empirical understanding – Observations and Misunderstandings

It’s a full moon today so energy will be high. How fun that it’s also Halloween. How sad that everyone will be stuck inside in front of Zoom screens. Apparently one aspect of a full moon, or at least the affect upon us, is that we revert to our strongest habits. You won’t be able to prove that in a lab so I imagine it’ll be down to some empirical research of sorts to understand that. With us viewing the world and experiences through a presupposed narrative, I assume that empirically our understanding will be deeply flawed. A leap of faith, well it may just be necessary. Regardless I do enjoy trying to understand habits, they seem rather powerful after all.

I’m reading a book at the moment on fear and not in a typical challenge you fears kind of way but more learn to love and see the positives of fear. I’m only a quarter of the way through so I haven’t fully grasped it but there does appear to be some legitimacy in what he says. It’s called Fearvana by Akshay Nanavati if you’re curious. I won’t go into what Fearvana is exactly, mainly because I’ve not read enough that I’ll likely do it a disservice. What made me think about it though was that he mentions something about synapses in our brains which we have developed over a long time. Connections between neural pathways or something like that. Anyway these are the animalistic responses we have to situations, the habitual response we have learnt to make.

It’s another way of looking at how we behave but it’s interesting to think of it that way when observing how we behave and respond, and this can be to anything. Instead of just thinking about how this is habit, looking behind it at the science seems to help understand how malleable our behaviour is. If it’s just connections in our brain which have formed, it also means they can reform. Without saying certain things can be good or bad, we definitely have more and less desirable habits which we decide upon personally. It’s very liberating to realise what they actually are and with the brick wall coming down it also makes them surmountable.

So this full moon, observe yourself. What is it that seems to have been building up this last week especially. How do you find yourself responding to it. Do you recognise anything familiar in your behaviour, good and bad, desirable and undesirable. Can you detach yourself from it and see it for what it is. Just that first try will do. Just observe. Don’t judge and don’t box yourself. Step back. Step back from it all.

According to BJ Fogg habits are connected to our emotions and until we understand our emotive relationship to our habitual responses we will struggle to transform our behaviour into a series of positive actions. I may have added to and slightly paraphrased what he said but the link to our emotions is all his. He also says that we should make tiny changes to our habits and give ourselves a reward as and when we achieve our aims. He uses the example of his eighty year old father wanting to do twenty push-ups a day and believing he’ll achieve this because of his desire to do so. His father according to Fogg is displaying an outdated attitude to creating change, one of believing that if he has strength of mind and willpower to make these changes in his life; that that will be enough to make the positive difference he is after. Fogg believes instead that he should make tiny changes, perhaps two push-ups against the sink each time he’s washing his hands for example. This is an achievable goal and can be used as a base to work on. The emotive aspect comes from our need for a reward. The reward can simply be feeling happy when we achieve targets and make positive habitual changes in our lives or when we struggle feeling unhappy. These emotive responses become habit themselves.

This journey into the realms of discipline you’re going on with me is, and I’ve said this many times before, interlinked with our habits and responses. Our habitual responses to situations dictate how we behave when faced with a variety of situations big and small, and have become deeper and deeper ingrained the more we repeat them as we get older. Once we see behaviour as simply as series of habits it becomes easier to both empathetically understand other peoples actions and creates a deeper understanding of ourselves and our own behaviour. These ideas of BJ Fogg then are very interesting because what he is adding is a method to how we can make these changes. While it is still about observing your habitual responses to different situations, he suggests making these small changes you want to happen. It appears to be a more direct approach than simply observing and not repeating, or trying a new approach when you recognise the old toxic one. This is made possible by not trying to create huge and unattainable targets that will hinder your achieving the positive emotive response you unconsciously desire and require. This idea of tiny habits is a new one for me so I’m not entirely sure empirically what I think about it but it seems like common sense it a way. The danger is though that just like his father; I want it all now, I want those twenty push-ups a day. To really embrace tiny steps and tiny habits requires a deal of patience that in itself needs to be fostered habitually. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy no matter how much you desire it.

Tag: empirical understanding

A Habitual Moon

Habitual Emotions