The smile on a dog ...

I borrowed the title of this epigraph from an old song that's knocking around in my mind; that's just how I feel today, like a smiling dog.

There's a lot of talk out there about motivating yourself by working on your self-talk -- you can do it!  Have an attitude of gratitude!  and so on...   But I feel best and work best when my thoughts are quiet.

I don't mean the quiet of meditation, at least not exactly.  I mean the quiet of focus.

There is more than one kind of focus, too.  For example, there is focused intent.  This might be closest to what the Flow masters talk about.

There is the focused awareness.  Not holding onto anyone thing.  This is more like meditation, but meditation is not necessary to get there.  I most often get this when walking down a street or hiking down a trail.

But focus, by which I mean attention without words, can go beyond the dichotomy of awareness and intent. A kind of focus is felt when considering the behavior of others. Often, I feel this kind of focus when watching others:  the play of children, an act of kindness between two strangers.

On another level, a kind of focus appears in the joy of physical activity.  Running down a trail for the heck of it, instead of trying to meet a distance or a time. Jumping.  Dancing.

At bottom, because of the lack of inner words, it is ultimately un-self-conscious.  But saying it is the state of no self or ego, is incorrect too.  The self is there, but supercharged. Powerfully Present.

#Awareness #Intent #Meditation

The Evolution of Storytelling

Communication begins without words.

Words come after.

Words come when we depend on each other.

Imagine all of the life that's come before: fish, ants, dinosaurs, birds, cats, dogs.

All of these signal each other.  They work together to find food, find shelter, and to survive in a world of limited resources.

The dependence of one member of the tribe on the others is the beginning of love.

Wolves communicate as they hunt, using the best strategies they can muster to secure food for the pack.  Just as early humans must have.

The first signals would have been from beings exploring for resources: "food, water, shelter is over there". 

At first, pointing would have been enough.  Bees are able to communicate this much.

In conditions of scarcity, more communication would have been helpful: "there is stream over that hill, but there is a bear as well."

What about trade?  Trade would have begun between tribes; resources needed by one tribe would be traded for resources by the other tribe. 

More complex communication would have eventually evolved into stories:  "we hunted in the ravine, were successful in the hunt, camped for a night on the plains, and returned home."

Being able to tell such stories would allow members of the group to leave for extended periods and to return to the full tribe later.

These kinds of story would have the effect of increasing the bond between the members of the tribe.

These kinds of events form the basis of the human love for stories.

We have evolved so that we are constantly telling ourselves stories.  We have an inner monologue.

We are constantly telling others stories.

We are constantly watching or listening to stories.

Real life becomes the story in the evening news. 

Our own life becomes the story in the realm of psychology.

Stories about our tribe become our history.

Stories about our place in the world become our religion.

Stories about the how the physical world works become the story in the physical sciences.

But the world is not a story; we are not characters in a story.

Stories are generally judged on their external and internal cohesiveness -  do the events in the story fit with each other?  Do they fit with the other stories we tell ourselves? Do the actions fit with the characters?

They are NOT primarily judged on how true they are.

So the question becomes:  how far should we trust our story-based thinking?

Emotional mismanagement

Calm down!  Maybe not…

You may have  noticed that exhorting people to calm down is not very effective.  It's basically as effective as telling a child "Stop Crying!"  Every parent knows how well that works.

It turns out, according to a study published in  the Journal of Experimental Psychology and covered in The Atlantic and Inc.com, that telling yourself to calm down is just as useless.

Instead, they found that if you are anxious, reframing your mood, via self-talk, as excitement led to better performance.

The conclusion is that transitioning one's mood from anxiousness to excitement is easier than transitioning from anxiousness to calmness, presumably because they are more similar.

This begs the question -- can this be applied to other emotions?  I can think of plenty of emotions that you might want to transition away from.  For example, when angry the advice you are usually given,  as with anxiety, is to calm down.  What would be a good state to transition to from anger?  It seems to me that similar states without the downside of anger might be "determined"; "motivated".  In fact this kind of emotional transformation is seen in sports, where coaches often counsel their athletes to turn their anger into determination to win.

What about depression or sadness?  What  state might you transition to?  In the two above examples you are transitioning from a negative high energy state to a positive high energy state.   Depression and sadness are low energy states, so perhaps we could transition to passive states such as awe, or wonder.

Of course, all this assumes that you have the self-awareness and the desire to change your state.  The foundation for that may come from awareness practice (some form of meditation).

Lots of interesting questions here!

APA Study

Coverage in The Atlantic

Coverage at Inc.com

#Psychology #Emotion #Performance

Time Horizon Bias

I've been reading and thinking about the kinds of systematic mental mistakes people make.  I've just come across an interesting piece in "Fooled by Randomness," by Nassim Taleb.  


Checking results of a measure (like stock prices) frequently, increases the ratio of negative (price down) vs. positive events (price up).  This is due to the existence of randomness (volatility in stock prices).

Because there is a good deal of day to day randomness in stock prices, at short time scales the volatility masks the trend.

So while a stock price can in general be trending up, the trend can be hard to discern at short time horizons.

If it's true that people feel more pain from a loss than pleasure from a gain, this means that checking frequently can lead to an overall feeling of loss, even though in dollar terms there is a gain.

Example: 15% Return with 10% volatility (uncertainty per annum)

This translates into a 90% probability of making money in any year

• Checking daily: this means 241 pleasant minutes against 239 painful ones each day (8 hour day)
• Checking monthly: 8 pleasant events versus 4 painful events
• Checking yearly: 19 pleasant events to 1 painful event

Viewed more generally:

• Over one second, 1796 parts noise for one part performance
• Over one hour, 30 parts noise for one part performance
• Over one month, 2.32 parts noise for one part performance
• Over one year .7 parts noise for one part performance

Of course, one should be monitoring the overall trend, as the example above assumes that you are getting a 15% return.  Since the trend can only really be discerned at longer time horizons, it begs the question, what is the appropriate time horizon to check, as you not only want to maximize your feelings about the stock, but you also want to maximize your gains.

So what do you think?  Ready to stop checking stock prices every day?

#Randomness #Happiness
Fooled By Randomness Web Site
On Google Books