Good life = 1. Healthy Mindset + 2. Can learn from circumstances + 3. Have a plan to get to / stay in a good place
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
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Summary: 2 mins
Details: 13 mins
Summary: One equation for a good life = 1. Healthy Mindset + 2. Can learn from circumstances + 3. Have a plan to get to / stay in a good place.
Life doesn’t get easier, but you can get better at it. An easy life isn’t necessarily a good life.
Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.
Good life = 1. Healthy Mindset + 2. Can learn from circumstances + 3. Have a plan to get to / stay in a good place
1. Healthy Mindset
Condition yourself to look for things to be grateful (vs pessimistic). Don’t do pessimism practice, do gratitude practice.
Much of life is a Rorschach Test: those who look for beauty find it, those who look for ugliness find it.
2. Can learn from circumstances
If something bad happens, you take it as a learning opportunity
3. Have a plan to get to / stay in a good place
If i’m in a good place but don’t have a plan for how to stay there = unhappy
If I’m in a bad place but have a plan for how to get to a good place = happy.
Jingle: If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then ugliness is also in the eye of the beholder? So look to beautify :). Be the change you want to see, build yourself into the person you want to be.
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Details
What is a rorschach test?
The Rorschach test is a test used by psychotherapists and researchers to gain insight into subjects’ unique perceptions. The test consists of a series of Rorschach inkblots, intentionally ambiguous spatterings of ink, that are then described by patients. These unique descriptions then form the basis of analysis: a scary monster may reveal one’s fearful disposition; a beautiful butterfly a sunny one - or so Rorschach intended. Although now largely dismissed as pseudoscientific in therapy, the Rorschach test serves as a useful metaphor for life: we all possess unique interpretations of otherwise neutral stimuli and these are informed by our past experiences and subjective mindsets.
In short: you can look at many things in different ways, both positively and negatively. How do you try to look at things in a positive way?
Cognitive behavioural therapy
From Wikipedia: “Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psycho-social intervention[1][2] that aims to improve mental health.[3] CBT focuses on challenging and changing cognitive distortions (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes) and behaviors, improving emotional regulation,[2][4] and the development of personal coping strategies that target solving current problems.”
One key way to change how you view something (ie positive vs negative on a Rorschach Test) is to change your thoughts and beliefs around something.
Positive psychology: Gratitude practice vs Pessimism practice
I’m a big fan of Martin Seligman (one of the founders of positive psychology) and Danny Kahenman (a current influential psychologist who has conducted landmark research on judgement, biases and decision making).
Neuroplasticity = Neurons that fire together wire together.
In short you can train your brain to have certain prioritised behaviour responses (what Kahenman calls ‘thinking fast’ (vs thinking slow)).
Eg do you want to wire in pessimism or gratitude?
Gratitude practice = Noting 3 things each day you are grateful for
Evidence shows that 1. slowly people increase the range of things they find to be grateful for, 2. People start to find things to be grateful for in ‘bad’ circumstances and 3. Start to have more grateful thoughts across a day.
Examples
Increased range: I’m grateful for the yummy dinner I ate => I’m grateful for all the people needed to grow the food for dinner I ate => I’m grateful for the new environmentally friendly packaging at the supermarket => I’m grateful for the paddock to plate movement
Grateful in ‘bad circumstances’: I’m grateful for the opportunity to see what not to do from the behaviour another demonstrated => there is no good without bad, I’m grateful for the opportunity to have seen this bad thing as it helped me realise these good things I had take for granted (in some respects gratitude = not taking things for granted) => I’m grateful I’ve realised now that I acted in a way that I would change if I had my time again… imagine if I didn’t realise this?
Start to have more grateful thoughts across a day: eg when walking to get a coffee and have a free moment do you think about how much work you have to do, how someone said something poorly in a meeting, why the weather is nice now but you have to work VS how you are grateful you got this project done, how someone said something poorly in a meeting but you now have the possibility to give them a ‘upgrade opportunity gift’, so nice that I get to be outside for a minute and see the dappled light through the trees.
Comment
I've been doing gratitude practice each day for 5 years and I’ve found it’s totally rewired my brain. It’s literally the first thing I do in the morning before I meditate. With the benefit of hindsight, I used to have stuff all grateful thoughts a day. My best guess:
5 years ago Duncan: 0-3 grateful thoughts a day on average
3 years ago Duncan: 3-6 grateful thoughts a day on average
Today Duncan: 7+ grateful thoughts a day on average
But it’s more than this, it permeates my mindset through almost everything. For me gratitude practice is as valuable as meditation for my mindset and emotional health.
