“We are approaching a new age of synthesis. Knowledge cannot be merely a degree or a skill… it demands a broader vision, capabilities in critical thinking and logical deduction without which we cannot have constructive progress”

We’ve reviewed a few of the fundamental human psychology concepts over the past four weeks. In today’s post, we are going to discuss 3 insights developed from the feedback from and discussions with many of you about the blog posts. A huge thank you to everyone who provided feedback and chatted with me about the blog!

Frameworks

I love my frameworks, but after reading mindfulness, I reconsidered the importance of frameworks. I feel that frameworks can sometimes make you mindless – you’re either “fixed mindset” or “growth mindset”, you’re either a “maximizer or a “satisficer”, you’re either “an extrovert” or “an introvert.” However, I reasoned with myself that these frameworks are not black and white – you can embody both categories in different parts of your life or you can embody both categories in the same part of your life, but at different times in your life.

I talked to one of my friends about my internal dilemma on frameworks. He said “I find frameworks a helpful way to think about things – they give you a scientific explanation for why you’re doing something and then you can understand yourself better and not feel like a crazy person.”

This got me thinking … frameworks help us raise actions from an unconscious level to a conscious level. Let’s say your manager gives you feedback and you start into a negative spiral – “I am not smart enough and will never last at this company.” Without knowing frameworks, you would just say to yourself “I’m feeling very bad right now,” and continue to have that jittery nervous energy throughout your body. However, now, knowing the core psychology frameworks, you can pause and say “I am being fixed mindset right now.” By being able to put a name to this jittery nervous energy you have, you can more objectively assess the situation, your feelings and your response. And then you remember the other part of the framework – growth mindset – which can help you start to reframe the feedback from criticism on your intelligence to helpful tips on how to guide your work going forward.

Being able to put a label on your emotions has been shown to do great things. Let’s say you have a fight with a friend and you identify yourself as “feeling bad.” This isn’t helping your brain process what’s going on because many things can make you feel bad – getting food poisoning, experiencing a heartbreak and realizing you forgot your laptop at home when you arrive at work. If you can be granular on what type of “bad” you’re feeling – guilty, frightened, lonely, resentful, aggressive, you will be able to better understand yourself and decide on the best path forward given the context, as opposed to mindlessly letting your thoughts run into the same negative habit loop of self-judgment and criticism.

So, I’ve decided that I love my frameworks and will continue to use them in most cases.

Try This: During the week, when you start to feel bad about something, take a pause. See if you can more granularly identify what the bad feeling is. Do any of the frameworks help you understand why you’re feeling bad? - are you being fixed mindset? are you following a negative habit loop? are you being a maximizer? How do you feel after this exercise?

Mindfulness Makes Us Be Kinder to Ourselves and Others

In the mindfulness post, we talked about how being mindful can help you change, but I did not fully understand this concept until these past few weeks (and probably still don’t fully understand it). But I believe that mindfulness can help you change because you are more compassionate to yourself and others.

I often get upset that I cave to my bad habit of eating sugary candies and I was embodying a fixed mindset and seeing this as something I would always be tempted by. When I took a deeper look at the contexts that drive my bad habit – it’s stress or boredom at work. But once these cues or triggers are gone, I can easily say no to sugary sweets. By looking at my actions in context, I can be less judgmental of myself – instead of saying to myself “I can’t believe I ate that chocolate candy bar,” I understand that I am feeling very stressed right now and I’m looking for a sweet and relaxing thing. When these contexts came up again, I was able to explain to myself why I was feeling this way and went on a walk, talked to a friend or researched party planning instead. However, there were still times where I ate the candy bar, but then I tried to move on with my life, explaining the context to myself, instead of judging my behavior.

We discussed how breaking a bad habit focuses on either removing the cue, so you don’t complete the bad habit or changing the routine when you feel a negative emotion. But I truly believe that a bad habit cannot be broken unless we are compassionate towards ourselves and forgive ourselves when we slip back into a bad habit.

Interestingly, most humans (but, not me) attribute negative behavior to context when it comes to ourselves, but when it comes to others, we attribute their negative behavior to their character. For example, if you are late to work, you think “the subway was down, which is why I’m late to work.” However, if a co-worker comes in late, we think “my-coworker is late because they are irresponsible,” when in fact, their subway was delayed. Over the past two weeks, instead of judging people when their actions do not align with what I expect, I try to understand what potential contexts could be driving their behavior. For example, if my co-worker isn’t engaged at work, maybe it’s because he has other things going on at home, not because he’s a lazy worker; if my friend is very curt with me on the phone, maybe it’s because she had a hard discussion with her boyfriend, not because she’s not a caring and compassionate friend; if a guy on a first date says that he’s good at his job and getting promoted year-after-year, maybe it’s because he’s intimated by my career, not because he’s arrogant. This has made me be less frustrated with people this past week.

Try This: When you start to judge yourself or someone else for a negative behavior, create a list of at least 5 reasons for why they could be responding this way. Reflect on how you feel after this exercise.

Learned Helplessness

In response to the Paradox of Choice blog, one of the readers said that given that we have too many choices in our world today, what if we had no choices – would we feel better, even though this goes against our “American principles?”

Short answer – absolutely not!

Being without options, you feel out of control of your life, which can lead to (i) reduced motivation to try in the future (ii) inability to detect situations where you have control (iii) suppressed immune system and (iv) in certain circumstances, profound clinical depression.  

In a study, rats were placed in ice water immediately, where they could swim without difficulty for 40-60 hours. However, if the researchers held the rats in the water until they stop struggling, the rats gave up immediately and drowned, instead of swimming.

We often think by doing something for our family, friends and significant others, that we are helping them achieve their goals, but we are really perpetuating learned-helplessness – where people do not exert effort in situations that they could easily manage because they do not think they are capable of doing so. All those times that I did math worksheets for the students I tutored, completed my brothers projects and rewrote my analysts’ work without giving her feedback to improve, were perpetuating the concept of learned helplessness for these people. Instead, sitting next to these people while they are doing the task and providing pointers, frameworks or examples, gives them the tools to improve, so you’re happy with the outcome and they build self-worth and confidence.

Try This: When you start to take control away from someone because they are not doing something “right,” give them feedback, so they can correct their work instead of correcting it for them. I think you’ll find that you’ll get consistently better work back from them.

So – here’s my ask

I switched up the format for this blog post – I would love to hear if you liked this format more or less than the previous posts. Also, are there any concepts from the blog that you are wrestling with internally or disagree with – I would love to hear from you! E-mail me at nicoleepollack@gmail.com