Are you conscious?

The other night I was washing dishes and decided to also give my mind something to do by listening to an audiobook by Ayn Rand titled “The Virtue of Selfishness” in which she describes the ethical implications of her philosophy “objectivism”. She divides people into two categories: those who are unconscious and copy other people’s life models and those who are conscious and actually take responsibility for their lives. According to Rand what makes us human is our ability to disregard our instincts, i.e. our will to survive (cats can’t choose to commit suicide). However, this capacity comes with the responsibility to use our rational minds because our instincts actually don’t tell us what to do. For example a cat’s instinct is to kill mice and birds, even if it’s not hungry, whereas our instincts only tell us that we should get food, but not how to get it. We have to use our brains in order to figure out how to fill our stomachs which led from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a sedentary one (more reliable food source, at least in the long run).

Nowadays getting food usually isn’t the most challenging task, at least not in the Western world. Already as children we know that we have to go to the grocery store in order to get stuff for breakfast, lunch or dinner, we are born with a roof over our heads and nobody asks us if we want to go to school or not. To summarize, we don’t have an awful lot of choice when it comes to fulfilling our basic needs as other people (parents, teachers, governments) make most of the decisions for us – until we leave the nest. So far so unconscious. And what happens next? When I ask people why they do things like studying to be a teacher or dating their ex again or eating fast food the answer is often something along the lines of “I don’t know, it’s safe/ comfortable/ my parents/friends think it’s a good idea/ it’s what I’ve always done”. Can you hear the quarter life crisis bells ringing?

Research has shown that we make up our identity as we go along. That includes coming up with rational explanations for our not at all rational decisions. The more time, energy and effort we have invested in something, the more we try to justify having taken that specific course in life. The result: we build our own mental prisons. Let’s say you’ve been dating this guy or girl for a few years already and something doesn’t feel right, yet there’s no way for you to consider a break-up or even just a break: “After all this time? Are you crazy?” It’s better to stick it out, right? And your mind thankfully supports the whole sham by skilfully creating better and better explanations for why you do what you do. Some part of you obviously thinks it’s less painful (or uncomfortable) to keep up the status quo than to admit that maybe this hasn’t been the best choice of your life. And the more you play along the stronger you make this part and thereby the belief: I don’t care about myself enough to look for alternative options. And this applies to any repetitive behaviour (also called habit) that you might have developed, i.e. making promises to yourself and breaking them. To quote my friend Paul Harrison:  “In the current times, people are training their unconscious minds with patterns that work against them instead of for them.” (Read more about how not to do that, but instead go after and achieve your goals in his blog post “The Will and the Word”:http://paul-cr-harrison.blogspot.com/2011/06/will-and-word-part-1-or-how-to-manifest.html) That’s why people stay in abusive relationships or keep jobs they hate, although they know it’s bad for them: Anything familiar is better than the unknown. Now you might ask yourself: Why is my mind doing this, what purpose does it serve? (Be sure there is one, there always is.) The answer is: It learns through repetition. The goal is to foresee the future because the better you are at predicting it the better are your chances of survival.

In order to be conscious you need to make sure that your choices are really your choices. How do you know? It’s easy – just ask yourself “why did I do this or that?”. If your mind immediately spews out an elaborate explanation brimming with rational reasons you should have a closer look. If it just reacts with a warm and fuzzy feeling in your stomach and the short sentence “It felt right”, you’re on track.

Talking ‘bout a Revolution

Have you written any To Do lists lately? Or planned your next business venture/holiday/shopping trip? Structured your day? Role-played the next “serious conversation” with your partner/spouse in your head or in front of the mirror? All of the above? And ended up doing nothing or changing it so much that your original plan seemed to belong to an entirely different person or life? Congratulations – you’re a “who needs real action when there’s planning to do!” junkie! But don’t worry, you are not alone. We are secretive, but we are everywhere.

If you don’t believe me just drop by the nearest book store, will you? And then find the business section, or the self-help shelf, books on fitness, language courses – anything really (apart from fiction). Or google it if you’re too lazy to leave your couch. Just type in something along the lines of “the secret to planning”. Or better yet, just “planning”. 3 BILLION entries. Do I have to say more?

We’re a generation of planners. I can see the evolutionary benefit that led to the survival of this skill (from hunting to planting seeds and subsequently harvesting enough food for a whole winter instead of just one dinner was a pretty big step), but it seems to have become rampant. People can’t even use the washroom without planning their “loo breaks” any more, it seems. Toddlers need blackberries in order to keep track of their various appointments and ongoing projects. OK, that might be a bit exaggerated, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they invented the “iphone for kids” very soon. They seem to have the most money anyway.

