't feel good to you, I would encourage you to consider it at length sometime soon. In the meantime, let's explore some concepts about the reality of decisions and choices a bit more, as a part of why you are who you are, so that we can later apply this to Goal Achievement so that you can understand how to become who you really want to be.
Modern neurologists study the different parts of the brain to determine which segments of the brain are responsible for processing the different types of sensory information that come from the external world (and from itself), and neuropsychologists try to determine how this information is interpreted and acted upon. It's tough work for two reasons. 1) Our thoughts are not currently observable to the outside world (although this may change soon as neuropsychologists are now using machines that may make "reading" minds possible), and, 2) we can't just mess around with human brains because damaging them has dire consequences. Scientists use animal brains as models for human brains and behavior because many of the features of animal brains are very similar to our own and generate similar behavior. A lot of what we know about the strictly human brain and strictly human behavior has come mostly from people who have suffered accidents or have needed brain surgeries in order to continue to live. Suffice it to say that the human brain is an unbelievably complex network of 100 billion or so neurons, organized into a multitude of specialized areas, that communicate with each other via X connections, by generating their own electricity to stimulate the release of a dizzying cocktail of chemicals into the gaps between them known as synapses, and those chemicals float randomly until they hit spots on other neurons they can attach to which then makes that neuron propagate electricity, and so forth until enough neurons communicate with each other in their local and other remote specialized regions to create what we experience as cognition, a small percentage of which is considered conscious thought. And a small percentage of conscious thought is actively used to induce activity observable in the outside world.
So, while it's true that your brain is constantly working, because conscious thought is so heavily energy-consuming, a great deal of what we act upon is subconscious "thought" or what is know as non-conscious or subconscious cognition. For example, when our brain's hypothalamus receives information from the rest of our body that our stomach is empty and our intestines are releasing less oxytocin, it sends signals to make us experience hunger. We are generally not aware of the interworkings, and often just begin to manipulate our limbs to get ourselves something to eat automatically. Hunger is instinctual. We rise in the morning and go about our day in a routine. That is our habit, much of which does not require conscious thought. The oft-cited experience of driving home from somewhere without actually having paid attention to any aspect of driving or the route we took is the seminal example. If we start to ask ourselves questions about why we do the things we do we start to generate costly conscious thoughts. Are we simply reacting to an internal drive? Have our actions been triggered by something in the outside world? Did I go to college and buy a house because I wanted to or because that's what everybody else seems to do and so that seemed "right"? Do I do what others do because of their expectations or my own? Do others do what they do because of societal expectations? And is that right? In what ways is societal or cultural influence good and in what ways is it bad? Does your brain hurt yet? Good. You just became fully human.
Hopefully, you now have at least a rudimentary understanding of how I want to you think about thinking; how I think you must learn to think in order to set personally appropriate and achievable goals. Our actions must, of course, be connected to our goals. But until we have a really good handle on reality, specifically, who we really are and how the world really works, it is likely that our subconscious, cognitive automaticity is contributing a lot toward creating our conscious thoughts and we are not really bothering to create well-thought-out, conscious goals. Actively changing your conscious thoughts, that is, developing a structured set of rules by which you judge your thoughts for their connection to reality, and superseding those that do not meet your standards with ones that do, is how you change the arrow of your brain function from letting it use your body in the basic interest of merely keeping you alive to reproduce, to actively using your brain to impact your actions for your greater benefit and for the benefit of others. The only way to do that is to ask powerful, challenging questions that lead you to a better understanding of yourself and the world around you.
The process of asking questions of yourself and digging deep into the questions that follow from an original question to arrive at nuanced conclusions is called Self-Discovery and it is hard, often frustrating work, but it's worth it. People get deterred from really digging deep into their own minds because they find themselves contradicting themselves and so often end up more confused before things become more clear. The interesting thing about clarity is that it often results from the acceptance of ambiguity as the final state of their investigation.
People who go through a structured and thorough self-investigation and hold well-thought-out and nuanced opinions on matters regarding themselves and the world around them have generally laid a good foundation for their goals, often being able to clearly articulate what they really want out of life, what's important for their own wellbeing, and how their own sense of wellbeing effects the people around them. They have a good handle on what they can accomplish in a given period of time, take into account opposing viewpoints, and can provide an actionable opinion about how something can be accomplished that they are willing to change if new information is uncovered. Which begs the question of how new information might be uncovered.
