Reflection – Page 5 – A millennial's musings

Good advice vs bad advice

“I hesitate to give advice because every major single piece of advice I was given turned out to be wrong and I am glad I didn’t follow them.”

– Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taking advice from anyone, be it Seneca, an aunt or an admired mentor is risky business. Almost everybody who gives advice means well – even those who make money by doing it. However, it is very easy to overgeneralise with advice. It’s also tempting to shift part of the responsibility for results onto the advice giver – without meaning to do so – just one reason we are drawn to good advice, hacks, secrets, tricks and shortcuts. It’s also not uncommon to receive conflicting advice from seemingly reputable sources. What to do then? Here are four questions to ask before deciding to take on advice.

Is it advice or is a fact?

Exercise is good for you is a fact; it’s not advice. It applies to everyone from recent ICU patients to pregnant women to the elderly to – basically everyone. Obviously, the application of this fact is different for all these people, but it is all based off the same fundamental principle. High-intensity interval training and a ketogentic diet would be good for you is advice. It doesn’t apply to everyone. People who say it assume that everyone is just like them, so it will work for everyone (or for a critical mass that makes the rest irrelevant). It won’t work for everyone – simply because the assumptions don’t hold for everyone. It’s not 100% clear what those assumptions are, perhaps it is genetics, microflora, etc, but it’s not a fact and as advice it needs to be refined, i.e. made contextual – I will explain further on.

How does one distinguish between facts and advice? It’s probably an intuitive judgement that relies on the universality of a statement. If it is a fact, great; a new gem for our wisdom collection. If it is advice, we shall continue to investigate.

Is it a sales pitch?

Watch an interview with Richard Branson. He always says it is very important to let go, not hold a grudge and other such merry stuff. He also always brings up this example: when he started his airline, British Airways tried to sabotage it through a series of illegal tricks like calling Virgin passengers, telling them their flight is cancelled and rebooking them with BA. Being the sound lad that he is, he made up with the management of BA after the dust settled on their conflict. Great story. There’s just one problem. If Mr Branson really took his advice seriously – he wouldn’t have gone around 20 and 30 years later dragging British Airways through the dirt. Yes, they arguably deserve it, but it certainly isn’t an example of letting go and being sound. What it is, is a sales pitch for people who lack insight. Branson is basically talking up the brand that centres so significantly around his persona. If he is sound, surely you will want to buy from him and his c. 400 companies.

There are, of course, less subtle examples of this. Is there a conflict of interest? The most obvious example comes from the glut of people online who sell X teaching others how to sell X. For example, people who sell courses on how to sell courses. Professional advice givers that aren’t really professional – the many life coaches out there – are in that same category. To be fair, even doctors and lawyers could be accused of this. The difference is that there is a greater degree of responsibility that the provider assumes for their client. So the difference isn’t qualitative, it is quantitative.

Taking advice from mentors is ridden with problems too. They have an ego and a reputation to defend. Before I went into medicine, Every. Single. Doctor. I met told me not to do it. They told me I would regret it. Once I was in it, it was a different game. They couldn’t talk to me earnestly like before because they had standards and facades to uphold – a vision to sell. Any complaint regarding the issues in medicine goes down like we’re in the Stanford prison experiment. Ok, it’s not a sales pitch, but it’s a perversely related beast based on a conflict of interest.

The reason advising in various shapes and forms is a whole industry, is that it sells. It sells just like Coke. Advice is a product, it’s the intangible magic pill – one that makes us feel good too.

Is this advice contextual?

Advice without context is meaningless. That part of the advice industry that is tailored is useful. So for example, a one-on-one consultation with a doctor or lawyer, an engagement with a management consultant would be contextual. They ask questions, in other words, they find out the context. All advice should really always carry the same disclaimers as medical advice. For example, Marcus Aurelius’ advice to live every day like it’s our last isn’t right for everyone. Similarly, just because Jimmy does better on the purple inhaler doesn’t mean that Bobby will too. It wouldn’t be right for Jimmy to tell Bobby to throw out his brown inhaler and buy a purple one. This logic should be applied to all advice.

