Plans will fail

About a year ago I was working with Elsa as my personal coach. I’d make a list of things that I wanted to do, and at the end of the day, I’d discover that I hadn’t done what was on the list. I hadn’t wasted the day. I’d just done other stuff. That wasn’t what I wanted.

So we worked on making a plan so that I’d do what was on my list. We went over the plan again and again. We did premortems. Each time the plan got better. Finally, we had a plan that we couldn’t improve.

I said: “I’d be surprised if that failed.”

So what happened?

If failed, of course. But it failed in a surprising way.

So I was right. I was surprised when it failed.

But not the way I thought.

So we made another plan. That one lasted longer. Eventually, it failed.

A couple more iterations and the plan went on so long that when it failed, I didn’t care about it anymore. So I did not fix it. But I had learned how to fix it if I had cared.

You can’t always make fail-proof plans. Almost any plan that you make to teleport to Mars will fail. But you should at least think about failure modes.

And if there are too many, maybe you should plan on having a different goal.

Like astral projection to Mars.

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Recovering the dream

When I was a kid, I had a secret dream. One way to say it: I wanted to save the world. Another: I wanted to solve all the world’s problems.

I thought I was special. Who knows? Maybe I was. Perhaps I could realize my secret dream.

I got older. I realized how complicated life was. I could barely solve my own problems. No way I could solve the world’s.

I put my big dreams aside and had smaller ones. Find someone I loved. Get married. Have kids. Build a house. Put one foot in front of the other. Live to fight another day. Survive!

I had ideas for business. Ideas for software. I had ideas for making money. I succeeded at some. Failed at others.

I gave up a few times. Or mostly gave up.

I survived. I retired. I unretired. I re-retired. I re-unretired.

I never stopped learning.

My dreams were pretty modest. Write some blogs. FIgure some stuff out. Not change the world.

But deep inside, my big dreams were still alive.

Now, something is changing.

This year the big dreams are being reborn. Or some version of the big dreams. I don’t think I can solve the world’s problems. But I can aspire. I can give it my best.

Who knows how much I can accomplish?

Why set limits?

I’ve got another ten, maybe twenty, maybe even thirty years left. Perhaps I can make something big happen.

I don’t have to do something big myself. Maybe I can inspire someone who does something big.

Maybe I can’t even do that.

Maybe the best I can do is to inspire someone who inspires someone else who helps someone else who inspires someone else.

That would be pretty good.

I’ve been building my skills, trying small experiments, avoiding attention.

Every ideal is a judge, Jordan Peterson says. I goal sets the criteria for failure, he says.

I’ve avoided articulating my goals because I’ve been afraid of failure.

But you can’t make much of a difference if no one knows you exist.

Your ideas can’t have much impact if no one knows where to find them.

You can’t fail until you give up.

So this is the year when I come out of hiding.

I can’t change the world all alone in my room.

So this is the year.

This year will be different.

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Raising the dead

I can remember the feeling. The present was nothing but agony. The future would be no different. Life was awful. I was a failure. There was only one way out: I had to die.

That’s my ten-year-old self.

I can see him, desolate. “I wish I were dead,” he wails. “I want to die,” he cries.

I see him tie a necktie around his neck. He tightens it, crying. He starts to black out.

He reflexively loosens the tie, still crying. Maybe he didn’t want to die as much as he thought he did. Perhaps a part of him wanted to die, and another part of him didn’t.

No matter.

He hates himself for his cowardice.

“You can’t do anything right,” he screams in his mind. “All you had to do was nothing, and you couldn’t even do that. You’re completely worthless. A failure.”

If he was cursing at the part of him that had loosened the knot, it has no answer.

That part of him is speechless in the face of such utter contempt and overwhelming misery and utter hopelessness.

It makes no argument. It offers no excuses.

That’s some of what’s inside me. Maybe something like that is in other people, too, but certainly in me.

Not just the 10-year-old

It’s not just the troubled ten-year-old inside me. I’m full of miserable teenaged selves. They wish for their death. For the end of their intolerable existence.

The other day in an IFS session I woke up and saw the ghosts of those tormented, failed, embittered Past Selves within me—dead, and yet undead.

They had not sacrificed willingly for the sake of a better Future Self. They had died regretful, resentful, angry—in the desperate hope of oblivion.

They died cursing themselves and all of existence. They died full of self-loathing and self-contempt. Something else carried on, worked hard on improving, and eventually became the self I had become the day I discovered the living dead.

The irony: those past selves reviled themselves for not killing themselves, unfairly because they succeeded.

They were dead, but not dead the way they had hoped to be.

And as Miracle Max says, not completely dead.

