Reflections on Issue Seventeen

Resolve for a New Year

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Thank you to everyone who had a chance to read Issue Seventeen. For those who have yet to read it, the reflections from other readers below may be a good starting point, or you can read “Resolve for a New Year” first.

The Understory reflections between issues are intended to share thoughtful comments from subscribers that expand upon and challenge parts of the previous issue. I am grateful for the comments that have been posted to the Issue, as well as the many others that have been shared with me offline.

I am guessing you, like me, have had various conversations over the past few weeks with friends and relatives about the symbolic shift to 2021. While our social media feeds and even Netflix viewing options have been cluttered with messages about “Death to 2020,” there also seems to be a broader and more significant recognition that this year was atypical in that some of the changes we have seen in 2020 will have enduring impacts on our sense of self, community, government, economy, and planet. While these changes are temporal, the question remains how long they will endure and what their lasting effects will be on these myriad forms that constitute our world. The events of the past week are a dramatic reminder of time being a continuance, and thus, the temporal framing of change from one year to the next is more one of annotation than actual transition.

One such conversation was with my wife, Dr. Jillian Lerner, who knows far more about Nietzsche than I likely ever will. Jillian noted that in Issue Seventeen (and some of The Understory issues that came before it) is a “paradox between fatalism and radicalism.” If we are to accept “amor fati” or the love of one’s fate as Nietzsche suggested, how can we at the same time be motivated to make radical change? While I will expand on this further in response to Peter’s comment below, in reading Sharon Salzberg’s Real Change over the holidays I found deep resonance in her reference to James Baldwin’s essay “Notes of a Native Son” (1955).

In coming to terms with the death of his father, Baldwin recognizes the meaning in his father’s texts and songs, which he previously dismissed as meaningless, arranged before him “like empty bottles, waiting to hold the meaning which life would give them for me. This was his legacy: nothing is ever escaped.” Baldwin’s father had tried to teach him that the bitterness of racism was a folly, and dwelling on it would only lead to hatred which “never failed to destroy the man who hated.” This is Baldwin’s final reflection on his father’s teachings:

“It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in the light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is a commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one's own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength. This fight begins, however, in the heart and it now had been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair. This intimation made my heart heavy and, now that my father was irrecoverable, I wished that he had been beside me so that I could have searched his face for the answers which only the future would give me now.”

Baldwin acknowledges that “men as they are” entails accepting the “spoils of injustice, anarchy, discontent, and hatred [that] were all around us.” While commonplace, one need not accept them as a desired future. In Baldwin’s writing, it is in the temporal relationship between accepting one’s past and present and an aching for a different future that dispels complacency. As Balwin wishes he had his father by his side to find the answers in living with this paradox, I too anticipate this paradox of acceptance and desired change will continue to manifest throughout my writing and thinking as I continue to seek similar answers. 

As Shared by Peter Tavernise

Blue Whale (anim1755 by NOAA Photo Library (CC BY 2.0))

“On this part: ‘But habits should never become enduring so as to lose their lustre and become limiting rather than expansive forces in our lives.’ I see these sort of like whale songs, we can slowly shift our practices over time as needed to keep them appropriate to our needs. Somatics talks about an ever-expanding spiral of human development that is based on understanding what we are currently practicing, and what we need to practice instead to grow into the shape we seek to become. We study our current habits, and then shift them over time. This means that later, our relatively newer habits are the ones that are again studied, and then shifted to what is needed next. Habits grow branches, some are pruned back, but the tree of our lives becomes larger and healthier over time.”

Before reading Peter’s comment, I had not considered the temporal nature of whale songs. While science is just beginning to understand the songs of cetaceans, scientists have recorded distinct seasonal changes in their song patterns. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, whale songs are louder and “sung” at night in summer and early fall, whereas throughout the winter months “singing” is mostly a daytime activity. Not only are the song temporally distinctive by season, but scientists have also found that blue whale songs evolve over time writes Rebecca Giggs in The Atlantic. Since the 1960s, the pitch of their songs has downshifted three white keys on the piano. While scientists are still trying to determine why, one of the theories is that the songs can be quieter because sound waves travel farther in our increasingly acidic oceans as a result of absorbing more carbon dioxide. As Giggs says, “our deeds echo in their voices.” 

