A key part of breaking cycles for me has been noticing when my default mode network (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network) or DMN is being activated, being able to stop, do a series of 4-2-6 breaths to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and focus on what I'm doing in the present. The DMN is the little chatterbox "daemon" always talking in the background. Learning to consistently notice it and handle it is liberating.
This is not easy, but I've found working on this every day is better than any form of traditional meditation or "mindfulness" work. It truly is work, like exercise, and the point is not how long you do it, but noticing more and more when my DMN engages and I can return to breathing and reactivating my parasympathetic nervous system.
I can't stress enough what a change occurs after two months of focusing on this.
Reminds me of the Buddhist term papañca - mental proliferation, thoughts bouncing off each other, going in different directions and building each other up - it's the opposite of the qualities of calm, collectedness and concentration that are cultivated in meditation.
As a person with long experiences in trauma responses, I see this sort of behavior pattern everywhere. There’s so much “trust your gut!!” advice when the gut can be deeply wrong especially when it comes to identifying interpersonal threats. We don’t educate people in how to process their feelings in a healthy manner and to differentiate what they feel is happening and how they should behave. This results in anything like saying someone has “bad vibes” to be a reason to exclude them, to actively covering for someone with a known pattern of harming people simply because they are charming.
But you also get disasters when people ignore their gut/"vibes" and try to do the "rational" thing based on more easily nameable evidence. The gut is not reliable, but it is a model that's trained on a lot of data and shouldn't be ignored. As usual there are no easy answers.
The problem is identifying what is your gut vs what your brain was wired for over years and decades. It echoes, and this is an abstraction, consumption and how consumption made those crowds and individuals feel, that appeared as having the most fun.
a) you don't see the doses of amphetamines and other drugs these people have consumed or are consuming regularly
but more importantly:
b) your gut is disturbed by what you eat and your brain by what you perceive, which is filtered by your personality and current/past state of mind. just a little of x and it's hard to trust a feeling that comes from a place of mixed feelings, some of which are more obviously bad than others, some of the time.
c) your peripheral gets your subconscious goat all the time.
people are bad at trusting their gut. highly intelligent and or educated people have especially grand issues with that because intuitive heuristics and intuitive cognitive logic get such a bad reputation while nobody ever (I'm exaggerating) speaks or writes about exceptions to common fallacies and bias, which are usually only presented to justify gears of economic rationales that tend to completely ignore side-effects (because "long-termisms", even before the term was coined), often enough due to irrationally high thresholds of relativity aka p-values.
And you start of with
> There’s so much “trust your gut!!” advice when the gut can be deeply wrong
and end on
> This results in anything like saying someone has “bad vibes” to be a reason to exclude them, to actively covering for someone with a known pattern of harming people simply because they are charming.
on purpose. Please, at least try to sound non-manipulative.
The second half of the article was pretty underwhelming. It felt like "don't be a judgemental jerk and assume the worst in people"—unclear how that would help me "spiral upwards"?
I read it as just being context dependent. The "Tripoli" vs "Triple E" bit in the article was to me another anecdote on how we resolve ambiguity based on what we have in our mind's stack at the moment:
> A friend once told me of an ingenious class demonstration that helped her begin to understand this process. A professor split the class in two and then spoke to the first half alone, telling them of his love for travel and a recent trip to Libya. Next, he spoke to the second half about shopping and how hard it was to find the right size shoe. Last, he brought the class together and said a single word. He asked the students to write it down. Students in the first group wrote, “Tripoli.” Those in the second wrote, “Triple E.”
It remains as “Why”. Same for “Why not?”. Maybe it needs at least three words. Though “Why why why“ also isn’t changed. Apologies to anyone who came across my experiments.
I think the shortened title is actually better; the essay doesn't go deep into "why", it's more a set of observations illustrating that we do in fact spiral.
I've found that handwritten letters, to my friends and to my colleagues, tends to go a very long way in making someone's day. Something that takes me ten minutes tends to make a difference for a month of more.
I think it's useful to try to always assume the best from others:
- If they aren't being friendly this will irritate them in a way they cannot object to too openly.
- If they are friendly it will avoid damage and even start an upward spiral.
