Minding Your Mind

It's like riding a horse. Saddle up!

Like a thousand other strong men who have come into the world here in America in these later times, Jesse was but half strong. He could master others but he could not master himself. — Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg Ohio

We all want to be happy and successful, and we do everything we can to make that happen. We often do well at this, and sometimes we stumble. In addition to the external obstacles (“reality”) that can get in our way, it turns out there are also some internal obstacles that we should all pay attention to.

As marvelous as our minds/brains are, like any organ or machine or computer they have certain design flaws and imperfections that can cause us big problems. Fortunately we humans have the special ability to study our own minds as a means to improving our own health and happiness and success. Here is some of what various students of human nature have discovered along the way.

A brief history of “psych-ology” and the mind/brain

Psychology (psyche = soul, self, mind; logia = study of) has existed for as long as there have been human minds contemplating themselves. The study of mind has always had one overarching purpose: to increase life’s joys and reduce its pain and suffering. For thousands of years, people have developed psychological models and paradigms for that purpose. The most influential models of mind include:

• Buddhism

• Psychoanalysis

• Cognitive and game theory

• Evolutionary biology

A number of common themes run through these theories of mind, and they are important both separately and together:

• The mind’s thoughts, beliefs and attitudes are not completely under our voluntary control; they are not all intentional; many “just happen”

• Despite this fact, once we have our thoughts, we tend to believe that they are “true” and “real” and that “I” thought them

• The content of our thoughts is a proximal contributor to our emotions and our actions (and vice versa)

• The mind can generate patterns of thought/belief, emotion and action that are both helpful and harmful to our interests and well-being

• By cultivating the foundation skill of self-awareness, we can observe how certain thoughts and emotions lead to happiness and success, while others lead to suffering and failure

• Based on these observations, we can work to bring more voluntary control over our thoughts, emotions and actions so as to maximize benefit and minimize harm

So all of these mental paradigms advise us to tame our minds as the rider tames the horse. The powerful idea here involves a certain “splitting” of the mind into an automatic experiencing part (the horse) and an observing and directing part (the rider). This idea is powerful because we tend to experience our own mind’s workings as seamless, of a whole piece, a unitary reality where there is no “distance” or separation between our Mind and our Self.

Splitting our mind into an experiencing self and an observing self provides a platform for self-understanding and strategic intervention. The mind minds its mind. The patient is also the therapist.

Self-Awareness

Each theory of mind has prescribed its own methods and practices for increasing self-awareness. Self-awareness is universally viewed as a foundation skill for living the good life. You can’t manage/control or change what you don’t know you don’t know.

Awareness of our thoughts and emotions (and their impact on our actions) can be developed by various methods such as

• meditation/cultivation of mindfulness (Buddhism): pay attention to your breathing and notice how your mind is pulled away from that focus by its various thoughts and emotions; do not accept or reject them; just notice them

• free association (psychoanalysis): observe and say whatever comes into your mind without censoring/concealing anything

• journals/diaries (cognitive-behavioral, emotional intelligence and resilience models): write down what you are thinking and feeling and doing whenever things get “difficult”

After mining our mind for its thoughts and emotions, we can then step back and look for patterns of thoughts, emotions and behavior and their consequences in the real world. A healthy dose of skepticism (“Don’t believe everything you think”) is recommended during this process by most of the models of mind above. Rather than automatically viewing every thought or emotion as “mine” and therefore believing it to be “true/real”, we are advised to adopt a scientific attitude toward our thoughts and emotions by viewing them as data and looking for recurring patterns and laws to explain them. We will soon recognize that some of our thoughts and emotions come from a part of our mind that is not necessarily wise, realistic or under voluntary control, and should be evaluated in terms of how they lead to action and how those actions turn out in terms of achieving our most cherished desires and goals.

This is a wise view to take, as the 4 mental paradigms above warn us that our minds/brains are not perfect computers or truth-tellers:

Buddhism offers the notion that much of what we think and believe is illusion designed to protect us from painful realities (such as our own mortality/fragility) and ensnares us in cycles of suffering. Psychoanalysis introduces the concept that much of what we view as current reality is in part a replay of unconscious patterns based on early important relationships and events. Cognitive and game theory clarify a number of less than “rational” mental patterns and quirks to which the human mind seems to be prone.

Evolutionary biology/psychology views the human mind/brain as having been designed by natural selection as hundreds of generations of our hunter-gatherer ancestors coped with the survival challenges of pre-industrial and pre-agrarian life where we spent most of our evolutionary history. This idea builds on Charles Darwin’s thesis that biological forms (including their minds) appear and change over time as a result of the struggle to survive by adapting to the local environment.

