Chapter 11
From Buzz to Joy
(An Ode to Depth)
He loved the sea and so, in 1930, he joined the navy. But he wasn’t satisfied with just skimming the surface; he wanted to understand the sea, to go deep. He started diving using a pair of underwater goggles, but enthralled, he wanted more. Together with Emile Gagnan, an engineer, he built the aqualung, the first self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. In so doing, he invented scuba diving. Leaving the navy, he set off on a lifetime’s expedition into the sea, exploring and discovering. He was the first to recognize that porpoises could use echolocation, and he made films such as the Oscar-winning The Silent World, introducing millions to the realm beneath the sea’s surface. He went deep, and lived a life of adventure and joy. He inspired a generation, started the scuba industry, and pioneered marine conservation. His name was Jacques Cousteau.
Cousteau recognized that the true joy in life wasn’t to be found on the surface, but down below, and so he immersed himself, deeply. Whether we are discussing work or life, we only achieve real happiness and full satisfaction when we are able and willing to dive deep into our activity, our moments and ourselves.
Yet we live in a world that’s scattered and diffuse. Messages, information and stimulation hit us from every angle, at every second. Our attention is pulled in every direction, never really sticking. When we get hooked on busy, we constantly scan for the next thing, skipping onward, only half-present. We seek information in sound bites, relationships in snatches, and activity in bite sizes. We want life in thin slices; we want the buzz of busyness.
Ultimately, however, the buzz of busy is hollow. In fact, you could argue that buzz is the opposite of happiness. Pretty much everything good happens when we go deep: our experiences are richer, our relationships are better and our thinking is more insightful. We are more immersed, more connected and more satisfied. Happiness results from real engagement rather than distraction. It comes from depth rather than diffusion.
This chapter is an ode to depth. It will fire a shot over the bows of the superficial, the shallow and the fractured. We’re racing across the surface of the sea, eager to get to our destination, mistaking the fizz of stimulation for the true joy of immersion, oblivious to what we’re missing. We need to cut the engine and dive into the wonder and color of the depths below if we want to achieve real and lasting happiness.
Buzz and Happiness
In Chapter 9 I explained the unhealthy triangle of busyness: how an endless striving for “More” leads us to become busier, which leads us to disconnect from what matters and then filling the resulting feelings of emptiness with more busyness. In that chapter I also addressed the first part of the unhealthy triangle by outlining how placing our core values first is a far more reliable approach to happiness than striving for “More.” In the last chapter, I explored how to avoid disconnection in our most important relationships. In this chapter I want to address the third part of the triangle: the filling of emptiness. I’ll start by suggesting a better way to fill our time (and attention) than the vacuous buzz of busy if we want to achieve happiness. Then I’ll address the topic of emptiness.
The Buzz of Busy
Busy is a buzz. It can feel good slashing through your to-do list, skipping from screen to screen, and racing from meeting to meeting. We’re alert and ready, like some supercharged task-ninja. The heart is pumping and all kinds of buzz-inducing chemicals are flowing: adrenaline, cocaine-like dopamine and even the internal opiate system,1 which induces a kind of blissful stupor as we search for ever more information on the web. As our busyness triggers all these chemicals, the brain can get into a wanting cycle: it wants the reward, gets the reward, and as soon as it is rewarded, it starts wanting again. Our dopamine and opiate systems are never satisfied. As neuroscience professor Kent C. Berridge says, “As long as you sit there, the consumption renews the appetite.”2 We want information, so we do a Google search; as soon as we are rewarded we feel compelled, irrationally, to seek that reward again, so one search follows the other.
Many mental health researchers, such as Dr. Kimberly Young, have campaigned for years for medical recognition of technology addiction disorder. Countries around the world are taking information addiction seriously.3 In fact, early in 2014, India opened its first “technology de-addiction clinic” in Bangalore (China already has three hundred!). While calling busyness an addiction may be stretching it, recognize one thing is sure: rampant activity sucks us into more activity. Busy is a buzz, and while it can be fun in small doses, it can take over our lives, our attention and our relationships, and so damage our happiness and well-being.
