Flawed imaginings

Our best tool and worst enemy in choosing possible futures is our own imagination. I am thinking about this, in part, because of the book I’m reading. But, more importantly, I’m trying to find a path to where I should be going next. The problem is that I can’t really imagine “next”.

Based on the Reality First principal that I spoke about here, I know that I am strongly influenced by this very moment when I think about tomorrow. What is the weather like? What is on my To Do list today? How are my allergies? How did I sleep last night? What am I reading? What did I hear on the radio? It all matters!

Of course, I knew this before I read the book. I have gone on emotional input “diets” where I only listen to, watch and read positive things in order to modify my state of mind. I’ve decorated my house to be a calm haven. I even have very brightly colored work shirts that I reserve for very grouchy days. In other words, I know how to put myself in a more positive place, but how can I put myself in a place to more accurately predict what I will want next?

I’m sure that the book will have some suggestions before this is all through, but I doubt that he will address my fundamental issue. I could be happy doing any number of things. I am a problem solver at heart and there are plenty of problems that interest me. I have even done some research and imagined how I would be able to solve some of them. But now I know – at this stage of the book anyway – that I need to thoroughly and completely distrust my own brain. I know exactly how it has been tricking me all of these years and I’m not sure what to think.

That is an explanation for why I am questioning myself, which makes me feel better. But I also now know that explaining things in any way – even incorrectly – is one thing that we humans do to make ourselves feel better. So, that leads me right back to the tricky mind premise.

I must admit that this entire thought process has been great fun for me. I am fascinated by new ideas and these are some of the best I’ve found in a while. But awareness of this brain/body functionality is one thing. Spending time considering it with every decision I make could turn my entire decision process into one endless hamster wheel race – lots of activity and no progress.

So, until I finish the book and see what he has to recommend about countering our own tricky brains, I’ll probably let this one be. His data seem to indicate that this is how it has always been and I haven’t done anything too crazy yet, so I’ll probably be OK for another few days. Until then, I’ll just accept that my flawed imaginings have served me well so far and may, with some new ideas from this book, serve me better in the future.

Seeing the forest

I'm still in the midst of Stumbling on Happiness , so it is coloring just about everything that I see these days. At this point in the book, Daniel Gilbert has explained how our brain works when using imaginary input as opposed to external input. So, for example, you can't look at an ostrich and tell someone whether a penguin has longer flippers than feet. He refers to this as the "Reality First" principal. When your brain is processing visual data, you can't give it imaginary visual data to process as well.

He goes on to show that this also works for emotional information - like how we feel about our lives or futures. He quotes a study where people were asked to think about how satisified they were with their lives. The results turned out to be depent on how nice the weather was in their city that day! In other words, even when imagining just general life happiness, the Reality First principal overlaid most people's entire lives with that day's weather.

On some level, I think that most of us are aware of this. But you can see how well that works in the picture of the cello above. Though I could clearly see the shine of the cello in low light through the tree fronds, the camera didn't really get it. In the same way, I often forget that no matter how clearly I believe my vision to be, the factors that are not my focus can still impact the clarity of my picture.

I know myself well enough to realize that my own mental imagery is clouded in another way. I have a fascination with details. I can't even guess how much time I spent playing with different perspectives like this on Friday night. Suffice it to say that the hosting of our benefit coffee shop was largely left up to the rest of the band for long stretches of time. This can be a very useful skill at times - when given a "big picture", I can always find the pieces that I can do to advance that picture along - but it also means that I can get caught in a point of view that doesn't make much sense.

As always, I see an analogy in all of this. There are a number of factors, in my 9-5 (as if!) life, that are darkening my perspective on a job that I, for the most part, enjoy. I am slowly eliminating them in my "one piece at at time" way, so that I can lighten up my perspective.

In the big picture, this year is buying me and mine a good future. It will give us more control over the hows and whats that will impact the next stage of our lives. As HTH will tell you, the more controls that we have to play with, the better! Which is why, of course, he has a 20 channel board for a 9 channel band....