Pessimism practice = in some respects the opposite of gratitude practice
Eg instead of waking up and thinking of 3x things to be grateful for each morning you wake up and think of things that ‘aren’t going well, why someone did something annoying yesterday, how you have too much on today, etc etc’.
Comment:
I’m not saying at all that one should be ‘unreasonably optimistic’.
The glass isn’t half full (optimism), half empty (pessimism), it’s 50% full (realism).
I try to be a realist who looks for things to be grateful for when things go well AND when things go poorly. I find a ‘grateful mindset’ is a quality precursor to be able to learn from a circumstance.
Some more in this area:
Those who look for beauty find it, those who look for ugliness find it.
There are two wolves in your mind, the good wolf and the bad wolf. Which wolf wins? The wolf you feed the most.
In some respects gratitude practice is pavlovian classical conditioning. Use the same idea to constantly build habits etc. An example of something that research says massively helps with mood is exercise (I’ve personally found this to be the case). First you build your habits, then your habits build you. Setting up the right habits like gratitude and exercising will pay off over your life.
A good life equation = 1. Healthy Mindset (eg condition yourself to look for things to be grateful (vs pessimistic)) + 2. Can learn from circumstances + 3. Have a plan to get to a good place
The only way to fail is to fail to learn
In the present good and bad things will happen, but bad things in the present can be good long term if you can learn from them.
“The good learn from everyone and everything, the average only from themselves, and the stupid already know everything.” Socrates
I find that the ability to learn from ‘bad events’ is one of the most powerful things one can cultivate.
If you can learn from a ‘bad event’, then often it stops being ‘bad’ and can actually turn into a ‘learning event’... so something good can have happened or you can have learned something!
“A mistake is only an error, it becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it” - John Lennon
But if something good happened in the present and you want more of this goodness in the future then best to learn about the good too :).
The only way to fail is to fail to learn. If you can learn from any circumstance then you can win all the time?
Either I was right, or I learned something.
*Aside:
It is of course important to acknowledge that the harder one’s environmental circumstances, the harder the work to condition yourself into a positive mindset will be. The number of ‘hits’ you’ve had in life, the more negative experiences there are to undo mentally through gratitude: traumatic/bad experiences also affect your neural networks.
Stress outcome = External (Environment) * Internal ( Experience + Tolerance + Resilience)
In this way, someone who has experienced more hardship will likely have to work harder to undo conditioned negative experiences and thereby reach a positive mindset
A good life equation = 1. Healthy Mindset (eg condition yourself to look for things to be grateful (vs pessimistic)) + 2. Can learn from circumstances + 3. Have a plan to get to a good place
Viktor Frankl & Logotherapy
“Man's Search for Meaning is a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positive about, and then immersively imagining that outcome.” - Wikipedia.
Some 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.”
“Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
“I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.”
“Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”
Or as Nietzsche put it: “One who has a 'why' to live for can endure almost any 'how'.”
Guess what, you have a big say in the why’s of your life!
… and by this definition, the man without a why cannot withstand any what?
More on this area
Fragile = something bad happens and you are worse after
Anti fragile = something bad happens and not just aren’t you worse, you are stronger!
A good life equation = 1. Healthy Mindset (eg condition yourself to look for things to be grateful (vs pessimistic)) + 2. Can learn from circumstances + 3. Have a plan to get to a good place
The opposite of happiness is not sadness, it’s hopelessness.
The opposite of hopelessness = having a plan for how to get to a good place.
I don’t care if I’m in a good place or a bad place, I care if i have a plan to get to a good place and / or stay in a good place.
So, if i’m in a good place but don’t have a plan for how to stay there = unhappy
If I’m in a bad place but have a plan for how to get to a good place = happy.
Micro plans
Someone is not performing at work, what do we do?
COVID lockdown might go for ages, how do I do some new types of socialising (eg online cooperative multiplayer games)?
10x work goals: human beings, not human doings - thoughts on how epic work can be a reason for being
*aside:
One lens I have for life: 5 days a week of purpose, 1 day a week of play, 1 day a week of peace.
I don’t think one should be looking for ‘macro meaning’ in all hours of all days. As an example, to me relaxing done well is recharging.
Purpose = 1. Fun * 2. Consequence
Play = 1. Fun * 2. No consequence
Peace = 1. doing nothing (aka not doing fun) * 2. No consequence
If you only take away one thing
Don't be bitter, be better. Bad things will always happen, it’s crucial to deal with bad things in a good way!
I don’t think you can be given a good life, but I do think you can build one.
Hopefully some of the strategies in this blog help!