I want to distinguish desire from motivation. Desire is a part of motivation but not the only part. I can be motivated by fear, hunger, ignorance, desire, love, etc. The “best” kind of motivation is generally considered to be desire. We tend to think that conscious goals are the product of desires, and just ignore making fear a motivational force for conscious goals, which would rob them of their power if we did. So, we feel a desire and we translate that into a conscious goal. Why not do that to fears?

That sounds odd, I know. If I told you that one of my goals was not to end up homeless, you may think that’s an odd thing to call a goal. Most people just have a fear of becoming homeless and destitute, but if I say its one of my goals, I rob the fear of its power over me and can come up with a good plan to prevent that from happening. I usually then rephrase the goal into the positive, such as: I want to live in a comfortable home. The other major tip here is fear-setting, from Tim Ferriss author of the 4-Hour Work Week.

This is part of making fears and other “negative” motivations conscious, acknowledging them and then deciding whether to follow them. Here’s another example: in the midst of a fight with someone, I often stop and ask myself what I want. I Accept whatever comes up, and that means I’ve had to acknowledge that I want to be right, I want to blame others or that I want the other person to feel hurt. Then I can say, “those are not my goals. I choose to resolve this situation in a way that preserves and improves this relationship.” And that allows me to get clear-headed again. When I verbalize those motivations, they’re no longer unconscious or hyper-emotional and thus loosen their grip over me and allow me to choose more conscious actions.

In a final example: I value my emotional space and constantly ask myself what I want, and it is usually to feel happy. So, anytime I’m not feeling happy, I consciously choose to feel happy and find ways to feel happier.

That, I believe, is the real reason people ask this question. It’s easy to feel good about yourself if everyone else is also stuck in the same place, or if you can assign some external reason for why you are not doing what you really want to do but don’t have the courage to right now. Those reasons enumerated, I do want to answer the question as asked:

Like I said previously, a massive change like everyone following their dreams will not happen suddenly. If anything, it could be argued that its been happening slowly over the last many decades. Massive social changes like that rarely happen very quickly (they’re called revolutions if they do). “For example, if everyone did what they felt their purpose was and there were no garbage-collectors left, this is some of what might happen: 1. The wages for a garbage collector would skyrocket. 2. People would have to clean up after themselves. 3. There would be a greater demand for solutions that didn’t require humans or as many humans, such as automated cleaning machines, and the people who really enjoy solving society’s problems using technology would love to create that.”

There are every kind of people. Paul taught me about this. This may sound really, really strange to you, but there are people who ENJOY being garbage collectors. The Fred Factor is a book about a postman who brings so much joy and purpose to his work. Most people would think that being a post delivery person would be dreary and boring, but Fred loves his work. The value of these people who really love to do this would go up dramatically because they are so rare, so they could actually make a lot of money doing something that others would consider “dreary”.

Finally, we, as a species/culture, can adapt to massive social changes such as if everyone is starting to follow their dreams. We’ve gone through a number before now. For example, I’m willing to bet that someone said at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, “What if everyone went to work in jobs in factories and left the farms; we’d all starve!”. And we have not starved. This henny penny, “the sky is falling” stuff is usually overrated.

Let’s say there was suddenly a severe shortage in the number of postal workers. Courier businesses would probably skyrocket, people would stop sending as many letters (as they have), the wages of postal workers would skyrocket, faxes and emails would grow much greater in number, many entrepreneurs would step in to attempt to come up with solutions that are cheaper and/or more efficient than the current system. Perhaps instead of getting mail delivered to our doors, each neighbourhood or block would get its own central mail box racks where you go to pick up the mail, like a PO Box, this is pretty common in many places around the world.

There is one big difference between theories and the stories we use to explain our lives, though, and that is that while theories tend to be observational and simply try to explain the events as best as possible, stories and a consistent style of story-telling can affect future events, and multiple stories are just as valid or “right” as each other. As an example, psychologists have identified an explanatory style that people use to tell the stories of their lives.  There are three components, and I quote:

• Personal. People experiencing events may see themselves as the cause; that is, they have internalized the cause for the event. Example: “I always forget to make that turn” (internal) as opposed to “That turn can sure sneak up on you” (external).
• Permanent. People may see the situation as unchangeable, e.g., “I always lose my keys” or “I never forget a face”.
• Pervasive. People may see the situation as affecting all aspects of life, e.g., “I can’t do anything right” or “Everything I touch seems to turn to gold”.