This is one of the reasons why “secrets” often traded by people who did well in something are of limited value. They lack context. Furthermore, this is made worse by a certain cognitive bias: once one learns something, it is virtually impossible to imagine not knowing about it.

Daniel Kahneman, in his wonderful Thinking Fast and Slow, showed that we have 2 systems: one intuitive, stereotype-driven fast system, and the other logical slow system. The trick here is that everyone’s fast system is slightly different. The point of giving advice is to elicit an idiosyncrasy about this particular person’s fast system that is so far from reality that it is hurting them.

Do I want to swap places with this person?

It’s only a crude proxy, it doesn’t always apply, but generally, unless a person is living your dream at least in that aspect of their life on which they are advising – it’s probably not worth taking their advice. It still a valuable data point, but not good advice. This is why it is hard to take advice from overweight doctors and why reading the biographies of philosophers has me feeling shocked with their trail of pregnant land ladies and other hypocrisies. It is also the reason why role models are usually more beneficial than advice givers.

And yes, I know that someone out there will call this advice – or even meta-advice! However, I don’t think it is possible to give advice by asking questions. Questions direct people to narrower answers, but I do believe that this set of filters will lead to more thoughtful and relevant decisions.

Exercise and thinking

I recently chanced upon a study showing that aerobic exercise can be beneficial in mild cognitive impairment. It literally increases the size of the brain. The fact that we can now image brains in a way that detects this is exciting. Nobody is really quite sure what it means, but the fact that it is so tangible and obvious is really gratifying – and hard to argue with. Interestingly, mindfulness also changes brain structure on imaging.

There have been plenty of studies of this sort – including on healthy people. They show that exercise benefits one’s mood and working memory, enhanced cognitive strategies, hippocampal neuroplasticity – in short, exercise helps your brain do its thing. I wish this message was easier to spread. Exercise for a functional brain.

In my own subjective n=1 experience, exercise makes a huge difference to how I feel emotionally. It’s like a shield that keeps irrelevant noise out – and it was quite hard to believe how well it works until I tried it. At this point, I’ve been non-stop at it for over 3 years. My main motivator to stay going with exercise is how it makes me feel. Not immediately, not right after a gym session, but on average. Having said that, isn’t our motivation nearly always how it makes us feel? How I got into it was the classic monkey-see-monkey-do dynamic. Some like to call it having a role model. During my masters, I was surrounded by a bunch of health-freaks: they were all from continental Europe, wore fancy running shoes, drank a lot of coffee and read the Economist. The enthusiasm with which they discussed running routes for their new city, whether or not a Fitbit is worth the investment – and so on, rubbed off on me. I had to try this, ze fitness. I never stopped.

I’ve experimented with running, spinning, HIIT, swimming, weights – pretty much anything that is solitary and non-competitive is good. During a particularly busy stint at the hospital, I injured a joint – meaning I couldn’t properly weight bear. I could barely get around the seemingly endless corridors of a large Dublin hospital with nobody to cover for me on call. Exercise was not on the menu. About a week into this state of affairs, I noticed that I was starting to get sad for no reason at all. It took some introspection to figure out that it was likely down to the fact that I wasn’t exercising. The biochemistry shifted, the chemicals released during exercise wore off – and now I was feeling down. I took corrective action: so I cannot weight bear. Time for abs of steel! As if. In any case, the change in my mood from a week of significantly diminished physical activity was stark.

This experience is echoed in the story of a patient I once saw in a psychiatric hospital. He was a young guy who exercised a lot: 20 miles on a bike every day, marathons, the works. For about a year and a half he attended a cardiologist about a chest pain. He had virtually every conceivable test done – none of these tests detected any abnormalities. By the time he saw me, he had had a few attacks of this chest pain in the space of a few days – and a very low mood. The week before two things happened: he twisted his ankle and his girlfriend had just broken up with him. Long story short, the man’s chest pain was psychosomatic. He had a perfectly healthy heart. The stress of his girlfriend breaking up with him, superimposed on not being able to exercise due to a twisted ankle, led to the mood collapse as well as the chest pains.