The funny thing about doing all that work to ask yourself hard questions about yourself and the world around you and coming up with complex and nuanced answers that will probably contain lots of conflicting information is that, ultimately, no matter where your opinion ends up about who you think you are and how you think the world works, ultimately, it will just be your own subjective "truth". If you believe you are good at something after a lot of self-investigation it will still only be your opinion that you are good at it. If you come to believe the world works in a particular way, like, say, "my boss is just a jerk" even after attempting to empathize with her by pretending you are your own manager, because it is impossible to actually become her, your thoughts that she is a congenital jerk can only be your best guess.
Whatever you think is merely your subjective interpretation of reality regardless of how thoroughly you think about it, unless and until you discuss it with other people. It is good to remember that your ideas are your subjective interpretation of reality, especially when you engage in discussions with other people, which I encourage you to do, because remembering the nature of subjectivity will change how you behave. For example, if you have convinced yourself that your boss is a jerk and you ask a co-worker, "What is always stuck in Jane's craw?", or "Why is Nancy always in such a bad mood?", you may find that other people are surprised that you think anything is stuck in Jane's craw or that Nancy is ever unpleasant. And when you ask people questions about yourself you will avoid leading them with, "Why am I so bad at meeting deadlines?" and instead ask, "How would you characterize my ability to meet deadlines?" In the first question, you have provided a pre-answer and are clearly just asking a rhetorical question that you really do not want the answer to. The second question is more open-ended and tells the respondent, "I am ready to accept what you have to say, both good and bad, and I am hoping you can expound on it a bit so that I can learn as much as I can from you." Keeping the fact that your opinions about anything are your subjective reality about those concepts helps to keep you open-minded, which we will discuss later as a critical factor in personal change.
Objective Reality
Engaging the thoughts of others is a great way to gather information about yourself and the world around you. Indeed, it has been shown that people who discuss their goals with other people are more likely to achieve them. They report being more committed to accomplishing them and spend more time working toward them. They also are more likely to find support and resources to help them via the network of people that they develop in discussing their goals. If anyone ever uses the word "manifest" your goals or "the universe will help you if you put it out there" this is what they actually mean. We will discuss asking for and accepting help later in the Leverage Your Strengths section of this book but the idea behind manifesting an Objective Reality means performing actions that have consequences in reality. When you share your goals with others, some people will be excited for you and perhaps even eager to help. Others will tell how they failed or succeeded at what you're attempting (making the conversation about themselves but none-the-less trying to be helpful), and still others may unwittingly (or purposefully) hinder you by attempting to do the exact thing you are, like trying to be the first place tri-athele in your age group or vying for the same job at your company. Learning to wade your way gracefully through good advice, bad advice, good help, hinderances, and competition are all simply a part of the Objective Reality of the goal achievement landscape. There are risks involved with trying something new and sharing what you want to accomplish with others. In general, people who achieve goals view the ins and outs, and ups and downs of striving as problems to be solved rather than insurmountable obstacles.
A word of caution is again required in sharing your goals and getting information about them. Just as with your own Subjective Reality, when you ask for someone else's opinion about you or the world around you, they will provide you with their own subjective interpretation of the situation and circumstances of reality. If you ask a number of different people the same question about you and you get the same or similar answers, that may be a good indication that you are being perceived in a particular way. If you are pleased with the way you are being perceived then perhaps you can focus on investigating some other aspect of your life. If you are displeased with the way you are being perceived, it may make sense to create good follow-up question that will help you create a plan to change that perception.
Additional caution is required when you start asking questions about how other people perceive the world. Something to keep in mind is the aphorism, "Just because everybody thinks it doesn't make it so". Everyone thinking the same way does not constitute Objective Reality because, a) thoughts are not observable until communicated and communicating ideas to one another effectively is often REALLY hard, and, b) brainwashing via cultural and societal norms is a common reason for everyone to think the same thing regardless of what is true. Think about how people in the 1400s "knew" the earth was flat, people in the 1800s thought that doctors needn't bother washing their hands before delivering women's babies and, people right now think that carbohydrates and gluten are bad for you, or that US public school are inferior. We now "know" that the earth is spherical (unless you consider that the accepted physics of the shape of the universe is two-dimensional, in which case the earth isn't just flat it is immaterial in the dimension of depth, or that the universe is actually just a hologram "projected" off of quatum gravity, in which case we once again kinda cease to exist), we "know" that germs are spread by unclean hands (unless you consider that being overly clean through the use of antiseptic products which kill off the weak germs leaving no competition for the strong ones is a factor behind the creation of super-germs that are far more deadly), and we should "know" that carbohydrates and plant proteins like gluten are, in fact, essenitial nutrional elements of the human diet and only people diagnosed with Celiac or gluten sensitivity need avoid gluten, and you can get your carbohydrates from fruits and vegeables and so there is no need for the high-calorie products that incorporate processed carbs like refined sugars and flours, but we can eat them for enjoyment. And, finally, if we base our opinion of the US educational system on worker productivity, they rock! If you base it on how many languages we speak or our knowledge of geography, math and computer science, they suck.
