Interesting article

Whatever You Feel Compelled to Do, Don't

Remember the last time you pushed the "send" button for an email and then instantly regretted it? Or snapped at someone in a moment of frustration?

It's easy to recite the litany of all we do wrong in our lives — eat and drink too much, exercise and sleep too little, spend too much on things we don't need and run up too much debt, judge others too quickly and embrace them too conditionally, profligately consume resources and spend too much time obsessing about our own needs and too little focused on the needs of others.

We know better. We're capable of better. So why exactly do we make so many short-sighted destructive choices?

Let me suggest a very basic answer: Unbeknownst to most of us, we each have at least two very distinct selves. They don't know very much about one another. If you have any doubt this is so, think for a moment of what you're like at your best, and what you're like at your worst. Which one is the real you? The answer, of course, is both. Two selves — both you.

Under ordinary circumstances, our parasympathetic nervous system and our prefrontal cortex are running the show. We're capable of thinking clearly, calmly and logically. In our work at The Energy Project, we call this the "Performance Zone." It's here that we're capable of operating at our best.

In the face of a perceived threat, however, our sympathetic nervous system and amygdala take over and our second self steps up. A flood of stress hormones is released. Our pre-frontal cortex shuts down, we become narrow and more myopic in our vision, and we react more primitively and instinctively.

The physiology of fight or flight mobilizes us to attack, or run like hell. Think of this as the "Survival Zone." It's a great place to be if there's a lion coming at you.

It isn't great in situations where thinking is an asset. The problem is that our bodies respond to any perceived threat — say, a critical comment from a colleague or a boss — by fueling the fight or flight response. We lose our capacity for rationality and reflectiveness, and we mostly don't realize we've lost it.

Consider a classic question you've surely asked someone — or been asked yourself: "What were you thinking when you did that?"

More often than not, you weren't thinking anything at all. You were just reacting.

Once stress hormones stop circulating through your body, the capacity to think logically returns. But that doesn't mean we take responsibility for our bad behaviors. Instead, many of us use our prefrontal cortex to rationalize what we've just done without thinking. We seek to justify, or minimize, or deny our responsibility for behaviors that were in fact hurtful and destructive to others.

We misuse the gift of our cognition.

Think of all the bankers who made irrational, sub-prime loans that were sure to eventually fail, but have yet to take any responsibility for their self-serving misdeeds — or been held accountable.

So what's the antidote to behaving reactively — and badly — when we feel under threat?

The first step is to become more aware of when your emotions begin to turn negative. That may mean noticing your heart beating faster, or tightness in your chest, jaw, or forehead.

The next step, when you sense you're getting frustrated or anxious, is to apply "The Golden Rules of Triggers." It's very simple: Whatever you feel compelled to do, don't. Compulsions are not choices, and they rarely lead to positive outcomes.

The moment you feel yourself moving into the Survival Zone, label it: "Ah, there I go." Take a deep breath. Inhale through your nose to a count of 3, and exhale slowly to a count of six. That will quiet your body.

Finally, feel your feet, to get out of your head and ground yourself in the reality of the present moment.

You've just bought time. Now you should be able to ask yourself "How would I behave here at my best?" and make a conscious choice about how to respond.

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Recently, I came across this startling statistic. Each day, we make an average of 217 food-related decisions. Is it any surprise we so often make poor choices about what we eat?

The simple act of making decisions, says the researcher Roy Baumeister, progressively depletes our ability to make them well. We begin to experience something called "decision fatigue." Worse yet, we're often not even consciously aware of feeling tired and impaired.

Here's how the brain compensates: As much as 95 percent of the time, it makes decisions automatically, by habit, or in reaction to an external demand. So what would it take to intentionally make better decisions in a world of infinite choices?

The answer begins with self-awareness. Our first challenge is resist being reactive. Many of our worst decisions occur after we've been triggered — meaning that something or someone pushes us into negative emotion and we react instinctively, fueled by our stress hormones, in a state of fight or flight.

That's all well and good if there's a lion charging at you. It's not very useful in everyday life. Most of the time, it makes more sense to live by the Golden Rule of Triggers: Whatever you feel compelled to do, don't.

If you respond out of a compulsion, you haven't made an intentional choice. It may feel right — even righteous — in the moment, but it's more likely to exacerbate the problem than solve it.

Here are three keys to making really good decisions:

1. The first key is not to make bad ones. That begins with self- awareness — becoming more attentive to the physical signs that you're feeling a sense of threat. The most common ones are tightness in any part of your body, more rapid breathing, and the experience of anger or fear. The intensity of an emotion is not a reason to act on it.

Instead, when you recognize what's happening in your body, take a couple of deep breaths — breathe in to a count of three, out to a count of six. Then feel your feet, which will ground you back in reality.