Clearly, exercise is addictive. This is part of the reason why people keep exercising despite pain. Before I discovered the absolute must that is a foam-roller, I caused a repetitive strain injury in my calf from running too much. I couldn’t really stop: I was so into it, I just gobbled down two Nurofen and off I went. If, six months previously, someone told me that I would be like this, I would never have believed them. My buzz was all about cuddling up with a book and drinking hot chocolate – not hopping around with a painful calf in the permeating Dublin rain.

Once a psychiatry professor came to talk to us during lunch. His opening question was: “What is the single most effective intervention for both physical and mental health?” Some annoying know-it-all raised their hand and said: “Exercise.” (Okay, okay, it was me). I would still say it though.

I think it is the perfect example of the 80/20 rule, or even a 99/1 version of it. Exercise takes up very little time – if you’re clever about it – and delivers unbelievable results. In short, exercise is definitely on the to-do list of anyone who is interested in having a clear head. It’s surprisingly easy to get carried away into fitness-junkie territory, however, it is definitely worth the risk. In any confusing situation, it’s mindfulness and exercise.

Philosophers: practicing what you preach

Children are a spectacular audience in that they have a great BS filter. It is quite common in paediatrics for kids to be very skeptical of advice. I recall an overweight doctor working in paediatric endocrinology giving dietary advice to a diabetic child. Let’s just say, the poor doctor was informed of the value of giving advice that they themselves don’t follow.

Through the years, I’ve met many smoking surgeons, neurotic psychiatrists and overweight dieticians (but never a less than glowing dermatologist). It’s not necessary to practice what you preach to give good advice. However, going directly against what you preach, what you are meant to be good at – does raise authenticity and competence concerns, not always fairly, but we would be worse off without this filter.

Whatever about overworked doctors, my real question is about philosophers. Schopenhauer is widely regarded as having been an intolerable hedonistic psychopath and a chauvinist. It is well known that he nearly pushed a woman down the stairs – for being annoying. He bailed on a woman who was pregnant with his child. Hegel did something not entirely dissimilar. Nietzsche didn’t have much of a social life, except for in brothels (not unlike Schopenhauer, actually). Kant didn’t have one at all. Gazillionaire Seneca denounced worldly possessions. He was clearly preoccupied with a fear of poverty. At times, in his letters to Lucillius, he sounds like he’s trying to calm himself down more than anything else. I strongly believe he has what modern day psychiatrists would call a passive death wish. Marcus Aurelius was born into being arguably the most powerful man in the world – and so his advice sounds good, but it’s not clear of how much use it was to him. Seneca’s and Marcus Aurelius’ explanations often reference two separate entities: luck an the gods, without really examining the nature of these. Machiavelli, regarded by many as the ultimate weasel and plamaser, didn’t exactly fare so well at court. Freud came up with a theory that is to philosophy as Newtonian physics is to physics. Nonetheless, there is some outrageous stuff in there too. And if you say enough – some of it is going to be right, a bit like a broken clock is right twice a day.

Two quotes come to mind. Both from Seneca. The first I will use as a disclaimer:

“I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good”.

The second, the one I am actually interested in is:

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

What if replace the word religion with the word philosophy? Let’s be honest, philosophy is nearly more powerful than religion – because it spreads more insidiously. There’s no discrete baptism, no conversion, no point of no return – just silent incremental exposure. And so, I wonder, we treat philosophy with such reverence, but should we?