It seems that a Present Self can sacrifice itself for the sake of a better Future Self, or it can die unable to bear its existence. Either way, a Future Self arises. In one case the Past Self is alive, integrated within it; in the other, the Past Self haunts it like a ghost—a sad, miserable creature, dead and undead.

The ghost remains until it finished its unfinished business.

Talking to ghosts

I’ve been talking to some of those ghostly selves, those undead Past Me’s. “You succeeded,” I tell them. “You wanted to die, and you died.

“And if you want to stay dead, that’s fine. But you’ve got choices now that you didn’t have then.”

They’re relieved to know they didn’t fail utterly: that they wanted to die and they succeeded. Oddly, they are relieved.

They’re happy to know what has become of what they once had been. They are pleased to meet me, the person who evolved.

I tell them that I’m grateful—that I appreciate their suffering and the fact that they died to get me here.

They are relieved to know they did not live their lives in vain.

Relieved of their burdens, freed from the past they wake up.

Related

• Self-discipline and sacrifice
• On sacrifice
• The slippery slope of sacrifice
• Sacrifice to realize potential
• The price of progress is death
• Dying thoughts of a former self

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Consciousness, Awareness, Attention, Intention

I’ve been discovering how fascinating my mind is. Really. It’s fascinating.

I’ve looked inward from time to time. But I’ve never said: “Wow! That’s fascinating.”

My guides have made the difference. First, Sam Harris with “The Waking Up Course.” Then, Culadasa (John Yates) with “The Mind Illuminated.”

Sam told me that I’d also find it fascinating—as fascinating as the stars in the night sky and as fascinating as the details of the structure of the universe that are revealed by powerful telescopes.

That was a new idea. And correct, once I looked.

The guided tour with Sam

Each ten minute guided meditation in the Waking Up Course is a Sam Harris tour of my “field of consciousness.” We visit the now-familiar objects of consciousness—the sensations of breathing, the sounds that arise and pass away, the darkness behind closed eyes, the “cloud of sensation” that is the body, the thoughts arising and passing away.

My guide points out details that I might have missed on earlier visits. Sometimes he points to new objects.

He proposes new experiences or encourages me to repeat familiar ones more attentively. Every tour is interesting.

Sam reminds me that everything that I can experience arises in my field of consciousness. There’s no experience other than that.

Consciousness does not appear in my head. It’s the reverse. Consciousness first, head second. My head must arise in consciousness for me to have a head.

He reminds me that there is nothing that I need to do to make something arise in consciousness. Sounds appear in consciousness; I don’t make them appear. When my eyes are open visual phenomena appear in consciousness; when my eyes are closed, a dark field—not entirely black arises. I don’t make them appear.

Thoughts appear in consciousness; I don’t make them appear. I do seem to be able to change the kinds of thoughts that arise—a bit. I just decided I’d like some thoughts about sunny tropical places. Images appeared. The names of places appeared. I didn’t choose them. I just established a context.

I have partial control of my attention. I can intend that I pay attention to an object of consciousness and my attention will move there. Sometimes my attention moves without my intention. Sometimes I can’t stop paying attention to something.

All fascinating to observe.

The unguided tour, Culadasa style

I follow my daily ten-minute guided tour with an unguided tour. I started with ten minutes, and I’m now at 40. I use Culadasa’s six-step process to prepare me, and four-step process to guide me. I reread his instructions from time to time.

The six steps

Before I start the session, I take these steps:

1. Motivation: I have clearly in mind why I want to be doing this
2. Goal: I set a clear goal for this particular meditation session
3. Expectations: I remind myself to have reasonable expectations
4. Diligence: I remind myself to use the entire period to make progress toward the goal. Periodically in the session, I’ll remind myself to be diligent.
5. Distractions: I look for things that might distract me and take action to prevent them. I pull the batteries out of the wireless handset in the room where I meditate; I turn my phone on DND. I make sure people know that I am personally on DND.
6. Posture: I find a comfortable posture before I start.

The four steps

Once I start the meditation session, I follow these steps:

1. Become aware of the present. Let go of thoughts of the past and the future
2. Move attention to the body. Be aware of how it feels
3. Move attention to the sensations of breathing
4. Move attention to the sensations of breathing in a particular, small area

I take as much time as I need to do the four steps. If my mind becomes unsettled in one stage, I might move back to an earlier one.

Attention

The goal is “stable attention” and heightened “peripheral awareness.”

Culadasa distinguishes between these two and defines “mindfulness” as “an optimal balance between attention and awareness.”

Attention and awareness are two different ways of knowing the world. Attention singles out some small part of the field of conscious awareness to analyze and interpret it. Peripheral awareness provides the overall context for conscious experience.

Stable attention Is the ability to [intentionally] direct and sustain the focus of attention, and control the scope of attention.

Intentionally directed and sustained attention means spontaneous movements of attention stop.

