Radical Practice Peace of Mind E-Book

Izabela Luiza Jahn

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 113

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

We think we know a lot about ourselves, but unfortunately, we often have unfounded opinions about how we and others are. At the same time, we have no idea how our own brain works and what it is doing to us at the moment, and what fundamental demands this places on us. We consider our thoughts to be true and correct, yet they are so often miserable and simply wrong, and yet they determine our lives. In "Radical Practice Peace of Mind" you will find the latest research results, further considerations, as well as practical instructions on how to lead a fulfilling life.

Leseprobe

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Akrasia is not a wonderland

Take out the trash

Radical honesty

Radical action

The Significant Other

Emotions

Respect Yourself

Negative emotions vs. responsive mode

Responsive mode enabled

What is happiness?

Habit

Ad rem

Sleep, eat, meditate, love, repeat

Until you actually live your values and insights, what you think doesn't really matter. It only becomes significant when you act on it.

AKRASIA IS NOT A WONDERLAND

An old coaching adage is, "If you can't apply it yourself, make it an advice." The world is full of knowledge about "what is good for us" and of people who have that knowledge in their heads, but then turn around and do the exact opposite.

The ancient Greeks had their own word for this phenomenon: akrasia. It's easier to grasp than "acting against one's better judgment. We know this: "I'm not eating these chips. No way. "Crunch, smack.” Bag empty... And boom: guilty conscience and self-loathing. And now that it all doesn't matter anyway: where was the chocolate?"

Exactly, self-control is considered the antidote. A clear plan for selfimprovement, with goals and discipline as means of salvation. The sixpack as proof of performance and self-esteem. This then leads, among other things, to high-tech packed uphill and smile-avoiding cyclists who doggedly complete their optimized training plans and then post the evaluation begging for likes on Facebook or Insta. Social media in particular is full of the perfect bodies, eyebrows, workouts and meals optimized in their gluten content, the perfect morning routine and the perfect life anyway. Everything is planned, has a goal and must bring a benefit, otherwise it's all nothing. It's all about the YOU, and the advertising slogan for it certainly includes a you, your, for you and a bunch of emotions and hyped experiences, because that sells best. You too can have the perfect lifestyle, body and experiences (with our product). Is that really doable? Can we be perfect if we just pull ourselves together and shop the right stuff? Probably not, when there is the yo-yo effect and supposedly 90% of all New Year's resolutions fail, and relationships always revolve around the same problems. In many countries people have hardly any money to spare, but many supposedly salvific products. There are things from which there seems to be no escape. Siren song that always leaves us smashed against the same cliff.

Weaknesses. Everyone has them. Not everyone likes to admit it. Not everyone sees them either. And then comes the well-known cliff... it's almost reassuring. Everyone must have a weakness; it is not said for nothing. Hehe.

Yes quite funny. Only it was supposedly Einstein who said so aptly that "it is madness to do the same thing over and over again but expect different results." It wasn't Einstein, of course. It just makes the saying sound more legitimate and weighty in a world that confuses famous names with authority and competence in a special field. The saying is still true, just by the way....

But then what's the problem? If perfection is not possible, then weakness is okay, right?

The problem is that we strive for perfection where it is unattainable or obsolete, and we squeeze both eyes tightly shut on grandiose weaknesses. We polish the facade and sweep the dirt inside instead of getting rid of it and wonder why happiness and fulfillment do not materialize. But what really brings happiness?

Apparently, it's not the good school degree, not the diploma, and not the car. Nor is it the house - and it's not the family. And it's certainly not the promotion, and it's not even the six-pack. At best, all of this briefly creates a high mood, and afterwards everything is just as gray as before. Or worse, because now you have to do everything to keep the six-pack maintained or you'll fail and fail...

We like to believe it very much that "if only xy, then I will be furiously and wishfully happy." But practice teaches us that this a. is not true, even if things turn out as you liked and b. is always "something" that does not go as intended. So you can only lose that way. Everyone who is older than twenty knows from experience that the "Once I have xy, then I'll be happy" song is not true. It's just that we like to believe it - perhaps for lack of an alternative?

How to win? Have no expectations? But still keep demands? Is it even possible to win? Is there one solution, or is it all very complicated and still individual?

My favorite thinker says: "Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children; they own the kingdom until the stupidity of society and culture infects and corrupts them. To attain happiness, you don't have to do anything, because happiness cannot be attained. Do you know why? Because we already have it. How can you attain what you already have? But then why don't you experience it? Because you have to lose something first, and that is your illusions. You don't need anything extra to be happy; on the contrary, you need to lose something. Life is easy, life is fun. It's just hard on your illusions, ambitions, greed, desires." ,1 So you have to lose to gain. But what exactly are we supposed to lose?