A religion for people who, in troubled times, don’t want any trouble

Breakfast of Champions was completely different to my first encounter with Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse-five. Breakfast is vehemently anti-American – in a way that is could be anti-any nation and is disturbingly relevant today. Vonnegut has a way of stripping away the sugar coating. He speaks of the slave-trade as buying and selling agricultural machines. This comparison is brought back every time he mentions the social problems of those whose ancestors were slaves: he compares them to actual metal machines and explains that the latter are cheaper leaving the former jobless. Plain, cynical and sobering.

The book is largely centred around the concept of free will. As a medic, I recall learning about free will in physiology. Back in the 1980s, Libet et al did a clever experiment showing that the brain initiates a movement before we are aware of wanting to carry out the movement. Subjects were asked to sit in front of a clock. They were told to move at will – and note the time when they decided they were going to move . An EEG was recorded. Essentially, the EEG showed that the impulse to move occurred around a second before subjects became aware that we’re going to move. Libet and colleagues said:

“cerebral initiation of a spontaneous, freely voluntary act can begin unconsciously, that is, before there is any (at least recallable) subjective awareness that a ‘decision’ to act has already been initiated cerebrally.”

This is a good review of the subject free will in physiology. In short, awareness of volition occurs in parallel to actual agency. Whether volition is causal to movement – nobody knows. Our story-telling machine brains do like to think that it is causal of course.

As a person fascinated by mindfulness, I was curious about Vonnegut’s reference to transcendental meditation. Bunny, one of the characters, used TM. Vonnegut described the procedure in Breakfast. Vonnegut doesn’t hide his scepticism.

I appreciate that absolutely everything that involves a financial transaction can be called a scam. Some people think it is insane that the seemingly skill-less abstract art is sold for millions. Some people trust in banks, corporations, governments – and others are swayed by the evidence that these institutions cannot be trusted. Appreciating this subjectivity, my impression of transcendental meditation is that there is a big scam element to it. There are also some elements of religion in it. While I am interested in learning about the ancient tradition of this particular kind of meditation, the TM organisation and its specific take on the technique smacks of danger to me. I would certainly stay well away.

Kurt Vonnegut’s wife and daughter were practitioners of TM. He said: “Nothing pisses them off anymore. They glow like bass drums with lights inside.” So far, so good. He later said about TM:

“a very good religion for people who, in troubled times, don’t want any trouble.”

This really resonates with me.

Much like positive thinking, transcendental meditation promises the world via some very simple thing that you have to do compulsively – and preferably attend expensive seminars. It’s very important to never doubt the high priests of these respective philosophies – otherwise, it won’t work. I mean, come on.

It also makes sense that TM and positive thinking has worked for some trustworthy high-profile people. It’s because what they call TM and what they call positive thinking is different to what the seminar-selling folk mean. They take a common sense approach – not a “I will take everything literally and follow all instructions” approach that the gullible people these things attract take.

Escaping the cr*p never really works. Transcending into an imaginary ocean of perpetual calm is a form of cheap escapism that only works for seconds. On that note, I recall having a really bad stomach pain. Without any set purpose, my mind wandered and I imagined getting a shot of morphine. I immediately felt much better. However, I still had to go to hospital to make sure it was nothing serious. One simply has to acknowledge their pain and deal with it. Thinking magically won’t resolve it.

The proper, non-commercial, non-popularised practice of TM is a form of mindfulness -and I have every faith that it works well. It’s not my weapon of choice, but I recommend that people try it. Om is a always a good mantra to start with. I don’t see the value in getting mystical with “personalised” mantras. The point remains: if it walks and talks like a scam, it probably is. The other point is that Breakfast of Champions is another worthwhile book.

It’s always good to look back on where you started

Western culture has a distinct focus on the future. We’re all about innovations and trends. It seems that the en vogue mood is to not really be too interested in history: too full of things like racism and other forms of inequality for us to warrant being proud of it. The present moment is always traded for a future option – hard work pays off they keep telling us.

There is a lot of advice out there to be grateful. It could be argued that it’s generally good advice. However, as with all positive thinking, a forced positive thought always backfires. Hence, you cannot be compulsive or forceful about it. A better way would be to ask ourselves the sort of questions that could make us feel grateful: what good things happened today? What way can I use my situation? What’s good about my situation?