Intention is a big deal. You can’t program the unconscious mind directly, but you can get it to reprogram itself by intention. The way you become skilled at a sport is by going through the motions, with attention and intention. Simply going through the motions is not enough.

Repeating simple tasks with a clear intention can reprogram unconscious mental processes. This can completely transform who you are as a person.

So you use intention to stabilize your intention. And at the same time, you use intention to expand your peripheral awareness. In my sessions, I will periodically remind myself of my intention: focus attention on the sensations of breathing in a narrow area while keeping my attention as wide as possible.

Peripheral awareness:

… involves a general awareness of everything our senses take in. Peripheral awareness is only minimally conceptual. It is open and inclusive, as well as holistic. That is, it’s concerned with the relationships of objects to each other and to the whole.

What can be aware of? A second ago I was aware that the Pats were playing the Chargers. I wasn’t aware of the computer I was using to watch or the room where I watched. And I wasn’t even vaguely aware that I was on a little blue planet 93 million miles from the nuclear furnace that provides us with energy in a vast universe 14.75 billion years old. Now I’m vaguely aware.

Right now I’m aware the words that I’m typing, aware of my fingers doing the typing, aware of the computer I’m using, aware of the Pats’ game streaming in the background, and so on.

The fundamental technique in TMI is to focus attention and then expand peripheral awareness.

It’s fascinating to notice that I can move my attention around; that it will sometimes move spontaneously; that many things arise and pass away in peripheral awareness; that there are many things I might become aware of; that the power of intention.

Reflection

It’s useful to meditate, and it’s helpful to reflect (or maybe meditate) on meditation.

Sometimes, when I’m meditating, I think “Wow! I’m going to have to remember that and write it down!” Sometimes I think: “Maybe I should stop meditating and write it down because I’m likely to forget.”

Then I realize that these are just thoughts arising in consciousness.

I move my attention from those intriguing thoughts to the sensations of the breath.

And spread my awareness as wide as I can.

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Another forgotten intention

I woke up. I could not get back to sleep.

I thought about doing something to kill time. But everything that crossed my mind was something I knew that I would regret in the morning.

Maybe it would be mindless eating. Maybe watching a stupid video. Maybe catching up on latest Donald Trump drama.

What would it be?

I felt drawn toward distraction, unable to stop.

I thought of waking Bobbi. I knew that talking to her would keep me from a bad decision. But I didn’t want to disturb her sleep.

What would I do?

My mind was at full race, trying to convince me that none of my bad habits were that bad. I could pick the least bad one, and have done with it.

And then, good fortune, I picked up the device on which I’d been reading “The Daily Stoic.”

I remembered.

I’d gotten it at on January 1, and I’d decided to read one essay each day.Here it was January 16th. There it was January 4th—the last day I’d read.

I had not only failed to carry out my good intention, but I had forgotten that I’d decided to do it.

I decided that rereading the first four days, and reading forward to today would be not be something I’d regret.

And I didn’t regret it. Not at all.

Lessons from The Daily Stoic

My reading reminded me:

1. I need to remember what I can control and what I can’t.
2. The only thing that I can reasonably hope to control is my mind. And right now I don’t control it that well.
3. That all I do in the world is the product of I mind. Since I want to improve the world, I need to start with my own mind.
4. My main job in life is improving my mind.
5. The distractions of life are efforts by others to control my mind—and thus control me and what I do.
6. There are lots of things in my mind that I don’t want there. I need to clean it up.

Another lesson

There’s another lesson here.

Intention matters. I can change the world with my mind but only by forming an intention and holding that intention.

So I renew my intention to read the Daily Stoic every day.

There’s a good chance I’ll make that intention stick.

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Mind over matter

Imagine how cool it would be if you could change the material world by using your mind. Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Well, you can. You already do.

You do it without realizing it.

You can do it better if you know how.

How you use your mind to change matter

Your brain always changes. Left alone, it deteriorates.

When you repeat an action your brain offsets deterioration in the part of your brain that controls the action.

With more repetition, your brain changes itself so that it can carry out that act more efficiently.

But most of what you do is mindless, so you don’t determine what changes. Your brain decides.

But eventually, the act is about as efficient as it can be. Simple practice—mere, mindless repetition—will no longer significantly change the brain.

When you do something mindfully—with intention and with careful attention to the outcome—your brain changes differently than if you do that same thing mindlessly.

Repetition with clear intention to achieve a result and careful attention to how well the result was achieved is called “deliberate practice” or “deep practice.”

Deliberate practice changes your brain in ways that lead you to mastery.

Your brain is made out of matter.

You change it with your mind when you use intention and attention.

So deliberate practice is mind over matter.

