I was sitting in a tiny rental lodge, feeling resistance. It was about dinner time — I knew I should go make some food. I just wanted to sleep, sink into a bed and stay passive. It felt similar to when I’m recently awake, lying in bed, and procrastinating getting up.
On the one hand, making food would shift me into a new state of being, getting going and maybe feeling happier. For part of me, this promise didn’t feel real — not in the way the bed did. I realized I was stuck in a tie between Pragmatic-Analysis and Akrasia.1
I shifted out of this impasse by going into Beast-Mode. Practically, I acted out the first hedonistic impulse to appear — grabbing a date and eating it. Shifting my headspace into Beast-Mode helped ease the short-term resistance — the Beast-Mode shift made the possibility of future state-shifting more real. If I could go into temporary Beast-Mode, then surely I can enter a happy salad-making headspace.
My Akrasia headspace is quite stupid, lacking the theory of mind required to understand that my experience and headspace can shift to enjoy many things that temporarily feel “too much” — such as early-morning cold showers. Other headspaces of mine — including Beast-Mode & Pragmatic-Analysis — are much more mature, and able to account for the preferences & goals I hold in other headspaces.
When I’m in these mature states, I can control my reactions and mindset to a large degree — making mental moves to shift how I relate to things. When I’m in Akrasia, I feel resistance that makes everyday things hard to do — washing dishes becomes a slog through a nasty marsh. When I’m in Beast-Mode or Pragmatic-Analysis, washing dishes can be great fun — accompanied by singing, taking my time to make things sparkle, and enjoying the repetition.
Unfortunately, I easily forget that I can shift mindsets around. I “meld” with the negative thought patterns, forgetting other ways of being. When I’m anxious, I resist taking steps to improve the situation, fearful that I’ll do something to provoke even stronger anxiety. When I’m in Akrasia, I’m unable to imagine what flow is like — thinking that the grass is equally brown on the other side, and further away.
Historically, I’ve used Pragmatic-Analysis to deal with most challenges — with great success. However, it’s less efficient when dealing with Akrasia and Anxiety. The analysis easily turn non-productive, serving to affirm dysfunctional headspaces rather than finding a path forward.
Pragmatic-Analysis tends to frame solutions in plans, such as “I’ll step out of bed, go take a shower, then do some breathwork […]”. At this point, Akrasia starts resisting, either shutting down the thoughts or turning the planning into a daydreaming-ideation state. Shifting into Beast-Mode is a better plan — doing something immediately pleasant that is also invigorating/agency-inducing.
Please define beast mode
To paraphrase:
Want and have. See and take. Run and chase. Thirst and slake. And if you’re thwarted in pursuit of your desire… so what? That’s just the way of things, not always getting what you hunger for. The desire itself is still yours, still pure, still real, so long as you don’t deny it or seek to snuff it out.
In this sense, no one who is alive in a modern city for longer than a day could possibly be in ‘beast mode’. Because they would have stepped in front of a bus/truck chasing something, and gotten wrecked and therefore would no longer exist.
Nor could anyone enter ‘beast mode’ for any sustained period of time, and still remain alive.
Sure, but you obviously don’t (and can’t even in principle) turn that up all the way! The key is to make sure that that mode still exists and that you don’t simply amputate and cauterize it.
A ‘beast mode’ that no reader of LW will likely ever experience for even a full hour continuously is hardly a ‘mode’ is it? There are other terms for such phenomena.
When I’m very in tune with my short-term desires, emotions and agency—acting according to instinct and impulse rather than ideas, plans or similar.
It’s a mindset/state of being I can go into, which has a very particular “flavour” to it, it’s light-hearted, unconcerned & in tune with what I want/like, in the moment.
I guess different people have different “modes” or “headspaces”, a kind of equilibria for how they experience the world, their own agency, and themselves. Different equilibria fit different situations. What I wanted to exemplify in the post was the potential of knowing what “modes”, “equilibrias” or “headspaces” you have access to, and try switching into non-standard ones when your default headspace doesn’t resolve the situation at hand.
The resistance likely comes from the accumulated cost of taking many actions, whereas living in the moment is easy. To give an example: Taking a single step is basically always easy, whereas walking 10 kilometers is not, but walking 10 kilometers is just many, many single steps.