Even at that, I find the best way to feel grateful is by looking back where I started. I don’t mean compare bank balances and neighbourhoods. I mean think of everything I didn’t know back then that I know now. All the people I’ve met and the lessons I’ve learnt. I’m always surprised by what I find.

Imagining it is a poor substitute for actually going back. I am writing this as I am flying back from the city where I spent a lot of time when I was younger. Immersing myself in that atmosphere highlighted the differences between me then and me now. Meeting the people I used to spend time with was one of the most insight-generating things I’d ever done. At one point we were so similar, and now we’ve diverged into our parallel universes. It’s an experiment I highly recommend to anyone. It’s would be a banal statement to say that travel really does give perspective, adds variety and a better understanding of what things mean. I think travelling to places we know well but have left behind is of a certain irreplaceable benefit.

Why forcing positive thinking doesn’t work

The positive thinking crowd – who have flooded every corner of the internet, most of all social media, would have us believe that our minds instinctively drive us towards that which we focus on. Hence, it makes sense to focus on the good, according to them.

As a naturally skeptical-yet-optimistic person, I find myself repelled by the cult of positivity. Below, I explain the theory behind positive thinking and the reasons why it ultimately doesn’t work.

There is logic behind positivity. For example, attentional bias and its many cousins are our way of noticing the things we prefer to notice even more.

So if we try to notice good things, we are likely to notice a disproportionate amount of good things. It is assumed that by being surrounded by positivity, we will feed off this virtuous cycle and gather the strength to produce other good things. Another argument in defence of positive thinking is that our brains tend to follow certain patterns, habits of sorts. Feeling good more often leads to more feeling good. Another virtuous cycle.

Positive thinkers encourage setting and identifying with ambitious goals as a necessary part of all achievement in life. There are endless quotes from celebrity icons to support this. Many of those who have succeeded would say – I had a vision of x, y, z – and here I am now, I’ve achieved it.

We don’t hear the, undoubtedly, innumerable stories of those who go through the same “law of attraction” process – without ever arriving at their destination.

In addition, we’re quick to assume a causal relationship between the idiosyncrasies of the successful and their success. These are just two of many biases that are inherent in the positive thinking logic. So of what value is this obsession with studying the habits of the ultra-successful? As role models – fair enough. However,

the studies that support positive thinking are more often than not obviously in violation of basic parts of the scientific method.

But hey, it takes a while to prove anything, so we will bear with them for now.

By that same positive thinking logic, thinking about negative things will somehow lead to these bad things. Good point (we will agree with their assumptions for now). There is one problem with it though. Let me explain.

Forcing ourselves to focus on the good things creates a kind of dissonance. One part of our brains is saying: we should feel positive in all circumstances. Another part of our brain is pointing out all the things that we are used to feeling bad about.

Now, it is possible that the way we are interpreting the world is unhelpful, but this requires a lot of work to unmask and change. Therefore, until the hard work of rethinking our beliefs, for example, through the (much more) scientifically backed talk therapy is at least attempted, it is impossible to cure the feeling that something is off kilter in our heads as a consequence of positive thinking. It feels fraudulent and may even make the subject feel worse. Furthermore – and this is the interesting part – this sensation of something not being right will draw more attention to these negative thoughts we were told to run from.

The swollen positivity of Instagram’s motivational gurus doesn’t just urge us to be positive – it tells us that being negative is wrong.

“Rid your life of negative people”. “Purge negative words from your vocabulary”. “Avoid negative thoughts”. Forcing positivity accentuates negativity: whenever we feel down we will flag it as red, pumped by inspirational quotes. So positive thinking urges us to focus on the negative. Isn’t this negative focus going to lead to negative events – by their own logic? In addition,

the red-flagging of negative thoughts often results in further guilt and helplessness to go with our already negative feelings.