All you're trying to do here is buy time. It's only when you quiet your physiology that you can think clearly and reflectively about how best to respond.

2. The next challenge in making good decisions is cultivating perspective. The primitive parts of our brains aren't wired to take the future into consideration, and tend to seek out instead the most immediate source of gratification, or the route to the least pain and discomfort.

Too often, we use our prefrontal cortex to rationalize our shortsighted choices, rather than to foresee their future consequences. "It's ok to have this dessert because I worked out this morning," you tell yourself, even though it was your first workout in a month and your 10th dessert. Or: "I'll put off that difficult work because I've just got to deal with these urgent emails" — only to find you're too tired to get to the tougher stuff later.

The antidote is to ask yourself a simple question each time you're contemplating a difficult decision: Which choice is going to add the greatest value and serve me best over time? Plainly, there are instances when you simply have to do what's most urgent. But it's also easy to kid yourself that you've always got urgent demands and never have prioritize time for what's harder to do, but will truly add value.

One solution is to schedule your most important work as early as possible in the day, when you typically have the most energy and the fewest accumulated demands.

3. The highest challenge we all face is doing the right thing — especially when it doesn't necessarily serve our immediate self-interest. Doing so requires knowing what you truly stand for. Then what you need most is conviction, because choosing the right thing may involve sacrifice and discomfort.

It's the difference between doing what makes you feel good — a couple of beers can get you there — and doing what makes you feel good about yourself.

If you deeply value honesty, do you warn a client away from a product about which you have doubts, even if it means losing a sale? If you are committed to kindness and consideration of others, do you choose to help out a friend in need, even when you're feeling exhausted or overburdened?

Once again, you can begin by asking yourself a simple question: What would I do here at my best? Meaning, "Who do you really want to be?" Intentionally embodying your values in your everyday behavior requires the courage to intentionally override your more primitive impulses.

Think for a moment about someone who recently triggered you — pushed you deep into negative emotions. How did you react? Did it get you what you really wanted? Was it consistent with the person you want to be?

We always have a choice about how to behave. The challenge in life is to keep upping our game.

What do these words have in common? "Savor," "relish," " "luxuriate," "stroll," "muse," "dawdle," "mosey," "meander," and "linger?"

We rarely use them, because we rarely do them. We don't have time. We've got so much to do, so many balls to juggle, so many miles to go before we sleep.

I've been thinking about this a lot since I posted the blog "The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time" two weeks ago. It prompted a passionate outpouring of comments from people feeling overwhelmed by the relentless demands in their lives, and the sense that there's no way out.

We're all wired up, but we're melting down. We're dancing as fast as we can. Stroll? Mosey? Linger? That's what slackers do.

I'm not suggesting this is a new phenomenon. "More, bigger, faster" has been the rallying cry of capitalism for more than two centuries, since the advent of the industrial revolution. I first wrote about this subject 25 years ago in an article for Vanity Fair titled "Acceleration Syndrome: How Life Got Much, Much Too Fast." Even then it was before anyone had cell phones or an email address, and before Google, Facebook, texting, and tweeting existed.

But the acceleration has accelerated — crazily so. The speed of our digital devices now sets our pace and increasingly runs our lives. Any doubt? See if you can turn off your email for a day, or even for a few hours, or try holding the attention of a 12- year-old who has a smart phone in her hand.

I like getting more done, faster, as much as the next guy does. But I also recognize how costly it can be. Speed is the enemy of depth, nuance, subtlety, attention to detail, reflection, learning, and rich relationships — the enemy of much, in short, that makes life worth living.

Last week, my wife and I accompanied my older daughter, a theater director, to a play called "Gatz

 

" at the Public Theater in New York City. The show is based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The script is the novel itself, which the main character, Nick Carraway, reads from the stage over six and a half languorous hours between 2 pm and 10 pm. There are two 15-minute intermissions and an hour and fifteen minute break for dinner.

Honestly, this is not the sort of event I would have chosen to attend, but it was a gift from my daughter. To my amazement, I found it riveting. I savored and luxuriated in Fitzgerald's elegant sentences, and I became so immersed in the story and the era Fitzgerald so vividly evokes, that my attention rarely wandered. I felt enriched and enlivened by the experience. It has stuck with me.

Speed is a source of stimulation and fleeting pleasure. Slowing down is a route to depth, more enduring satisfaction, and to excellence.

How would you feel if you knew the surgeon operating on you was racing through your surgery, while checking email, and writing texts along the way? I notice my own impatience if the Internet doesn't come up fast enough on my phone when I'm walking from one appointment to another.

Am I nuts? It makes me think of a line from Simon and Garfunkel's 59th Street Bridge Song: "Slow down, you move too fast. You got to make the morning last." Why can't I just take a deep breath when I've got a free moment, and appreciate my simple aliveness?

