J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Tag: happiness Page 1 of 2

Some Personal Updates, and a Request

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On April 2

In Creative Work/Career, Electronic Music, Personal Updates, Writing

Unrelated to the post, but Bumblebee was parked in front of my house yesterday.

I got back from my uncle’s funeral service a few hours ago. It was belated for various reasons — he died over a year ago — but the service was well-attended, in a beautiful location, and I feel as if we did right by him.

Both my father-in-law and my uncle passed away around the same time last year. For a few months my stress levels redlined and I had difficulty sleeping, but after I’d had a chance to grieve and the bulk of the end-of-life logistics were handled for both family members, I settled into a more reflective state. It’s been good to consider my own mortality, and the mortality of my friends and family. It’s easier to prioritize what’s important when I consider the relative imminence and unavoidability of death. I frequently let my family and friends know that I love them, I work on my big ideas, and I do the things I would regret not doing were my life to be cut short.

But I hope that my life continues for a very long time, because I’m enjoying it immensely. In terms of external life metrics such as finances and career, I’m doing fine, but what’s really making me happy are the following:

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Why Dungeons & Dragons?

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On May 12

In Culture Rants/Shares, Gaming

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I play Dungeons & Dragons almost every week (and sometimes more). I love games in general, but D&D is my favorite game. Here’s why:

1. It adds knowledge.

As a kid, D&D sharpened my math (especially probability) and expanded my vocabulary (especially martially: cuirass, hauberk, greaves, trebuchet, arbalest, spetum, glaive). As an adult, world creation pushes me to expand my knowledge of geography, climatology, history, ancient religions, and literature.

2. It stretches my brain.

A game of D&D unfolds as a sort of structured improvisation. Ideally, the dungeon master (who creates and runs the world) and the players co-create the storyline. Nobody knows what’s going to happen next. The mental challenge of impersonating a character is difficult and exciting. Some of this happens on a superficial level (imitating various accents is not a required part of the game, but for me it’s a fun part — right now I’m working on a South Irish accent for my druid Shoren Shallows, something like Nathan Young on Misfits). Some of it is deeper. In real life I’m sensible, sane, and reasonable (most of the time). The characters I play in Dungeons & Dragons are usually kindhearted, but also eccentric, unreliable, erratic, and slippery. When I run a game (as dungeon master) I play villains and monsters who are cruel, malicious, conniving, greedy, and psychopathic. At the very least this kind of role-playing is cathartic. At other times it even feels therapeutic, as if I’m exploring or reconciling the shadow aspects of my personality.

3. It makes me happy.

In his book The Social Animal, David Brooks cites research claiming that joining a group that meets at least once a month produces the same happiness gains as doubling your income. Playing D&D definitely boosts my own happiness. I couldn’t tell you exactly why. Maybe it has something to do with hanging out with friends and drinking beer. Maybe it’s because the activity itself is engaging and challenging but not overtly competitive; the players might want to impress each other but there is nothing to prove. I’m not recruiting here — D&D (and tabletop role-playing games in general) aren’t for everyone. Many would find the pace too slow, or the record-keeping aspects too work-like, or the role-playing too awkward and stressful, or the people who play to be too nerdy. But for people who enjoy simulation, improv, fantasy, strategy, and cooperatively generating narratives, there’s nothing else like it.

4. It’s cheap.

D&D and other tabletop RPG’s (like Pathfinder, Fate, 13th Age, Numenera, Call of Cthulhu, and Runequest) can be expensive hobbies, but they don’t need to be. Resources for 3rd-edition are available for free under the Open Game License. To get started you need a group of people (ideally at least three and no more than seven), a rulebook or electronic rules document, polyhedral dice, a few miniatures, pencils and paper, a table and chairs, and plenty of time (at this point in my life the time is the most expensive element). Compared to almost any other form of entertainment, D&D is a bargain. A single night of clubbing in Vegas could easily set you back a grand. That much money invested in D&D gear would result in an epic collection of hardcover rulebooks, dice, miniatures, and terrain. It could even get you started on converting the spare bedroom into a medieval tavern.

5. The nerds won. So why not join them?

We’re in a strange cultural epoch. Watching Game of Thrones counts as mainstream entertainment, programming computers counts as a regular job, and jock types play a game called “Fantasy Football.” So D&D might be a notch less nerdy, relatively, than it was when I was growing up, because collectively we’re all nerdier. Some of my friends and family still shake their heads a little at my refusal to give up my nerdy childhood pastime, but mostly they get it; it’s entertainment.

