Consciously upgrade your mind’s operating system, it makes everything else better!
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Summary:
An analogy I like is that your mind has ‘an Operating System and Applications’.
You can look to improve individual Applications (eg maths ability, knowledge of a topic)
OR you can look to improve ‘Universal Elements’ that upgrade all Applications (ie upgrade the Operating System)
To upgrade your OS you want to be:
1. Quality at being Calm
2. Awesome at Emotional Self Awareness
3. Special at Emotional Self Regulation
4. Righteous at Responding Not Reacting
5. Epic at Empathy (Emotional Awareness of Others)
6. Amazing at Attention Control (to be able to focus on what you want in a way you want)
Comment: this is obviously a non-exhaustive list of ‘Universal Elements’... some might call this a non-universal list of ‘Universal Elements’ ;)
10 years ago Duncan didn’t have the concept of ‘Universal Elements’ and ‘upgrading your Operating System’.
I used to spend all my time doing things like reading (knowledge acquisition), writing (communication practice) and looking at models to explain the world.
Now I want to get to minimum sufficient on all ‘core areas’. If you are a chef you might need a ‘great knife skills application’. The Applications needed vary per person, the ‘Universal Elements’ don’t!
Jingle: Getting to sufficient in the ‘Universal Elements’ means you’ll never be left out in the elements getting sufficiently crapped on by the universe!
How do I think about improving at ‘Universal Elements’?
Read below… come on do it!
One big way however is ‘meditation’ and ‘mindfulness’. For me, the two are interlinked. Yes I’m beating this drum again!
Another big avenue is ‘Post Game Analysis’ aka ‘reflecting on events by yourself and with others’. “You don’t learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences.”
I try to review minimum 1x event a day by myself and 1x with someone else. Post Game Analysis is the best tool I know to improve myself and other. We are all players, we are all coaches. Give upgrade gift opportunities to yourself and others.
The lenses I use for post game analysis:
What was my and others mindstates and how did they shift over eg the meeting? Mindstates (eg stressed, excited, calm, annoyed, etc) effect everything.
What was the logic path? You can typically find you or others misinterpreted something that this is really interesting to see. You can typically find yourself or others going off down some irrelevant rabbit hole!
Did I or others have any interesting emotional responses at any point? Typically you’ll see yourself or others respond / react to something that is really telling about your / their underlying beliefs / expectations.
Respond not react. Did you or someone else consider, as they would have liked, the circumstances and then respond in a manner that they would if they had their time again? If you don’t answer that you would redo something for every 1+ hour long meeting I think you are in denial!
I don’t think anyone would not think it’s important to improve at the ‘Universal Elements’. If you don’t have a plan to improve and are not spending time on levelling up ‘Universal Elements’ what makes you think you’ll improve?
I spend 1-4 hours a week on trying to improve my mental Operating System (Universal Elements). It’s much fun… a universally rewarding activity if you will!
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Details:
Firstly, the mind is the most complicated thing in the known universe. So these thoughts are just that, ideas that can hopefully help you get a better understanding of your mind and how to have it work with you, not against you :)!
Your mind is with you all day every day, through everything you do.
I used to focus on increasing my knowledge through eg reading.
I used to focus on improving my communication through eg writing, speaking with others.
I used to focus on improving my problem solving through eg acquiring and making mental models.
IMO ‘how your mind is’ is analogous to the Operating System, each of the above is an application that runs on the operating system.
If you upgrade the Operating System you upgrade all Applications.
The two most common forms of meditation are:
Meditation = focusing on breath
Meditation = focusing on the body
I know I’ve already written about Meditation, but there is much new below! Hopefully these new thoughts will help humans :)
So what can doing meditation for 10-20 mins a day do for me? IMO massively upgrade your Operating System though upgrading all of the mentioned ‘Universal Element’. Ie massively upgrade everything in your life!
What is my ideal ‘meditation practice’?
5-10 mins when I wake up typically a song or with Buddify
1 mins breathing meditation each hour with Apple Watch breathing app.
5-10 mins mid afternoon guided with Smiling Mind, Headspace, etc
20 mins in the evening unguided or with Sam Harris’s Waking Up app.
Comment:
How often do it get ‘ideal’ done? Almost never.
A good day is 80% of ideal.
A bad day is 20% of ideal.
Calm:
Meditation = focus on breath = let go of what every is going on in your mind, once you have let go of everything you are left with calm.
Levels of calm:
L1: After 10-20 mins can let go of what is going on in your mind and get to calm 50% of the time.
L2: Can get to calm in 5 mins 75% of the time.
