One way I like to think about it is whether I am deciding to do things because of fear or joy. i.e. I should exercise because if I don't I am at more risk of bad health outcomes. I was invited by my partner for a run earlier this week and was shocked by how much I loved the feeling of running outside.
A thing I noticed was that this dichotomy is very well layered. See if it happens for you. The impetus to play may start to feel like it slides over to being a fear. i.e. "You should play or you will miss out on all the joys you should be having".
I've found that acceptance of fear and uncertainty and loving that I care, but being separate enough to feel the tug of joy is the easiest way to "play" with the fear based thoughts.
I like the idea and want to come back sometimes. "Discipline is what’s supposed to make the difference between doing the sustaining thing and succumbing to Resistance." And I put it in our newsletter.
Your article resonated with me quite a bit, as it put into easily digestable paragraphs, what feelings and thoughts have gone through my head, more than once!
My comment on this has 2 parts:
1) Learnings from my therapy: the idea of your ideal-self
Many ideas about personality, habits and how to grow as a person, that i got in touch with in the past, I would categorize as cognitive-behavioral theories. So when I finally got myself a therapist instead of another self-help book (can recommend), I picked one with a humanistic person-centered approach.
Many struggles, regarding what I knew to be the right thing to do, versus what I wanted to do, versus what I thought others expected of me, got untangled in the process. Those new theories were a good addition to how I understood behaviour in the past.
2) My personal solution
One idea I learned through guided meditation, was to notice feelings or thoughts, rather than following them. So when I get the idea to go for a swim and immediately some resisting thoughts pop up, about how it's too far away and so on, sometimes - i need to meditate more regularly - i manage to notice the resistance against the initial effort - but keep my body moving - packing my swim gear and getting on my bike.
I have the strong sense, in many areas of my life, that if I'm trying to exercise discipline or willpower then I've already missed the boat. I might be able to force whatever behaviour I'm after for a while, but 'failure' (for want of a better word) is never far away. I do much better when I use my energy to create the conditions that will motivate the behaviour in the future. Unfortunately it can be quite hard to figure out what that is! But 90% of the time it seems to be basic wellbeing stuff like 'getting enough sleep' or 'talking about my anxieties'. (How do you make yourself feel like doing those when you know you should? Er…)
(I use the same approach for getting my toddler in the bath: the direct approach doesn't work, but e.g. getting excited about taking a particular toy in the bath later does.)
Have a read of The Control Heuristic by Luca Dellanna. He has an interesting (and intuitively sound) model for the intention-behaviour gap, and much besides. His podcast on Econtalk is also worth a listen.
Well, started writing for my work blog ,posts about healthcare and the nuances that come with clinical practice. It was fun, had flow and simply something I did for fun.....as soon as I put a calendar reminder to when I should have the next post up, I got demotivated and I always run out of time to do it.....guess ,it's the timeline ,the notion of productiveness that is taking all the joy of writing from it.
Play activates the ventral (front side) of our vagus nerve. It responds to cues of physical safety and safe emotionally connections. It improves resilience and up-regulates our emotions from reactive fight/flight and immobilizing collapse.
One of explanations of procrastination that i know - people don't do something that they think they should/want to do because of conflict between wishes, needs or reality and some of their inner mental constructs/models (learnt habits, behavior models, cognitive biases, fears, unconscious fatigue sensation etc). The hippocampus triggers a system of inhibition of behavior due to a conflict of goals. Result of that inhibition is anxiety (ref to The neuropsychology of anxiety, Book by Jeffrey Alan Gray). To cope with anxiety child begins to act up, may cry, refuse to do what the parent tells. Adults can surf the web instead of doing important things or do a simple task/action. In the case of a child, the reason is simply solved - what the parent wants does not correspond to his goal of having fun. Sometimes that conclusion works with an adult :) But more often its more complicated of course. To solve procrastination puzzle with an adult, you need to understand the cause of the conflict. Discipline can work but it is more of a hack. And sometimes probably only a hack can work with adults too? - we tend to stay kids till the end... Discipline helps to start acting, probably this is the most important thing. Perhaps we are constantly in a state of conflict - there are so many opportunities for action that we find it difficult to choose, you CAN'T CHOOSE swimming, for example? Playing games is fun and by gamification we can reduce severity of the conflict.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about what activities I have experienced this phenomenon with and the most significant one is walking.
I take two walks a day (early morning and evening) and these days I do it on autopilot almost. I know I'll feel better when it's done and so I don't hesitate.
But it wasn't always like that, in the beginning I had to drag myself (literally) to take one walk every morning. I knew I'd feel better at the end of it but for some reason I had to fight to do it.
What I find really curious is that I don't know when the transition happened and why. When did it cross from something to struggle through to something to enjoy and savour? I can't tell, and I might never have thought about it if I hadn't read this.
