To answer the question of “how to describe internal experience”: you could practice describing felt senses in more detail. For example, recently when I found my mind resisting the idea of doing something, I said “when I think of doing this, it feels like there’s a part of my mind that says NO, and then I have a sense of there being a brick wall in front of me and it feels like if I try to push through, I’ll just end up with a splitting headache”. This was literally my experience.
To answer the question of “how to reliably signal internal experience”: I’d say you can’t. If you are looking for something that will always convince your friends of your experience, then there is no such thing: they could always believe that you were faking, or maybe not even faking but somehow subconsciously deluding yourself. Which you could be!
To believe your report, your friends have to have at least some genuine curiosity for, and openness to, your experience. If your friends don’t have that, then—as others have mentioned—it would be better to look for better friends.
To answer the question of “what to do when I think I am doing my best but an outside view suggests that I am being needlessly defeatist”: I think that in this case, even if the outside view was right, the best answer would not necessarily be to force yourself forward and work harder.
Well, it depends on the circumstances—maybe you have something left undone that really needs to be done now for you to pay your rent next month, in which case, yeah probably just push yourself.
But in general, this kind of situation means that a part of your mind has information that makes it believe it is an important priority to stop you from doing whatever it is that you feel defeatist about. If you force yourself through, that may work in the short term, but the mind will react to that by noticing that you are doing something that it perceives to be dangerous, and increase the amount of resistance until you become unable to continue pushing through the thing. (If the resistance is mild, this might not be true, especially if pushing through gets you something that feels genuinely rewarding to counterbalance it; but often it is.)
In that case, what you want to do is not to push through, but take the time to find the source of that resistance and investigate why it is that your mind considers this to be a bad idea. If it’s mistaken, it can be possible to reconsolidate the emotional learning that’s blocking you. Though I suspect that in a lot of cases that lead to burnout, it’s actually the other way around: you are doing something because a part of your mind has the mistaken belief that doing this will lead you to something that it is optimizing for, with the rest of the mind throwing up resistance because it knows that fact to be mistaken.
To answer the question of “how to describe internal experience”: you could practice describing felt senses in more detail. For example, recently when I found my mind resisting the idea of doing something, I said “when I think of doing this, it feels like there’s a part of my mind that says NO, and then I have a sense of there being a brick wall in front of me and it feels like if I try to push through, I’ll just end up with a splitting headache”. This was literally my experience.
To answer the question of “how to reliably signal internal experience”: I’d say you can’t. If you are looking for something that will always convince your friends of your experience, then there is no such thing: they could always believe that you were faking, or maybe not even faking but somehow subconsciously deluding yourself. Which you could be!
To believe your report, your friends have to have at least some genuine curiosity for, and openness to, your experience. If your friends don’t have that, then—as others have mentioned—it would be better to look for better friends.
To answer the question of “what to do when I think I am doing my best but an outside view suggests that I am being needlessly defeatist”: I think that in this case, even if the outside view was right, the best answer would not necessarily be to force yourself forward and work harder.
Well, it depends on the circumstances—maybe you have something left undone that really needs to be done now for you to pay your rent next month, in which case, yeah probably just push yourself.
But in general, this kind of situation means that a part of your mind has information that makes it believe it is an important priority to stop you from doing whatever it is that you feel defeatist about. If you force yourself through, that may work in the short term, but the mind will react to that by noticing that you are doing something that it perceives to be dangerous, and increase the amount of resistance until you become unable to continue pushing through the thing. (If the resistance is mild, this might not be true, especially if pushing through gets you something that feels genuinely rewarding to counterbalance it; but often it is.)
In that case, what you want to do is not to push through, but take the time to find the source of that resistance and investigate why it is that your mind considers this to be a bad idea. If it’s mistaken, it can be possible to reconsolidate the emotional learning that’s blocking you. Though I suspect that in a lot of cases that lead to burnout, it’s actually the other way around: you are doing something because a part of your mind has the mistaken belief that doing this will lead you to something that it is optimizing for, with the rest of the mind throwing up resistance because it knows that fact to be mistaken.
huhm, I didn’t realize I was asking multiples question at once, thank for clarifying, that was helpful.
your answer seems to give me something, I am not sure what. I would have to meditate on it.
I’ll try out what you suggest though I am a bit foggy on the detail. Will see how it turn out.