Being able to shift ones headspace or “mode” is a valuable skill, and I can do it to some extent, but there’s also sometimes something which gets in the way, and I think it’s likely that the mind, in order to protect itself, limits our control over it. By manipulating your belief system, you can lessen your inhibitions, by lowering the perceived threat of less control.
As you probably already know, we lack a language for talking about these things, making it hard to communicate methods and personal breakthroughs in self-manipulation. For example, how would one write a guide on relaxing ones body? Even my own breakthroughs and methods are lost at times. I can write them down, but future me can’t always replicate them. So I might read “trust the universe” and get closer to a flow state, or forget exactly what I meant by that.
Interesting post, by the way!
I don’t follow this sentence
Yes, this is the problem when signifiers detach from the signified. In my post on personal heuristics I mention something similar: the issue where many “stock wisdoms” turn into detached platitudes.
This is also reminiscent of spiritual practices (like meditation instructions) that turn into religious dogma.
For me, there’s a difference between having techniques that are dependent on reminders (like telling yourself “trust the universe”), and techniques that are more descriptive (like “take slow belly-breaths with long exhales” or “act upon your immediate impulses”)
This is an enormous topic that is under-theorized, agreed that language is somewhat lacking.
Your inhibitions exist to protect you. At some point in your life, something conditioned that inhibition, and the brain now thinks that not having the inhibition is dangerous, so it won’t let you dissolve it until it’s convinced otherwise. You can probably turn down an inhibition since it’s quite easy to argue that most inhibitions are exaggerated, and that’s the idea with the “magic dial” in Book review: “Feeling Great” by David Burns
So I think the extent to which you can change your state of mind depends on how many restrictions your mind has put in place, how many regions of this space are “forbidden regions”. Some people won’t allow themselves to do anything weird or “cringe”, and for some people, this is true even if they’re completely alone, which tells me that they’ve internalized some panopticon mechanism of protection against social judgement.
I also think we worry because we’re afraid that if we stop worrying, something bad will happen. In other words, the worrying itself is a self-defense mechanism. Same with things like guilt and unhappiness, the beliefs are “If I stopped feeling guilty, I might do something bad”, and “if I stopped being unhappy, then I might stop putting effort into my life”. So unhappiness is a contract we make with ourselves. “I’m allowed to be happy once I achieve X, but not before”
So ultimately, most of the things controlling these mechanisms seem to exist in our “core beliefs”. Some people also speak of “core values” and “identity” as additional restrictions, but I think these may just be other kinds of beliefs.
Indeed, teaching wisdom is really difficult. Most people will have to experience things themselves in order to get them.
I think the “trust the universe” thing is a bit like placebo (positive belief with positive results), a bit like praying (believing that a state will be reached, a bit like visualizing the future you want (anchoring a goal state and believing that you will reach it), and a bit like confidence (the belief that you can reach valuable states).
Believing that something is possible is highly useful. Have you seen how records (like in sports) improve over time? You can go 100 years with minor improvements, and then somebody beats the record, and now many other people, now realizing that it’s possible, beat the old record as well.
And do you know the story of George Dantzig? A professor wrote two unsolved problems on the blackboard, and Dantzig, thinking they were homework, solved both of them. To tie this into the writing above, it’s seems like limiting beliefs hold us back in life. Spiritual people seemingly attempt to lift these limiting beliefs by statements such as “Mind over matter” and “Belief can move mountains”.
I think strong beliefs are a factor in some mental illness, though. Delusions of grandeur for instance. Some also describe depression as trapped, negative priors.
Finally, I’d like to bring up fight/flight/freeze/fawn. The difference seems to lie in your belief in your own strength (capacity for fighting), and your belief in the trustworthiness of other people (that fawning won’t be used against you). Also the legitimacy thereof, are you allowed to use your strength, and are you allowed to be weak? Self-defense laws conflict with the former, and if you’re a pillar of strength for many people, it will conflict with the latter. I’m not yet sure how to seperate “freeze” and “flight” though.
This past paragraph is useful to think about, as you want to grow stronger under pressure rather than weaker. To flip “Oh no I’m so useless” into an “I will show you!” and a “what if I fail?” into an “I will do my best”. I think manipulating your beliefs can make you more ‘antifragile’