People who generally tend to blame themselves for negative events, believe that such events will continue indefinitely, and let such events affect many aspects of their lives display what is called a pessimistic explanatory style. Conversely, people who generally tend to blame others for negative events, believe that such events will end soon, and do not let such events affect too many aspects of their lives display what is called an optimistic explanatory style.

You’ll notice that personal development offer a consistent explanatory structure to use, that you are the master of your life (personal internal), that you can and do change things (impermanent), and depending on what you read, may promote having a singular personality, or learning to recognize your intrinsic worth as a person is not tied to your actual effects. The second two are also examples of beliefs including both limiting or positive ones.

There is a problem with theories and thus stories, though. The facts can support an infinite number of theories. Broadly speaking, then, there are two ways that people can tell their stories–optimistically or pessimistically. To help drive this point home, here are my stories:

Ever since I’ve been a kid, I’ve felt like I didn’t really belong. I was born in Saudi Arabia to Pakistani parents. My father was a guest worker and the Saudis generally didn’t like us very much, so I grew up as a perpetually expat Pakistani. I draw a large part of my identity from being a Pakistani but I’ve probably never spent more than a year total there. When I was 11, I was taken away from all my friends and the life I knew and brought to Canada, a foreign and cold land. I grew up in a mostly white neighbourhood and the darkest person in my class was a half-black, half-white kid that I befriended, probably because he was about the most familiar thing there. Being the new kid and being different were marks against me and I was bullied and made fun of by the other kids for the first 5 years of coming here. I’ve lived most of my life as an outcast, not quite fitting in anywhere.

This story makes me feel depressed just thinking about it. However, it is just about as true as the next one:

My parents lived in Saudi Arabia and I was born in an excellent hospital that was part of my father’s benefits. It was better than any hospital I would have been born in in Pakistan, and there’d already been a stillbirth before me so I’m appreciative of the better medical facilities. I also got much better schooling than I would have, and the standard of living in Saudi Arabia was higher than in Pakistan. My parents desiring the best for us decided to bring us to Canada, where the standard of living is much higher, the education is world reknowned, the opportunities are vast and we had a shot at actually becoming citizens of this country. Through trials and tribulations, which are a normal part of life, I’ve grown up to become the person I am today. I may still feel a bit like an outcast (I have come to enjoy it), but I’ve built a strong network of friends who make me feel like I am part of something. I’ve also learned to build an identity as a Canadian-Pakistani and, in some ways, I finally belong. Currently, I’m going to one of the top 50 universities in the world, on my own terms. I am also engaged in improving myself and my life, and I am building a successful future for myself.

Which story do you like better? They’re both true and cover most of the same facts. Life is so complex that you necessarily have to highlight some facts versus others. I like the second story better because it is one of hope and it is empowering. With this story, I can feel that my life is going well, and since there’s no real “objective” data on that, I’d rather feel that things are going well rather than badly and that I am improving things.

How do you tell your story if someone asks about you? What do you say when someone asks you what you do? Do you tell the victim story, the martyr story, or the story of hope and empowerment?

Size or height also has interesting relationships within the human mind with status. For example, a psychology study had a person introduced to a class as a fellow student and the class was asked to record what they thought was the guest’s height. The same person was introduced to another class as a Professor’s Assistant (or similar) and their height was again recorded. Finally, the person was introduced to class as a full Professor and their height was estimated by the class. Guess how the height was found? As the person’s status went up, the height estimates also went up. I think the status-height link is one of the reasons people think celebrities are taller than they are and are disappointed when they meet and say, “I thought you were taller”.

While status can influence size, it goes the other way, too. Taller people tend to have greater status in society. While the following may be a case of a correlation doesn’t mean causation error, I believe that someone’s height causes others around them to perceive them as higher status, and with higher status comes greater benefits, including access to resources such as food and mating opportunities. For example, I recall the top 3 tallest members of indigenous tribes have 7 times as many affairs as the bottom 3 shortest people. One study I recall reading about suggested that for every additional inch of height a person has, they make an additional almost $800 dollars a year. Another thing is that taller people are grossly disproportionately respresented among upper management. Put another way: ”In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell says that 30% of Fortune 500 CEOs are 6-foot-2 and taller (vs. just 4% of all men).” More information about unconscious biases related to business positions are here, including that leaders are White, held by both White folk and non-White folk. Another post by the ever insightful Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) highlights the same issue here. Here’s an excerpt: “Hair and height are great predictors of future careers. If you’re a guy with a good head of hair, and you’re over 6’4”, you’ll probably have a career in upper management.”

