Testing testing, 1 2 3. Well, wish it was this easy to test my imagination. I always wonder if writing is a good thing to do... from a kind of a zen-ish perspective. One good thing about it that it makes me think.
Guess it's my vanity. Don't have many of those, but this intellectual one is certanly not something to dismiss. However, I have hard time publishing or producing stuff that I'm less than proud of, which makes it awfully hart do publish anything. Just look how long time it took me from creating this blog to posting anything on it. Well, I'm trying to lower my expectations on myself and just make these posts amusing or at least interesting to read. If I fail, well what the hell, that's another thing that i need to practice.
Not that I never fail, only rarely. The trouble of never or rarely failing is that it is evidence of slow or no progress. Not good. All of us feel good when we are good at what we do, when we excell at our hobbies or do a really good job at work. I don't even want to get into why this is so, I guess most people can accept is as a fact for now. Well, with slow progress at whatever we do, it will be hard to keep up with the competition, and for this we don't even have to compete, conscientiously at least.
So what is it that makes us so afraid of failure? And, what can we do about it? Also, what is a good ratio of doing things safe and experimenting and risking failure? Obviously, we can't fail all the time since this wouldn't lead to improvment of a skill but a stagnation or even loosing skill. Always playing it safe would than probably be the better of the extremes.
Comment, and I'll see in what direction my next post will go.
12 comments:
Haha - cool man, I wish you all the best with you new blog! But, you have to link to my blogs, or I will have to kill you :-)
So, a few comments:
I always wonder if writing is a good thing to do... from a kind of a zen-ish perspective. One good thing about it that it makes me think.
My idea of zen-ish perspective is that there are not "good things" or "bad things" you can do, just things that you do. But, you can feel good about the things you do, or feel bad about the things you do - Zen tells you to feel good! :-)
Another thing I reacted at in your blog is the usage of word "Failure". In order to see your actions as "Failure" you have to expect certain results, and then not reach them. If you are afraid that you might fail, one way to relax the fear of failure is to lower the expectations that you have on your self. This is often hard to do, as your own expectations on your self are actually others expectations mirrored - but try scaling down first others expectations, then your own, and when you're not really expecting anything from your self, you will not be able to fail! :-)
Another thing that I love doing (and I have dragged you in that sometimes) is jumping into situations where I have no idea what is going to happen. When you have no control, and no expected output from the situation, you are floating on your own and real creativity is unleashed! (just remember crkvenica!)
Oki, so I guess what I'm saying is that failing is better than not trying as long as you can make your self feel good failing!
My god, my english sucks!
I would love to link to your blog, as soon as I find out how to do that. :) By the way, do you still intend to keep both zenandi and zenija alive?
My idea of zen-ish perspective is that there are not "good things" or "bad things" you can do, just things that you do.
Well, I think that zen is state of mind and that the state of mind is influenced by everything we do. That is why Buddhists emphasize the importance of doing on the path to nirvana.
So, the exercise of writing, will it take me forward, towards happiness and being content or the opposite? That is what I am wondering.
In order to see your actions as "Failure" you have to expect certain results, and then not reach them. If you are afraid that you might fail, one way to relax the fear of failure is to lower the expectations that you have on your self.
I agree that this one of the answers, but I also wonder why we actively have to lower our expectations of our selves, but not the opposite. I'll try to explain what I mean with a simple example.
When I'm at the dojo, for example training grappling, I mostly divide people in two groups: better than me and worse than me. There are also some people that I consider equal but those are in minority.
The interesting ones are the people that I know I can beat. What happens now is that I know this and so do they, and for some reason I don't want to loose against them (fail) which makes me defensive. So, for some reason, I'd rather accept a draw or perhaps wait until they make a mistake and than attack than try new things, open myself to attacks to learn defense, experiment and so on... which in the long run will develop my grappling skills.
Now, what is "lowering my expectations"? Accepting that I don't have to win over these people every time? It is obviously not that I need to accept that they are better.
I think this behavior has its roots in ego. A big show stopper that probably deserves its own post. ;) I guess I'll have to write about that soon as well.
(What's wrong with your English? :)
Now, what is "lowering my expectations"? Accepting that I don't have to win over these people every time?
Exactly! To lower your standards mean that you understand and accept that you probably will get your butt kicked, but you are still willing to let that happen as you think that you might learn something from it.