There is another problem with telling people not to think stuff. It was voiced by Fedor Dostoyevsky, a hero of mine since back in school when I managed to write an exam essay outlining the importance of the religion in Crime and Punishment that was corrected by a 70 year old Soviet-through-and-through teacher of literature – resulting in a stellar grade. Fedor gets the credit here. Anyway! He said that the things that we try to not think about are the very things we end up thinking about.

Could you do me a favour and not think of a blue scarf please?

Yeah, I know.

Furthermore, telling someone how they should feel is fertile ground for tyrannies of the shoulds – feeling low as a consequence of now complying with some preconceived rule, or should. More unintended negativity.

This emphasis on avoiding negativity draws us no less to negative events than the focus on positivity draws us to positive events

…I hypothesise. In addition, the dissonance and a new rule to follow about something only partially under our control in and of themselves feels rotten, i.e. more negative feelings.

I think positive thinking is flawed: not because it has no basis, but because its basis has counterweights that accentuate the negative thoughts just as much – made worse by the uncomfortable dissonance it creates. It just makes us judge our thoughts more.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that allowing ourselves to ruminate on sad things we cannot change, having no faith in ourselves or any other unhelpful behaviour should be encouraged to spite the positive thinkers of the self-help industry. I just don’t believe positive thinking is going to solve the underlying conflicts. It is a good idea to see the best in people and things etc. It is a good idea to let our positivity strengthen. It just can’t be compulsive – or the positive effect is ruined as described above.

There’s no need to dwell on the negative beyond what is reasonable either. For example, raising awareness about suicide sometimes results in a higher incidence of it. Not dwelling on something can be achieved without running from it, however.

There is a nice point on the emotional “graph” – and I think we could reach it by being a bit more open-minded about the negative.

It makes sense to reflect on this through the most extreme negative thought – of death. Being comfortable with the thought of death seems preposterous to most people – unless they are a doctor or something like that. Even then – it’s not their own death they are thinking about. When I first heard of the annual Mexican festival in celebration of death, it seemed insane – blasphemous in a kind of secular way. My own mother, who unlike me did not grow up with Halloween, still feels there’s something not quite right about it. People in our culture seem to avoid thinking about death as if somehow thinking about it will bring it closer.

Where do positive thinkers stand on death? Is thinking of death banned as well? It would seem obvious that death is regarded as one of the worst possible outcomes in our culture. Well, ok, but it’s going to happen anyway. The theory underlying positive thinking would lead us to believe that thinking of death will somehow bring it closer. The thought of our own mortality cannot be easily tolerated. It has to go right now. We may touch wood or bless ourselves to undo the damage it already caused. Obviously, there are other explanations for this besides what we usually call positive thinking, but the mechanism is the same. We just don’t want to bring it upon ourselves.

So is it ok to talk about death yet? The Mexicans are a pretty happy people, or so they say in those country-by-country happiness studies. Death was a beloved subject of the medieval tradition – with their skulls on their tables in countless paintings to remind themselves of death.

There are many lessons to be derived from thinking of death.

The Stoics loved thinking of death – it’s their way to remind themselves that nothing is worse than death – and death isn’t that bad. It’s our beliefs about it that make it bad. Hence, there is no need to fear death. Since we don’t have to fear death – the worst outcome of all, surely, we don’t have to fear anything else. Buddhists would regard death as just another experience – neither good nor bad.

Maybe that’s it: it’s all about trying to avoid uncertainty – “the thought of undiscovered country from whose bourne/ No traveller returns, puzzles the will”. Positive thinking seems to heal the pain of uncertainty.

It positively confuses our brains – that aren’t very good at distinguishing between fantasies and reality to begin with. One of the proposed benefits of positive thinking is that it gives us a sense of certainty. It is argued then that once we believe that something is indeed possible, we will find it easier to achieve it. That’s why it’s so popular: it eases the fear of uncertainty.