I’d love this! I definitely have that same struggle - but I never struggle to go out with my camera. OK occasionally, but for the most part I don’t struggle with that. Why? Because it’s play! It’s fun and I never know what will be there. I know if I don’t go I might miss something. Now I want to think about how to make writing and drawing and going to bed on time or eating things that are good for me follow that same path. So much to think about. For a couple years now I’ve been trying - or at least wanting - to play more and be more playful. I seem to run up against this image of myself as a serious person who wants to be taken seriously. I want to ponder what you’ve written a little bit longer. Maybe some new piece will fall into place. I’d really like to be more lighthearted and fun!
For quite a few years now, my wife has been a champion of “purposeful play,” in which she encourages and guides adults (usually) stressed out, lonely, stifled, or stuck to engage in various forms of play. She set up two tetherball sets outside her apartment for the public to use. They wore out within months. She’s had her own paint and sip parties where people paint, color, sing, or dance as they see fit. They love it. She loves it. She has reminded me many times that I need to learn how to play again. In other words, everything you wrote resonates.
Really enjoyed this, Irina! I agree that play is massively under-valued in contemporary life (In Japan or Thailand it is not quite as disparaged). I loved this book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Ludens
I'm reading your posts out of order and way later that you published them, but this connects in my mind to your piece about owning your writing. I thought of writing in terms of discipline for a long time, but now I think of it as a practice. The difference to me is that discipline strives toward a certain goal or outcome, the carrot at the other end of the stick we're supposed to whip ourselves with. But a practice is much simpler: the only point is showing up. It may go well; it may go badly; I may hate it; I may love; I may be very productive; I may produce nothing but drivel. The point is just to show and be myself, and see what happens. And play is essential. A 45-year-old guy keeps showing up for pick-up basketball games just to play. He's never going to be in the NBA; he's never going to make money at it or win acclaim. He just feels like himself when he's doing it. Writing is my practice.
Maybe the people you know that go play soccer and basketball do that because those are hobbies. And even then, maybe sometimes they don't feel like going - fun as it might be - but they do it anyway because they took a responsibility towards others to show up. Would that be discipline?
A balance between discipline and play?
Or maybe we might just try to take pride in the fact that we're doing it *despite* not wanting to, if we made a decision to take up a responsibility, towards others or ourselves.
One way I like to think about it is whether I am deciding to do things because of fear or joy. i.e. I should exercise because if I don't I am at more risk of bad health outcomes. I was invited by my partner for a run earlier this week and was shocked by how much I loved the feeling of running outside.
A thing I noticed was that this dichotomy is very well layered. See if it happens for you. The impetus to play may start to feel like it slides over to being a fear. i.e. "You should play or you will miss out on all the joys you should be having".
I've found that acceptance of fear and uncertainty and loving that I care, but being separate enough to feel the tug of joy is the easiest way to "play" with the fear based thoughts.
I like the idea and want to come back sometimes. "Discipline is what’s supposed to make the difference between doing the sustaining thing and succumbing to Resistance." And I put it in our newsletter.
Memo to myself: https://share.glasp.co/kei/?p=athzfSrk5Gns5IcnnfVt
Your article resonated with me quite a bit, as it put into easily digestable paragraphs, what feelings and thoughts have gone through my head, more than once!
My comment on this has 2 parts:
1) Learnings from my therapy: the idea of your ideal-self
Many ideas about personality, habits and how to grow as a person, that i got in touch with in the past, I would categorize as cognitive-behavioral theories. So when I finally got myself a therapist instead of another self-help book (can recommend), I picked one with a humanistic person-centered approach.
Many struggles, regarding what I knew to be the right thing to do, versus what I wanted to do, versus what I thought others expected of me, got untangled in the process. Those new theories were a good addition to how I understood behaviour in the past.
2) My personal solution
One idea I learned through guided meditation, was to notice feelings or thoughts, rather than following them. So when I get the idea to go for a swim and immediately some resisting thoughts pop up, about how it's too far away and so on, sometimes - i need to meditate more regularly - i manage to notice the resistance against the initial effort - but keep my body moving - packing my swim gear and getting on my bike.
I have the strong sense, in many areas of my life, that if I'm trying to exercise discipline or willpower then I've already missed the boat. I might be able to force whatever behaviour I'm after for a while, but 'failure' (for want of a better word) is never far away. I do much better when I use my energy to create the conditions that will motivate the behaviour in the future. Unfortunately it can be quite hard to figure out what that is! But 90% of the time it seems to be basic wellbeing stuff like 'getting enough sleep' or 'talking about my anxieties'. (How do you make yourself feel like doing those when you know you should? Er…)
(I use the same approach for getting my toddler in the bath: the direct approach doesn't work, but e.g. getting excited about taking a particular toy in the bath later does.)
