Skip to main content
0
Feb 21
Love1

Taking Your Time at the Start

By Habits and Strategies

When we see someone who truly excels at what they do, one quality often jumps out: they make it look easy.

But what is it that gives us the impression of ease?

They seem to take their time. Even when you’re seeing an elite athlete making lightning quick moves, it seems to be moving more slowly than the actual elapsed time. They’re not panicked, they’re not forcing things; the moves look fluid.

When someone has reached a state of mastery, with all the deliberate practice that requires, they’ve accumulated a vast store of knowledge and experience in their working memory. So when they get to work, they don’t need to take time to look things up; or when it’s a physical skill like athletics or music, they don’t have to think about the movements themselves.

Because of this, they also don’t feel rushed to act. They have time to orient to the problem or the task, and before they take action, they will have scanned their working memory for the information they need – the facts, the experience, the causes and effects they know – and then when they do act, they do so magnificently.

In my college astronomy course, our professor brought in a guest speaker one day who had once shared an office with Albert Einstein. He told us how Einstein had been on vacation for a couple of weeks, and during this time this (then very young) professor was working on a complex formula on the board in their office. He was stumped by one section of the formula, and had not made any headway on it for most of those two weeks.

When Einstein returned, he was curious about the formula, and he began asking what seemed, to this professor, to be some very simple – and kind of dumb – questions. This went on for about twenty minutes, during which time this professor was beginning to seriously question the great genius of Albert Einstein.

But then, all of a sudden, Einstein said, “Oh, well then…” and he promptly completed the formula, easily solving the problem that had flummoxed the professor for two weeks.

When approaching a problem, a true expert will approach it with curiosity, take their time, orient to the situation, and get to know the problem first, before they act.

Novices, on the other hand, will tend to jump in quickly, getting to work on the problem before they really understand what they’re dealing with.

Read More

Feb 14
Love1

Gratitude: The Antidote to the Hedonic Treadmill

By Happiness

One of the – sometimes – unspoken expectations when we buy something is that it will, to some degree, make us happy.

We buy a new appliance, or a nice piece of furniture for our home, and it satisfies an idea we had that led us to buy it in the first place. Part of that idea is that the new oven, or couch, will make us happy.

We shop for a new piece of clothing, and we expect that we’ll enjoy wearing it.

Even a trip to the grocery store is often accompanied with an expectation that the food we buy will make for a yummy meal that we’ll savor.

We can buy gizmos like smart phones or Apple watches, and we expect they’ll improve, to some extent, the quality of our lives.

And each of these purchases usually does bring us some degree of satisfaction or pleasure… for a little while.

But part of our strength as human beings is our capacity to adapt to a multitude of circumstances; from tremendous wealth and opportunities, to severe poverty or physical danger. We can expand into great flourishing, or we can make do, struggle, and muddle through rough times.

“Hedonic adaptation” is the term that researchers use to describe this capacity to adapt to different circumstances while staying within a range of overall happiness. This gift of adaptability is a wonderful advantage in a continually changing world, full of endless creativity, unanticipated events, and unpredictable possibilities, good or bad.

It also means that we adapt to good things relatively quickly, so the happiness we experience from them is often fleeting.

…then we need another good thing.

…and another.

And when we become used to the availability of good things, when we come to expect them as a regular experience of a good life, we enter what’s called the “Hedonic Treadmill.”

Needing more and more good things in order to feel what we’ve come to expect as a baseline of happiness can be exhausting. It can undermine the sense of happiness we enjoy with each positive experience.

And in that way we can undermine our sense of being happy about our life.

But there is an antidote; something we can deliberately practice and gets easier over time, and that can significantly affect our happiness:

Read More

Feb 06
Love1

If You Want to Think Clearly and Perform Exceptionally…

By Emotions, Moods and Reactions

Today I want to talk about the positive state that we want to aim for most of the time – which will connect us with the emotional resources and clear thinking we need to make our best decisions.

Researchers like Steven Porges call it our social engagement system.

When we feel safe, and trusting, and relaxed, our heart rate and blood pressure lowers, and our heart rate variability increases – our heart rate rises a little on the inhale, and lowers on the exhale, and the difference between these is our heart rate variability. Higher heart rate variability is a good thing. This is all very beneficial for our immune system, our cardio-vascular system, our organs, and our overall health.

We’re also more connected with our higher brain functions, and the part of our vagus nerve that connects the organs of our body with our brain. This is counter to being in the protect mode of fight or flight, so it lowers our stress levels, and makes it easier to think and create with complexity.