For a sense of what deep evolutionary time (with its thousands of generations of struggles for survival) looks like, consider the following brain chronology:

• First brain of any kind (flatworm) appears ~ 550 million years ago

• First primate brain appears ~ 40–65 million years ago

• First human ancestor brain appears ~ 7 million years ago

• First homo genus brain (homo habilis) appears ~ 2.5 million years ago

• First “human” (homo sapiens) brain appears ~ 195,000 years ago

By pointing out that the brain was designed for survival and procreation rather than wisdom or happiness, evolutionary theory invites us to realize that our mind’s default programs can sometimes work against our best interests and therefore benefit from strategic push-backs and intentional modifications.

We are well advised by all these paradigms of mind to pause and build in a moment/space to observe and reflect on our emotions and thoughts, and then to think strategically about how best to act on them given the particular environmental opportunities and threats we are facing at any moment.

Self-Control

No other thing do I know that brings such harm as a mind that is untamed, unguarded, unprotected and uncontrolled. Such a mind truly brings harm. No other thing do I know that brings so much benefit as a mind that is tamed, guarded, protected and controlled. Such a mind truly brings great benefit. — Gautama Siddhartha (Buddha)

What distinguishes us (homo sapiens) from other species is our brain’s cortex and related structures, a collection of cells that overlays older brain systems dedicated to cardiac, pulmonary and other life functions (limbic system, brain stem) and to hunger, sex and emotions (amygdala, hypothalamus, etc). The prefrontal cortex regulates the so-called “executive functions” of the brain such as focused attention, working memory, symbolic/abstract thought, language, counting, reasoning, planning, etc.

Brain images using various non-invasive scanning technologies (MRI, NMR, PET, fMRI) reveal that as activity in the frontal cortex increases, activity in the emotional and action centers decreases, reflecting a dynamic of reciprocal inhibition between “higher/modern” and “lower/ancient” brain centers. This is the biological basis for metaphors such as Freud’s ego and id and Buddhism’s rider and horse.

Trick-or-Treat!

That we can in fact manage other people is by no means proven. But we can always manage ourselves. — Peter Drucker

In an ongoing research program on the nature and development of self-control by Walter Mischel and others at Stanford University, children are given a marshmallow and told that they can either (a) eat it right away or (b) wait for a while and get a second marshmallow. Of course some of the kids gobble down the marshmallow immediately and some wait.

The children who waited for the second marshmallow used very specific self-regulation and problem-solving strategies to manage their craving and delay gratification, especially active self-talk (internalized speech) routines such as

“It’s hard to wait, but if I can just hang in there, I will get that second marshmallow and I’ll be really glad I did. I can do it. I’m strong. Just wait a minute and then another minute. Think about something else, yeah that will help”.

These children (1) were aware of their own cravings and the situational challenge they faced (2) had effective self-management strategies they could use and (3) were confident that they could handle the situation. These processes enabled higher levels of self-regulation, planfulness and “success” (more marshmallows).

The children in the marshmallow experiment were followed up for decades (which is hard and expensive research to do, which is why we don’t have a lot of this kind of longitudinal data). It turns out that the children who could delay gratification and wait for the second marshmallow were, as a group, more successful (school/career performance, finances), happier (less anxiety or depression) and healthier (less obesity or drug abuse) than the children who gave in to impulse and ate the marshmallow right away. It has been demonstrated that children can be taught to use these effective self-control and problem-solving strategies even if they do not naturally tend to do so, and they benefit from that instruction in terms of their subsequent achievement and health.

Current research on self-awareness and self-control are studying the cognitive/neurological, developmental and environmental differences between children who eat the marshmallow vs. wait for a second one, between adults who invest and save their money vs. those who spend/gamble it away, and between people who eat/drink moderately vs. those who become obese or addicted to alcohol and other substances.

Sometimes a marshmallow is more than just a marshmallow

At first glance, we might chuckle about an experiment with kids and marshmallows. How could we learn anything important from that? On further contemplation, it is a beautiful set-up for studying the human mind/brain and some of our core life challenges and potential solutions.

We are all faced with challenges and temptations that speak to our hungers and cravings and desires. For most of human history lived under conditions of severe resource shortages where you literally never knew where your next meal was coming from, the “smart” (survival) strategy was

When a being consumes more calories, it is more likely to live longer and procreate more. According to the evolutionary principle of “natural selection”, this will cause the Eat The Marshmallow Right Now (EMRN) program to be genetically passed on to future generations. If those descendants with the EMRN program survive and reproduce in greater numbers compared to those who delay gratification and wait for more “marshmallows” later, the EMRN program will be strengthened in each generational cohort. And it was.

Most of us will, when given the choice, eat more sooner. And that is fine … so long as we are living under the same conditions (resource scarcity, small tribes, low-impact technologies, relatively “stable” climate) where that strategy provided an advantage.