Going Deep
Busy is a buzz, but it also messes with the brain. While novelty attracts our attention and rewards, the brain doesn’t like disorder and chaos. The brain likes it best when everything lines up: our goals, our thoughts and our attention. When novel information arrives, by definition it’s inconsistent with our current thinking, our present goals. When we face a lot of novelty, we get knocked off course, distracted from our goals and preferences; energy is diverted from our priorities and we are set on different, less satisfying tracks. Our thoughts become chaotic, hurried and splintered. This mental state is called psychic entropy;4 it is more unpleasant than happy. Busyness may be a buzz, but it induces psychic entropy.
So what’s the alternative? Retire to a mountainous hermitage, away from the twenty-first century and its temptations? The answer started with a beeper in Chicago. Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wanted to understand happiness. Like Cousteau, he wanted to go deeper; he wasn’t satisfied that questionnaires asking about life satisfaction were really capturing the essence of happiness. So he got an awful lot of people to carry beepers that sounded at random times. Each time the beep sounded, subjects were tasked with capturing their actions, feelings and thoughts at that exact moment. Through capturing hundreds of thousands of these, his team built up a clear picture of the day-to-day experience of happiness, when it happens and why it happens.
One of the first things he found was a challenge to the stereotype: happiness is not lying on a beach sipping cocktails! He found that people’s biggest highs, their peak moments, weren’t relaxing or passive at all, but highly active. He described these times as flow experiences.5 When we’re in flow, we are deeply immersed in our chosen activity. We lose all sense of time; we lose our sense of self (or the internal dialogue stops anyway). Flow experiences are the very opposite of psychic entropy: our intentions, thoughts and actions are perfectly aligned; our consciousness is coherent and organized. This might be the semi-meditative state you get into on a long bike ride, the quiet focus you find as you rebuild the car engine, or the laughter and giggles of a night out with your friends.
Busyness gets in the way of flow experiences in three ways: We jump from task to task without giving ourselves enough time to become deeply engaged (it can often take fifteen to twenty minutes to get into flow); our attention is scattered as we constantly scan the environment for new inputs, preventing full immersion; and we tend toward the superficial and expedient approach, rather than a more engrossing, thoughtful and skillful one. Our opportunity to experience flow is reduced through frenetic, divergent activity.
Flow is the antidote to psychic entropy and the addiction to buzz. We achieve happiness through deep engagement in what we are doing, whatever it is. We don’t need to wait for life to get less frantic or more interesting; we can start by deciding to focus, 100 percent, on the job at hand—to engross ourselves fully by stretching every fiber of our being to improve or excel in that task or activity. The children’s bath time, the monthly sales report or the washing up all offer opportunities for great happiness, but only if we sink our attention into them with reckless abandon.
Enjoyment: The Performance Enhancer
Throughout this book I haven’t simply been interested in happiness, I am also interested in success. It turns out there is a significant performance enhancement that happens when we are enjoying our work, immersed and in flow. Paul O’Keefe, assistant professor at Yale–NUS College in Singapore and Lisa Linnenbrink-Garcia of Michigan State University showed that when students were enjoying an assignment three things happened: their performance improved, they stayed focused for longer and the work tired them less.6 When we are loving what we are doing, it’s easier and we do it better. As mentioned earlier, immersion reduces our sense of overwhelm. In fact, though research into flow was focused on happiness, and studies of athletes being “in the zone” were about performance, it has become recognized that the two states are pretty much the same thing. Getting into flow means more than just experiencing happiness; it means getting into your optimal performance state as well. So how do you do it?
How to Achieve Flow
If you stop and think about your own moments of flow, you will soon realize that peak moments are never guaranteed. You may passionately love cooking and frequently experience flow as you whip up a soufflé or a sweet and sour. There may also be times when you’re just not feeling it, when, no matter how much garlic you crush or fruit you flambé, you are just going through the motions.
Flow is never guaranteed, but there are some conditions under which it is most likely to happen, which we’ll look at now.
Challenge
The first component of flow experiences is that of challenge. When we stretch ourselves and our skills, we are more likely to engage deeply. This might come from competitive sports, a fierce debate or an artistic activity. Or it may come from something more mundane in which you have found a way to challenge yourself. I am reminded of my aunty Dymphna. As an early teen, I was tasked with drying the dishes along with her after a big family meal. (Big family = lots of dishes!) I was horrified when I saw the sheer quantity of crockery and cutlery awaiting us, while I knew my siblings and cousins were off playing. I hadn’t realized that I would learn a valuable lesson. Dymphna attacked the drying up with an efficacy I had never experienced before. Her trick was, instead of drying a single plate at a time, she’d dry three simultaneously. She would do the same with knives and forks. I started aping her and soon found that by challenging myself to do three at once, not only did I get through the dishes a lot quicker, the time flew. I had discovered how to get into flow while drying dishes!