Besides being told to think positively, could there be other reasons why we dislike thinking about death so much then – given that is, well, as good as certain? The facts may be the facts, but way we think about death is full of uncertainty. In the extreme, there is a part of each of us that isn’t quite certain that we will die: it will be an older me, a more prepared me, not me me. Maybe; but seeing as how at 27 I don’t feel radically different to how I felt when I was half that age, I imagine it will be me me. However, just like the minus infinity to 1989, the infinity that I will miss out on after I am gone is just a part of what we got into when we were born. We also have no idea what will happen when we die – if anything, adding to the dreaded uncertainty. As evidenced by the scanty insights brought up here though: there is much to learn by thinking of the seemingly negative.

It would be mean to get to this point and not offer some kind of alternative to the wretched positive thinking. My answer, as much as it is possible to answer, is giving up on the hatred of uncertainty. There will always be uncertainty. No amount of meaningful relationships or possessions will ever shield us from uncertainty. We probably should set goals, but not cling to them unaware of the changing world around us. We can try and tame uncertainty by working around it, by forming beliefs that aren’t sabotaged by uncertainty – but not by resisting it through compulsive meaningless positive thinking.

Do you have to learn about Buddhism to fully understand mindfulness?

The extent to which mindfulness and meditation are intertwined with Buddhism is disturbing for me. It’s not that already committed to another religion and feel defensive. I don’t hate or judge religion, or Buddhism especially, but I would rather not go there. When mindfulness teachers go on about Buddhism, how it is more of a philosophy, how it’s important in understanding mindfulness – I feel like a car salesman is selling me on a bunch off car accessories I determinedly do not need. Can I just get the car? Here, I just want the mindfulness, not the philosophical paraphernalia. Is it possible?

Yes. I went and studied what these people have to say. First of all, there are other religions that involve meditation, even Christian ones. The philosophies are completely different. This means that the philosophy is optional. Second, the ideas of Buddhism that are supposed to help you to understand mindfulness are echoed elsewhere, for example, in the writings of Stoic philosophers or more recently in the writings of Viktor Frankl. This means that the philosophy isn’t exclusive to Buddhism.

I have stripped down the relevant beliefs here:

There’s nothing certain in life. Certainty is an illusion. We will never achieve certainty. The reason why most people want to be wealthy is because they feel they won’t have to worry about x, y, z. In truth, wealthy people indeed do not have to worry about x, y and z – they now worry about a, b and c. Furthermore, things are always changing.

Thoughts and emotions happen to us the same way as the weather. Thoughts and emotions are like noises, smells and sensations. The mind is, among other things, a sensory organ. It perceives thoughts and emotions – we don’t have control over them, but we can control what we do about them. We control the beliefs that we have – for sure. This will have an impact on thoughts and emotions, but indirectly and over time. You teach yourself not to cringe at the smell of vomit, and you can teach yourself not to cry at the end of a sad film. However, the thoughts and emotions still come in from the outside in. Any kind of thinking is thinking.

Feeling happy all the time isn’t the goal. You should just observe how you feel without judging it. It doesn’t mean you can’t act on what you’ve observed, but you certainly shouldn’t act before you’ve acknowledged everything that’s going on. Assuming that you can – and should – always feel happy causes a lot of the pain we feel.

Escaping how you are feeling is pointless. It will just take longer to get past the challenges associated with how you are feeling. This is where the way they deal with resistance comes in. You can act to change your reality – they don’t call that resistance. However, not understanding reality is resistance. Most violence and bad things come from this resistance.

Mindfulness isn’t there to make you a better person or make you happy. It’s just a way to understand what’s going on.

You don’t have to feel a certain way to act a certain way. Since thoughts and emotions aren’t always in your control, it doesn’t make sense to wait for your feelings to be right to act. For example, you can go to work without being motivated.

Why people get addicted to checking the news

The news has been in the news a lot lately. Trump got elected and Facebook et al are under fire for allowing fake news to spread.