As Peter and other readers could likely tell, I continue to oscillate between the value of habits and their declining effect as they become habituated. Where Nietzsche’s habits and Franklin’s thirteen moral virtues intersect is how we interface with our values. Franklin’s virtues endure as long as he has habits that perpetuate them in his daily life. The habits that both Nietzsche and Peter describe can help shape who we become by their continuous evolution rather than in their stagnant habituation. Peter’s metaphor of habits forming the branches of the tree of our lives is a beautiful gift.

“Regarding ‘I intend to achieve X’—Gollwitzer, we get into the research of Richard Boyatzis et. al. on the shift from what he and his colleagues term "coaching for compliance" versus their coined approach ‘coaching from compassion’ or ‘Intentional Change Theory.’ Which is to get out of our task-positive neural network (near term accomplishments, goals, judgements, closed mindset) to the default mode network (tend & befriend, forward-focus, open mindset). We do this by as both Gollwitzer, Boyatzis and Covey would say—beginning with the vision of the bright attractive future (‘begin with the end in mind’). Their research shows 65-85% efficacy of keeping the attention on this "positive emotional attractor" of our future vision vs. 11% success rate or worse that comes from focusing only on consequences, ‘should’ or what they term ‘negative emotional attractors.’

Furthermore, on Temporal Self Appraisal Theory—backward-looking self-assessment can become its own cul-de-sac. For instance spending decades rehashing our past in whatever modes of disbelief, self-blame, shame, judgement, regret, etc. By contrast, Buddhism holds there is no fixed identity, and every moment (and we in it) are fresh and new—which both gives us the freedom to unlock our own mental/emotional cages while also handing us the radical responsibility to constantly reassess our assumptions, or simply practice setting our assumptions aside so that we may rise to whatever the present moment calls for in terms of response from us.” 

It is fascinating to consider the space between the research of Anne E. Wilson and Boyatzis et al. According to my understanding, Wilson’s research about our psychological distance from past and future selves affects motivation in our present self. However, I think the research subjects are unguided by others. Peter’s comment made me wonder (and we may have the chance to confirm this with Dr. Wilson) whether the coaching frame that informs the research of Boyatzis can alter the self-appraisal and psychological distance challenges identified by Wilson if the research subjects embarks on goal fulfillment with others rather than alone? As Boyatzis, Smith, and Beveridge write in “Coaching With Compassion” (2013), compassionate coaching focuses on guiding the coachee to invoke their “Ideal Self,” which is “the individual’s vision of who he or she wants to be and includes his or her goals, values, and deepest aspirations for the individual’s future.” 

Wilson’s research would contend that if that Ideal Self is very distant from the present self, motivation will be low. However, in a later paper by that I found after writing Issue Seventeen, “Wrinkles in Time and Drops in the Bucket: Circumventing Temporal and Social Barriers to Pro-Environmental Behavior” (2018), Wilson explicitly addresses the temporal distancing problem of climate change. She and others found that they could positively affect temporal discounting, which otherwise causes people to underrate the severity of climate risk due to being remote in time, and thus undermines their willingness to act. By inducing subjects to feel that distant future climate outcomes are more imminent AND that others are taking climate action, pro-environmental behaviour increases. Perhaps it is the compassionate coach who not only helps guide coachees to their Ideal Self, but also assists in making climate change concerns less subjectively distant and surrounds a coachee with others wanting to take collective action where even greater possibilities lie for motivating climate action. 

