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Happiness, 6.02 (V) Week 6, Video 2 - Stepping Outside The “GATE”

6.02 (V) Week 6, Video 2 - Stepping Outside The “GATE”

[MUSIC] Ola everyone, and welcome back. In the previous video we saw how being mindful improves our happiness levels even when experiencing something unpleasant. This means that we have a source of happiness right within us, mindfulness. As I mentioned in the previous video, mindfulness is easy to define. It's just be present. When you have undivided attention on whatever is going on, you are mindful. But although mindfulness may be simple to define, it's not easy in practice. As I'm sure many of you have discovered. So the question is, how does one develop this capacity to be mindful? Before getting to this question, I wanna quickly point out something that you may already know. It's easiest to be mindful when you are in flow. As we saw in week two, one of the features of flow is a focused attention on the present sub-goal or sub-sub-goal. So doing flow we are very focused on whatever is going on, which means that our attention is undivided. It is also relatively easy to be mindful when you're feeling happy. Although, some findings do show that if you're delirious, it can be difficult to be in the present. For example, imagine that you've just won the lottery. You may start day-dreaming about everything you will do with the money. Maybe hanging out with Jay Z and Beyonce on a yacht in the Mediterranean. Or adopting a couple of tigers and moving in with Mike Tyson, or whatever. It means that you wouldn't be mindful. Your mind wouldn't be in the present. But for most positive events it's relatively easy to not let the mind wander. It's most difficult not to let your mind wander when you're feeling stressed out or otherwise negative. That's because you end up doing something that researchers calling ruminating, when you're feeling negative. You start building on the negative feelings, and that soon snowballs out of control. So for example, if you just got shouted at by a boss, let's say, you may think that he's unfair, and how only you get shouted at. This thought might, in turn, trigger thoughts of how you're probably gonna get fired next year, since the company's looking to lay off people, and so on and so forth. It's important to note that when you ruminate you're not being mindful. Although it might seem like you're being in the present moment. Being mindful means focusing on whatever you're experiencing right now. So for instance, if your boss has just shouted at you, and you feel upset, being mindful means to experience those feelings. So what does it feel to feel upset, fully without thinking other thoughts that either intensify this feeling or those that in fact mitigate this feeling. I elaborate more on this in the next couple of videos, but let me just get back to this idea of not thinking other thoughts. Which means that being mindful, in a way, is the opposite of emotion regulation. As you might remember from Week 4, emotion regulation has to do with steering your thoughts away from your negative feelings or thoughts that you're having right now. So, if a boss has just shouted at you, an emotion regulation strategy might be to think of other instances in which the boss has praised you for example. Or to distract yourself from these negative thoughts by going for a run or chatting with a friend and so on. As we saw in Week 4, emotion regulation strategies do work, they make you feel better. But what Killingsworth and Gilbert's findings show is that being mindful, that is, fully focusing on whatever it is that you're going on about, not running away from it, accepting it fully, embracing it, even, can be an even more powerful way to regulate your feelings than emotion regulation strategies are. Except, and here's one of the many paradoxes of mindfulness. You're not really trying to regulate anything through mindfulness. You're not trying to regulate your thoughts, your feelings, etc., when you're being mindful. In many ways, in fact, what you're trying to do is the opposite of controlling your thoughts and feelings. What you're trying to do is merely observe what's going on without passing a judgement or a common thing in what's going on. Let me try and explain this with an example. Imagine that as you're watching this video you suddenly have a thought. Oh my god, it's late. I need to pick up my son from daycare. Usually when we have such a thought, we just let that thought determine the next thought. Which could be something like, I should try to be a little more on top of things. I always slip up, I never finish things on time. Which in turn could trigger and emotion such as guilt and perhaps that might trigger an action of hitting the stop button and then rushing to the car. On the way to the car, you might pick up a little snack for your son to appease him, just in case he's upset about you bring late, etc. Note what's going on in this example. A thought that you might be late evokes another thought that you're bad at time management, which in turn triggers an emotion, guilt, which in turn triggers the action of rushing to your car. And the goal of trying appease your son, and so on. In other words, the original thought has triggered a web of consequences that evoke thoughts and emotions and actions and action tendencies and goals. It's not just this thought that evokes all these other thoughts and emotions and action tendencies and goals. Almost every thought that we have does. So one way to characterize what we experience normally is that we're immersed in a web of what might be called GATEs. Goals. Actions, or Action-tendencies. Thoughts. And emotions. Another way to characterize it is that we're caught in a web that likes experiences and events. Weave for us. If you get shouted at by a boss, which is negative feelings that in turn trigger other negative thoughts, that trigger certain actions, which trigger other negative or positive feelings, that trigger another set of thoughts, that trigger new actions. And the chain continues on like this. This is, of course, quote, un-quote, normal in the sense that most of us operate this way most of the time. Now if the weapon which we are called happens to be a good one for example, when your boss shouts at you, you react in a way that's healthy, then it's not so bad. But unfortunately, and this may be particularly true for those of us who commit the other deadly happiness sins that I talk about earlier including chasing superiority or being overly controlling. Most of us don't react in a healthy fashion to many of the events and experiences that life throws at us. One way to break the cycle is to adopt the habits of the highly happy. For example, replace the need for superiority with flow, or the need for being overly controlling with taking internal control, and so on. But there's another way to do it. And this way, which complements the habits of the highly happy, is to try and step outside of the GATE web altogether. That is, this way is to walk out of the GATE of your mind. But what does it mean to walk out of the GATE of your mind? And why does it lead to a more healthy way of dealing with what life throws at us. Those are the questions to which I will turn in the next video. See you soon. [MUSIC]