Goals
Goal-setting is really just another way of increasing challenge. Instead of increasing the task’s difficulty, we can set parameters around the task that make us stretch to achieve it. By doing so, we can even transform the process of answering emails from a cause of busyness to a flow-inducing activity. Here’s how it works. Set aside a specific time in the day to deal with email. Then, once you have seen how many emails you have, set yourself a goal. For example, “I’ll respond to or delete all new emails within thirty-two minutes.” Then get a big clock to time yourself, cut off distractions, and go crazy. What happens is that, as you are trying to achieve a tough goal, you also start thinking about new strategies for improving your efficiency, which engrosses you further and pulls you into flow.
Concentration
When an activity requires all your attention, it brings organization to your consciousness, triggering flow. Rock-climbing, playing chess or writing poetry all involve focused attention and so make flow more likely.
I used to row for my university. Often we’d be rowing on cold, wet, windy mornings. You’d get into the boat, knowing you had a hard session ahead of you, wanting to be in bed, or back at home, or pretty much anywhere other than where you were. As you started to row, you could feel the aches from the previous day’s training; you felt exhausted before you even began. Then, at some point in the first fifteen minutes, flow would kick in and you would forget all that. Consumed by the rhythm, focused on the micro-movements of the rower in front, trying to get the timing of the catch (the point at which the blade enters the water) in perfect sync… Rowing is an endless quest for the perfect stroke, an intense concentration on your actions, the movement of your crew members and the feel of the boat. Rowing is hard work, but it is also deep concentration. As one stroke merged into the next, so I would glide into a flow state. It was difficult to think of anything else when sunk so deeply into the moment as this; all my consciousness was wrapped in the activity, and the resulting psychic organization, those flow moments, live with me to this day.
Feedback
Optimal experience happens when we’re involved in a feedback-rich activity, and when we pay attention to that feedback. When you play tennis, you get feedback from each shot, knowing instantly how well you swung your racket. If you are playing with the intention of improving, this feedback makes you strive to hit better, which absorbs your attention and elicits flow. As the musician plays her violin, she hears how well her fingers and bow combine to create the concerto. The gardener relishes the daily signs of growth—a tribute to his ministrations. When we observe progress, we are rewarded with joy.
The Joy of Commitment
The world of too much can lead us to keep our options open: to try a bit of this and a bit of that, to wait for something better. Overwhelmed by choice and opportunity, we can hedge our bets. We don’t simply bounce from task to task at work; we bounce from hobby to hobby outside of work. We start sailing, and are feeling quite good about that until we hear about a friend who is kitesurfing, or waterskiing.
Dan Gilbert wondered if keeping our options open would increase or decrease happiness.7 He had students in a photography course take pictures of things that were important to them using a film camera. At the end of the course, they were asked to go into the darkroom and print up their two favorite pictures. Gilbert would then ask, “Which one would you like to give up?” One group of students were told that if they changed their minds, they could swap their choice with the other picture. The other group of students were told that they had to make a decision, and that there would be no option of changing their minds, since the photo would be sent away immediately for assessment, never to be seen again. Gilbert followed up with the students to determine how much they ended up liking the picture they chose. Those who were stuck with the picture, who had no option to change it, ended up liking it an awful lot. Those who had the option to change it didn’t like the picture much at all.
We enjoy things more when we commit and stop keeping our options open. Yet we are entirely oblivious to this fact. When Gilbert asked these students which photography course they would prefer to enroll in—the course in which they could change their minds, or the one in which they had to commit—two-thirds of all students chose the course that would make them less happy with their ultimate photograph.
In his wonderful book Mastery, George Leonard, an aikido expert, bemoans the fact that so many of us fail to commit to pursuits, activities or areas of expertise in the longer term.8 We get enticed by new sports and hobbies, thrilled with the initial steep learning curve. When our progress slows, as it always does, when we plateau, we lose interest and seek new activities. We miss the point. True joy, deep engagement and real mastery come from the journey, from the practice, from the persistent immersion in a pursuit; it comes from commitment.