THE REAL DANGER OF DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

In the seventies, during D&D’s initial run of popularity, there were some hysterical reactions linking the game to devil worship and teenage suicides. These are the same people (mostly fundamentalist Christians) who are aghast at the popularity of Harry Patter (witchcraft!) and consider our culture to be awash in “occult influences.”

I agree that D&D is a threat to Christianity. Polytheistic pantheons are a part of the game, and I could see how reading Dieties & Demigods could lead to a relativistic view of religion (it did for me). To some Christians, this is a threat.

But overwhelmingly, role-playing games are a force for good. If you have any doubts about this, watch this video — it might change your mind.

But there is a real danger of playing Dungeons & Dragons. Sitting for hours, consuming soda and/or beer, and eating salty snacks is bad for the waistline and bad for cardiovascular health. D&D works best as a lifestyle element if there is some other outdoor/exercise-type hobby to mitigate the sedentary calorie consuming. Something like larping. Or for the hardcore types who aren’t afraid to lose a tooth, there’s this:

RPG Renaissance

D&D and other tabletop RPGs are enjoying a surge in popularity. Sometime in the next year Wizards of the Coast will release their new edition of D&D (even more remarkably, Forbes is covering Dungeons & Dragons). Celebrities like Wil Wheaton and Vin Diesel have championed the game. Nerd culture in general in on the rise. I think we’ll see tabletop RPGs rise in popularity for some time. I predict they’ll steal “market share” from television and video games.

But if it doesn’t go that way, I’ll still play. D&D has been my favorite game for thirty years, and I don’t see why I can’t keep playing for at least another thirty.

What’s your favorite game that you keep coming back to, year after year? And why?

The Pursuit of Happiness Is Meaningless Without the Pursuit of Justice

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On December 16

In Culture Rants/Shares, Metaprogramming, Utopian Speculations

Where’s the Justice League when you need ’em?

Ambushed By An Article

Yesterday morning I was happily drinking coffee and reading the New York Times, when I came across this disturbing article by conservative think tanker Arthur Brooks.

The piece starts off as a bland rehash of “the latest” happiness research (trotting out studies from the seventies). Nothing new, but nothing offensive either. Towards the end, the piece takes a sharp right turn as Brooks champions free enterprise as the solution to both personal happiness and global poverty. The bogeymen of socialism and collectivism are trotted out as the usual enemies. Perhaps as an apologetic concession to liberal NYT readers, Brooks does acknowledge that social mobility and economic opportunity are on the decline in the United States (at least as compared to Canada and the Scandinavian countries — ironically all collectivist social democracies). The whole piece is a confused mess.

Personal Development Hijacked by Corporate Ideology

So why am I writing about it?

This blog is subtitled “Systems for Living Well.” I agree with many of Arthur Brooks’ conclusions about personal happiness (a spiritual life, strong relationships, meaningful work, and connection to community are all important). But I want to distance myself from Brooks (as well as bloggers like Steve Pavlina, Gretchen Rubin, Tony Robbins, and Tim Ferriss) who approach personal happiness and life satisfaction in a “bubble” context, ignoring social and political issues as if they didn’t exist.

Too often, self-help philosophies function as a justification for right-wing ideology. Ignore the bad cards life has dealt you, and pull yourself up by your own bootstraps! Pursue your passion and beat the economic odds! Be a winner not a loser! A credo of personal accountability ties in neatly to ideals of free enterprise and anti-welfare sentiments.

In a similar vein, advocating gratitude and forgiveness as spiritual practices is usually good advice (in terms of emotional health and personal empowerment). But the same philosophy can be twisted to imply that workers should be happy with (and feel grateful for) whatever is doled out by their employers, instead of negotiating for better wages, benefits, and working conditions, or fighting against corporate crime and corruption. It’s one thing to forgive the CEO of a Wall Street company that swindled tax-payers, so you don’t have to live with hate in your heart. But it’s another thing to lie down and let them do it again.

I believe in personal accountability, the value of hard work, establishing effective habits, practicing gratitude — all the same things that the Pavlina/Rubin/Robbins/Ferriss types are pushing. But I also believe that if we truly want to live well, we should fight against the injustices that prevent others from living well.

So what are the injustices we should be fighting against? Well, for starters:

Maybe, if I’m not happy, it’s because my conscience isn’t clear. Maybe I’m not working hard enough for the right for others to get a fair shot at the pursuit of happiness. Yes, we’re all responsible for our own happiness and sense of meaning in life. But if we ignore injustice, others may not even get the chance to pursue happiness.

