Amazing news - I have almost completely eliminated sadness from my life. 🥳 Same with anxiety.
And I think some of the lessons are generalizeable, so it might work for some of you too So what was it? What eliminated my sadness and dramatically reduced my anxiety? It wasn't exercise. It wasn't therapy. It wasn't mindfulness (more on why I regret mindfulness practice later) It was actually 𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 mindfulness practice, and exploring more widely. It was stopping trying to change my attitude and instead, changing my environment. 𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟭- 𝗥𝗘𝗗𝗨𝗖𝗘 𝗦𝗔𝗗𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗦 BY 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗬𝗢𝗨𝗥 𝗘𝗡𝗩𝗜𝗥𝗢𝗡𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 I used to struggle with sadness a lot. Now I pretty much never feel involuntary sadness. I still feel sad when I watch that movies, or when I watch factory farming footage to maintain motivation. But that's voluntary. If something genuinely bad happens to me, then I’ll feel sad, but for what feels like an appropriate amount of time, which actually isn’t something I actually want to get rid of. But I don't have days where I randomly feel sad anymore. I don’t feel sad for way longer than I feel I “ought” to. I tried so many things to fix it, and in the end, what fixed it wasn't changing my mind or internal state. I stopped feeling involuntarily sad because I changed my 𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 circumstances. It turns out that I was just trying to fit my brain into a job that made me sad. I struggled with this because all those books on meditation made me think I could just meditate hard enough, or smart enough, and then I could be happy regardless of external conditions. Or I could just pick a job that made me a “7 out of 10” happiness. Happy enough, but not super happy. And that was a fine exchange for doing more good in the world. It just turns out that even if that’s good in principle, you don’t have nearly that degree of understanding to pull it off in practice. We don’t really know what makes us happy or sad. Even now, I don’t really know if it was my job which made me unhappy. Maybe it was my relationship. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was my beliefs about impact. Maybe it was my epistemics. Maybe it was some weird interacting mix of factors. These are all plausible hypotheses. So it’s not really realistic to aim for something as precise as “happy enough”. And sure enough, ever since I started taking into account my own happiness when designing my job, I got rid of almost all involuntary sadness. Interestingly, I think I’m higher impact than I’ve ever been. Take that for what you will, other overly scrupulous, altruistic, guilt-prone impact maximizers. It turns out your external circumstances affect your happiness. Who knew? All jokes aside though, I actually think this is an important realization for many people. Of course, the law of equal and opposite advice applies, and many people think that external factors are more relevant than they are. But there are plenty of people who need to hear that actually, you don't just need to meditate more, or do a new psychological technique. Sometimes the problem is actually the environment and it won't go away unless you fix it. Even Sam Harris, who says that he has achieved non-duality at will, left Twitter because he said it was bad for his happiness. If even a person who has spent 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 in monastic contemplation has to take into account his environment, you are no different. People are adaptable, but up into a point. Sometimes it's better to fix your environment instead of trying to “fix” your brain And yet, one the other hand, my anxiety was fixed entirely by changing my brain, not my environment. 𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗣 𝟮 - 𝗥𝗘𝗗𝗨𝗖𝗘 𝗔𝗡𝗫𝗜𝗘𝗧𝗬 𝗕𝗬 𝗗𝗜𝗧𝗖𝗛𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗗𝗙𝗨𝗟𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗦 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗪𝗜𝗗𝗘𝗟𝗬 I’ve already told the story of how I reduced my anxiety ~85%. Also, since I posted that, I ran an experiment on 20 other people, and they also experienced massive drops in reported anxiety. I think the main lesson learned there was to not spend so much time on just one technique, but to experiment widely until I found something that worked. In retrospect, I did mindfulness practice for 𝘸𝘢𝘺 too long. I did ~30 minutes a day for about a year, spread out over a few months-long stretches. It never did anything for me. Just fireworks occasionally, and eventually happiness on demand (but in a totally unsatisfying way). I can now achieve probably a jhana of some sort, on demand, where I feel extreme joy when I’m in intense concentration, which I can do whenever I want. The problem is - it only works when I’m concentrating on a single meditation object. It goes away when I stop (or, rather, there’s an afterglow, but it only lasts for like, 30 minutes or something?). And it’s really 𝘦𝘧𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘧𝘶𝘭. And 𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨! I’ve realized an interesting thing - you can feel bored even when you’re feeling pure joy. I would have thought the two sensations were incompatible -- but nope! I can be experiencing pure joy and then also . . . just kinda be bored? Like my brain wants intellectual stimulation? It’ll be like “sure, joy is fun. But it’s the 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 joy again and again. That’s boring. Go read a book” So yeah, I just don’t do it. It’s a bit like dancing or running. Both pretty reliably make me happy. But they’re hard, the happiness doesn’t last long, and they’re not that intellectually stimulating, so I find it hard to maintain. But I kept with mindfulness practice for way too long because all the books and the teachers keep telling you it’s 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 fault. You just aren’t meditating the right way or you haven’t meditated long enough, etc. Except, actually, I have a habit of asking people I know who meditate a lot what their actual results are. And usually, they report similar things. They’ll have meditated a ton, they’ll have had a grand total of a few minutes spread out over a year where it felt close to drugs, they’ll have afterglows after meditation, and report “subtle” effects throughout the rest of their lives (I have so much skepticism about the latter. Sounds like rationalizations to me). So, yeah. I am the person who’s done the thing. Who’s meditated 30 minutes a day for ages. Who’s read all the books and followed all of the different techniques. And I’m telling you I regret it. Not because I don’t think you should spend 30 minutes a day trying to improve your psychology. I think that’s the 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘯 that meditation works for a lot of people Doing 30 minutes a day of almost 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 that could plausibly help your happiness is probably good. It’s just - I could have been spending more time on exploring possible techniques, to find something that really suits my brain, instead of digging deeper into a hole that wasn’t going anywhere. And who knows - maybe if I’d kept at that hole for another year, I would be enlightened now. But I did 30 minutes a day for around a 𝘺𝘦𝘢𝘳. And it didn’t do anything lasting. Meanwhile, I did the technique I developed for 3 weeks and, two years later, I’ve still reduced my anxiety by ~85%. Permanently. With no maintenance. Despite me having one 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘭 of a year. (If you know me, you know what I’m talking about). So yeah. I wish I had experimented more. Tried more emotional techniques. Not believed the people who said if it wasn’t working, it’s because I was doing it wrong, I wasn’t meditating enough, or any other thing than mindfulness meditation just doesn’t work for my brain. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t work for other people’s brains. I know a lot of people who swear by it. And by all means, they should keep doing it. But if you’ve been meditating for awhile, and you’ve tried a bunch of different sub-techniques, read a bunch of different books on it, and really put in the time for a few months, and you’re not really feeling much or anything? Try something else. There are a lot of different psychological techniques (e.g. CBT, ACT, IFS, journaling, yoga, solution focused therapy, confidence practice, problem-solving, hypnotherapy, tapping, relaxation techniques, etc etc) There are a lot of different types of minds. We have not even come 𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦 to figuring out happiness yet. So explore widely. Give each technique a shot, then, if it’s not working for you, try the next one. Once you find something that’s gelling for you, really dive into that. That will lead to way more happiness than simply digging in further and further into something that people tell you 𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 to work, but isn’t working for you. --- So there you go. My two bits of attempts at wisdom for you: 1) Sometimes it’s not you. Sometime it’s your environment. 2) Sometimes it’s not you. Sometimes you just need to try a different mental technique.
4 Comments
Franz
6/30/2024 05:49:19 am
Dear Kat, I know this really wasn't the point you're making, but out of curiosity what was the specific technique that worked for you? (even if mostly self developed, was it based in anything else recognisable by some label?)
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Kat
6/30/2024 07:58:31 pm
Woops. This was originally a tweet so I didn't include the link. I've updated it and here's the link to the technique. I call it confidence practice. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ci9PZYNAQgZLGTki7/impostor-syndrome-how-i-cured-it-with-spreadsheets-and
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Franz
7/9/2024 07:04:02 am
Cool, 'sänks for sharing!
Kat
6/30/2024 08:01:02 pm
Confidence practice is basically if you switched loving-kindness practice to confidence, and you systematically used spreadsheets.
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