This applies to hobbies and it also applies to careers and areas of expertise. My world changed when I decided to really commit to my subject, when I stopped trying to have a successful career and started trying to be a better psychologist. The change was subtle enough at first, but as I built my knowledge, my interest grew; I started falling back in love with psychology. Then, projects became transformed with the insights I was gaining; the conversations I was having changed and amazing opportunities began appearing. My career and life satisfaction were transformed. None of this came through working harder; it came through commitment. The deep engagement brought joy, but it also brought opportunity.
The Importance of Boredom
We don’t just fill time for ourselves; we fill it for our children too. We sign them up for endless after-school activities to stretch their minds and bodies. We race them from class to class, sure that the resulting pressure the endless shuttling of children is making on you and them is worth it for their future wealth and health. Are we right in that assumption? Yuko Munakata, a professor in the psychology and neuroscience department at the University of Colorado, was interested in the effect of unstructured time on children. She found that children who had more unstructured time, less time in formal after-school activities, had stronger executive functioning:9 that means they thought and focused better.
I now have a saying with my children when they turn to me and say, “I’m bored.” I reply, “Your boredom is the greatest gift I could give you.” It’s wonderful to give our children opportunities to learn and develop, but they also need time without adults structuring their time or activity. They need time when they have to use their imagination to turn a stick into a lightsaber, or a milk carton into a mold for mud bricks. Boredom is valuable; don’t deprive your children of it!
Deep Into Your Three Seconds
When René Descartes provided the inspiration for the Keanu Reeves blockbuster The Matrix, back in 1637, he was clear about one thing: the only thing we can be absolutely certain of is our mental experience. (“Cogito ergo sum”—“I think, therefore I am.”) The world we experience could be real, a dream or the “Matrix,” but our thoughts regarding it are certainly real. Whether or not you’re a fan of René (or Keanu), Descartes captures something important: our experience, our attention, is all we have.
If our moment-to-moment experience, our attention, is all we can be certain of, how long does it last? How long is the “present” tense? From a psychological perspective, the present lasts about three seconds. Outside of those three seconds, we think of experiences as the past or the future; we are not directly experiencing them as now. You could argue that the whole of your life is one long three-second bubble; it’s all we really have. All of our attention is found in those three seconds, so it is important we maximize them. Flow isn’t the only way of enhancing your present tense. This section will look at other ways to dive more deeply into the moment, to live and experience your three seconds more deeply.
The Joy of Full Attention
Real joy requires full, undiluted attention, and that’s something we’re not in the habit of doing: we don’t practice being totally present. When we “have a moment,” we fill it with the help of our smartphone. We top up experiences with more stimulation; we multitask for pleasure as well as for productivity. We surf the Internet or look at Facebook while speaking on the phone. We tweet while watching TV. We email while playing with the kids. In losing our ability to go deep into the moment, our moments are no longer enough for us in themselves without artificial additives. Unless we regain the ability to notice, to savor, we will be sucked ever more into unrewarding and unsustainable busyness.
Stop for a moment and recall your best moments over the last few weeks. Without exception these will be times when you shone the flashlight of your attention fully onto something, when you dived into the moment and were fully present. Improving your happiness and well-being doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does require us to recognize that attention-splicing undermines our focus, weakens our ability to fully experience joy, and squanders our three seconds.
Savor the Moment
How good are you at savoring the moment? How good are you at lingering appreciatively in an experience, at plunging your full attention into the moment, the sensation or the thought? A life of high-octane busyness can diminish our ability to stop and notice, to feel rather than do. Through busyness we vacate our three seconds, leaving behind only the husks of split, stretched and partial attention.
Fred B. Bryant and Joseph Veroff from Loyola University are the founders of the savoring movement.10 Through their testing of thousands of undergraduates, they have found techniques that promote savoring. Since our frantic lives diminish our ability to be present and savor, consider these three exercises in bringing you back into the present.
1. Happy Attacks
Barry Horner, my father-in-law, is an artist and an inspirational figure. He has developed a fantastic little habit that I, and many around him, have copied. At seemingly random moments—during dinner, a conversation, or an activity—he will call out, “I’m having a happy attack!” He does this when he notices he is really enjoying that moment. This works on three levels: It helps him to amplify and savor great moments as they happen (how often do we realize times were great only after the moment has passed?); it is generous, inviting others to relish the moment; and it is sticky—such a simple behavior easily becomes a habit. Speaking personally, my wife and I have taken this habit on board so fully that when we bought a little dinghy, we called it Happy Tac! (Apologies for the bad pun, but the name still makes us smile.)