Call To Action

To writers, bloggers, economists, psychologists, and social scientists who are exploring the topic of happiness, here’s what I’m suggesting:

  • Don’t be a tool for corporate ideology. In the discussion of personal happiness and life meaning, don’t ignore oppression and injustice, wherever you see it.
  • Allow for the possibility that the concepts of personal accountability and social inequity/injustice can co-exist.
  • Don’t only look at happiness and life satisfaction on a personal level, but consider social and economic factors that affect us collectively, and call people to action to fight against injustice, greed, corruption, oppression, and other realities that hurt all of us.

I do understand why self-help writers want to steer clear of these topics. If you write about political issues, you potentially lose half your audience (or more). And I want to give credit to Ferriss and Robbins especially for raising money for schools, fighting poverty, etc.

But it’s delusional to think that we can *all* pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and visualize (or optimize) our way to an ideal life, when income inequality is so high, and social mobility so low, and we live in an age of rampant unchecked corporate irresponsibility.

Please share your thoughts below.

Quality of Consciousness

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On August 2

In Mental Health, Metaprogramming

It’s about the quality.

Three personal values, or metaprograms:

  1. Maintain a high quality of consciousness.
  2. Take radical responsibility for every aspect of your life.
  3. Design and implement a system of functional vitality.

The three are interdependent and intertwined, but this post focuses on the first.

Everything we do, we do to alter our state of mind. The motivation behind every external gain (both selfish and altruistic) is the feeling we expect to get from the result. We do things because we expect the result to be happiness, satisfaction, cessation of pain, euphoria, contentment, peace, or some other desirable sensation, emotion, or state of mind.

I call this the psychedelic realization. It’s what Timothy Leary was getting at when he said “tune in, turn on, and drop out.” You don’t have to follow society’s implicit and explicit “live this way” rules (ie. the “rat race”) in order to receive the feel-good rewards of high-status, wealth, etc. Instead, you can engage your neural circuitry more directly. In Leary’s own words (from Flashbacks):

‘Turn on’ meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. ‘Tune in’ meant interact harmoniously with the world around you – externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. ‘Drop out’ suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. ‘Drop Out’ meant self-reliance, a discovery of one’s singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean ‘Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity’.

So how do we maintain a high quality of consciousness? How do we feel good (and fully awake, aware, and alive), directly and immediately?

Like Leary, I don’t think that taking consciousness as the primary consideration necessarily leads to navel-gazing, inactivity, self-obsession, substance abuse, or disengagement. If we really take our own state of mind seriously, then the more likely result is proactive behavior, including getting stuff done, taking charge of our lives, planning, being more engaged with the world, being conscious in our relationships, and generally being more real, alive, intelligent, aware, and powerful.

In regards to mind-altering substances, there’s a fine line between better-living-through-chemistry, and numbing out. If we’re experiencing negative fall-out (hangovers, sleeplessness, difficulty concentrating, mood swings, etc.) from any chemicals we’re using, then what we’re getting is crappy-living-through-chemistry. I like my coffee, but I don’t want to be the caffeine spider.

Web spinning – no drugs vs. caffeine.

For what it’s worth, here my own list of how to maintain a high quality of consciousness. Despite my total atheism, this list cribs heavily from religious texts and teachings (mostly Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism — the three traditions I’m somewhat familiar with). None of the concepts are complicated or secretive, but they’re all difficult to implement consistently. That’s why I have a list in the first place.

1. Open Heart

What does it mean to keep your heart open? It means that you’re vulnerable to pain and hurt, as well and pleasure and joy. Opening your heart means increasing your emotional bandwidth. You can’t have a symphony of feeling if only one note is available to you.

Living with an open heart is an emotional force multiplier. By practicing compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, and courage, we remove roadblocks to our own energy, vitality, motivation, love of life, and power.

Living with an open heart also means we’re more vulnerable emotionally. When we increase the bandwidth, we also let in anger, fear, disappointment, loss, grief, shame, envy, and all the “bad stuff.”

These “negative” emotions are debugging tools for our brain. If we don’t let them in, we have no idea what’s wrong inside. It’s better to fully experience and process your emotions than to be numb. Numbness (narrow bandwidth) results in a dull affect, no joy, and inertia when it comes to action. Emotional repression can also lead to muscle pain (John Sarno’s theory is that repressed emotions leads to chronic muscle tension which leads to reduced blood flow which leads to chronic pain — I’ve personally experienced major pain relief from simply allowing myself to feel my own feelings).