Essentially, size and status are correlated in our minds because of a heuristic (mental shortcut) that says they’re porportionally related. I’d imagine this has some evolutionary root, potentially because taller/bigger people have an advantage in fights and hunting, as well being able to run faster. Another possible reason (though not mutually exclusive with the first), is that height is a sign of better nutrition, so it might suggest the ability of that person to feed themselves in the past, either by simply being higher status and thus being given more of the food, or by hunting it by themselves.

Author’s Note: This is the sort of blog post that I thought this blog mighe be about. Interesting facts and theories tied together. Essentially, if you enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, you might enjoy my blog, was the idea. How did you like it?

Physical energy is the thing that we’re all most familiar with. Are you feeling tired, or energetic? Physical excersize improves this sort of energy overall. That may seem strange, because excersize takes up energy, but it actually unleashes more energy than it takes in, a bit after you’ve rested.

Mental energy is also fairly obvious: thinking hard can take up a lot of this energy. Ever felt burnt out after a long test or exam? That’s it.

Emotional energy may not be that obvious, but there are many things which are physically easy but emotionally difficult. For example, your body can handle excersizing for ten minutes a day (I like to start things in a low-commitment way, something you can easily do) but can your mind? Emotionally, you may feeling afraid of judgment or failure, or just feeling lazy.

You can think about this for a second: things in our reality have no emotions attached to them. The emotional response arises from the interaction between your consciousness and that thing. That’s how different people can have different responses. Cold-calling, for example, may energize someone else while it drains me of all energy. It’s physically easy: I pick up the phone and move my mouth a bunch, but emotionally, it’s draining to deal with the rejection and to feel like I’m wasting the time of so many people in a very intrusive manner.

So, here’s a trick that you can accomplish after some practice. Mentally separate the physical actions required to do something and the emotions that result when you think about it. It’s not easy until you get some practice at managing your emotions and recognizing that between stimulus and response there is a gap, and with practice that gap can grow. If you master this trick, though, you can easily do things which are emotionally difficult or even fear-inducing.

Here’s a very important point: All of these kinds of energies are related. I split them up for the sake of analysis, but it is a capital mistake to ignore the fact that if you start to excersize regularly, not only can you think better, but your emotional control and self-esteem also improves. After a long exam, I’m not only mentally exhausted, but also emotionally and physically, even though all I did was pick up a pen and scribble a bunch. I certainly didn’t run a marathon (the brain, however, does use about 20% of the body’s energy, and more under stress).

Essentially, a level of analysis is what it says, depending on what level you are looking at the same thing can mean different things. In Getting Things Done, one of the most powerful models Allen describes is the “altitude” model. It is this:

• 50,000 + feet: Life (Purpose)
• 40,000 feet: Three- to five-year visions
• 30,000 feet: One-to two-year goals
• 20,000 feet: Areas of responsibility (3-6 months)
• 10,000 feet: Current projects (weekly)
• Runway: Current actions (daily, max)

Here’s an example: Say I’m calling a prospect and that works right at the runway, current projects and areas of responsibility levels, but when I hit the 30,000 foot level I get snagged. Maybe the snag is that I don’t want to be doing whatever I’m doing; maybe I want to be a lumberjack! Alignment on all these levels of analysis is one of the things that Steve Pavlina stresses.

Another example of levels of analysis is this blog entry. For example, you can go to the level of syntax and make sure all the sentences make sense. You could go to the level of words and make sure all the words are spelled correctly. You could jump to the paragraph level and check the argument put forward and its proof. You could even jump to the level of the blog and check out how this entry fits into the whole thing.

Another very important place where this model is helpful is in resolving conflict in relationships. Usually, if everybody involved in the conflict is getting emotional, they are probably looking at the wrong level of analysis in the relationship. Odds are that the conflict is not at the level of what actually happened, but at the level of expectations and/or values.

• Meeting a challenge
• Coming in first or winning
• Getting a promotion
• Marriage
• The holidays
• Buying a new home
• Going on a roller coaster ride

This, for me, is a very useful mental change because a lot of our emotional states are very similar physiologically and it seems that we mentally make attributions as to why we are experiencing those states after the fact. What does that mean? That means that I can stop being worried about being nervous before a big performance or a public speaking event. I’m not nervous, but I do have a heightened awareness. Like in 300, “It is not fear that grips him, but a heightened sense of things.”

