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.)
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.