#73: Three Things that got me thinking
😶perfectly unhappy + 🧠 de-conditioning + 💛willing heart
Hello smart ones,
Last week I published my first advice column! Here’s my response to two thoughtful readers who asked me about sustaining motivation over long projects:
And now, onto the Three Things that got me thinking about intrinsic motivation in the past week:
Redefining happiness
De-conditioning
Emotional agility
1. First of all
This comic by The Oatmeal:
Oh, I don’t know.
I just like SlargNakking.Sometimes my arms hurt from lifting these, and sometimes I get frustrated.
But I find it meaningful.
2. Doing the things
I’ve been bingeing on Elisabeth Feytit’s podcast (in French1) Méta de Choc—a prolific exploration of metacognition (= thinking about our own thinking).
In 2019, she published a fascinating six-part conversation with philosophy teacher Grégoire Perra about his 30-year experience living in, then leaving anthroposophy, a sprawling spiritualist movement founded in the early 20th century by Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophy has ramifications not only in education (through Steiner-Waldorf schools), but also in agriculture, banking and cosmetics.
In episode 5.5 of the “Shocking” series, Perra explains his own de-conditioning process, and his search for “truth” and his “real self” (starting around 35:50):
Who I really am, I don’t know if I know it. I’m searching, I have a few leads […]. I’m discovering it through doing the things that I’m passionate about, that I love.
[…] I am someone who loves my cats that run around the apartment. […] I am someone who loves to travel, I am someone who loves to dance, who loves to learn, who is curious about the world.
People around me at the time don’t understand why [my dance classes] are so important to me. […] I reclaim my own body, I reclaim the contemporary world. […] I don’t need intellectual constructs, I avoid them. I want to travel and do things that I don’t know how to do.
3. Wagging finger
Finally, these two quotes from Chapter 7 of Emotional Agility, by Harvard psychologist Susan David.
On have-to vs. want-to motivation:
In trying to bring our actions more in line with what really matters to us, we can double down on discipline and willpower, but, as most of us have learned the hard way, this rarely leads to the best results. You may drag yourself to the gym, but how often does that lead to a great workout and sustained attendance? Or you may call up your relatives out of a sense of obligation, but how often do you have a meaningful conversation? When we enter into something this way—compelled by a wagging finger instead of a willing heart—we end up in an internal tug of war between good intentions and less-than-stellar execution, even when the end goals—improved health, better relationships with family—are supposedly in line with our values.
On the importance of language:
We all fall into these subtle traps of language and thinking: ‘I have to be on “dad duty” today’ or ‘I “have to” attend another boring meeting.’ When we do this, we forget that our current circumstances are often the result of earlier choices we made in service of our values: ‘I want to be a father’ or ‘I love the work that I do and want to excel at my job’.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting we should all simply ‘think positive’ and ignore real underlying concerns. If you can't find a ‘want to’ in some particular facet of your life, then that could be a sign that a change is in order.
The podcast’s in-depth conversations (in French) cover a range of topics including new-age esoterism, positive parenting, and conspiracy theories. Feytit writes:
I invite you on a journey beyond the obvious, on an exploration of our mental conditionings: cultural, religious, familial, ideological, or biological. And I encourage you to ask yourself: but why do I think this? Why do I act this way? Where does this reflex, this repetitive pattern come from?
The one video interview I found in English (below) is a conversation with Jessica Schab, who describes her journey from believer / guru to skeptic. But after this conversation was published, Schab returned to her previous spiritual beliefs, as Feytit explains here (in French).