Here's one reason:

The faster we move, the less we feel, which may be a primary reason we move so fast. Most of us are more worried, uncertain, and insecure than we care to acknowledge, even to ourselves. Moving fast keeps those discomfiting feelings at bay.

So we deify doing. Just think about this senseless but venerable cliché: "No rest for the weary." Really? Isn't resting precisely what the weary ought to be doing?

To savor is to enjoy and appreciate something completely. It necessarily takes time and requires slowing down. So how might you build more savoring into your life? Try one of these:

1. Designate one meal a day — or even one a week — during which you take the time to notice the aroma, flavor, and texture of what you're eating.
2. Curl up in a favorite chair at some point after you return home from work and spend at least a half-hour reading a book purely for pleasure.
3. Take the time to really listen to someone you love — to give that person the space to speak without interruption, for as long as it takes.
4. Choose a place that interests you — it could be in the city or the country — and spend a couple of hours just exploring it without any specific end in mind.
5. Buy a journal, and before you go to bed, take a few minutes to reflect on what you feel grateful for that day, and what went right.

Above all, slowly build more strolling, dawdling, moseying, meandering, musing, lingering, relishing, and savoring into your life.

A few weeks ago, I found myself in a conflict with someone in my work life. I felt he had clearly violated an agreement we'd made. My first reaction was righteous indignation.
It was a familiar feeling. I was raised by a powerful mother who saw the world in stark terms: black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. She devoted her life to fighting for social justice and prided herself on uncompromising honesty. Her worldview deeply influenced mine.

In this case, I believed the person at work had acted badly. I was right, and he was wrong. My goal was to get him to see it my way.

A few days later, we had a chance to sit down together. Not surprisingly, the conversation was awkward at first. Then, to my surprise, as he explained himself, I felt myself beginning to understand why he made the choice he did.

It wasn't so much that I felt he was right, as that I felt less righteous. This was complicated. There was more than one way to look at it. It wasn't about good and evil. If I looked at the big picture, it still made sense to go forward together, even under the new terms.

I felt good about our resolution in the moment, but over the next day, my mood plummeted. At first I suspected it was some sort of repressed anger. As I reflected, however, I realized I was grieving a loss. It wasn't about him or our relationship. It was about me. I was grieving the loss of certainty.

What I felt slipping away — as it has been for some time in my life — was the sort of security and clarity that comes from believing you've got the answer. It feels good to know things for sure. It makes us feel safer, at least in the short term.
But certainty has its limitations. Very rarely, I've discovered, is certainty the outgrowth of careful consideration and deep understanding. Far more often, it's a primitive instinct — a way we defend against uncertainty, which understandably feels unsettling and even dangerous.

The problem is that certainty often oversimplifies and trivializes, especially in a world that has grown so immensely complex. "I don't do nuance," the notoriously unambivalent George W. Bush once said. But is there much doubt that Bush's easy certainty, lack of introspection and narrowness of vision served neither him nor our country well?

What we need from leaders (and ourselves) is greater capacity to see the big picture — to embrace nuance, subtlety and paradox rather than racing to choose up sides. Certainty creates a zero sum world in which my gain is necessarily your loss, and my being right means you must be wrong.

Just a simple example: Take out a piece of paper and make a list of the qualities that characterize you at your best. Next, make a list of the qualities you exhibit at your worst. If possible, do this before reading any further.

OK, so which one of these lists describes you? Plainly, the answer is both, opposite as they likely are. "Do I contradict myself?" Walt Whitman asked in "Song Of Myself." "Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes."

This is no argument for moral relativism or for anything goes. Some qualities are obviously more virtuous than others. But would you rather have a leader who recognizes, acknowledges and honestly struggles with his limitations, or one who pretends not to have any? Which person would you rather be?

From a neurological perspective, our pull to certainty is a byproduct of overtraining and over relying on the left hemisphere of our brain at the expense of the right. Choosing up sides between the two — privileging the left over the right, as we do — makes us narrower. Cultivating both hemispheres gives us access to a whole and far more powerful brain — both the rational, deductive, goal-driven capacities of the left, and the openness and big picture orientation of the right.

It's the same with even the most virtuous qualities. Overuse any one of them and they become destructive. Confidence un tempered by humility turns into arrogance. Tenacity without flexibility becomes rigidity. Courage without prudence is recklessness.

Above all, certainty kills curiosity, learning, and growth. True confidence requires the willingness to give up the need to be right, the courage to say "I'm not sure," even when the pressure for answers is intense, and the hunger to forever learn and grow.

Here's a threshold question I now ask myself when I'm in conflict and convinced I'm right. "What would the other person say is happening here, and in what ways might that be true?"