Emotional processing can mean talking it out, doing therapy, journal writing, and the like, but it can also mean taking action in the world. How can you fight injustice if you can’t experience anger? How can you be a better person if you can’t allow yourself to feel shame for your past wrongs?

2. Mind Like Water

Having a tranquil mind doesn’t mean being sleepy or spaced out. It means effectively controlling your attention, keeping your conscience clear, managing distractions, and processing information effectively.

David Lynch compares meditation to tooth-brushing. If I’m willing to dedicate a few minutes each day to keeping my teeth clean, why not do the same thing for my mind? Mental hygiene.

Another part of “mind like water” is having and consistently using an organizational system that fits your personality. There’s no one-size-fits-all, but David Allen’s Getting Things Done is a great starting point.

Reams have been written about managing distractions. Some are people are capable of truly simultaneous multi-tasking, but most of us are just deluding ourselves. In practice, for myself, managing distractions means 1) picking just a few priority items to get done each each day, 2) thinking ahead in terms of childcare and other family obligations, and 3) using LeechBlock to make sure I don’t fall down the social media sinkhole.

Is my conscience clear? Never perfectly. There’s always some crappy thing I’ve done, some way I could have treated someone better. But for the most part I try to be decent to other people, and to apologize and make it right when I do mess up. When my conscience is mostly clear is when I’m most effective and focused.

What else? Non-attachment. My peace of mind shouldn’t depend on external conditions or outcomes. I can’t control everything (nor would I want to — a single agent game would be boring). I can’t totally control other people’s perceptions, feelings, or actions (unless I use coercion, which is too costly in almost all cases). So in some cases I surrender to things I can’t control. This isn’t passivity or fatalism — it’s just realism and picking my battles. We aren’t gods and puppet-masters, we are limited agents with limited powers. To attempt total control is pathological.

3. Empowerment

Most people vastly underestimate their own capacity to determine their own lives and to change the world. Most of us are eager to give up our power to others. This is reasonable. It requires tremendous effort to actually visualize a better life for yourself, and a better world. There are too many variables. It hurts the brain. Inertia is much easier!

Still, empowerment is a crucial part of quality of consciousness. Even if our striving comes to nothing, the neurogenesis is worth it.

You could call it radical self reliance. You could call it living your best possible life. Not settling for what others are willing to give you, but instead creating exactly what you think is worth creating. Not coasting through with what you already know, but straining to learn (and use) new knowledge and new skills. It takes enormous effort, it involves multiple failures, and there’s no guarantee of any success whatsoever.

Is self-empowerment worth it? Is it too much bother?

It’s worth it because it keeps your brain fresh. It’s worth it because it gives you something to push against, and to know you’re there in the world.

Take Away

I don’t think just deciding to be happy works very well. We might just end up with forced cheeriness, which is creepy. And if we’re depressed, meditation or a to-do list system isn’t going to instantly snap us out of it (there are many effective approaches to treating depression — personally I like the “become more paleolithic” method).

But I do think we can decide to prioritize quality of consciousness, and take both internal and external actions to do so. It’s not necessarily the path to happiness (that has more to do with friendships, community, and marriage — in other words happiness is almost entirely about social interaction [TED talk]). But if we focus on quality of consciousness, our relationships (both personal and community) will improve, quickly and radically.

Unrelated News

In other news, my group Momu has a new album out. It’s only available on Beatport at the moment, which is a little pricey. If you like the music but can’t afford the Beatport price, the general release date is August 15. The iTunes version will be cheaper, and it will be available on Spotify as well (free).

The Emotional Force Multiplier

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On June 19

In Mental Health, Metaprogramming

Motivational hotfix.

In an earlier post, Force Multipliers In Life, I wrote about how some behaviors and habits can make us more effective in every life area.  The post focused on increasing biological and organizational energy, including:

  • Consuming Less Poison (and better fuel)
  • Getting Really Fucking Organized (GRFO)
  • Ninja Training (customized exercise and meditation habits)

I also mentioned a fourth area — an attitudinal adjustment that can increase our effectiveness and happiness.

What Makes Us Do What We Do?  Are We Free?