L3: Can get to calm in 1-2 mins 90% of the time.
L4: Even despite massively rough seas (external environment) you can get to calm in 1-2 mins 90% of the time!
Imagine that you are frustrated about something, then you just bring out your practiced calm ‘muscle’ and are able to melt the frustration away on cue.
This is what meditation can do for you! Melt frustration away on cue!
Have your mental states work for you, not you work for them!
IMO being able to be calm when you choose improves everything at work.
Being calm improves problem solving (put one foot in front of the other, not expending unnecessary energy being frenetic (ie not calm))
Being calm improves group discussion (able to not get riled by someone's comment)
Being calm improves when you are presenting (eg not having frantic disconcerting tone)
Being calm improves your ability to switch tasks (eg you aren’t all flustered coming into a new task and thereby find it harder to concentrate)
Why would you not want to be good at calm? IMO spending 10-20 mins a day cultivating calm is an epic investment in upgrading your operating system!
Dampeners vs Neutral Vs Inflamers
When the seas inevitably get rough, what do you want to do? Make things worse or help navigate to calmer waters?
IMO one of the most important characteristics of a coworker is that they can dampen. IMO this is much harder than you think. IMO if you don’t think you’ve ever inflamed a situation then you are unaware of yourself (see observing consciousness below).
Body Awareness - aka Emotional Self Awareness
“Your body can’t lie, but your mind sure as f@#$ can.”
One major type of meditation is a body scan. This is scanning through the body to see what sensations there are.
Typically how I meditate during 5+ min meditations:
Step 1: focus on breath until I have been able to let go of everything else (you’ll feel your mind calling you away, I focus on my breath until it stops pulling me strongly away with thoughts). This can happen in 2 mins… sometimes it doesn’t happen in 20 mins.
Step 2: scan body - ie looking for different sensations in the body. The longest I’ve ever done a body scan for is 40 mins… but people do it for hours!
Step 3: this step varies, I often don’t get to this, eg might just stay on body scan.
Your emotional states are reflected in your body.
The most basic stuff is sympathetic / parasympathetic nervous system.
From Wikipedia:
The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is one of the two main divisions of the autonomic nervous system, the other being the parasympathetic nervous system.
The autonomic nervous system functions to regulate the body's unconscious actions. The sympathetic nervous system's primary process is to stimulate the body's fight-flight-or-freeze response.
Eg if you are tense / stressed you’ll have shorter breaths, raised heart rate, tension in muscles, adrenaline kicking around, etc.
Why do I scan my body each day?
I’m trying to build what the baseline of my body feels like. Ie a detailed ‘map’ of how it normally is.
Then I’m trying to notice any differences in my body vs baseline and then use this to inform what my emotional state is.
When I do a meditation body scan I’m 10x+ more aware of the different sensations in my body than when not looking for them (ie at all other times such as in a group discussion meeting).
If I’m frustrated I normally feel tension right in the centre of my chest. The number of times I only realise this when I meditate is astonishing…ly annoying!
If I’m feeling worried there is this weird flatness in my torso.
Happiness somehow registers as relaxedness in my shoulders.
Then when I find a sensation I’m trying to figure out what it is and what is says.
Steps of body scan:
Step 1: look for sensations
Step 2: try to identify what emotion this sensation represents
There is low, mid and high resolution of emotion identification.
Step 3: trying to figure out what the root cause of this emotion is (ie where it came from)
Comment:
It’s the best fun detective game ever!
Levels of body scan:
L1: when doing a body scan in a 5 min+ meditation, I can only pick up emotions that are ‘Large in size’ and at ‘Low resolution’. Eg I am large stressed (intense) about time deliverable.
L2: when doing a body scan in a 5 min+ meditation, I can only pick up emotions that are ‘Medium+ in size’ and at ‘Mid resolution’. Eg I am Stressed - soft about time deliverable which
L3: when doing a body scan in a 5 min+ meditation, I can only pick up emotions that are ‘Small+ in size’ and at ‘High resolution’.
L4: I can get a read on my body in shorter 1 min meditations.
L5: Cultivating your ability to read your body for sensation (signals) means that you have a better quality read on what is happening at all times. I’m normally ~10% as aware of body sensation then when I’m actively looking for them in a meditation body scan, but hopefully I can recognise a ‘Large’ emotion real time and then figure out my course of action :). Body scans in meditation increase my ability to get signals from my body. While ‘only listening’ to my body in a body scan I can hear much more than eg when I’m in a group discussion meeting, I can still pick up more because of all the cultivation I’ve been doing during meditation! Ie cultivating ability to sense my body during meditation allows me to have higher awareness during non-meditation times! Yay!