6.02 (V) Week 6, Video 2 - Stepping Outside The “GATE”

[MUSIC] Ola everyone, and welcome back. In the previous video we saw how being mindful improves our happiness levels even when experiencing something unpleasant. This means that we have a source of happiness right within us, mindfulness. As I mentioned in the previous video, mindfulness is easy to define. It's just be present. When you have undivided attention on whatever is going on, you are mindful. But although mindfulness may be simple to define, it's not easy in practice. As I'm sure many of you have discovered. So the question is, how does one develop this capacity to be mindful? Before getting to this question, I wanna quickly point out something that you may already know. It's easiest to be mindful when you are in flow. As we saw in week two, one of the features of flow is a focused attention on the present sub-goal or sub-sub-goal. So doing flow we are very focused on whatever is going on, which means that our attention is undivided. It is also relatively easy to be mindful when you're feeling happy. Although, some findings do show that if you're delirious, it can be difficult to be in the present. For example, imagine that you've just won the lottery. You may start day-dreaming about everything you will do with the money. Maybe hanging out with Jay Z and Beyonce on a yacht in the Mediterranean. Or adopting a couple of tigers and moving in with Mike Tyson, or whatever. It means that you wouldn't be mindful. Your mind wouldn't be in the present. But for most positive events it's relatively easy to not let the mind wander. It's most difficult not to let your mind wander when you're feeling stressed out or otherwise negative. That's because you end up doing something that researchers calling ruminating, when you're feeling negative. You start building on the negative feelings, and that soon snowballs out of control. So for example, if you just got shouted at by a boss, let's say, you may think that he's unfair, and how only you get shouted at. This thought might, in turn, trigger thoughts of how you're probably gonna get fired next year, since the company's looking to lay off people, and so on and so forth. It's important to note that when you ruminate you're not being mindful. Although it might seem like you're being in the present moment. Being mindful means focusing on whatever you're experiencing right now. So for instance, if your boss has just shouted at you, and you feel upset, being mindful means to experience those feelings. So what does it feel to feel upset, fully without thinking other thoughts that either intensify this feeling or those that in fact mitigate this feeling. I elaborate more on this in the next couple of videos, but let me just get back to this idea of not thinking other thoughts. Which means that being mindful, in a way, is the opposite of emotion regulation. As you might remember from Week 4, emotion regulation has to do with steering your thoughts away from your negative feelings or thoughts that you're having right now. So, if a boss has just shouted at you, an emotion regulation strategy might be to think of other instances in which the boss has praised you for example. Or to distract yourself from these negative thoughts by going for a run or chatting with a friend and so on. As we saw in Week 4, emotion regulation strategies do work, they make you feel better. But what Killingsworth and Gilbert's findings show is that being mindful, that is, fully focusing on whatever it is that you're going on about, not running away from it, accepting it fully, embracing it, even, can be an even more powerful way to regulate your feelings than emotion regulation strategies are. Except, and here's one of the many paradoxes of mindfulness. You're not really trying to regulate anything through mindfulness. You're not trying to regulate your thoughts, your feelings, etc., when you're being mindful. In many ways, in fact, what you're trying to do is the opposite of controlling your thoughts and feelings. What you're trying to do is merely observe what's going on without passing a judgement or a common thing in what's going on. Let me try and explain this with an example. Imagine that as you're watching this video you suddenly have a thought. Oh my god, it's late. I need to pick up my son from daycare. Usually when we have such a thought, we just let that thought determine the next thought. Which could be something like, I should try to be a little more on top of things. I always slip up, I never finish things on time. Which in turn could trigger and emotion such as guilt and perhaps that might trigger an action of hitting the stop button and then rushing to the car. On the way to the car, you might pick up a little snack for your son to appease him, just in case he's upset about you bring late, etc. Note what's going on in this example. A thought that you might be late evokes another thought that you're bad at time management, which in turn triggers an emotion, guilt, which in turn triggers the action of rushing to your car. And the goal of trying appease your son, and so on. In other words, the original thought has triggered a web of consequences that evoke thoughts and emotions and actions and action tendencies and goals. It's not just this thought that evokes all these other thoughts and emotions and action tendencies and goals. Almost every thought that we have does. So one way to characterize what we experience normally is that we're immersed in a web of what might be called GATEs. Goals. Actions, or Action-tendencies. Thoughts. And emotions. Another way to characterize it is that we're caught in a web that likes experiences and events. Weave for us. If you get shouted at by a boss, which is negative feelings that in turn trigger other negative thoughts, that trigger certain actions, which trigger other negative or positive feelings, that trigger another set of thoughts, that trigger new actions. And the chain continues on like this. This is, of course, quote, un-quote, normal in the sense that most of us operate this way most of the time. Now if the weapon which we are called happens to be a good one for example, when your boss shouts at you, you react in a way that's healthy, then it's not so bad. But unfortunately, and this may be particularly true for those of us who commit the other deadly happiness sins that I talk about earlier including chasing superiority or being overly controlling. Most of us don't react in a healthy fashion to many of the events and experiences that life throws at us. One way to break the cycle is to adopt the habits of the highly happy. For example, replace the need for superiority with flow, or the need for being overly controlling with taking internal control, and so on. But there's another way to do it. And this way, which complements the habits of the highly happy, is to try and step outside of the GATE web altogether. That is, this way is to walk out of the GATE of your mind. But what does it mean to walk out of the GATE of your mind? And why does it lead to a more healthy way of dealing with what life throws at us. Those are the questions to which I will turn in the next video. See you soon. [MUSIC]