Evolution is not always “progress”

Humans have made dramatic technological advancements over the past few centuries:

• Internal combustion engines fueled by fossil fuels replacing human muscle work

• Dramatic increases in food production due to massive land capture and bioengineered sources of protein/calories

• Improved health/longevity largely due to public health/disease prevention strategies (think vaccines and sanitation/waste management) plus some modest “medical” innovations

• Terraforming capabilities where humans join the beaver in adapting the environment to its benefit rather than just adapting to the environment like most species

• Mass communication capabilities (printing press, radio, telephone, internet) enabling viral information sharing and democratization

• Industrial factory model with modern “management” strategies enabling human groups to expand and crash through evolved group size limits without fracturing

These advances, created by a few people (hint: scientists and engineers) and adopted by billions, have transformed the world in which we live and must adapt. In this brave new world, the old EMRN strategy can create some serious blowback for ourselves (obesity, compulsive consuming), others (domination, violence, inequality) and the planet (environmental degradation, climate disruption). In a world with exponential growth (in population, ideas, technologies, energy/food production, choices, products, waste, temptation, complexity), we need wiser ways of dealing with our craving for more “marshmallows”.

MIND OS 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 …

The mind is a system of organs of computation, designed by natural selection to solve the kinds of problems our ancestors faced in their foraging way of life, in particular, outmaneuvering objects, animals, plants, and other people. — Steven Pinker

Over the centuries, some ingenious humans (philosophers, ethicists, scientists) have developed mental software upgrades to compensate for some of the bugs and flaws of our evolved operating system (Mind 1.0) and its original programming. Examples of these software program upgrades include

• Buddhism: our suffering is caused by our craving for “marshmallows”; we can increase our well-being by understanding this truth (contemplate the 8 Fold Path, 4 Noble Truths, and 5 Hindrances) and by cultivating specific mental practices (Notice the marshmallow cravings come … and go)

• Stoicism: our suffering is caused by our obsession about the “marshmallows” we don’t/can’t have; we can increase our well-being by focusing on what we can control and minimizing the importance of what we can’t (I can do without marshmallows; at least I have enough food to eat); we should make more “downward comparisons” (Many people have fewer marshmallows than I do) to avoid the anger and envy triggered by “upward comparisons” (That person has so many more marshmallows than I do)

• Cognitive and Positive Psychology: our emotions and actions are guided by our thoughts; we can increase our well-being if we are aware of and change specific self-defeating thought patterns/beliefs (I don’t deserve any marshmallows or I’m entitled to ALL the marshmallows); the pursuit of “happiness” by eating more marshmallows (hedonia) has diminishing returns over time, so we can also pursue another long-term strategy (eudaemonia) e.g. share your marshmallows with those who have none, invent a healthier tastier candy to improve public health etc.

• Iterated Game Theory: we can increase our individual and collective well-being by starting every new “game” (relationship, project etc.) with a cooperation strategy (Let’s all get some marshmallows!); if others respond cooperatively, continue in kind; if they compete (I’m gonna take all the marshmallows!), respond in kind

No software release is ever perfect in either the technological or biological realm. Continuous improvement is needed. The mental software upgrades above were designed by generations of minds contemplating their minds and lives, discovering the inherent glitches and viruses in the original human operating system, and then prescribing fixes and hacks and workarounds.

A big problem facing humanity: unlike our smart web-enabled devices, we do not receive automatic updates for MIND OS 1.0. We all need to discover and download our wisdom upgrades for ourselves by thinking and experimenting and learning throughout all the years of our lives.

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SUGGESTED READING FOR MIND 1.0 UPDATES

Chris Argyris, Teaching smart people how to learn, Harvard Business Review

Casey et al., Behavioral and neural correlates of delay of gratification 40 years later, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Charles Darwin, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals

Charles Darwin, On The Origin of Species

Epictetus, The Enchiridion (for a brief synopsis, start with The Art of Living by Sharon Lebell)

Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id

Ellis & Harper, A Guide to Rational Living

Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis

Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence

Greenberger & Pedesky, Mind Over Mood

Heinz Hartmann, Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever Your Go, There You Are

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

Meichenbaum & Goodman, Training impulsive children to talk to themselves: a means of developing self-control, Journal of Abnormal Psychology

Walter Mischel, Delay of gratification in children, Science

Peterson & Seligman, Character Strengths and Virtues

Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works

Raveis & Shatte, The Resilience Factor

Martin Seligman, Learned Optimism

Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness

Stewart & Plotkin, From extortion to generosity: evolution in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Strack & Deutsch, Reflective and impulsive determinants of social behavior, Personality & Social Psychology Review

Glenn Wallis (transl.), The Dhammapada: Verses on the Way

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