In short, IMO your body is an epic place to get signals on your emotional state. Cultivating your ability to be good at this is KEY to Emotional Self Awareness!
IMO one can cultivate anything, maths ability, how good you are at a video game, empathy, creativity… your ability to know what you you are feeling!
To me, Emotional Self Awareness is effectively a sense (eg like sight, sound, touch, taste). A blind person typically has cultivated their ability to hear more than average. This isn’t because they were born with better ears than average. They have built their ability to isolate echoes etc.
Just like you can cultivate your ability to hear, one can cultivate their ability to understand the sensations in their body.
IMO meditation is a core practice for this.
IMO you can go from ‘what are emotions’ to ‘many high quality signals’. It’s like a body scan goes from seeing things only in low resolution with 12 different greys to high definition 4k with millions of colours.
Jingle: A high def life allows you def get high on life!
How to get good at emotional self awareness
Meditation
Post Game Analysis. If you are anything like me others will be able to see much in you that you can’t see in yourself.
Emotional Self Awareness levels and practices
The levels:
L1: can get some signals from body scans
L2: can get high quality signals from body scans
L3: can get low quality signals after the fact when not doing body scans (eg while working)
L4: can get high quality signals after the fact when not doing body scans (eg while working)
L5: can get low quality signals real time all the time (ie when not doing body scans + but also from your mind, not just body)
L6: can get high quality signals real time all the time from my avenues (eg body & mind).
How to level up Emotional Self Awareness (aka Practices):
Meditation (body scans)
“Post game analysis”: replaying events to see how you can do them better from a communication, emotional, logical and state of mind viewpoint. I do this with others and myself many times a week. Sometimes through speaking, sometimes through writing! See this blog.
Observing your consciousness:
IMO a core tenant of mindfulness is that ‘one can observe one's consciousness’.
I honestly had zero idea what this concept was until 5 years ago. Then when I first encountered it I thought it was crap. How could one not be aware of what is going on in ones head, isn’t this the only thing one can’t not be aware of?
Have you ever had someone point out something to you about a conversation after the conversation and you are like ‘oh yeah, I didn’t see that at the time?’ Well IMO this is what is going on in your head UNLESS you spend mega amounts of time trying to cultivate being aware of things real time. AKA your ability to observe your consciousness.
“Post Game Analysis” is effectively observing your consciousness after the fact. IT IS THE BEST FUN!
I now believe that for most of my life I was a passenger for most of what was going on in my head. I had a tiny (eg 10%) real time understanding of what was going on (but I thought I had the full picture). After the fact, if I tried to replay events or discussed them with others, I normally got another 10% of what was going on from an “communication, emotional, logical and state of mind” viewpoint. So I might have had a 20% understanding of what was going on in my head.
Observing your consciousness categories:
L1: not able to see what is going on real time or after the fact in any of “communication, emotional, logical and state of mind lenses”
L2: not able to see what is going on real time but can see how I was after the fact in any of “communication, emotional, logical and state of mind lenses” (eg in Post Game Analysis)
L3: able to see 50% of what is going on real time in all of “communication, emotional, logical and state of mind lenses”
L4: able to see 100% of what is going on real time in all of “communication, emotional, logical and state of mind lenses”
L5: L4 + I have confirmed with others that my perceptions of what is going on align with theirs (‘Rule 1: do not fool yourself. Rule 2: you are the easiest person to fool’)
Comment:
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to see 100% of what is going on.
On a good day I can see much of what is going on. This is typically when the seas are calm.
On a bad day, I can’t see much at all. This is typically when the seas are rough!
When is it most important to be able to see what is going on in your mind, aka ‘observe your consciousness’?
When the seas are rough as typically the rougher the seas the more ones automatic ‘reaction’ might be counter productive.
It’s always best to ‘respond not react’. But if the seas are rough one might be stressed, or frustrated, or hurt and then your ‘state of mind’ might negatively affect your ‘reaction’ that could further inflame the situation.
The best way I know to help with being self aware (aka being able to observe your consciousness) this is to expect yourself to be fallible, to assume that that you’ll likely have the lowest quality (accuracy) self perception the more ‘worked up you are’ (aka not calm).
Then you need to have external regulators, ie other people who help you realise how you are.
“Be kind to yourself, be kind to others. Kindness is my religion.” Da Li Lama.
“Get external regulators for yourself, be an external regulator for others. Having external regulator is my religion.” DA 2019 ;P!
… oh and do constant Post Game Analysis!
Responding not Reacting:
The route to responding:
Getting good at being aware of what emotions you have going on
=> get good at understanding what is driving the emotions.