When we’re in fight or flight – or the freezing that can happen when we’re in the throes of trauma – we’re not able to distinguish changes in facial expression or vocal tones in others. Which means that it’s nearly impossible to feel connected and attuned to another person.

It’s best if we can stay out of our fight or flight system most of the time, but there are exceptions of course. Athletes tap into the energy of the fight system without getting lost in rage (most of the time – but when athletes “lose it,” they also lose the capacity to think clearly and connect with teammates and opponents, so they also usually lose the competition).

As with athletes, those of us who work in dangerous professions, or who live in threatening environments, may learn to tap into this protective system just enough to keep us appropriately vigilant, but not so much that we’re lost in it completely. Learning to ride this edge is part of the training and skill needed to master such circumstances.

When we’re in an emergency situation, we pop into the fight/flight part of our nervous system automatically in as little as one tenth of a second, and it’s a good thing we do – when there’s an actual emergency.

But with our complex brains and complex histories, many of us can pop into that system – just as automatically and quickly – when there is no actual emergency. This is the cause of much anxiety as well as other psychological symptoms. When that’s the case, it’s even more important to learn how to deliberately move into our social engagement system.

So how do we do that?

Read More

Jan 30
Love1

Excellence Takes More than Time

By Habits and Strategies

We can learn a lot about gaining our own expertise from seeing how the great masters gained theirs.

Back in the 19th century, Sir Francis Galton in his book “Hereditary Genius,” argued that performance of skills for mature adults improves rapidly at first, but then at some point “Maximal performance becomes a rigidly determinate quantity.” What limits any significant improvement beyond that, in Galton’s view, was whatever nature endowed us with.

Other researchers – as far back as 1899 – added to this that it may take over 10 years to become an expert. The idea that this is a relatively orderly process, moving from novice to intermediate to expert, led to the belief that we can judge expertise through someone’s social reputation, education, accumulated knowledge, and length of experience.

There’s truth to this, of course, but it’s missing something important.

Because it turns out that people’s level of training and experience don’t always predict high performance. From psychologists to software designers, to wine experts, to decision makers and forecasters on investing, research has shown that the amount of time spent in the field is not a reliable measure of performance.

Something else is essential, which K. Anders Erickson and his co-editors map out in their tome, “Expertise and Expert Performance.”

What makes the difference between a Mozart or a Beethoven and somebody who can play quite well? What makes the difference between a Michael Jordan and a good overall basketball player?

There is a role for raw talent, of course. You have to be capable of accomplishing such feats as these incredible masters to begin with. There is a role for genius and natural ability. There is also the role played by parents and mentors from an early age, which is usually significant.

But there are plenty of people with loads of talent and ability who never, ever come near their potential. There are a lot of people with very high IQs who never really challenge their mental capacities.

Everybody knows that we have to practice something to get good at it. But there are plenty of people who spend years and years at their instrument or profession or sport, but who reach a level of basic competence and go no farther. The now famous 10,000-hour rule, or ten years of experience, doesn’t apply when we just go through the motions doing what we already know.

Read More

Jan 24
Love1

Your Long-Term Goals Have to Matter to You

By Habits and Strategies

Where do we find the energy to achieve big, long-term goals?

How can we persevere over time and through adversity to create something that requires a commitment of several years?

Simple. It has to matter to you.

Not just a little bit. It has to matter enough that you’ll see it through.

When someone calls me for coaching, once we’ve established the goals that they want to accomplish, one of the first questions I ask is “Why is it important for you to reach these goals?”

If the reason is something like “My parents want me to…” or “My boss wants me to…” or “I’m supposed to…” I know we have some work to do before we get to the nuts and bolts.

Somebody else wanting us to do something is rarely a strong enough motivation to make changes in our lives.

And reaching big goals usually requires making big changes.

Changing behavior, learning new skills, overcoming personal limitations – all take consciousness, time and willpower.

Habits are powerful forces; we can change them but not lightly.

Frankly, we have to have a darned good reason to change.

And we have to have an even better reason to maintain these new habits through adversity. Read More

Jan 16
Love1

Mastering Emotions, Moods and Reactions

By Emotions, Moods and Reactions

(This is from the introduction to my book, Mastering Emotions, Moods, and Reactions)

Mastering our emotions, moods and reactions begins with understanding our fundamental nature as living, growing organisms. Our biological processes are full of rhythms, pulsations, flowing liquid and moving breath. Nature’s forces are powerful and enduring. If we try to fight against a powerful wind, we can be quickly overcome by it. But if we can accept, study, and harness those same forces, we can power a sailboat or a windmill. By stepping back and looking at the bigger picture of our own internal nature, we can more easily understand our own patterns and rhythms; and if we begin by accepting these as they are, we can use their power and direct them in ways that work better for us, rather than fighting against ourselves; against our own nature.