When you're not feeling good enough it's sometimes helpful to remember that even people who create negative impacts often get into positions of power and stay there for one reason or another. i.e if they can do something very badly then why are you so worried about whether you are worthy?
Finally, remember that lots of people feel like you - so try to do little things that start them on an upward spiral. The more you do this for other people, the more they will be glad to see you.
> The more you do this for other people, the more they will be glad to see you.
That's not a given. That's the rational response on their end, but not only is no one perfectly rational, but some people are very, very irrational.
It can sometimes[1][2] be the case that the best option is to be among those who don't attract any attention at all.
Separately:
The spiraling described in this post is worth consideration, but equally worthy are the odd disparities in professional life (or life in general) and the negative consequences that aren't the result of internal forces like paralyzing self-doubt.
Consider an article that starts just like this one, except it focuses on the different consequences experienced by Dawn who is regularly forgiven for things like tardiness and mistakes in her work in contrast to more severe outcomes for Hila, who after arriving late—perhaps for the first time, even—is perceived to be fucking up because that's in her irresponsible nature[3]—even if a sober, objective analysis would reveal that Hila is actually exceeding the expectations one would have for any employee (and her transgressions are well behind the line of courtesy that is extended to Dawn)—for no other reason than Hila being younger or newer to the company.
This can result in a similar spiral of defeat, but it's a kind of defeat by external forces rather than self-defeat.
1. Depending on your environment/experience, you could even say "very often"
It was a bit glib but what I notice is that small things cheer me up. Good interactions with other people in quite trivial matters send me on a good trajectory.
I also notice that whatever negativity I output to someone, it tends to come back to me multiplied by 1.5. So e.g. with my wife, I find myself in some argument but I can trace it back to some smaller negative thing I said earlier. ie. we get into arguments and the arguments spiral. So IMO it is important to remember to be just slightly more upbeat and neutralise things at the point where they are small if possible.
This doesn't work with people who see you as a threat in some way. They are not appeased, but not everyone is like that and you can at least try to make life reasonable for some being - even if it's just your dog.
I generally agree but in my experience it becomes more complex when you cognitively decide on one thing (to assume the best), but don’t feel it. How you feel influences how it’s going to happen in major and in subtle ways. Your return friendliness may be received as snarky or sarcasm, or at least detected as insincere, to give one example.
In my experience you can only moderate your response. So you cannot pretend to be very pleased when you're 90% certain that someone has been very rude to you but you can avoid an immediate angry response and give yourself time to think. I sometimes feel that I'm being put upon at the moment and then later think perhaps not - I'm always glad when I manage to restrain my initial reaction.
For people trying to sit more in the middle, forcing a neutral balance is another way to do it: don't burn bridges and don't over assume people's feelings.
That means not one-upping snark, but also keeping a healthy default distance with people you deal with professionaly.
One might miss some genuinely heartful exchanges, but it also makes the worst times way easier to deal with. Compensating for keeping too much distance is usually easy, repairing problematic exchanges is way way harder.
Indeed, the default should be to assume the best intentions of people. Also, people can have a bad day and be snarky. Next meeting they might as well be friendly.
Staying positive and not letting (potential) negative feedback derail you, works like magic in the long run.
If someone is really picking on you, or they genuinely disapprove of your work, you will find out in due time.
If you want to work in a corporate environment you have to grow a thick skin and just focus on delivering. Once people realize that you get stuff done despite all the BS nobody will doubt you, ever.
I think it should be said that abusive, toxic work environments can creep up until you're in one, and hearing things like people should just have a tough skin. What would be a more specific way of putting that?
A key part of breaking cycles for me has been noticing when my default mode network (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network) or DMN is being activated, being able to stop, do a series of 4-2-6 breaths to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and focus on what I'm doing in the present. The DMN is the little chatterbox "daemon" always talking in the background. Learning to consistently notice it and handle it is liberating.
This is not easy, but I've found working on this every day is better than any form of traditional meditation or "mindfulness" work. It truly is work, like exercise, and the point is not how long you do it, but noticing more and more when my DMN engages and I can return to breathing and reactivating my parasympathetic nervous system.
I can't stress enough what a change occurs after two months of focusing on this.