Yes, modern life demands a lot from us, a lot of multitasking and scheduling and organizing because we’re oh so mobile and flexible and specialized while at the same time DIY and BYOB and “be your own boss”. And it’s great to have so many opportunities that our parents couldn’t even dream of, but lately I’m thinking more and more that it comes with a heavy cost: the loss of action. In the good old times (I mean pre-cell phone times in this case) if you wanted to see a friend or arrange some kind of meeting you did it with one quick phone call or a 2-minute face to face chat. Done, no need to think about it till the actual day of the meeting. Today the phrase “I’ll have to reschedule” seems to have outstripped “I love you” in terms of frequency of usage, if not popularity by far. Alarming, don’t you think?

Again, if you don’t believe me, I’ll prove it to you, just follow this simple instruction: During the next two weeks, make a note whenever you plan to do something – whether it’s buying light bulbs or taking an old friend you haven’t seen in ages out for coffee – but fail to actually do it. And then count these “not done”s.

There’s nothing wrong with thinking ahead and trying to figure out the best way to do something, even writing down a list of steps or sub-goals. What we have to understand, though, is that planning doesn’t magically expand time or give us twice the amount of energy. It helps, but the learning and what’s even more important the fulfillment, joy and success of our lives are in the doing.

For a lot of people (including me) planning often times is a means of avoiding something unpleasant or unknown. Instead of just jumping in and doing it I spend hours (sometimes days) analysing all the possible outcomes and planning my reactions. Just because we humans have been given the gift of anticipation doesn’t mean we should use it all the time. So if you want to meet your high school friend for a drink don’t let bad weather or that urgent email you suddenly remember you have to write thwart your plans. And if you want to be the next political leader don’t waste time talking ‘bout a revolution – be one.

The difference between knowledge and wisdom

I flatter myself that I know quite a lot of things – I speak several languages, have a Master’s degree in psychology and am a rather avid reader. (I also play guitar and sing, but somehow this doesn’t seem to fit into the category of knowledge... If I remember correctly it belongs to the procedural memory, that’s stuff like tying your shoe lace or riding a bike: pretty much automatic activities that is.) Surely there must be a fair bit of facts and figures stored away in that big storehouse of mine – my brain. But I also know that I have forgotten a lot of things. For example how exactly a PET scan works (which I studied in university) or how to fix a flat bike tire (something I was taught in grade 3. Although – that might also have had to do with my ridiculous unhandyness). And innumerable other things. Which is sad, right? I mean I spent so much time studying for exams and countless hours reading and memorizing, but most of it seems to have been retained for only a short amount of time. And I’m asking myself why that is. Maybe the sheer amount of information we’re trying to cram into our heads is just too much for our intellectual capacity? My dad told me that his dad’s “intellectual fodder” consisted of only a few books, six maybe, timeless classics, and that he would read them over and over again throughout his lifetime and gain something new and valuable from them with every rereading. Surely he basically knew them by heart after the umpteenth time through, no danger of forgetting the names of the main characters or the lessons learned with so much repetition.

I am still reading “Evolve your mind” (as always I have started dozens of books over the past months and weeks so that it takes me forever to finish one – a really bad strategy when it comes to staying motivated by the way) and just finished the section on learning. Now learning and its counterpart teaching happen to be particular interests of mine. I’m sure every single one of you can remember his or her teachers from high school that actually managed to implant something permanent into your brain cells and the ones that – excuse my French – absolutely sucked at that. I’m talking about the ones that made you fall asleep after five minutes of class. The difference according to Joe Dispenza, the author of “Evolve your mind”, lies in the quality of the experience. In other words: When we experience emotions in a situation it is much more likely that it will leave an imprint on our brain structure because new synaptic connections are being formed. The fascinating thing about us humans (apart from having invented ice-cream and Friends) is that we integrate new knowledge by building on top of what is already there, kind of like adding a new storey to a house. So when we manage to perceive a connection to what we already know (and this doesn’t have to be a conscious process!) it is much more likely to stick. That’s why analogies and metaphors are so great because they show you these connections in a playful and yet superefficient way.

In olden times the young were taught mainly by the arts: songs, stories and paintings were used to drive home the lessons that were important to the respective society. Because they were made up of familiar elements (for example a young hero the listener/spectator could identify with) and spoke to them emotionally (how many of you are being transported to a very specific time and place just by hearing a song from your past?) they worked. And were fun at the same time! Unfortunately teachers forgot about this magical trick over time and nowadays to my great regret and dissatisfaction a vivid imagination is not among the prerequisites for being admitted to teachers’ college.

Now some of you might ask: What does all of this have to do with the difference between knowledge and wisdom? The answer is: everything. Just close your eyes for a moment and remember some of the lessons you’ve learned in life – from “don’t go down stairs on roller blades if you like your bones whole” to “you reap what you sow” (a fucking awesome metaphor – doesn’t everybody know exactly what it means even if you can’t explain it? That’s great teaching!) – and then remember how you learned them. Did you read them in a text book? No, you experienced them first-hand. And that’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Your guts will know. Trust me.