The opposite would be saying: "Ah, no need to compete against these people, they will definitely kick my butt..." Well, in this example, it is obvious that the second approach is wrong, but in many other situations (approaching girls, going for new job opportunities, going to higher education, tons of examples) people do not fulfill their dreams for fear of failure.
I am wondering if this fear of failure is ever justified. Of course, there are blunt examples "You see 4 armed robbers, you realise that if you try to stop them, you will fail and get shot, you decide not to try and survive". But I am wondering how much social credit we lose every time we try and fail - do you know what I mean?
Say that we have 20000 units of social capital (collected likeliness of our peers). When you get your butt kicked in dojo, what do you lose, maybe 1,2 units? Maybe none? When you try to rail in a girl and fail in front of all your friends, 20-50? Is there a way to do this math, what do you think? Is this something we do subconsciously?
Anyway, I think this is a little bit in our gens, and a lot in our upbringing (cultural) - don't try if you think you'll fail, as people will not think highly of you than (you lose your social capital)
I don't understand what you mean "Why don't we do the oposite of lowering our expectations". I mean, if you already don't want to do something, as you think you might fail your expectations, how will rising your expectations help you? Then you most definitely will not do the deed.
There is however one possibility - that the failure and the expectation are not connected or related. You expect your self to learn jujutsu well, and that is your expectation, but it is OK if you fail 2000 times before you finaly master it. But - then you are expecting the failure! Which is actually lowering your expectations in the begining, and then gradually raising it as you get better...
Ah, yeah, you know what I meant... and about my english - I read the comment I wrote, and i could not get half of the things... So, I could either say that I make no sense whatsoever, or that my english is bad... guess what I chose :-)
I understand what you mean about the social capital. Interesting concept. It is also an interesting question how much of that is a genetic thing and how much is social, I don't know and perhaps it is not important.
I guess these "social creds" come from the fact that we want people to like us. I belive that we should try more being who we are and letting who we hang around with or consider our friends adapt to who we are instead of the oposite. That way I think it would be easier to dare fail and going down in social points would be easier (or perhaps failing without loosing social points would).
I don't understand what you mean "Why don't we do the oposite of lowering our expectations".
I don't understand where you get this from, but it doesn't matter, I'm getting a bit bored with the subject. I think it is time for a new post. ;)
“In order to see your actions as "Failure" you have to expect certain results, and then not reach them. If you are afraid that you might fail, one way to relax the fear of failure is to lower the expectations that you have on your self.”
No, you don’t have to expect anything. I can expect myself to fail as I try to nail some girl in a bar with all my friends watching and still try since I see the possible reward seems bigger then the odds against me times the “punishment” awaiting if I fail. And if I fail it will still plain suck. That is basically what I think that we all do in each and every conscious decision we make without really defining the though process for ourselves every time we make it. Here it is a bit more simplified (or is it?):
If (oddsforgettingpunished * punishment ) < (oddstogetreward * reward) then do
Else if
Don’t
Of course in some dilemmas the answer is so obvious to us that it doesn’t even seem like the rule is used or even necessary although it is but the simplicity of the decision makes it harder to see.
Then again: Some people are just really lousy. irrational gamblers and as nobody is all-knowing. We never get the odds, the rewards or the punishments exactly correctly in our mind. It is all aproximations.
With this being said we can go on to explain the answer to the overall question:
“So what is it that makes us so afraid of failure? And, what can we do about it?”
My answer to this is that we have to, in some way make the “(oddsforgettingpunished * punishment)” smaller or the “oddstogetreward * reward)” bigger. This means that there are four things that we could do to make our selves “ATLEAST TRY!”:
1.Convince our selves that the odds of getting punished aren´t that great. “Example: His grappling sux, the only thing I need to do is to avoid getting in his guard”
2.Convince ourselves that the punishment wont be that great if we fail. Example: SO WHAT? He beats everyone else as well; its no big deal if I lose to him.
3.Convince ourselves that the odds of getting a reward are greater. Example: “He probably doesn’t expect me to do a flying armbar, I will catch him of guard and beat him that way even though Im a lesser fighter!”
4.Convince ourselves that reward is greater: Example: “Yeah sure ill probably lose and sure, it will sting but if I beat this guy EVERYONE will look up to me”.
Although I think that it is necessary to be afraid of failure and we shouldn’t do anything about it in most cases. People who lack fear of failure are in our world either dead, referred to as “idiots” or extremly lucky.
As to why we are afraid of failing:
We dont want others or ourselves to lose a better image of oneself. Simple as that. It doesnt nessesarily have to be a kognitive process (see Watson, Skinner, Pavlov), its pretty much "automized".