Reminds me of the Buddhist term papañca - mental proliferation, thoughts bouncing off each other, going in different directions and building each other up - it's the opposite of the qualities of calm, collectedness and concentration that are cultivated in meditation.
As a person with long experiences in trauma responses, I see this sort of behavior pattern everywhere. There’s so much “trust your gut!!” advice when the gut can be deeply wrong especially when it comes to identifying interpersonal threats. We don’t educate people in how to process their feelings in a healthy manner and to differentiate what they feel is happening and how they should behave. This results in anything like saying someone has “bad vibes” to be a reason to exclude them, to actively covering for someone with a known pattern of harming people simply because they are charming.
But you also get disasters when people ignore their gut/"vibes" and try to do the "rational" thing based on more easily nameable evidence. The gut is not reliable, but it is a model that's trained on a lot of data and shouldn't be ignored. As usual there are no easy answers.
The problem is identifying what is your gut vs what your brain was wired for over years and decades. It echoes, and this is an abstraction, consumption and how consumption made those crowds and individuals feel, that appeared as having the most fun.
a) you don't see the doses of amphetamines and other drugs these people have consumed or are consuming regularly
but more importantly:
b) your gut is disturbed by what you eat and your brain by what you perceive, which is filtered by your personality and current/past state of mind. just a little of x and it's hard to trust a feeling that comes from a place of mixed feelings, some of which are more obviously bad than others, some of the time.
c) your peripheral gets your subconscious goat all the time.
people are bad at trusting their gut. highly intelligent and or educated people have especially grand issues with that because intuitive heuristics and intuitive cognitive logic get such a bad reputation while nobody ever (I'm exaggerating) speaks or writes about exceptions to common fallacies and bias, which are usually only presented to justify gears of economic rationales that tend to completely ignore side-effects (because "long-termisms", even before the term was coined), often enough due to irrationally high thresholds of relativity aka p-values.
And you start of with
> There’s so much “trust your gut!!” advice when the gut can be deeply wrong
and end on
> This results in anything like saying someone has “bad vibes” to be a reason to exclude them, to actively covering for someone with a known pattern of harming people simply because they are charming.
on purpose. Please, at least try to sound non-manipulative.
PS: clattering teeth
The second half of the article was pretty underwhelming. It felt like "don't be a judgemental jerk and assume the worst in people"—unclear how that would help me "spiral upwards"?
Your mind doesn’t, though. It’s still ruminating. Was that snark in my boss’s voice? Were they talking about me before I logged on?
I wonder if some of this could also be related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_attribution_bias where some people simply see ambiguous or benign behavior they don't like and interpret it as hostile.
I read it as just being context dependent. The "Tripoli" vs "Triple E" bit in the article was to me another anecdote on how we resolve ambiguity based on what we have in our mind's stack at the moment:
> A friend once told me of an ingenious class demonstration that helped her begin to understand this process. A professor split the class in two and then spoke to the first half alone, telling them of his love for travel and a recent trip to Libya. Next, he spoke to the second half about shopping and how hard it was to find the right size shoe. Last, he brought the class together and said a single word. He asked the students to write it down. Students in the first group wrote, “Tripoli.” Those in the second wrote, “Triple E.”
Original title: “Why We Spiral”; mangled by HN to the incomprehensible “We Spiral”.
That makes one wonder what happens if one was to submit a story titled "Why"
It remains as “Why”. Same for “Why not?”. Maybe it needs at least three words. Though “Why why why“ also isn’t changed. Apologies to anyone who came across my experiments.
FYI HN does edit out the "Why", but OP can go in and modify the title after submitting.
Maybe HN needs an "if num_words > 3" before the "delete leading Why". Or maybe an "if char_count > CHAR_LIMIT" before the "delete leading Why".
Or just don't. What a near guaranteed way to mangle the meaning of a title.
I found the shortened one accurate and also thought provoking
I think the shortened title is actually better; the essay doesn't go deep into "why", it's more a set of observations illustrating that we do in fact spiral.
I figured it was going to be about WeWork circling the drain. Thankfully it wasn't.
A spiral of thinking about a spiral of thinking.