Two fascinating studies on this (and nothing else in this post so skip it if you’re not into amusing studies):

The first: Imagine that you are brought into a room and given an injection that causes physiological arousal (but you don’t know that) and then you’re led into a room and asked to wait there. There’s another person there and you get to talking and he says that he got the same injection as you. Soon he starts to act in an angry fashion and gets really excited. How do you feel? Believing that they were given the same injection, the subjects began to mimic the other person who was, in fact, a confederate actor. Sometimes the actor pretended to be angry and sometimes pretended to be elated and joyful and both times the subjects mimicked the actor.

The second study is also excellent. Imagine you’re a man, in the woods, crossing a 450-foot long bridge and you’re approached by an attractive female and asked to participate in a psychological survey about how scenic vistas affect creativity. After the survey she gives you her number and says to call her if you have any questions. Do you call her? She’s attractive after all. Well, as before, she is a confederate. She approached men both while crossing this scary bridge and after they had crossed it and had a rest. The results? More of the men who were approached while crossing the bridge called to ask her for a date than the ones who had rested after crossing the bridge and thus were not physiologically aroused. The idea is that the men who were approached on the bridge mistook their arousal caused by fear as arousal caused by her physical attractiveness. Similar results were found when attractive men approached women, so it’s not just men being sexist.

Another possible candidate for this situation is that I’ve heard that people find more people physically attractive and more distracting after they’ve started excersizing regularly. At first, I thought that this might have something to do with increased testosterone, however it may well be a misattribution of arousal situation, and there have been studies done on this sort of situation.

Wiki on Misattribution of Arousal

The concept is similar to what happens in the Capgras Delusion, which is where you believe that people and animals you know (like your family) have been replaced by impostors. Excellent talk about that at TED.

Caring too much about what other people think is completely futile. Not only can you never please all the people all the time; the diversity inherent in the six billion or so people in the world today ensures that someone out there disagrees and disapproves of everything you do.

As another example, say you don’t talk to strangers because you’re afraid of what they and other people will say. Well, what about those people that disapprove of your fear, or your inaction? Bad actions are not the only thing you can get criticized for; you can also get criticized for inaction.

You may be afraid of what other people will think of you if you start a business. Well, unless you’re around a lot of business owners or your family background involves business owners, you would likely be around people who would disapprove of that. But what about those people who disapprove of your choice to remain an employee? And what about business owners that disapprove of your decision not to start a business, whether you’re an employee or not? Not making a decision is still making a decision.

Even writing this, I’m getting anxious. I can speculate as to the reasons for this. There is a possible sociological reason that a society requires a broad sort of conformity to exist and thus we’re socially conditioned to care about what other people think to keep our actions within some boundaries. A more palatable option might be that we’re not very smart individually, and we try to borrow other people’s brains as much as we can, and we also use those brains to indicate to us how we’re doing and get anxious if the collective judgment isn’t very good.

Another reason might be an evolutionary/neurochemical one. Humans have primate dominance hierarchies and being higher in the hierarchy is better from a survival/reproductive purpose. In fact, at least some aspect of happiness is keyed into this idea, in that the only case where wealth brings happiness is when the wealthy are wealthier than those around them. An oft-cited example is that the person with the cheapest apartment on Park Avenue (a posh neighbourhood in New York) feels like crap. Anyhoo, so caring about your position on the dominance hierarchy is tied into how other people view you and think of you and you care about both because they helped your ancestors survive and give birth to you. Neither of the two explanations is mutually exclusive and neither is not changeable. The Power of Now has helped me care less about what other people think and I highly recommend it.

You may not be face-to-face with these people now, but knowing that you will never, ever gain the approval of everyone all the time forces you to make some choices. The first one is whether you will rest your sense of self on what other people think or believe. Of course it’s a bad idea to rest your sense of self on anything impermanent and especially not a good idea to rest it on something as fickle as other people’s opinions. The point here is not to listen to other people, period, but to become immune to the suggestions that impact your self-worth. If you have a strong idea of who you are, that’ll help. Having multiple and broad roles in life helps, too. For example, if I’m an employee, business owner, brother, son, actor and someone tells me that my acting sucks, then I’ll handle it a lot better than if I was just an actor.