Inadvertently, Barry hit upon his own version of what Bryant and Veroff would call “sharing with others.” (I prefer “happy attack.”) The single biggest predictor of pleasure is the ability to tell others about your joy in the moment.
Start noticing and calling out your happy attacks!
2. Sharpening Perceptions
This is the deliberate attempt to focus on certain elements of your present experience and the blocking out of others. This may involve paying particular attention to the drumming in a favorite rock track, noticing all the different colors and hues of green in a forest view or trying to discern the song of a specific bird.
On a personal level, this happened for me by accident. My work involves a lot of travel around the world—often to amazing cities. I was struck by how unmoved I was by some of the sights I saw in incredible cities like Istanbul, Hyderabad or Lima. I would often, out of boredom and tiredness, drift back to my hotel room and work. I realized why this was: without Dulcie, my wife and best friend, I wasn’t able to savor the moment to the same degree. I had no one with whom to share the experience, no one to call out my happy attacks to. By chance, Barry had started a photography club at the same time. I had no history of artistic ability or even visual fluency; all my photos up to that point were the worst kind of holiday snaps. However, for the fun of it, Dulcie and I decided to join. What I hadn’t expected was that this simple act transformed my travel. I now had a mission when I was out and about in strange and exotic cities. I wasn’t simply seeing the sights; I was looking for great photographs. As my camera lens focused and zoomed, so did my attention. I drank in the sights, hungry for more. I initiated conversations with locals (whose photo I wanted to take) whom I would otherwise have passed by, oblivious. I learned to truly savor the travel and the cities; I was excited and energized by what I experienced. I stopped drifting back to the hotel room.
Consider a potentially pleasurable activity that you have lined up today, at work or outside. How could you direct your attention onto a specific aspect of that experience to help you savor it more deeply?
3. Absorption
“Shut up!” This technique for savoring is the deliberate quieting of the internal dialogue in your head. We now appreciate that not thinking is a deliberate act: the natural state of the brain is to bounce and jump between thoughts, images and memories. Collectively, these inner distractions take you elsewhere intellectually. Absorption is the attempt to stop thinking and immerse ourselves totally in the senses. An example might be the experience of sinking into a deep bath, taking the time to notice the touch of the hot water on your skin, feeling the bubbles and the ripples and sinking into the gentle embrace as the warmth seeps through to your core. Or it might be intensely focusing on the taste of a fine meal, straining every aspect of your attention to wallow in the unfolding flavors. Both of these experiences stand in stark contrast to jumping into a bath and reaching reflexively for a celebrity magazine, or simply chewing and swallowing your meal, barely noticing the flavor and the texture.
What sensory experience could you wallow in and, by sinking all your attention into your feelings, use to quiet your overactive brain (at least for a few minutes)?
Less Is More
I went on a couple of stag weekends a few years ago. On one of them we flew to a foreign city for a fun-packed, activity-filled two days. We saw the sights, did the clubs and even went on a trip to another famous resort an hour away. It was beautifully planned and executed. A few months later I went on another stag weekend in which the same number of people went into the mountains to stay in a hut, with an ample supply of food and beer. We simply hung out together and did a little walking. The question is, which one was better? Unreservedly, the second weekend was better: we had more time to simply be together. All the activity of the first weekend got in the way of our enjoying time together. We were acquiring stories to tell on our return, rather than focusing on the present. The fact is, nearly every (positive) thing we do is better if we give it a bit more time, a bit more attention.
On the first stag weekend, we were so busy planning the next activity, or getting there, there wasn’t much time left to have a good time. We scattered and stretched our attention between too many things rather than allowing it to sink deeply into the conversations and the location. We were so busy doing, we didn’t give ourselves the chance to just be.
Sometimes deeper enjoyment starts with something as simple as deliberately doing less.
• How could you do less to enjoy the experience more?
• How could having fewer interests or hobbies improve your life by allowing you to focus on fewer, better?
Deep Inside
So far I have positioned the fragmented, distracted and shallow attention of busy at one end of the spectrum, and placed deep engagement and focused attention at the other. I have suggested that while busy is a buzz, it is not the route to happiness. To find joy we need to sink deep into our experiences and our moments. However, this is not a full picture. In actual fact, there is another place that is equally important for our happiness, one that is under threat every bit as much in today’s world as deep attention. That place is inside ourselves, alone with our thoughts, with nothing to do.
