Self-awareness – Page 3 – A millennial's musings

Inside a bilingual mind

My mother is in the throes of learning a foreign language – and I am doing my best to help. I am bilingual in English and Russian. There are definitely lots of people more talented at languages than I, but I am always surprised at how exceedingly rare people with near-perfect grammar and pronunciation in two languages actually are. Indeed, it is one of the things that stops me from wanting to learn another language – knowing how hard it is to get to proficiency.

In my attempt to help out with my mam’s progress, I found a lecture from this polyglot on the psychology of learning a language. He made a very interesting point:

in order to speak a different language you need to mentally switch wavelength and adopt a new persona. He argues that a language has a certain emotional state associated with it.

I don’t think it’s as literal as “happy vs sad”, but it’s more like a feeling you get when you speak a language. To be blunt about it, I imagine if I tried to speak Italian I would be more laid back and extroverted than if I tried to speak German. Indeed,

a few of my close friends remark that my mannerisms, tone and timbre all change when I switch between my two native languages. I had zero insight into this until I was told about it.

On reflection, I realised that a friend of mine who is fluent in German and English does something similar. He kind of seems to look at his shoes more when he speaks German – and seems generally less approachable.

I also feel quite different when I am speaking English vs Russian. This is going to sound like I’ve lost the plot, but I can think of no better way to describe it.

In English, things are slick – like an iPhone. In Russian, things are deep and meaningful – like Dostoevsky.

I like to listen to podcasts. I realised that listening to a good podcast in Russian made me see the speaker as being intelligent, whereas a good podcast in English made me feel that the speaker is competent. The difference is subtle and so cliché! It gets worse. The Russian speaker always seems a little too direct – though not aggressive – and the English speaker seems a little sales-pitchy. I mean that’s just caricature-worthy – but also true.

It looks like I am susceptible to the “national stereotype” biases even though I am well able to play for both sides and understand that these are just biases.

Much as I hate to admit it, I think I am also more polite when I speak English – and probably more tolerant. At the same time, I would also tend to oversimplify things more when speaking English.Perhaps having to speak English as a lingua franca has changed the world. The Financial Times has an interesting published an article portraying the ultimate beneficiaries of this arrangement as its victims here, arguing that China and Russia understand the USA and UK much better than they understand the rest of the world.

English is a language that doesn’t really allow for long sentences because there aren’t sufficiently complex noun and adjective endings, verb conjugations, etc to show what belongs where in a long sentence. For example, a typical German sentence is longer – because they do have the necessary grammatical framework.

In order to make sense in English, sentences have to be short and declarative – and by proxy, so do one’s thoughts.

All in all, there is definitely a persona-migration that happens in my head when I switch languages.

But that, as usual, got me thinking.

Adopting a persona to do any task at all is a thing. It’s not limited to languages. It’s a bit like having an implicit role model. It’s a dangerous game to play though.

On the one hand, it seems to make things easier. If one imagines themselves as a competent surgical trainee from Gray’s Anatomy, studying for medical finals get that little bit easier. However, isn’t this a departure from reality? I really like the point brought up in Steven Pressfield’s War of Art: imagining yourself as a poet/artist/programmer/whatever – is only a vanity project. The point isn’t to define oneself as a poet/artist/programmer/whatever, the point is to make poems/art/code/whatever. Acting in a role, faking it until you make it is well and good, but travelling too far out into the world of alter-egos, be they Italian or surgical, should be done with a lot of insight.

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.

The importance of self-awareness

I often think of The Great Gatsby. While everything in it has been said before, it seems like a particularly easy-to-understand piece on human nature – not least because it seems to be reflective of what our society looks like almost 100 years on. Gatsby was great because he was motivated by love and incredibly focused and resourceful in his quest. There were also many reasons why he wasn’t great: he lied about his origin, he lied about his name, he was a criminal, he had no problem seducing a married woman with a child… Most of all he got carried away from reality. He didn’t see Daisy for who she really was even though it should have been obvious. He suffered from infatuation, limerence and obsession.