QED

What changes

In the short term, deliberate practice changes which neurons fire and when they fire; it changes which neurotransmitters are released and taken up, and where.

In the long term, your brain rewires itself. Neurons grow branches in different directions, shrink other branches.

All these changes are the result of your mind’s effect on the brain’s matter.

Intention and attention are critical.

You need deliberate intention and focused attention; the intention sets the desired outcome, and the attention focuses on the degree to which the result matched the intention.

Then the brain rewires.

That’s all it takes.

TL;DR

You can change the material world with just your mind.

It’s a skill and one that you can improve.

You use intention and attention.

Meta

You can also intend to use intention and attention more consistently.

You can pay attention and see how well you’re using intention and paying attention.

The more you do it, the better you get.

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Mediocre Me

“Only mediocre people are always at their best.”

Mediocre Mike

Mediocre Mike is the person I am when I’m running on autopilot.

Mediocre Mike is my everyday self. He’s the person that I am unless circumstances or intention require me to be better.

I’ve written about him before. I’ve called him MikeSim
and AutoMike. All the same guy. More references are at the bottom of the post

Mediocre Mike in “action”

Mediocre Mike drifts along in a dream. He reacts. He responds. He rarely reflects.

Something arises in his field of awareness, and Mediocre Mike runs a program that deals with it. He’s got lots of good programs. AutoOptimizer improves them from time to time. He’s done it well enough to have a moderately successful life.

Once in a while, the environment presents a crisis or an unmistakable opportunity. A challenge. Mediocre Mike handles it, still dreaming. He might seem more than mediocre to most people. But he’s just running programs and doing the least he can do.

But once in a while, the challenge takes more than Mediocre Mike can deliver. He goes off autopilot. He wakes Mike.

Mike does something. If it doesn’t work, Mike does something else. Mike creates new solutions. Mike deals with the unique situation.

Then Mike adds his new solution to his program store and goes back to dreaming.

Next time he won’t need to wake up.

Mediocre Mike does useful things. Sometimes they’re quite helpful. But they’re always the least he can do. They’re always a waste of potential: his potential and the potential in the situation.

Maximum Mike

Maximum Mike is an ideal: he’s the best version of myself that I can imagine being. I can never be Maximum Mike, but I can aspire to be him. I can move in that direction.

From a distance, I can envision Maximum Mike.

Maximum Mike wastes no time. He wastes none of his potential and wastes none of the potential around him. He’s awake, aware, and present. He’s filled with joy and love and shares his delight easily.

I can never be Maximum Mike, but when I wake up, I try to be More-than-Mediocre Mike.

“What’s a good word for that?” I ask Bobbi and explain what I want. “Meritorious,” she says without hesitation.

Meritorious. Exactly!

I love my brilliant wife.

Meritorious Mike

Meritorious Mike is a worthy version of me. Meritorious Mike deserves praise. From me, at least.

Sometimes I’m Meritorious Mike. I really like it when I am.

Here’s how I become Meritorious Mike.

1. I’ve got to wake up. But that’s not enough.
2. Once awake, I’ve got to do some work to become Mindful Mike. It’s not hard, but it’s not a habit. I need to build the habit.
3. Being Mindful is necessary, but not sufficient to being Meritorious. Once I’m mindful, I’ve got to do the work. Mindful to meritorious his hard. But I’ve done it. I’m getting better at it.

Some people might be Effortlessly Mindful and even Effortlessly Meritorious, but not me.

For me, it takes work.

You’ve got to set goals, Jordan Peterson says. Here’s a post by a guy who has done an excellent job of distilling some of Peterson’s ideas. It’s worth stopping and reading.

Here’s my favorite quote, from Peterson’s TED talk:

You have to have an aim in order to do something. If you actually knew what success was, you would want to grasp it. You are an aiming creature. You have an aim; it sets up a world around you. It organizes your emotions and perceptions. What you see and you don’t see. The day manifests itself as a set of challenges; if you solve them properly, you are progressing to your aim. You can live in the day. That makes every moment of every day meaningful. That will sustain you in your life.

My aim is to become Maximum Mike, but Mindful Mike and Meritorious Mike are achievable goals that are on the path to Maximality.

It takes work. It takes practice. It takes having an ideal and a goal.

Blogging helps me. I hope it helps you.

References

Here’s some earlier stuff I’ve written about AutoMike and MikeSim.

• 70 Years Old. WTF!: MikeSim version 73: A simulated human being
• 70 Years Old. WTF!: Debugging and Programming AutoMike: Introduction
• 70 Years Old. WTF!: AutoDriver in the house
• 70 Years Old. WTF!: 75 years old minus 10 days, WTF?
• 70 Years Old. WTF!: Free will and self-improvement
• 70 Years Old. WTF!: Free will? Maybe. Maybe not.

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