Kuba: Hmm ok I see the bottom line of this is that I am not willing to change myself. This makes a lot of sense, why I would rather go on excursions, because then I get to remain intact as I am now and fool myself into an escape fantasy.
But to feel good each moment again for the rest of my life I have to change myself. Which is also why only returning to feeling good is insufficient. Am I understanding correctly?
In that me as I am now (if I was to remain like so) will forever experience those same ebbs and flows, I will remain in the 60/40 arrangement because this is what I am willing to allow.
So in order to move from the 60/40 arrangement to feeling good in all circumstances and at all times, I do have to change myself, in terms of ‘my’ beliefs, attitudes, habits, values, dreams, fantasies etc?
All of those things cannot remain as they are if I expect things to be different. Which is to say the Kuba who feels good for 23h 59m a day would be a vastly different person to the who that I am now. (link)
Adam H: This is pretty interesting. Thinking about this in myself it seems like a sort of compartmentalization, where I compartmentalize my feeling bad away into certain times of day or certain settings. It does seem like it’s fundamentally about avoiding the need to change, if I can change the location/ timing of my bad feelings, I don’t need to fundamentally change (that’s the trick I play on myself). (link)
Hi Adam,
There is a term for this “compartmentalization” when it happens in a more extreme form – “the Cognitive Dissonance Theory”. Yet every feeling being is prone to it to some extent.
Richard (based on several web sources): The ‘cognitive dissonance theory’ suggests that when experiences or information contradicts existing knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or feelings, differing degrees of mental-emotional distress is the habitual result. The distressed personality is predisposed to alleviate this discord by reinterpreting (distorting) the offending information. Concurrent with this falsification, core beliefs tend to be vigorously defended by warping discernment and memory … such people are prone to misinterpret cues and ‘remember’ things to be as they wish they had happened instead of how they actually happened. They may be selective in what they recall, overestimating their apparent successes, while ignoring, downplaying, or explaining away their failures.
However it is more than merely a foolish head-in-the-sand psychological aberration, because the new, the fresh, the novel is oft-times met with determined resistance, disagreement, opposition and hostility. Indeed, the record of history shows many an occasion where someone who dared to question conventional beliefs was tortured, stoned, rent asunder, burnt at the stake, or otherwise horrifically put to death.
It is difficult to comprehend the extent and depth of the brutal ignorance and downright stupidity required of the great mass of people who, unable to grasp innovative things that were to their own advantage, fought to retain the existing mind-set which was inimical to their welfare. It is the strangest of incongruities in regards to human pertinacity that peoples will invent reasons and struggle to maintain a state of affairs that is detrimental to their own advancement … even those conditions which enslave them.
The scientific method has evolved, in a large part, to reduce the impact of this human penchant for jumping to such self-justifying yet erroneous conclusions. (Richard, Abditorium, Cognitive Dissonance)
Richard: … the term ‘cognitive dissonance’ would be better described as a ‘feeling-fed cognitive dissonance’ as it is not just a mental blockage which causes people to be unable to grasp innovative things that are to their own advantage and to fight so hard to retain the existing belief systems which are inimical to their welfare.
It is the strangest of incongruities in regards to human pertinacity that peoples will invent reasons and struggle to maintain a state of affairs that is detrimental to their own advancement … even those conditions which enslave them. (Richard, AF List, No. 30, 22 Oct 2003).
As such it is great when you discover one or several of your own “compartmentalization” and are able to make sense of what is going on. So, whenever you dare, you can look closer at a sticky aspect of why you are feeling bad and in what way you dare to change in order to resolve the issue. And when you take a step back and look at your problem from a broader perspective then you’ll find that nothing really matters in the long run.
Richard: ‘(…) the human species has been doing its thing for at least 50,000 years or so – no essential difference has been discerned between the Cro-Magnon human and Modern-Day human – and may very well continue to do its thing for, say, another 50,000 years or so … it matters not, in what has been described as ‘the vast scheme of things’ or ‘the big picture’, and so on, whether none, one or many peoples become actually free from the human condition (this planet, indeed the entire solar system, is going to cease to exist in its current form about 4.5 billion years from now). All these words – yours, mine, and others (all the dictionaries, encyclopaedias, scholarly tomes and so on) – will perish and all the monuments, all the statues, all the tombstones, all the sacred sites, all the carefully conserved/ carefully restored memorabilia, will vanish as if they had never existed … nothing will remain of any human endeavour (including yours truly). Nothing at all … nil, zero, zilch. Which means that nothing really matters in the long run and, as nothing really does matter (in this ultimate sense) it is simply not possible to take life seriously … sincerely, yes, but seriously?
No way … life is much too much fun to be serious! (Richard, AF List, No. 25g, 22 Dec 2004).
From ‘Vineeto’s’ own experience, it helped to know about ‘cognitive dissonance’ and the sometimes atavistic fear associated with certain changes, yet ‘she’ also discovered that the change was never as scary (let alone dangerous) as imagined once addressed. The sincere/ pure intent to become more happy and harmless provided the impetus to eventually move forward. And with every reason/ trigger for feeling bad which is resolved/ dissolved there comes a relief that this ‘threat’ for change and the feeling stuck/ feeling bad is no longer present, and life becomes more enjoyable with the additional opportunity to appreciate being alive.
Cheers Vineeto