We begin our exploration with orienting to our biological nature.

From this perspective we can begin to make sense of our flowing emotions, our changing moods, and our sudden and intense reactions.

Distinguishing these three qualities from one another can help us learn what to do with each, with much more clarity than when they’re all thrown together as one experience.

Our emotions are more recent, connected with language, and useful primarily for self-reflection and growth. We’ll explore how to use our emotions in ways that allow us to learn from experiences that anger, hurt, frighten, or delight us so that we can function better in the future.

Our moods are more primitive and move more slowly. They have more to do with energy – raising our mood to meet a challenge or seize an opportunity, or lowering our mood when we suffer a loss, feel stuck, or take on goals that are impossible to achieve. We’ll learn to pay attention to the things that raise and lower our moods, and how to manage the natural ebbs and flows so we can stay connected and engaged through life’s ups and downs.

Our reaction of flight is at the heart of anxiety and panic, and is essentially designed to get us away from serious physical danger quickly. We’ll learn ways of calming and managing anxiety, and finding the actions we can take to strengthen and empower ourselves.

Our reaction of fight is the source of our explosive anger or rage, and is designed to provide us with an extreme intensity of energy and power, to fight against a physical threat from which we cannot escape. We’ll look at how to manage the often destructive reaction of rage, and how to distinguish it from the more useful emotion of anger.

Our reaction of freezing is our most primitive reaction, and is a last ditch effort to save our lives – by immobilizing us and anaesthetizing us when we’re trapped and terrified in the face of mortal danger. We’ll learn ways to come back into our body, and expand our sense of safety and well being.

Read More

Jan 11
Love1

What Happens When We Try To Change Somebody

By Habits and Strategies, Happiness

One of the most common questions I get in my coaching practice goes something like this:

“My (husband, wife, son, daughter, friend, neighbor, etc.) has this behavior, or belief, or way of doing things… How can I get them to change it?”

Now, if it’s a very specific behavior, and changing it would make a big difference in your relationship, it’s always worth just simply asking, for example, “When you talk with your mouth full it really bothers me, could you please do your best to not talk while you’re chewing?”

But often what we want the other person to change is much bigger and more abstract than that.

Of course, we’ve all felt this at some time or other – “If only this person we care about would just stop being so negative, or change this one belief… then they’d be so much better off.” (It’s always something that seems so obvious and simple… to us.)

The big problem with this is that it’s hard enough to change a big habit or belief within ourselves, when we want to. Trying to get somebody else to change a habit or belief, that maybe they don’t want to change, is really a long-shot.

I’ve been working with people to – in part – help them change their beliefs and habits for over 40 years. It’s something I enjoy very much, and have a lot of success with. But it’s not easy. It takes time and energy – and often a good deal of courage – to face our troubling behaviors, and the fears that sometimes accompany them.

When we nag, lecture, cajole, or manipulate those we love to be more the way we think they should be, in that moment we’re not really in relationship with them. In that moment we’re not seeing them as a human being, with all the complexity and unique internal experience that we each live within. We’re seeing them as a thing to make different. In order for them to live up to our expectations of them.

I don’t mean to say that we don’t generally love or understand them, but when we go into that particular mode of “teaching,” and what we’re teaching is the lesson we think this person needs to learn… in that moment, we’re disconnected from that person.

When was the last time you changed somebody else’s behavior by nagging or lecturing them? Or better yet: When was the last time you changed your behavior from somebody else nagging or lecturing you?

Read More

Jan 03
Love1

A Belief, a Goal, a Plan, and the Persistence to Hold to It

By Habits and Strategies, Happiness

New Year’s resolutions usually don’t work very well. The reason is that we often will pick a general life changing scenario liken “get more fit and healthy,” or “turn my finances around.” Or it could be a big specific thing like “quit smoking.”

What’s missing with this – which is why it’s not very effective – is that underlying these behaviors are habits. Often strong, long practiced habits. And a single behavior may include several habits.

To make effective changes in our lives, we must focus on the habits underlying the behavior, and create a plan of action for changing them, and to keep them changed over time.

That’s what we’ll be looking at today.

For most living creatures, instincts take charge of the necessary ordering which life requires: finding food, finding a mate, sleep cycles, protective behavior… But we humans are different in a fundamental way: our basic survival tool is our conscious mind, and unlike instinctual animals, we can choose to use our basic tool of survival… or not.