There’s an interesting dichotomy that arises from obsession. On the one hand, it is a way to get motivated like nothing else. I was recently listening to an interview with Travis Kalanick, the CEO and co-founder of Uber, who talked about how he chose his idea. He said he was in love with the idea of Uber. He also said that after you fall in love with your idea the hard part is to adjust it to the world so that it is exactly the best it can be. It seemed that all great entrepreneurs develop their businesses for some kind of personal reason. Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook was something he would have wanted to use for himself. He seems fascinated with how people have huge areas of the cortex dedicated to deciphering the meaning of facial expressions, seemingly minor detail. The kind of motivation that’s required to spend every waking hour you’re not doing coursework in one of the top universities working on social websites means intense interest. Whether it is obsession or not, it’s close to it. Our culture seems to value obsession. In fact, the word has connotations of real dedication and martyrdom. There are gyms called Crossfit Obsession. A “normal” person couldn’t have the level of dedication that these entrepreneurs have, or a particular variety within the men and women of Crossfit – we’ve all met them. A healthcare professional would surely class them as having traits of OCPD, or find a way in which their activity is a form of escapism.

However, all great entrepreneurs are sufficiently in touch with reality so as to know how to adapt. This brings me to the second part – obsession needs to be balanced with reality. For anyone who knows the feeling, they know that this is much easier said than done. When one tries to reflect on reality, it is easy to slip into denial. Alternatively, it can be easy to see the flaws, decide that you obsession is silly and give up on it. It is much harder to see the flaws and incorporate this information meaningfully into your quest.

This idea of either idealising or damning your quest first came to me when I was dealing with patients who had emotionally unstable personality disorder as a doctor. People with EUPD tend to undergo something called splitting: something/someone is either perfect, or they aren’t worth thinking about at all. In fact, this is characteristic of many personality disorders. For example, people with narcissistic traits are very quick to decide that someone’s opinion is worthless if they don’t like something about this person.

How is it that some people are able to benefit from the momentum of obsession, but not dragged down by the unhelpful ignoring or reality or give up on their idea at the first sign of imperfection?

Are these great entrepreneurs necessarily all free from toxic personality traits? Not at all. It must be possible, however, to be sufficiently self-aware so as to let those parts of your personality that you need the most at a given moment to fully express themselves. After all, all these personality traits that we regard as vulnerable – and put them down as traits of personality disorders – evolved for a reason. They made sense in a context. They are only called abnormal because they stopped being adaptive when the environment changed, but the person who developed them lacks the self-awareness required to acknowledge that they are using legacy software – never mind adjust again. So it’s not like there’s just one personality type, not one strategy that will carry you through, but like Darwin said – it is the most adaptable that makes it through. Adaptability is completely a function of self-awareness.

So, how could we hook up with some of that self-awareness? My hypothesis is, as always, by paying attention to it. It is surprising how commonly people are unable to describe how they feel. How do you feel right now? Is it easy for you to answer? In normal life – and in psychiatry – I’ve met pretty high functioning people who are unable to answer that question. Really and truly, they look at you like you are an alien, look away and after about 10 seconds they say, I don’t really know. It’s obviously a spectrum and it’s not uncommon. Some of these people will try and assess how they should feel, making cognitive judgements about their circumstances. It’s called alexithymia. I think this is the first step. Ask the question – how does it feel? Putting words on it is a good place to start. Tackling physical sensations first could be an even better idea. When you notice that you are hungry – how does it feel? Is there a pain in your abdomen? Where? What kind of pain? Is it a cramp or a dull ache? Is there some nausea that comes with it? Does your abdomen feel warm or cold? Essentially, it is a form of mindfulness. With some practice it will be easier to put words on your feelings, or your inner state. It’s not a case of needing to soul-search. It’s not cognitive, it’s all about feelings. Whether we like it or not, emotions play a decisive role in our behaviour – they give rise to our behaviour, that’s what the word means. I think that mindfulness has the potential to increase self-awareness like no other instrument at our disposal. Mindfulness is known to increase empathy. Self-awareness is no less important. People who lack empathy are probably lacking insight into their own feelings to begin with. It may even make sense to think of self-awareness as a form of inner empathy.