Have a read of The Control Heuristic by Luca Dellanna. He has an interesting (and intuitively sound) model for the intention-behaviour gap, and much besides. His podcast on Econtalk is also worth a listen.
Well, started writing for my work blog ,posts about healthcare and the nuances that come with clinical practice. It was fun, had flow and simply something I did for fun.....as soon as I put a calendar reminder to when I should have the next post up, I got demotivated and I always run out of time to do it.....guess ,it's the timeline ,the notion of productiveness that is taking all the joy of writing from it.
Play activates the ventral (front side) of our vagus nerve. It responds to cues of physical safety and safe emotionally connections. It improves resilience and up-regulates our emotions from reactive fight/flight and immobilizing collapse.
One of explanations of procrastination that i know - people don't do something that they think they should/want to do because of conflict between wishes, needs or reality and some of their inner mental constructs/models (learnt habits, behavior models, cognitive biases, fears, unconscious fatigue sensation etc). The hippocampus triggers a system of inhibition of behavior due to a conflict of goals. Result of that inhibition is anxiety (ref to The neuropsychology of anxiety, Book by Jeffrey Alan Gray). To cope with anxiety child begins to act up, may cry, refuse to do what the parent tells. Adults can surf the web instead of doing important things or do a simple task/action. In the case of a child, the reason is simply solved - what the parent wants does not correspond to his goal of having fun. Sometimes that conclusion works with an adult :) But more often its more complicated of course. To solve procrastination puzzle with an adult, you need to understand the cause of the conflict. Discipline can work but it is more of a hack. And sometimes probably only a hack can work with adults too? - we tend to stay kids till the end... Discipline helps to start acting, probably this is the most important thing. Perhaps we are constantly in a state of conflict - there are so many opportunities for action that we find it difficult to choose, you CAN'T CHOOSE swimming, for example? Playing games is fun and by gamification we can reduce severity of the conflict.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about what activities I have experienced this phenomenon with and the most significant one is walking.
I take two walks a day (early morning and evening) and these days I do it on autopilot almost. I know I'll feel better when it's done and so I don't hesitate.
But it wasn't always like that, in the beginning I had to drag myself (literally) to take one walk every morning. I knew I'd feel better at the end of it but for some reason I had to fight to do it.
What I find really curious is that I don't know when the transition happened and why. When did it cross from something to struggle through to something to enjoy and savour? I can't tell, and I might never have thought about it if I hadn't read this.
I’d love this! I definitely have that same struggle - but I never struggle to go out with my camera. OK occasionally, but for the most part I don’t struggle with that. Why? Because it’s play! It’s fun and I never know what will be there. I know if I don’t go I might miss something. Now I want to think about how to make writing and drawing and going to bed on time or eating things that are good for me follow that same path. So much to think about. For a couple years now I’ve been trying - or at least wanting - to play more and be more playful. I seem to run up against this image of myself as a serious person who wants to be taken seriously. I want to ponder what you’ve written a little bit longer. Maybe some new piece will fall into place. I’d really like to be more lighthearted and fun!
For quite a few years now, my wife has been a champion of “purposeful play,” in which she encourages and guides adults (usually) stressed out, lonely, stifled, or stuck to engage in various forms of play. She set up two tetherball sets outside her apartment for the public to use. They wore out within months. She’s had her own paint and sip parties where people paint, color, sing, or dance as they see fit. They love it. She loves it. She has reminded me many times that I need to learn how to play again. In other words, everything you wrote resonates.
Really enjoyed this, Irina! I agree that play is massively under-valued in contemporary life (In Japan or Thailand it is not quite as disparaged). I loved this book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Ludens
I'm reading your posts out of order and way later that you published them, but this connects in my mind to your piece about owning your writing. I thought of writing in terms of discipline for a long time, but now I think of it as a practice. The difference to me is that discipline strives toward a certain goal or outcome, the carrot at the other end of the stick we're supposed to whip ourselves with. But a practice is much simpler: the only point is showing up. It may go well; it may go badly; I may hate it; I may love; I may be very productive; I may produce nothing but drivel. The point is just to show and be myself, and see what happens. And play is essential. A 45-year-old guy keeps showing up for pick-up basketball games just to play. He's never going to be in the NBA; he's never going to make money at it or win acclaim. He just feels like himself when he's doing it. Writing is my practice.
Read Tiny Habits
Maybe the people you know that go play soccer and basketball do that because those are hobbies. And even then, maybe sometimes they don't feel like going - fun as it might be - but they do it anyway because they took a responsibility towards others to show up. Would that be discipline?
A balance between discipline and play?
Or maybe we might just try to take pride in the fact that we're doing it *despite* not wanting to, if we made a decision to take up a responsibility, towards others or ourselves.
Would that count as "play"? :-)