Hopefully, again you take my point about people's opinions and even large-scale surveys not necessarily being a great proxy for reality. So... If we can't come up with it on our own and we can't trust other people, how do we get to the point where we know what the Objective Reality of any state, situation, or set of circumstances really is? The answer is found in science. More specifically, the utilization of the scientific method. Science is performed by creating two identical environments and, under extremely controlled circumstances, changing only one thing in only one of the environments in order to observe what changes and compare that to the control (the environment in which you changed nothing). This is called an experiment. Then, if multiple scientists can run the same experiment the same way and get the same results, we can be reasonably certain that Objective Reality has been established. Easy peasy.
So..., it is true that it is not practicably possible to decide how to change your behavior by cloning yourself and everybody you know, putting everyone in a room and seeing how each set of people reacts when one of you behaves normally and the other one behaves differently. Nor how one of your bodies changes if one does your normal routine for three months and the other drops TV watching time three times a week to work out instead. It just isn't currently possible to send yourself down two different paths at the same time. However, thinking about what might happen if you did this can give you some insight into what might happen. And then you can test out a change to see what does happen. Thought experiments that account for various possibilities under different decisions and choices actually fall under the auspices of game theory and we'll use game theoretic logic later in this book in order to help make a full strategic plan for behavior change needed to achieve goals. For now let's focus on the idea that, in order for you to establish what Objective Reality is not sufficient to make decisions about what you'd like to achieve, you have to experiment with observable behavior and see how it impacts your reality.
Everybody is Average. Really.
Why it's so hard to accept that you're not superlative. Setting goals - usually based on
When we approach the topic of everyone being average people always challenge this. There is a distribution of ability for any skill, talent or characteristic. My main example is Stephan Hawking. He is average. "No!", you say. He was a brilliant physicist. A genius! Sure, but I likely wouldn't have let him pick the paint colors for my house, for that I'd like a colorist. I don't think I'd let him dress me for a special occasion either; for that I'd like a stylist. I wouldn't have let Dr. Hawking plumb my home or tell me about how to raise my children or how to interact better with my husband. As a matter of fact, and I don't think he'd disagree with me on this, the ONLY reason you know his name is that he wrote a popular culture book that did well. One of his other books, "The Grand Design", arguably a book better suited for popular culture, didn't get anywhere near the attention. Had "A Brief History of Time" been named "The Mathematics of Black Holes for Dummies" you may never have heard of him. Marketing made Stephen Hawking a household name - not his math skills nor his Nobel Prize. Have you ever heard of Hal Varian or . Both Nobel Prize winners. Likely not unless you happen to be in an industry they are famous in.
Hopefully, you can generalize this analogy, that everyone, no matter how famous, infamous, talented, intelligent, wealthy, or kind, are average human beings. If you cut them, they bleed, when they poop, it smells bad, and they all put their pants on one leg at a time (meaning that they, too, are affected by gravity, as Einstien pointed out). Those of us that know this are generally not overwhelmed by people who have achieved a superlative position in their chosen craft or industry. We appreciate what they do and we understand that we maybe can't do what they can do in those realms, but we possess other talents that the world values and we enjoy our lives without all the fuss and attention.
The statistics of humanity. Against the Gods.
Everybody is also a Genius. Really.
But most of us never reach our full potential because we keep our ideas to ourselves for very practical reasons. The risk of failure.
Recognizing that it is entirely possible that you could be wrong about anything and everything is a good first step. Being open to the idea that you could be wrong is very hard for your brain.
So the takeaways are: If you aren't constantly questioning reality you are likely not getting a full picture of your personal reality. Hunting for truth requires critical thinking and using a scientific approach. In order to set achievable goals you have to have a great understanding of what you are good at, what you are average at, and what you are not so good at using an objectively arrived at process to determine these things. If there are things that you are really good at, is there something you'd like to be exceptional at? If so, why do think you want to be exceptional at it and is it okay if no one else cares?
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