No, you don’t have to expect anything. I can expect myself to fail as I try to nail some girl in a bar with all my friends watching and still try since I see the possible reward seems bigger then the odds against me times the “punishment” awaiting if I fail.
But than you are not expecting to fail, although you see it as a possibility while you hope that you will succeed. If you truly expected failure, you wouldn't approach this girl, unless you had some other motive for doing this, such as a entertaining your friends, winning a bet or deciding on a logical level that you need the practice.
If (oddsforgettingpunished * punishment ) < (oddstogetreward * reward) then do
Else if
Don’t
There is lots of truth in this and the rest of your reasoning, but I don't think this is the only premise when deciding upon executing an action. For example, I do things sometimes in hope of future reward or to improve a particular skill (which very indirectly might give me some satisfaction.
1.Convince our selves that the odds of getting punished aren´t that great.
This seems to be a type of self-deception, I don't do that. ;)
2.Convince ourselves that the punishment wont be
That is quite good, but I think the risk is that thinking that we don't try enough which means we will learn little or nothing from this failure...
People who lack fear of failure are in our world either dead, referred to as “idiots” or extremly lucky.
This is an interesting observation. I agree that there are cases where "playing it safe" is a better option. ;)
Well you agree with some points and not others; fair enough.
God damn it! My intellectual vanity//narcissism (whatever) would not allow this one to slip by.
“If you truly expected failure, you wouldn't approach this girl, unless you had some other motive for doing this, such as a entertaining your friends, winning a bet or deciding on a logical level that you need the practice.”
I cant really argue with this one since it’s a simple matter of you saying “its like this” and im saying that “no, its not”. Well, lets just say that we don’t agree with each other on this one or perhaps you never ever do things that you truly expect wont go your way while I sometimes do but let me ask you this: When you gamble on lets say the one-arm bandit, do you really expect to win?
“There is lots of truth in this and the rest of your reasoning, but I don't think this is the only premise when deciding upon executing an action. For example, I do things sometimes in hope of future reward or to improve a particular skill (which very indirectly might give me some satisfaction.”
Well if I decide to lose weight so that I don’t die prematurely then im doing this for as you would say a “future” reward but if im going to the fridge to get me a Coke then im doing this for a future reward as well and I don’t see why the time span would be relevant in a sense that contradicts my theory. Improving a particular skill is also a reward or else it wouldn’t be done. For me its kind of a definition :).
Don’t see my as 100% behaviourist you damn Freudian!
“This seems to be a type of self-deception, I don't do that. ;)”
Ow well… I sometimes have to :)
When you gamble on lets say the one-arm bandit, do you really expect to win?
Well, I hope so. But, my primary reason for playing games of chance is the thrill of the anticipation - which is a reward in itself. So, I play such games for immediate reward. Had there been no chance of winning, I'd never play those games, just as a majority of people wouldn't.
and I don’t see why the time span would be relevant in a sense that contradicts my theory.
Ah, but the time ruins the most beautiful theories. ;)
There is a huge difference in getting immediate reward and expecting reward later, especially if this later is far of. In the first case, both our emotional part of reasoning and our logical part of the reasoning can agree upon action, in the later case, only our logical part can look favorably upon the action. In the worst case, those two reasonings disagree which can make us quite miserable.
Elaborating on you example with the coke and loosing weight, you could say that getting a coke from the fridge (if you are trying to loose weigh) often is a conflicting action. Our emotional part of the brain wants immediate satisfaction and tries to override the logical decision not to.
Anyway, I think that in a simplistic kind of way, your formula is correct when it comes to emotional reasoning, but is not applicable to the logical one. When deciding upon executing an action that might reward you in the future the "odds_for_reward * reward" is for most people close to zero since the reward in itself is always on an emotional level (can you think of a logical level reward!?). Also, you can't appreciate the size of the reward when deciding upon the action. However, you might get a reward for being logical and consistent, which is one of the reasons the logic is able to override the emotions at all.
Don’t see my as 100% behaviourist you damn Freudian!
I'm kind of a philosophy guy, rather than being "philosophologist" (stolen expression for historical studies of philosophy and philosophers ;), so I can't throw around fancy comments like those. ;)
Ow well… I sometimes have to :)
I mean, at least I try to avoid self deception when possible. ;)
How did you manage to stumble into this blog? :) You're the first person I don't know who has commented on a post...
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