Keep My Mind Away From My Life
..life itself is but what you deem it.
-Marcus Aurelius..our life is the creation of our mind.
-Buddha
What they said. Must be simple. I deem my kids’ college paid for. Just keep my mind away from my life!
In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt provided the above quotes, then wrote:
Self-help books and seminars sometimes seem to consist of little more than lecturing and hectoring people until they understand this idea [you deem the creation of your mind] and its implications for their lives. It can be inspiring to watch: Often a moment comes when a person consumed by years of resentment, pain, and anger realizes that her father (for example) didn’t directly hurt her when he abandoned the family; all he did was move out of the house. His action was morally wrong, but the pain came from her reactions to the event, and if she can change those reactions, she can leave behind twenty years of pain and perhaps even get to know her father. The art of pop psychology is to develop a method (beyond lecturing and hectoring) that guides people to that realization.
This art is old. [p23]
Change my thoughts, change my world. Or umm.. change my bad thoughts, and change my crappy world. Or um.. my thoughts are bad.. I want to change them.. I can’t.
Snap rubber band.
Good thing I have this rubber band. I can punish myself when I think bad thoughts. You know, whenever I finger rubber, I think bad thoughts. I must be an awful, broken person.
Lady Philosophy, like the pop psychology gurus of today, was working with the rider [the thinking mind], guiding him to a moment of cognitive insight and reframing. Yet, if you have ever achieved such dramatic insights into your own life and resolved to change your ways or your outlook, you probably found that, three months later, you were right back where you started. Epiphanies can be life-altering, but most fade in days or weeks. [p26]
Haidt didn’t seem too happy when he wrote these passages. First he mocks pop psychology - and of course, it deserves a good mocking every now and then. Then he says the effort to change your outlook might be doomed to fail.
What will happen to the girl and her father?
The poor girl is going to meet her father after 15 years, curl her lips in disgust, spill hot coffee in his lap and storm off. Where is a good psychodynamic intervention when you need one?
I want to start a new reality TV show - Family Reconciliations.
If you are going to be mindful of your thoughts, you could be mindful of your mind. To the quotes above, ‘to deem’ is not ‘to think,‘ ‘to create’ is not ‘to think.‘ These are processes below the thoughts.
Musings
Reader Comments (2)
Cole, Interesting Post. I read it several times. And either I'm fuzzy headed (which is very possible ) or your post wasn't as clear as some of your earlier ones.
I'm discovering that I can redirect my thoughts from the pain of old stuff into knowing that my dad left my mom when I was 8 out of self preservation. He did what needed to be done at the time. And unfortunately it took me decades to see it. So when the pain slams me to the ground, I shift my thought to something else. I feel better, am able to keep functioning, and am able to move more deeply into knowing that my dad did what was right for himself at the time. And I would be a very different person - had he stayed.
From your post, I am not sure if you believe in this kind of redirection of thought or not. It seems to work for me. And as I write this, it seems that as a culture we are returning in some ways to the ooooooold fashioned way of dealing with issues. Ignore them, turn your thoughts to something else, something better, and get on with living.
Is this evolving or de-evolving psychology? I don't know.
Gayle McCain, Author
What If... A Woman, A Pen and Life Again
www.gaylemccain.com
www.faithfultoyourjourney.blogspot.com
www.gaylemccain.blogspot.com
Sorry for the confusion.
With issues of hardship like the one you articulated, we create stories, beliefs and defenses to help us survive. Each time we relive hardship, we practice our survival skills and hone them to the point of instinct.
As you point out, you redirect your thoughts, feel better and keep functioning. You protect yourself with great success. You also don’t look past what your dad did. You are remarkably brave to acknowledge slamming pain.
Our pain often is cemented by the very defenses which were so successful.
Jonathan Haidt, who is a great scholar and psychologist, wrote the pull quotes. His point, I believe, is that we can’t realize our way past our pains. Relief from suffering comes from reworking our distorted biases, beliefs and stories.
My point: if we are mindful of our thoughts, we might as well be mindful of the process that generated them. Body sensations, emotions and feelings underlie the thoughts and embody our defended-self.
The middle part, where I made fun of rubber-bands? Silliness mainly. But consider this problem:
Imagine you get anxious when you think of your dog. If I told you not to think about your dog, how often would you?
If it were me, the more I tried not to think, the more I anxious I’d get. I'd start snapping the damn rubber band.