Everything we do, whether we understand it or not, is an attempt to alter the chemistry of our brains.  Of course we have real world “motivations” — we want to create things, help people, have sex, eat well, make the world a better place, accumulate power, get rich, or whatever.  Some of these motivations appear to be selfish, others altruistic.  Ultimately, though, all behavior is selfish.  We do things because our brain chemistry compels us to do them.  This is the psychedelic realization.

People that have this realization don’t stop engaging with the world — they may in fact engage even more — but they do realize that all motivation comes from within.  We do things because we’re programmed to do them.  Some of this programming is low level/subconscious (instinct, reflexes, addictions, compulsions, habits) and some of it is more complex/conscious  (conscience, values, reason, etc.).  While we never completely control (or even understand) our own behavior, we still have the option of reprogramming ourselves.  If you approach the question of free will as a spectrum (as opposed to “we have it or we don’t”), then metaprogramming is a range of techniques that most expands our freedom.  In other words, we’re most free when we take responsibility for our own programming.

Quality of Consciousness

In one sense, all we have in life is our moment-to-moment experience of the world (including our experience of our own mind, as thoughts and memories).  Quality of consciousness is how we feel, and our state of awareness, at any given moment.  How lucid are we?  How happy?  What’s our emotional state?  Confused?  Determined?  Angry?  Excited?  Hopeless?  There is no shortage of ways to describe subjective consciousness.  What can we know about quality of consciousness?  A couple points stand out to me:

  • Quality of consciousness is extremely important, on both an individual and societal level
  • Quality of consciousness is very difficult to control directly

If we can positively influence our quality of consciousness, we have a huge force multiplier on our hands.  Morale, happiness, confidence — whatever you want to call it — a feel-good boost immediately carries over into every aspect of our lives.

Limits to “Snap Out Of It” Consciousness Changes

Sometimes we feel bad, and there’s very little we can do about it.  A few weeks ago I was lying in bed and I began to feel a deep sense of unease.  This feeling worsened to a state of dread, approaching horror.  Why did I feel so bad?  It occurred to me that if I felt this way all the time, I wouldn’t want to go on living.  I couldn’t imagine having the mental fortitude to tolerate such a negative, painful state of consciousness for a long amount of time.

Ten minutes later I was puking up a fruit salad rainbow into the toilet bowl.  Turns out I had that 4-hour stomach bug that was going around.

As I lay on the cool bathroom floor, enjoying that oh-so-blissful feeling that is I’m-no-longer-about-to-throw up, it was clear to me that sometimes we have no option but to roll with what life deals us.  Our quality of consciousness sometimes isn’t even within our indirect control.  There was no way I could have “decided” to feel better until that particular illness had taken its course.

We should keep this in mind when we (or those we love) go through difficult times, experiencing anxiety, depression, or other negative states of consciousness.  There are things that we can do to improve our state of mind, but none of them will work instantaneously.  Usually, we can’t just “snap out of it.”

Forced cheeriness just makes us feel hollow and anxious.

Why Deciding To Be Happy Doesn’t Work

If we try to force a positive mental state, we’re more likely to induce unease and anxiety than happiness.  Forced cheeriness isn’t the same as happiness — it’s more likely to be obnoxious and drive people away.  This article discusses how pursuing happiness directly can actually make us feel worse.

The best we can do is approach happiness indirectly.  Researchers that have looked into the nuts and bolts of what creates happiness (Stefan Sagmeister presents a good overview) have discovered that many aspects of self and life that are commonly associated with happiness don’t actually matter (including income level, attractiveness, and superior health).  What does matter is friendships, marriage, and being part of a regular community or group (could be church, or any type of weekly group activity).

We can also take an empirical approach to happiness, noticing what makes us happy and what makes us miserable (and doing more of the former and less of the latter).  I keep lists of both categories.  I actually look at them too — to remind me never to go down a particular road again.  The “Don’t Do” list includes items such as “Never shop at Safeway at night” and “Never work remotely with a slow internet connection” and “Don’t answer client emails after 6 pm” and “Avoid large crowds of sports fans.”  On the positive side are writing, music production, and eating dinner with friends and/or family.  It’s not rocket science, but I still find I need constant reminders to do more of the fun stuff and less of the not-fun stuff.

So … better/more social connections and choosing activities that we enjoy — these are external approaches that improve our quality of consciousness.  But are there internal actions we can take that reliably and consistently raise our consciousness level, increase our effectiveness, and make us happier?

The Emotional/Attitudinal Force Multiplier

I strongly believe that if we choose to live life with an open heart, this will consistently and significantly boost our quality of consciousness.