Alone with Your Thoughts
How much do you like being alone with yourself? If you are like most of us, the answer is “not very much.” In fact, in an amazing series of experiments led by the influential professor of psychology Timothy D. Wilson, it was shown that many people prefer to give themselves electric shocks rather than be left alone and unstimulated!11 These people, earlier in the day, had received this same electric shock and been willing to pay in order to never receive it again. Yet, when faced with a period of between six and fifteen minutes without external stimulation, the electric shock was preferable to their own thoughts.
You may be thinking that the above study is crazy (despite the fact it was published in Science), but Wilson’s findings are in line with other studies. For example, Christopher K. Hsee of the Booth School of Business found that, given the slightest excuse, people would jump at the chance to do meaningless activity rather than spend time inactive.12 He also found, as did Wilson, that people are happier when they are meaninglessly busy than when they are idle.
The Default Network
One of the most significant findings from neuroscience in recent years is the discovery of the default network.13 This is the network of neural activity that fires up when we are not externally stimulated with information or activity. It is what happens when we are in the doctor’s waiting room with no magazines, when we are in the shower or walking to the train station, when we sink into ourselves, when we are alone with our thoughts, dreams and ruminations. We had expected a lot to be going on in the brain when we are busy, or when we are focused. We hadn’t expected a lot to be happening when we were neither of these; we were wrong. When we are not on task, the brain becomes extremely active. The question we have to ask is, “Why?”
What is happening here is that the default network is creating you! If you look inside yourself and ask, “Who am I?” your sense of “I” comes from a collection of experiences, roles, beliefs, ideas, cultural associations and feelings. Somehow, from that tapestry of disconnected thoughts and memories comes a sense of identity. When we are on task, we generate input and stimulation for the brain. This information is raw and external. It is only when we play with this input, associating it with our own experiences, that it begins to have meaning. It is only when we integrate it into our understanding of the world that we learn and develop. It is that process that turns raw, external data into something more personal; into your opinion, your insight and your wisdom.
The Importance of Idleness
This brings us right back to busyness: How much time do you have to quietly process, reflect and integrate? We have talked about the impact of all the demands we experience in the world of too much: our racing, multitasking and cramming drive out focused attention and engagement. However, our world of too much stimulation may be having an equally big impact. We now have stimulation devices with us all the time, ready for any moment when we are not on task. At home, we have multiple additional devices to ensure our brains are never left on their own.
Focused attention and engagement are the foods we need to provide the energy and the nourishment to survive and thrive. Stimulation and consumption of media is like bubble gum; it keeps us occupied, but offers little. The default network is like the digestive system: absolutely essential to allow that food to be integrated, to allow you to grow. I don’t think we’re doing enough digesting these days.
Resolving Our Emptiness
I explained in the busyness triangle that a consequence of too much busyness is an increasing sense of emptiness in our lives; which we fill with activity. I have suggested that focusing on values rather than “More” drives less frenetic busyness. I have also suggested deep engagement and flow generate more happiness than the buzz of busy. Both of these strategies will help to reduce the inner sense of emptiness. Now I want to talk about another strategy for happiness: getting comfortable with your emptiness.
What do I mean by emptiness? The notion of an emptiness in people has been explored by many in recent history, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre and Mark Rothko. In my view, we all contain a space inside us of utter emptiness; and it’s not a happy place. It originates from our unmet needs, unsolved problems and thwarted desires. This emptiness affects all of us in some way: it’s the source of our doubt, fear or yearning and it’s the darkness from which our ruminations emanate.
Back in the 1950s, Martin Heidegger predicted that we might become so dazzled and bewitched by technology that our only way of thinking might be calculative thinking; this would come at a loss of meditative thinking, the essence of our humanity.14 When we meditate, we reflect on our being, our truths, and the meaning of our lives. We make sense of everything about ourselves, good and bad, and develop authenticity. A lack of meditative thinking leaves our emptiness untended, raw and dark. If many of us, as Hsee suggests, have developed an aversion to idleness, our stimulation devices are helping us avoid doing the critical psychological work we need to do to become whole. If we fail to spend time inside ourselves, facing our demons as well as our dreams, we can’t resolve our problems, find meaning from our troubles, and make sense of the future we want. If we fail to spend time with our thoughts and worries, we can’t learn from them and grow stronger. If we fail to spend time inside ourselves, we can’t become ourselves, in all our possibilities and potential.