I've found that handwritten letters, to my friends and to my colleagues, tends to go a very long way in making someone's day. Something that takes me ten minutes tends to make a difference for a month of more.
I think it's useful to try to always assume the best from others:
When you're not feeling good enough it's sometimes helpful to remember that even people who create negative impacts often get into positions of power and stay there for one reason or another. i.e if they can do something very badly then why are you so worried about whether you are worthy?Finally, remember that lots of people feel like you - so try to do little things that start them on an upward spiral. The more you do this for other people, the more they will be glad to see you.
> The more you do this for other people, the more they will be glad to see you.
That's not a given. That's the rational response on their end, but not only is no one perfectly rational, but some people are very, very irrational.
It can sometimes[1][2] be the case that the best option is to be among those who don't attract any attention at all.
Separately:
The spiraling described in this post is worth consideration, but equally worthy are the odd disparities in professional life (or life in general) and the negative consequences that aren't the result of internal forces like paralyzing self-doubt.
Consider an article that starts just like this one, except it focuses on the different consequences experienced by Dawn who is regularly forgiven for things like tardiness and mistakes in her work in contrast to more severe outcomes for Hila, who after arriving late—perhaps for the first time, even—is perceived to be fucking up because that's in her irresponsible nature[3]—even if a sober, objective analysis would reveal that Hila is actually exceeding the expectations one would have for any employee (and her transgressions are well behind the line of courtesy that is extended to Dawn)—for no other reason than Hila being younger or newer to the company.
This can result in a similar spiral of defeat, but it's a kind of defeat by external forces rather than self-defeat.
1. Depending on your environment/experience, you could even say "very often"
2. See also <https://hn.algolia.com/?query=copenhagen%20strikes%20again&t...>
3. See also <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_attribution_error>
Of course it’s not a given as to any particular person, but regardless, it’s the right presumption.
And yes, of course there are things outside your control. Is that really “equally worthy” of your consideration and energy?
It was a bit glib but what I notice is that small things cheer me up. Good interactions with other people in quite trivial matters send me on a good trajectory.
I also notice that whatever negativity I output to someone, it tends to come back to me multiplied by 1.5. So e.g. with my wife, I find myself in some argument but I can trace it back to some smaller negative thing I said earlier. ie. we get into arguments and the arguments spiral. So IMO it is important to remember to be just slightly more upbeat and neutralise things at the point where they are small if possible.
This doesn't work with people who see you as a threat in some way. They are not appeased, but not everyone is like that and you can at least try to make life reasonable for some being - even if it's just your dog.
I generally agree but in my experience it becomes more complex when you cognitively decide on one thing (to assume the best), but don’t feel it. How you feel influences how it’s going to happen in major and in subtle ways. Your return friendliness may be received as snarky or sarcasm, or at least detected as insincere, to give one example.
In my experience you can only moderate your response. So you cannot pretend to be very pleased when you're 90% certain that someone has been very rude to you but you can avoid an immediate angry response and give yourself time to think. I sometimes feel that I'm being put upon at the moment and then later think perhaps not - I'm always glad when I manage to restrain my initial reaction.
For people trying to sit more in the middle, forcing a neutral balance is another way to do it: don't burn bridges and don't over assume people's feelings.
That means not one-upping snark, but also keeping a healthy default distance with people you deal with professionaly.
One might miss some genuinely heartful exchanges, but it also makes the worst times way easier to deal with. Compensating for keeping too much distance is usually easy, repairing problematic exchanges is way way harder.
Except this is self sabotaging, because you have no deep connection you stay alone and feel alone, ultimately spiralling.
You can be more open outside of work than in the professional space and not be alone!
Indeed, the default should be to assume the best intentions of people. Also, people can have a bad day and be snarky. Next meeting they might as well be friendly.
Staying positive and not letting (potential) negative feedback derail you, works like magic in the long run.
If someone is really picking on you, or they genuinely disapprove of your work, you will find out in due time.
If you want to work in a corporate environment you have to grow a thick skin and just focus on delivering. Once people realize that you get stuff done despite all the BS nobody will doubt you, ever.
I think it should be said that abusive, toxic work environments can creep up until you're in one, and hearing things like people should just have a tough skin. What would be a more specific way of putting that?