Another piece of advice that comes from The 4-Hour Work Week is to do fear-setting. As in, say you do whatever you want to do and make a complete fool of yourself. What’ll happen? Everyone will think you’re incompetent and no one would want to talk to you? You’ll become so socially repugnant that you won’t even be able to get a job interview for a caretaking gig? Figure out exactly what your worst possible case scenario is. It’s a lot better than weird uncertainty.

In the end, though, the best advice I have is not to care too much what other people think and go about your life and your goals the way you want to.

Recently, I was reading Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, and it was just a rambling bunch of paragraphs. There was no single focus for a chapter and Freud would talk about a number of unrelated things. There seemed like an overall lack of preparation there (something I’ve recently come to recognize the importance of). I came to understand that the three-part structure of essays helps give it clarity and balance. In a similar vein, the three-act structure creates a certain response in human beings which is quite enjoyable. That doesn’t mean its good or bad, it just is.

This is the image I have of these sort of structures: Imagine a human-shaped mold. It can only be filled with a certain amount of material and thus restricts growth. This is how I used to imagine these sort of structures. As molds to pour your work into, and that just felt inorganic and forced. Now, I’ve come to imagine them more as a skeleton that you can drape your work on. In this way, you can gain the benefits of these skeletons (such as clarity and structure) and still create great work.

The final way to learned to be ok with structures is to realize that while they may seem forced now and then but that’s only because I am not very good at them. At the beginning of learning any skill, it may seem forced and awkward, but as you become more skilled, it becomes easier. I wrote about this previously: 4 Stages of How You Learn!

All of that said, that does not mean I cannot play with the structure of these things. In fact, playing with structurs is a great source of joy for me. But I have gotten over my subconscious resistance to these sort of structures. I have a feeling that this has bigger implications than just for writing. I can feel that this has to do with my life purpose (finding which felt restrictive and mold-like to me) but now I realize purpose is simply a back-bone thread that is already in my life. I can feel that this may have to be why I do not want to do anything unoriginal. Similarly, to-do lists are not supposed to be restrictive like that and you have to do everything on them because it’s written down, but they serve as guides and skeletons for your time. There is more introspection to be done here.

I hope that if anyone out there is suffering from a similar subconscious resistance to structures, they can make the mental flip from mold to skeleton and lose that resistance. Without subconscious resistance, you can make conscious decisions better.

1. Having goals is super important for your psychological health. The field of Positive Psychology has found strong correlations with having goals and being happy, as well as psychologically healthy. Human beings are intensely goal-driven creatures. You have to be to survive in the natural world.
2. Pursuing goals. I’m sure you’ve heard that the journey is more important than the destination. Similarly, modern psychology has found that we get a bigger kick out of making progress on goals than the short-lived feeling of accomplishment before we have to set another goal. Note, I’m not advocating consumerism as a substitute to personal fulfillment (the hedonism treadmill, or pleonexia), rather that goals on which you’re making progress are an important part of an enjoyable life.
3. The change that going after and achieving those goals creates in you. Steve Pavlina likes to say that goals improve your level of consciousness and since you are simply a part of a larger single consciousness, you improve the level of consciousness in general by pursuing consciousness-raising goals. I realized that the change that happens because of goals is more important when I read this interview with Ze Frank:

What’s really interesting to me is that, as anyone knows who’s gone into a creative discipline, the second that you start doing those things, the world around you changes. If you draw, you start seeing the edges of things, and you start seeing the deformities of their shape when you move around them. When you start playing guitar, you start noticing notes in all the music you play, and in fact, the music that you listen to never sounds the same from that point on. I think that a lot of people are focusing on the content that’s being produced right now. And I think it’s the wrong thing to look at. It’s actually the pursuit and the perception change that I think a lot of people are experiencing about the world — that’s the thing to focus on and the thing to celebrate.

Marcel Proust said something similar when he said, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

I’ve experienced a nice shift in the way I look at things now. Before, I used to think that some goals or doing some things wasn’t important because the final result will be useless or unimportant. I generally believe that the things I do should have an impact and I refrain from doing something that does not seem to have an impact on my goal (which is logical), but I take it to an extreme. For example, I don’t like to spend time preparing, preferring to wing it because no one really sees the preparation. This new model of goal achievement gives me a new perspective on preparation and how it changes ME, not just as a useful aid to getting goals. Not preparing is very much like trying to harvest in the fall without having planted in the spring.