Because of this, we can do something pretty amazing: with our conscious minds, we train our own brains to hold the structure of our lives. We do this by creating habits. The habits we practice daily, weekly, monthly… are all maintained through neural pathways that we’ve established in our brain that make it easy and natural for us to follow these routines.

These habits – if they are good ones – help us to build a sense of meaning, purpose and direction. They are what allow us to persevere and reach long term goals. Without habits, we’d need to use our willpower for every single action we take.

The trouble is, we acquire many of our habits by default: from routines that our family valued and practiced, or that we learned in school, or from influential people in our lives… or from adapting to challenging circumstances as best we could.

This can be wonderful if the people we learned from all had good habits and great values, or when our adaptations have strengthened us. It can be awful if the habits we learned are awful.

But even in the best of circumstances – a loving family, a supportive community, great opportunities for learning, responsibility, and growth – the habits we learned earlier and that come easily to us may not be the best ones for our current and developing lives.

Read More

Dec 06
Love1

What Happens When We Expect a Catastrophe

By Emotions, Moods and Reactions, Happiness

I write sometimes in these columns about thinking biases that can affect our decision making. Today I want to talk about a way of thinking that can undermine our resilience during hardship, as well as our ability to flourish and succeed.

Catastrophes happen in life. Natural disasters, tragic accidents, terrible illnesses, heart-rending betrayals, economic calamities, war, famine… Human history has been filled with these, and most of us have been at least touched by something catastrophic.

But a catastrophe is not usually the most likely scenario – if they were common, we wouldn’t think of them as catastrophes; they’d just be the kind of normal troubles we expect in life. There can be disappointments, hardships, struggles, and losses that hurt badly, requiring us to step up to challenges we would rather not have to step up to. These are not uncommon.

But a true catastrophe is rarely likely. When we expect catastrophe as a likely scenario, that expectation creates its own troubles, and they can run deep.

Yet our current media and political culture thrives on creating and maintaining an atmosphere of impending catastrophe. This is true across the political spectrum, and throughout much of the common space we share through internet, TV, movies, print media… The conversation that is mediated by every kind of media is filled with visions of catastrophe.

The very way that these threats are framed do not encourage us to think clearly, investigate deeply, or to search for practical solutions.

The way they are framed encourages us to feel terrified, enraged, and helpless. And this can undermine our capacity for success, happiness and well-being across every aspect of our lives.

This orientation is guaranteed to activate our primitive reactions of fight, flight, and freeze – reactions that are designed to give us a last-ditch possibility of surviving the mortal attack of a predator.

While these parts of our nervous system serve an essential survival function when needed, they are very rarely actually needed. They also undermine our capacity to think clearly, our desire and ability to seek understanding, empathy, and compassion for others, and our internal sense of well-being and basic trust.

Catastrophic thinking can undermine resilience, and increase our risk for anxiety, depression, and PTSD. It can also undermine our capacity for success: those who tend to not engage in catastrophic thinking also tend to be the ones who excel.

Read More

Nov 28
Love1

Love and Playfulness

By Habits and Strategies, Happiness

Most couples wait six years or more from the beginning of trouble to when they seek help with a counselor, even though prevention is much easier and more effective than repair.

When I was working primarily as a marriage and family therapist, it was heartbreaking when a couple would come to my office as enemies, having long ago crossed the point of no return.

Once trouble starts, if a couple ignores it or just “lets things work out on their own,” that bond can degenerate quickly, and two people who were once deeply in love can find themselves in an agonizing cycle of criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling (silent brooding) – what relationship researcher and therapist John Gottman calls “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

That’s why I now work with couples primarily as a coach. It seems to take less time for couples to seek a coach than a counselor or therapist. With less accumulated pain and fewer hurtful habits, we can dive right into work on that prevention part.

The problem isn’t conflict. Successful marriages have plenty of conflict. The problem isn’t even unresolved conflict. Successful marriages also have plenty of unresolved conflict.

Conflict is where our differences meet; in many ways, our conflicts help us to get to know one another. A marriage without conflict is also likely a marriage without much intimacy.

It’s how we treat each other when there’s conflict that is the essential difference between a happy marriage and a miserable – or a finished – one.

A marriage is not a game; it’s not a trophy to win or a position to battle for. A marriage is a connection between two people who love each other, trust each other, respect each other and enjoy being with each other. It’s not about winning something over the other person; it’s about achieving something together, with the other person.

Read More