TAKE OUT THE TRASH

Strictly speaking, we need to get rid of the obstructive garbage from our head. There is only one small problem, an original sin if you will, which keeps us from paradise, and which we unfortunately have factory-built into us by the manufacturer. As mammals, we come into the world very underdeveloped and are existentially dependent on the care of our parents, and programmed to do everything to please them and receive their affection in order to actually survive. And by everything, I really mean everything. The parents are God in the child’s universe and it does everything to fit in. Even if you have/had loving parents, they have their own limitations and deformations that have been passed on to you because you have been raised in certain ways (by your parents consciously and also unconsciously) accordingly. As a rule, you are not brought up to develop your full potential and to be happy, but at best to "have it good"-meaning to function well in society and to have a financial livelihood. And that means as a child you are supposed to be well-behaved and obedient - so you are brought up to function according to certain ideas. These are not necessarily yours. And this is still the best case. The more serious your parents' problems with themselves or one another are, in short, the more dysfunctional your family is, the more you have a big problem: because in order to survive, you adapt to a completely sick system to the maximum, while still telling yourself that you are to blame, because unfortunately children relate everything to themselves. Not only is there no happiness there and no fostering appropriate and fair to the child, but the "perfect" adaptation to a dysfunctional system is what happens instead. This causes many permanent damages. What was experienced in childhood really leaves deep tracks and forms the personality and social skills of the child:

"As early as the 1940s, within the framework of the attachment research established by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, the insight was corroborated that the first years of life are crucial in the maturation of this "social brain". This is in the context of the early childhood attachment experience with the primary caregiver, i.e. usually - but by no means necessarily - with the mother. On the one hand, the infant and toddler experience the benefits of care from the caregiver, and this generates a primordial trust. At the same time, the emotional-communicative interaction slowly differentiates the child's initially still diffuse emotional world. The way in which the caregiver interacts with him or her imprints their emotional world on the child, at least in part. This applies especially to dealing with stress and strain, such as temporary separation from the mother, the ability to wait for rewards, to curb spontaneous impulses, to resolve conflicts without violence, or to develop an idea of how others feel and think - in other words, everything that belongs to basic social skills. "2

Where it goes wrong, it has a devastating effect and permanently impairs personal development:

"However, this presupposes that the person providing care, i.e. usually the mother, has appropriate competencies herself. If these are not present or not sufficiently present, for example due to the mother's own lack of attachment experiences, traumatization through maltreatment, abuse or severe strokes of fate, then these deficits imprint themselves in a disastrous way on the psyche and personality of the young child. They also form the basis of later psychological disorders, including poor attachment skills in adolescence and adulthood. There is then a greatly increased risk that a depressed mother will pass on her illness to her children through her behavior.

The consequences of such negative influences in early childhood can now be detected in the brains of adolescents and adults using various neurobiological methods. This is usually done by measuring the amount of certain substances relevant to the psyche (neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, neurohormones) and combining them with the results of functional magnetic resonance imaging. This shows that, due to early childhood damage, those parts of the brain are particularly affected that have to do with dealing with stress, with selfsoothing, impulse inhibition, bonding and empathy. However, it is also noted that such deficits in both brain and behavior usually disappear if good alternative attachment experiences are made within about two years.

[...] Actually, it's never too late to do so, although improving one's state of mind is increasingly difficult to achieve the older the person is."3

This partly explains why it is so difficult to change fundamental things permanently and sustainably. In my last book, I wrote that it is "my basic insight is [...] that we don't want to admit certain things:

1. That it all lies in childhood (and traumatic difficult experiences in adulthood, if applicable).

2. That we are so imbued with it that it doesn't occur to us in everyday life that there might be something wrong with our perception.

3. Or that we think our problems are so special that the "easy methods" don't help anyway

4. Whereby this is also only an ingenious attempt to evade responsibility for oneself

5. And to avoid having to change anything

6. For we fear the unknown more than we fear the known pain."4

We think of ourselves as rational and reason-driven beings, yet we only rationalize our behavior in retrospect for our supposed benefit. Even cognitive insight - if it succeeds in breaking through the repression and exposing beliefs - is not enough. For it are the emotions that control our behavior and these are deeply ingrained in us and can be reactivated with old behavior patterns in a fraction of a second. Especially during stress, we fall back into old coping strategies, and in addition, the burden of stress is also felt much more massive, one is virtually punished twice. Where one needs calmness and composure the most, this is gone, and you regress much faster into childlike behavior patterns.

Our childhood also shapes our choice of partner; we don't necessarily look for the partner who is really good for us, but one who gives us the familiar feelings from childhood that we think are love. These, if some theories are to be believed, have not changed since then, so we have a very childish and immature idea of "being loved". So if you come from a dysfunctional family, you will inevtable look for the partner who will recreate with you the dynamics of your childhood and give you the familiar charge of pain. 5

What does all this mean for our question? As a reminder, can you really take out the trash? Can you put it all behind you? Properly, thoroughly, definitively?

Yes, but on the one hand you are afraid to apply what you have perhaps even recognized as right, because it can mean confronting yourself, standing there alone and starting from scratch. And on the other hand, you become a toddler again through your emotions in the partnership, or in dealing with people important to you, and everything is back to the way it was. Nothing changes, or small changes go down in vehement friction with time, or they go down because you fall back into old behavior patterns out of habit. We also live in a society that calls us to do "what feels good to you" and thus be "authentic." However, this means that you can simply follow your whims, impulses and emotions, and thereby also be a "big immature child" or even an "authentic asshole" who hurts others and simply acts out in an unreflective and inconsiderate (possibly also autodestructive) manner. Miłosz Brzezinski said so beautifully in an interview, "Authenticity is not a value in itself." This is absolutely true, and also explains why, despite all individualism and supposed "authenticity," we do not really arrive at a happy and meaningful life.

We lack not only true self-understanding, but also morality. Morality in particular has become quite unpopular in recent decades. It is regarded as a dusty relic of the world religions, as a rigid smallminded rule, which our progressive enlightened world does not need.