If there was one thing that I think would advance someone’s personal development by leaps and bounds – it would be self-awareness. It doesn’t matter that you aren’t the strongest, the tallest, the smartest – or whatever, but if you able to be sufficiently self-aware so as to surround yourself with the right people – you can compensate for those weaknesses – and focus on your strengths.

Addicted to headphones

As soothers are to toddlers, headphones are to anyone who has given up their soother. As someone who’s trying to incorporate as much mindfulness as possible into my life, I was wondering why listening to music is so addictive. Anytime I leave the house I get a little rush – mmm, headphone time! The gym is great for listening to music too. Weights seem lighter and the treadmill moves in slow motion to David Guetta.

Having learnt about the rush on dopamine that’s associated with anticipation and how it makes our daydreams addictive, I’ve become intrigues as to what behaviours of mine are affected by this. I think my craving for the bass to drop is the same.

It all began when I started exercising. As well as being phenomenally good for me, it has turned into an exercise in escapism. When I hear my favourite tracks, my mind always wonders to the good times I had with my friends and all those associated daydreams. Essentially, listening to music has become an augmented day dream for me.

It seemed near impossible to leave my phone behind as I went for my evening walk. It genuinely felt like saying goodbye at the airport as your best friend is leaving for Australia (that would be a remote location relative to me!) I did. And it was a very nice walk. I noticed the shops that I passed by, I noticed some cool constellation – still no idea what it is – and I even helped someone with directions. Most of all, however, I was able to think more clearly.

My yearning for the headphones is a case of classical conditioning. Once the music is on, my thoughts are off to a nice place – away from here. They go in a circle and never reach anything. This time – walking without headphones was different – I was more aware of what was around me – and in my own head. I came home and wrote some interesting notes down about a question that had been bothering me before hand. All of these occurred while I was walking – in relative silence.

I would argue that it is good to give up the headphones once in a while. Maybe even most of the time. Listening to music is different for different people, but for me it is a way to run away from my current state into a safe place. It’s necessary sometimes, but most of us probably overdo it.

What schooling and culture does to our heads

All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

The school system has conditioned us a certain way. Often this sort of criticism comes from people who did poorly in school. At best, it comes from self-made billionaires who weren’t academic or were dyslexic.

I never got anything other than the top possible grade in any state exam I sat (and I sat them in 2 countries). So while anyone could be open-minded on the issue, I feel my lack of a chip on the shoulder or any other incentive to diss formal education adds a little more credibility. What I have noticed is:

School doesn’t reward strengths as strongly as it punishes weaknesses. This makes us very aware of our weaknesses and gets us to associate weakness with pain. It tells us to direct our efforts towards our weaknesses, not our strengths. This is probably a bad thing because we can always pair up with someone who can compensate for our weaknesses. We cannot, however, make up for the chances we lost to further our strengths.

It asks us to follow instructions. Following instructions isn’t a skill rewarded in real life, unless you have just come from IKEA. Seriously though, maybe there was a time when one could get hired and be told what to do and paid well for it – but even I have missed that boat. Anybody currently in school is certainly not going to have that luxury.

It asks us to not make mistakes. While life appears to work on the mistake-learn-do better cycle, schools teach that mistakes are final failures and should be avoided at all costs. Rather than teaching people to pick themselves up and consider what they would do differently next time, school teaches people not to try. Fear of rejection, abandonment and judgement is everything within a school.

It teaches us to be compliant. What do I mean by that? You need to learn things you know you will never use in order to get a gold star on your homework. That’s compliance. That’s what employers want. This is a tough one to call as it is specific to a person. Compliance doesn’t necessarily encourage innovation, to put it politely, but it probably builds better teams. Further, if you aren’t a compliant agreeable person by nature, school probably isn’t going to make you so (unlike the previous points, this actually attacks a character trait).