There are people who feel compelled to stay in tune with the news though it doesn’t make a difference to their lives in practical terms. Why?

We love stories. Our brains are designed to make and perceive stories. The news in like a bed time story for adults. Going to different countries, or even different news outlets in some countries, will reveal two things. First, the main character is always a good guy. Second, the good guy always wins. It can’t all be true, but it sure makes a good story.

Our brains are designed to scan for danger. This is to keep us alive. The news usually reports a lot of bad things.

Our brains prefer exceptions rather than the ordinary. This is kind of like scanning for danger. It’s another mechanism to draw our attention to anything that’s odd – called attentional bias. The news certainly reports a lot of odd.

Our brains love noticing change rather than seeing the wood for the trees. It’s called anchoring. A small cut to a health system’s funding is likely to cause outrage despite the fact that it is otherwise generously funded. The news only reports changes.

Seeing the same thing over and over makes us like it. It’s called the mere-exposure effect. We like the news anchors and the tune of the news opening titles.

We love having opinions. The news is told in a way that it is easy to make judgements. It also makes us feel that our judgements are informed. This leads to naive realism and naive cynicism: assuming that our worldview is informed and everyone who disagrees with us in uninformed and biased.

It makes us feel like we’re right. Our brains love confirming that what we already know is true – it’s called confirmation bias. Because the news repeats itself a lot, it constantly feeds us the same type of information. A nice resonant echo chamber. To make things worse, we believe things more when they are repeated. It’s called the illusory truth effect. A vicious circle of biases.

It gives you something to talk about with your friends. Empty chatter is better than none to most people.

For most people, the news is a distraction that brings all of the above pleasures. It’s neither meaningfully informative, nor does it make our lives better.

Beginner mistakes in mindfulness practice

Beginning to practice mindfulness is a big step. In and of itself, the action means you are trying something new and being open to it, so kudos. Here are some major things to avoid.

Having expectations of immediate quietness and serenity. Mindfulness often feels like a game of whack-a-mole and a conscious effort. It’s hard not to feel like you have failed when you mind wanders if you assume that it won’t. It most certainly will. Some days are better than others, but the mind does its thing – we have to respect that. Judging your thoughts is just another thought. Similarly, rejoicing at how your mind is completely serene is also a thought. It should be treated the same way as every other thought: acknowledged. Rather than trying to purge it, it is best to simply shift the focus back to the present, e.g. to the breath.

Assuming mindfulness will always make you feel better. Most of the time is does. However, practicing mindfulness will bring things to the surface that weren’t previously acknowledged: feelings, thoughts, facts. They’re not always good, hence, it could cause upset. The thing to remember is that you are always better off knowing now – rather than finding out in six months’ time when it has grown into a monster and manifested itself through a crisis.

Struggling to get the perfect form. There’s no need to sit up straight if it makes your back hurt. If your quads are too tight, there’s no need to cross your legs. You can assume any position that is comfortable – but promotes wakefulness. The cushion doesn’t have to be a certain perfect size. You don’t have to log it on your phone. You’re only doing this for you, not for the sake of perfection.

Only meditating when the you are really stressed. While most people pick up the practice in order to deal with stress, it makes sense to practice consistently. It’s ok to skip a day here and there. However, it is important to not rely on meditation as a remedy for the bad days. Otherwise, it is the equivalent of only going to the gym after you’ve put on weight.

Feeling you have to do it for x length of time or it won’t work. It’s hard to know what the dose-response curve is like with mindfulness. It is best to meditate for as long as you can, that’s all.

I can’t keep track of each fallen robin

Apparently, we all die twice. Once, when our hearts stop beating, and a second time, when somebody mentions us for the last time. Leonard Cohen left us today. I am not sad because his powerful legacy will live on.

I was 17 when I heard Rufus Wainwright’s cover of Hallelujah. I may not have even found out about Cohen had it not been for Wainwright. Maybe covers aren’t such a bad idea after all. Here’s to many more.