The Happiness Paradox
My wife sprained her ankle badly. Her foot swelled painfully, making her want to rest it all the time. Her doctor, on the other hand, had different ideas. He told her to walk with a normal step, rotating through the full movement, each stride. It was excruciating. At any given point, she would have been much happier resting that foot. Yet, the only way to improve was to walk through the pain, and so step by painful step, she walked and she healed.
It is true, as Wilson and Hsee found, that we are happier when active (even if the activity is meaningless). However, this misses the point. It is only by walking through our thoughts—and all the worries, problems and emptiness—that we build up our internal resources to face future troubles. If we don’t do this, we cannot stem the creeping cloud of hollowness. In many, that might mean we yearn for more external validation through money, image or popularity, which drives us to more busyness. In others it may simply mean that we try to drown out the wails of our existential angst through mindless, frenetic activity. Either way, unresolved emptiness drives us, unsatisfyingly, into the skeletal arms of busyness.
Earning Happiness
Happiness is something earned. It is only through focused effort and stretching ourselves, for example, that we experience flow. The same applies when we are not active. Happiness in your thoughts—alone and unstimulated—takes time and the willingness to do the work. We have to earn it through periods of idleness and meditation. In my view, both active and passive happiness are critical. We will not lead completely happy lives unless we can be completely engaged in our activity; and quietly content in our idleness.
Getting Practical
Going inside and working through what’s there is a little messy. It takes time, and there is no universal solution. Having said that, in the practical spirit of the book, here are a few pointers.
Dead Time
A recent American Time Use Survey, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, found that that 83 percent of people in the US spend no time at all “relaxing or thinking.”15 Caught between production and consumption, we manage to keep ourselves almost totally occupied. In doing this, we are the first generation who are living without downtime; no previous generation has had so little time alone with their thoughts. Our fabulous devices are allowing us to hyperstimulate ourselves away from happiness and fulfillment.
What are the best times in your day to create “dead time”? For me it is travel time: I fly a lot. I used to be intent on making that time useful, or at least interesting. Between podcasts of recorded lectures, my Kindle, and the odd book, I would make sure every second of my travel time, including driving to the airport and going through security, were learning filled. What I became aware of, is in learning and learning and learning, I had no time and space to stand back, to integrate and to make the research and ideas I was reading and hearing into my own. I have started creating dead time on these trips: time without input or stimulation, time for intellectual ambling. All the best ideas for this book came from those times.
Notice the Chimp
One of the things I like most about Steve Peters’s concept of the Chimp (mentioned in Chapter 8), is that it somehow externalizes emotions. It helps people see emotions and thought separately, to see irrational worries and fears as belonging to the Chimp, and as being normal. This allows the Human to observe them, reflect and learn. One of the core concepts of mindfulness is the ability to be alert and notice what’s passing through your mind, but to stay detached from it, at a distance, not judging or getting wrapped up in it. It seems to me that noticing the grip of fear or anxiety, it is easier to say to yourself, “There goes the Chimp again,” and in so doing retain a separateness from those emotions. In Latin-based languages for example, people would say, “I have fear,” (tengo miedo in Spanish), which seems a much more helpful description than “I am scared.”
Personal Pronoun Proofing
How do you talk to yourself? Ethan Kross, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, was curious when he ran a red light and caught himself saying, “Ethan, you idiot!” He wondered what effect speaking to himself (in his head) in the third person would have versus using “I.” He asked people to give a presentation with only five minutes to prepare. Some of those people he asked to talk to themselves using “I.” Others he asked to use their own names. He found that those who talked to themselves using “I” had an internal monologue full of emotion: “I can’t do this. I’ll look stupid. I’ll forget my words. I wish I’d worn my other pants!” On the other hand, those that talked to themselves in the third person tended to be more rational and supportive: “Tony, you’ll be okay. You’ve done loads of presentations before.” Using this subtle change in inner language helped people to get more emotional distance.16
When your time alone with your thoughts turns sour, catch yourself using “I” statements. Don’t force yourself to make ridiculously overpositive affirmations, just start talking in the third person. Your voices will naturally step away from the emotion and start supporting you through your challenge.