=> good at regulating emotions
=> high ability to Respond not React!
IMO emotions are signals. You get signals from your environment, you also get signals from your emotions.
The more you can understand your emotional signals the more you can understand your environment and yourself.
Respond not React:
Mindful (responding) : Perception Of Logic (eg understand the idea being put forward) + Perception Of Emotions + Evaluation => Considered Response
Mindless (reacting) : Didn’t fully grasp the idea being put forward + Unaware of what external emotional signals are going on + Unaware of your own emotional signals => Unplanned Reaction
Ever find yourself saying shortly after you’ve done something ‘I wish I did that differently?’
We don’t always get to choose our environment… but it’s possible for us to always choose our responses.
Some Viktor Frankl quotes :)
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Responding not Reacting levels:
L1: I can retroactively evaluate an event, see the signals, see my evaluation and how might want to do things differently and therefore what my ideal response would have been. AKA am good at Post Game Analysis.
L2: I can real time Perceive the signals (logical and emotional) however I can’t Evaluate real time in a manner I’d like. After the fact I replay the event and can see how I’d do things differently.
L3: I can real time Perceive 90%+ of the signals + I can Evaluate the signal and formulate an above sufficient response real time + I can articulate the response above sufficiency.
L4: ‘L3’ + I have confirmed with others that I was Perceiving, Evaluating and Responding at high quality.
How to get better at ‘Responding not Reacting’
Meditation to get better at emotional self awareness
Post Game Analysis. Replaying events by yourself and with others to get better at Perception and Evaluation. “You do not learn from your experiences, you learn from reflecting on your experiences.”
Empathy (Emotional Awareness of Others)
The better you get at Emotional Self Awareness the better you get at understanding others… but you can do more than this!
I wrote an entire blog post on ‘Empathy’. In short:
Empathy is built by practicing trying to understand others.
Replay events (Post Game Analysis) with others and thereby see how they were looking at the world.
So yes. Post game analysis helps you improve yourself… and helps you understand others more!
It doesn’t matter how the game (event) turned out, if you do Post Game Analysis you will get a win win outcome :).
Try to look at the world from others shoes and then compare what you thought with the actual person (ie see if your synopsis lines up). See blog post here.
Empathy Levels:
L0: you aren’t actively trying to take the perspective of others
L1: you have been reviewing your own actions (Post Game Analysis) with others to 1. Learn more about yourself and 2. See how they respond giving feedback how you respond (ie you are trying to get a 2nd opinion on how someone else would have responded). I call this modeling empathy for yourself (ie getting others to help). It’s a softer way before you try to understand others.
L2: you are actively trying to review how others acted after that fact (ie post game analysis by yourself)
L3: a big step, now trying to help and do post game analysis where instead of you being the person discussed, another person is being discussed.
L4: you start to tune your ‘empathy radar’ and become more aware of yourself and others real time, then during the game you try to help yourself and others.
L5: ‘L4’ + doing a debrief afterwards of how your ‘real time efforts’ went (ie hopefully helping not hindering). IE post game analysis.
Attention control:
I also have written an entire blog post on this! See link here.
In short:
There are many types of activities in the typical job (problem solving by one’s self, group discussion, presenting to others, providing feedback 1:1, etc).
Each activity type has an optimal attention type.
Learning what the optimal attention type is and how to do it well it hard work… but without doing the hard work of getting good at this you’ll make your work(days) unnecessarily hard!
Levels of Attention Control:
-L1: have the same approach to every activity
L0: know there are different activities and should have different approaches (types of attention) for each activity.
L1: know what activities make up 80% of my role and the ideal attention type for each activity
L2: are able to consistently have right attention type for the activity at hand!
If you only take one thing away:
22 year old Duncan wanted to do a good job, at the time that meant focusing on quality output.
Then I realised that I used applications to make the output like ‘knowledge’, ‘communication’ and ‘model ability’. So I focused on improving these applications.
Finally I realised that these Applications run on an Operating System (aka Universal Elements), and that upgrading the Universal Elements was key.
My goal is to try and figure out all the major components I need to do a good job (Applications, Universal Elements, other, etc), and then to get myself to sufficiency+ in each component. I wish I started working on the Universal Elements much sooner!
To upgrade your OS (Universal Elements) you want to be:
1. Quality at being calm
2. Awesome at emotional self awareness
3. Special at emotional self regulation
4. Righteous at reacting not responding
5. Epic at empathy (understanding others emotional headspace)
6. Amazing at attention control
One key way to improve all these areas is Meditation and Replaying Events (Post Game Analysis).
Onwards and upwards!