“Amor fati is not only Nietzche's but also the saying of the Stoics—here he has a more positive bent to his appreciation of life—but from the Stoics' standpoint it was to love every aspect, not just the beautiful; their discipline including somehow coming to love our dire hardships (the seemingly crueller side of our fate, was stripped of judgement and more than simply endured). What Buddhism would call equanimity. This is like Rabia al Basri's wonderful ‘I was born, when all I once feared, I could love.’ May we all reach such peace, and then act from it for the sake of the planet this coming year and all the years hence.”

I read that when Nietzsche strives to be a “Yes-sayer” in the New Year, he is saying “yes” to all that life brings forth, both good and bad. Undoubtedly the concept was informed by the Stoics nearly two millennia before his time—if we accept life as a series of imperfections, we can at the same time prepare ourselves to be calm and brave in all aspects of life—as Peter says, “to love every aspect” of life. As The School of Life succinctly summarizes, “stoicism is nothing less than an elegant, intelligent dress rehearsal for catastrophe.” Seneca encourages us to assume that what we fear might happen, will happen. By practicing these worst-case scenarios, we avoid falling into the anxiety gap about what might happen and what we hope could happen. To bring Gollwitzer’s research into this framing, his “if-then” rather than “I intend to achieve X” asks us to create resolutions that are situationally forecasted and dependent using implementation rather than goal intentions. In the Stoic tradition, Gollwitzer asks us to situate our “then” resolutions within the context of the “if” realities. This not only helps us overcome the two issues he identifies with resolution failure but also increases their likelihood of occurrence. I suspect even Benjamin Franklin would have been a fan of Gollwitzer’s construct.

I was not familiar with Rabia Al Basri’s poem, “Die Before You Die,” so thought I would share it in its entirety. As always, thank you, Peter. 

Ironic, but one of the most intimate acts
of our body is
death.

So beautiful appeared my death - knowing who then I would kiss, I died a thousand times before I died.

"Die before you die," said the Prophet Muhammad.

Have wings that feared ever touched the Sun?

I was born when all I once
feared—I could
love. 

See Peters’ comment in its entirety and add your reflections to his

As Shared by Mitch Taylor

“I can personally attest to the improved results of applying Houltberg and Uhalde's three questions to one's resolutions, even though I of course never knew anything about their theories at the time. I think we all apply the first question of hoping that our resolutions will meet our long term goals, and indeed most of us probably approach resolutions from a personal standpoint, but my own enlightenment comes from the third question which is to consider who else in this big wide deserving world might be positively affected by my own resolves and actions.”

I am so glad that you also found resonance in their third question that harnesses transcendent motivation. I struggled in approaching the topic of resolutions with the nearly entire focus on self. While our resolutions should be anchored in self, I am heartened by the research findings that our resolutions will not only be more effective if grounded in a context beyond ourselves, but will also bring about greater change in the world that is so desperately needed. As the pursuit of resolutions over time starts to feel boring or tedious (an inevitability), researchers find that self-transcendent purpose improves self-regulation as well (See “Boring but important”).

See Mitch’s comment in its entirety and add your reflections to his

I hope this week between issues provides the space for further discovery and reflection. I had considered inviting subscribers to publicly share their resolutions with the intention of increasing goal fulfillment. Then I discovered an additional piece of research by Peter Gollwitzer, “When intentions go public: Does social reality widen the intention-behavior gap?” (2009), where the research team determines that public sharing compromises goal-related performance.

I wish you a very happy New Year and success in fulfilling all your resolutions. Go forth and make a difference in the week ahead.

See you next Saturday with Issue Eighteen.

Adam

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Why I Write The Understory

We have crossed the climate-change threshold from emerging to urgent, which demands a transformative response. The scale of the issue demands not only continuous focus but also the courage to take bold action. I've found that a persistence of climate consciousness improves resilience to the noise and distractions of daily life in service of a bigger (and most of the time invisible) long-term cause. 

The Understory is my way of organizing the natural and human-made curiosities that capture my attention. Within the words, research, and actions of others lies the inspiration for personal and organizational journeys. I hope that my work here will help to inform not just my persistent consciousness, but yours as well.