I find as a coach that sometimes people really need the view of determinism (often framed as radical acceptance), and they in some sense don’t alieve the thing Gordon is talking about.
I’d be curious to hear examples of this. If I try to come up with them myself, they have a flavor of “lying to people to make them feel better”. (Which I’m not gonna say is categorically bad, but I feel like if you happen to agree that it has that flavor then that seems like a good thing to note on LW. But maybe you just don’t agree it has that flavor.)
Like, I’m imagining here the type of person who’s trying to save the world by working ten hour days seven days a week, and then they have a day where they just lie in bed and play video games and they’re like ”???why didn’t I do my best???”
And I can imagine replying to that with “you did do your best, your best is all you ever do”. But that feels like lying to me. A less-lying answer to me would be something like:
You are probably aware that you are a human, and humans need sleep. Like if you tried to stay awake for a full week, most likely you would simply fail, and if you tried really hard with drugs and stuff then blah blah blah bad idea. It doesn’t obviously violate any physical laws of the universe to stay awake for a week, but it is basically just not an option available to you. It violates some laws of “what it’s like to be a human”, at least for now.
Similarly, humans need rest and relaxation, and if they try to work ten hour days seven days a week they by and large simply fail, and if they push really hard then that often goes badly for them. That, too, violates some laws of “what it’s like to be a human”, at least for now.
You wouldn’t try to push yourself to go a week without sleep. Trying to push yourself to work ten hour days seven days a week is the same basic mistake, but a bit less obvious. You’re beating yourself up for not taking an option that was never really available to you.
To me, this rhymes with the determinism answer, but seems importantly different.
No, it’s much more like “you are hurting yourself fighting with reality”. The reality is that you slept and played video games and you’re wasting mental energy fighting something that:
You can’t change anymore.
You couldnt even have changed them, because you didnt have this thought process/coaching session/emotional state, etc.
So first, let’s accept the state of things as they are, and have compassion for the version of you that didn’t have the tools or ability to make a different decision.
Having done that, let’s have compassion for present you by learning from past you, and mentally practice what you could have done in this situation (or well before this situation) to avoid burnout. This way, future you will have those tools.
Nod. But I note that “you couldn’t have changed this back then, because you didn’t at the time have the tools to do this” seems very different from what I think Gordon is saying?
Like, I see a big difference between “there was only one thing you could have done, and you did it” and “this specific thing that you might in theory have done, was practically unavailable to you”.
Like, “because you didn’t at the time have the tools to do this” admits that we can classify past actions-not-taken into “those we could have taken but didn’t” and “those we couldn’t have taken” (perhaps “those we couldn’t have taken for reason X”, “those we couldn’t have taken for reason Y”, …), whereas Gordon seems to want to classify all past actions as simply “those we could not have taken”.
A: “there was only one thing you could have done, and you did it”
B: “this specific thing that you might in theory have done, was practically unavailable to you”
?
To me, this conversation feels like… you said you tell people B, and I said that seems very different from A to me, and now you’re saying you tell people A? And I’m not sure if you’re saying that to clarify “oh, no, I don’t tell people B, I tell them A”, or because you don’t see the distinction I’m trying to draw, or what. I’m not really sure where to go from here.
I’ll say that A is the thing that feels to me like lying to people, in that it seems true but only in an irrelevant sense. This comment might help clarify?
“You couldnt even have changed them, because you didnt have this thought process/coaching session/emotional state, etc.” is ambiguously either A or B. And I often explain it as A.
But “you didn’t have this thought process/coaching session/emotional state, etc.” isn’t a crux for A, right? I feel like if what you mean is A, then giving that reason is violating a norm of communication, and so it doesn’t particularly feel ambiguous between A and B to me.
But, okay, thanks. I think I see what you’re saying.
This is a tangent, but I’m curious if you agree with me that telling people A feels like lying to make them feel better? (No need to try and justify it or anything if so.)
I’d be curious to hear examples of this. If I try to come up with them myself, they have a flavor of “lying to people to make them feel better”. (Which I’m not gonna say is categorically bad, but I feel like if you happen to agree that it has that flavor then that seems like a good thing to note on LW. But maybe you just don’t agree it has that flavor.)
Like, I’m imagining here the type of person who’s trying to save the world by working ten hour days seven days a week, and then they have a day where they just lie in bed and play video games and they’re like ”???why didn’t I do my best???”
And I can imagine replying to that with “you did do your best, your best is all you ever do”. But that feels like lying to me. A less-lying answer to me would be something like:
To me, this rhymes with the determinism answer, but seems importantly different.
Is this at all close to what you’re thinking?
No, it’s much more like “you are hurting yourself fighting with reality”. The reality is that you slept and played video games and you’re wasting mental energy fighting something that:
You can’t change anymore.
You couldnt even have changed them, because you didnt have this thought process/coaching session/emotional state, etc.
So first, let’s accept the state of things as they are, and have compassion for the version of you that didn’t have the tools or ability to make a different decision.
Having done that, let’s have compassion for present you by learning from past you, and mentally practice what you could have done in this situation (or well before this situation) to avoid burnout. This way, future you will have those tools.
Nod. But I note that “you couldn’t have changed this back then, because you didn’t at the time have the tools to do this” seems very different from what I think Gordon is saying?
Like, I see a big difference between “there was only one thing you could have done, and you did it” and “this specific thing that you might in theory have done, was practically unavailable to you”.
Like, “because you didn’t at the time have the tools to do this” admits that we can classify past actions-not-taken into “those we could have taken but didn’t” and “those we couldn’t have taken” (perhaps “those we couldn’t have taken for reason X”, “those we couldn’t have taken for reason Y”, …), whereas Gordon seems to want to classify all past actions as simply “those we could not have taken”.
To me the argument is:
You literally couldn’t have done anything different in the past.
But you can IMAGINE what you would have done differently in the past in order to affect the future.
I will often invoke the idea that you literally did the best you could at the time when walking people through this.
Um. So do you not see a big difference between
A: “there was only one thing you could have done, and you did it”
B: “this specific thing that you might in theory have done, was practically unavailable to you”
?
To me, this conversation feels like… you said you tell people B, and I said that seems very different from A to me, and now you’re saying you tell people A? And I’m not sure if you’re saying that to clarify “oh, no, I don’t tell people B, I tell them A”, or because you don’t see the distinction I’m trying to draw, or what. I’m not really sure where to go from here.
I’ll say that A is the thing that feels to me like lying to people, in that it seems true but only in an irrelevant sense. This comment might help clarify?
“You couldnt even have changed them, because you didnt have this thought process/coaching session/emotional state, etc.” is ambiguously either A or B. And I often explain it as A.
But “you didn’t have this thought process/coaching session/emotional state, etc.” isn’t a crux for A, right? I feel like if what you mean is A, then giving that reason is violating a norm of communication, and so it doesn’t particularly feel ambiguous between A and B to me.
But, okay, thanks. I think I see what you’re saying.
This is a tangent, but I’m curious if you agree with me that telling people A feels like lying to make them feel better? (No need to try and justify it or anything if so.)
No, it definitely isn’t lying.