It teaches us to revere authority. Authority is king in school. A teacher’s word is pretty much final. On the one hand, this translates pretty well onto how employers deal with their employees. On the other hand, it stops us from thinking outside the box. I can’t count the number of times I consciously remember debating something with kids – when I was a kid – and the final line coming from my opponent being: my mammy says so, so that’s the way it is. Schools only make this horrible addiction to certainty worse.

So now that we’ve been through this machine, how do we deal with it? How do we unlearn the nasty habits and build new and better ones?

Focus on our strengths. Screw the weaknesses. The rest of the world is there to constantly point at our weaknesses. We have to be the advocates for our strengths. I tend to be able to notice things from more angles that other people and be open minded. Hence, I am writing this.

Decide what we’re after. Yeah, sure, sounds easy. It’s so hard in reality. Different people have different values. Our values will determine what we want in life. Maybe you are one of the lucky ones and your values correspond exactly to what the values you learnt in school. It certainly pays to contemplate what our values are.

We have a very strong desire to be consistent. We hate being wrong, so it’s painful to deconstruct our values. It’s not just an ego thing – we are wired that way. It’s how the placebo effect works. Our brain will make up the difference between the physiological and the perceived through specific chemistry. This is the reason I love mindfulness so much: it helps to disconnect all those false pathways and expose what’s really going on.

Having an understanding of two cultures (the West and Russia), I have always been fascinated how people feel that the values of the place that they just happened to be born in are their very own personal deeply held values. I think one has to actually dig pretty deep to understand what they believe now and what they want to believe.

There’s a conundrum I’ve always struggled with. Ok, so you’ve stripped off the BS. You are ready to find out what you’re actually about. So you ask yourself the question: who am I?.. Only to hear silence in response – what does that mean?!

I think I have the answer to that.

It means you have finally become open-minded. You have finally recognised, on a visceral level, that your values aren’t imposed on you. It is what you make them. There isn’t a ready-made answer. We don’t all come with either an iOs or a Windows operating system. We decide what our own operating system is going to be. So if you are struggling to understand who you are: you are probably asking the wrong question. You are what you ask yourself to be. We are what we pretend to be. We are what we repeatedly do. That’s not me who said that, that K.Vonnegut and Aristotle. Choice is a really fundamental ability, a power even, that is often overlooked.

What’s it all for if…

I often say on my blog for secondary school students that it’s all about balance. I feel wishy washy about it when I say it, so I wanted to tell this story to explain.

I recall spending some time with a dear friend of mine. She is a hugely successful physician now in one of the world’s top universities. This is way back when we were about 19 – in the throes of medical student life.

My friend, let’s call her Angela, is a particularly classy lady. She grew up in one of the finest neighbourhoods in a nice Irish city, educated privately, fancy extracurricular activities, the whole thing. She’s a gunner though, that girl. Being wealthy doesn’t automatically make you soft, and she’s the perfect example of that.

We were probably the only 19 year olds in Marks & Spencer’s buying things like dark chocolate and fresh linguini while our college classmates were out drinking 2 for 1 cocktails or Dutch Gold and eating frozen pizza. We spent our afternoons watching Gray’s Anatomy, The Other Boleyn Girl, Marie Antoinette, Coco Before Chanel, Gilmore Girls… And studying (her way more than me). You get the gist.

I never judge people for indulging. It would never occur to me to begrudge someone their luxuries or criticise them for being wasteful. So when I remarked on the fact that she has expensive taste, she was relaxed about it and said: If you can’t eat properly, what’s it all for?

This throwaway remark got etched on my brain. What’s it all for if you can’t be with your family? What’s it all for if you can’t sit and meditate for 10 minutes? What’s it all for if you can’t enjoy yourself for even a little part of the day? I don’t think she meant it that existentially. The way I took it was more in the stoic philosophy sense: live every day like it’s your last. As a true medical student workaholic fanatic, who was ready to give up everything for success, I never thought that living each day like it’s your last is about more than just achieving. I think if you work really hard, weirdly, sometimes it is easy to lose respect for yourself in a certain way. You become your own slave, the executive of your dreams, but not the person who actually gets to live them. That’s what I mean by balance.