I think there are three components to the emotional or attitudinal stance of open-heartedness, including:

  • Forgiveness
  • Gratitude
  • Compassion

Unfortunately, there are many misconceptions about what each of these mental practices involves.  These misconceptions create resistance that prevents us from taking advantage of the emotional bounty that comes with a shift towards open-heartedness.

South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Resistance Towards Forgiveness

Forgiveness simply means that you accept whoever has wronged you (or whoever you think has wronged you) as a flawed human being, and let your rage towards them slowly and naturally dissolve.

Forgiveness does not mean:

  • being a doormat
  • not taking appropriate steps to protect yourself in the future
  • dropping legal charges
  • not seeking justice
  • getting back together/reconciling
  • forgetting what happened

Forgiveness does mean that you stop pouring energy into rage, and that you let go of your mental construct of being a victim.  It takes time, and usually the choice to forgive needs to be made multiple times.  If we don’t make this choice, then rage, the desire for vengeance, and a feeling of powerless victimhood can steal years (or decades) of our lives.

If we do manage to forgive, we free up an enormous amount of energy to heal and reconstruct from whatever injury has been done.  Instead of an “eye for an eye,” go get yourself a bionic eye.  Living well is the best revenge.

Resistance Towards Gratitude

The primary resistance to gratitude comes from a lack of a satisfying answer to the question “Who should I be grateful to?”

Not all of us believe in a deity.  Personally I fall somewhere along the atheist/agnostic spectrum.  But this doesn’t stop me from experiencing the feeling of gratitude.  I’m thankful for my family, my friends, my health, my work, and plenty of other things.

Basically, gratitude is looking at your life and realizing how lucky you are.  No matter how bad you have it, it only takes a little imagination to imagine a much worse fate.

Is this so obvious that I shouldn’t even be writing about it?  I wouldn’t, except for the fact that there are so many miserable fucks out there driving fancy cars, in perfect health, with money in the bank, feeling sorry for themselves because some girl didn’t call them back.  Or because it’s raining.  Or because they didn’t get a bonus at work.  Or whatever!  Get over it — be grateful for the bounty in your life.

Resistance Towards Compassion

As it turns out, when you live life as a human being, you’re always fucking somebody over.  There’s no way around it.

Even if you’re a do-gooder vegan who has donated a kidney to charity and has a negative carbon footprint, you’re still taking up space on the damn planet.  You’re preventing wildlife from thriving in the space you inhabit.  You’re consuming resources while others go hungry.  Valuable field mouse habitat was destroyed to grow the quinoa in your dumpster-dived energy bar.

I ride my bike to reduce time in the car, and I buy humanely-treated animal products whenever possible.  Still, I’m a first-world car-driving meat-eater.  I’m part of the problem, and I know it.  Underpaid Chinese laborers made this nice laptop I’m typing on.  The Ecuadoran field worker who picked the banana I just ate was probably paid even less.

Most of us think we’re good people, but at the same time we know some of the things we do result in cruelty to animals, destroying the environment, or encouraging unfair labor practices.  One way to deal with this cognitive dissonance is to close our hearts a little to the suffering of others (both people and animals).

The problem with this approach is that it deadens us.  If we turn off our empathy (because it hurts too much, or because it disturbs our image of ourselves), then we feel less alive.

We resist compassion because compassion is messy.  Compassion for other creatures forces us to look at our complex relationships with other people, animals, and the environment.  Those relationships are full of unfairness, and sometimes cruelty.

Still, it’s better to stay open-hearted, acknowledge that we’re imperfect, and do our best to muddle through life doing more good and less harm.  We don’t have to behave perfectly or heroically — we just have to keep our hearts open and see what actions that leads to.

The other option is closing our hearts and pretending other people and animals are either subhuman or incapable of feeling emotion.  This leads to animal cruelty, worker exploitation, systemized oppression, slavery, and even genocide.

Estimated 1.25-1.5 Force Multiplication Effect

I’m not sure how to quantify how much of a force multiplication effect being open-hearted provides.  Just from my own experience, I would estimate at least a 25% boost to happiness and effectiveness when I practice a combination of forgiveness, gratitude, and compassion on a regular basis.  Maybe even 50% at times.

Practicing open-heartedness feels like removing roadblocks to my own energy, motivation, and love of life.

I’m not always able to manage it.  Sometimes I get angry at somebody, or fixated on something, and I need to pull out the big guns to manipulate my mental state.  I’ll talk about manipulating submodalities in a later post.

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