My emphasis so far has deliberately been on what's known academically as the 'affective', or feeling, aspect of our human nature. Let's now turn our attention to another part of our beings: the 'cognitive', or thinking side.
I make jokes about psychology, I'll admit, but they are friendly jokes. I don't scorn the achievements and insights of the millions of erudite people who have studied the human mind. In fact, I am in awe of human learning in that field. My own university studies of psychology were brief and undistinguished, I'll admit. Today, I have no wish to be even an amateur psychologist, but rather a professional
Happy Man.
While I have a healthy scepticism of anyone who complicates the beautiful simplicity of the human capacity for happiness, I am the first to say that my amateur knowledge of psychology does not qualify me to write on the subject. However, I hope I may be allowed to speak just a little on the topic of thought.
Using the brain for what it's made for
We are not only feeling creatures, we are thinking creatures. Not all of our thinking is rational, but each of us has a rational mind
– here we'll be referring to our cognitive mind. This part of our being is something that can, in most cases, very readily be put into our service to increase our happiness quite quickly.
cog·ni·tive
Pronunciation: 'käg-n&-tiv
Function: adjective
Date: 1586
1 : of, relating to, or involving cognition <the cognitive elements of perception
– C. H. Hamburg>
2 : based on or capable of being reduced to empirical factual knowledge
- cog·ni·tive·ly adverb
Source: The Merriam-Webster Dictionary online
The cognitive part of our minds is that part that is capable of knowing things and bringing them into our consciousness where we can comprehend them. How this happens differs from person to person. We speak of 'the mind's eye'
– for people like me who tend towards visual aspects of awareness, the description fits. However, for some people reading this, we can be fairly sure that 'the mind's eye' might resemble more 'the mind's ear', or some other sense organ. It's safe to say, though, that human beings tend to think mainly in images and words. Both the cognitive and affective aspects of mind make great use of pictures.
For example, when we think of a cow, we see in our mind's eye an image of a cow. It might be a clear, or a vague image. It's a safe bet, though, that it's a picture of some kind of cow that first comes into our consciousness, more quickly and more strongly than the cow's "moo". (Note, however, that if I say "laughing hyena", your 'mind's ear' will probably be quickly stimulated, not just your mind's eye.)
(tickle me)
When we become skilled at observing how we think, we are better able to alter how we think. If we get good at seeing the
pictures and words we think in, we gain control of them (my thought-words are in English and if I focus on them I see that they are written in the same alphabet as the words on this page
– that's because of my conditioning, of course).
Why am I emphasising this subject, the thoughts that pass through our minds? Because the extent to which we are able to view our thoughts is the extent to which we can alter them. (Rather, I should say "we can correct" them, because we can't alter a thought once it has been through our mind. The reason for this is that each appearance of a thought happens in real time, and we can't travel back in time to fix it. I would add that we can't stop thoughts popping into our heads, but we don't have to invite them to stay for tea and cookies.)
The ability to 'see' how we think gives us leverage over our emotions. In previous chapters we've concentrated on the fact that if we change our emotions first, our thinking will follow. Sometimes, though, emotions are stubborn and our habit so entrenched that it might be hard to shift. In those cases, to be aware of how they are affecting our thoughts is to have power in our lives. Then, our greatest power in the happiness game is to develop the habit of altering our emotions and correcting our thoughts.
Correcting our thoughts is one of the few habits about which we should become obsessive, fanatical. We benefit hugely when we reinforce the stimulus-response conditioning many times a day, so that we become incredibly skilled at seeing our thoughts, and altering them to our tastes, beliefs and aspirations.
Levering thought with thoughts
Like almost everything I have shared so far with you in this manual, there is absolutely nothing complicated in this chapter's Precept 14: I'll use thoughts for leverage. I could quite easily spin it out to a hundred pages with dozens of diagrams, citations, platitudes, arcane definitions and homilies
– but there's no point in wasting bandwidth, either on my website or in your brain. This manual is not concise because it's short-changing the reader; it's concise because (a) happiness ain't that hard (certainly easier than misery), and (b) the texts that have made it seem complicated have done us all a
terrible disservice.
The precept of using my own thoughts to get leverage on my thinking is blissfully simple. My gut feeling is that already your intuition tells you what this chapter and precept are about. Allow me to lay out the whole precept in two short paragraphs
– these are my hypotheses, or, as I call them:
Wilson's two Outrageous Generalisations:
1) Our affective (feeling) aspect largely creates the bodily environment for the generation of our thoughts;
2) Our cognitive (rational, knowing, thinking) aspect has the complete freedom to choose (a) what we feel, and (b) what we think. It can get leverage on whatever thoughts we believe to be unhealthy or bad, and eradicate them in time. We can transplant better thoughts where the outmoded ones formerly took up space, rent free, in our heads. The more we practise, the faster we will succeed in changing and feeling better.
That's it. That's Chapter 14, and that's Precept 14. Don't complicate it. Just add practice and bake for 80 years in a moderate brain.
Now, some of us are good at this some of the time. And some of us are bad at this most of the time. But few of us are good at this most of the time. Otherwise very happy people would be the norm. Are they?
Thoughts are things; we should watch them, and change them if needed, all the time. Just watch them closely, and commit yourself to change.
Just add practice
It's such a simple concept, but we need to understand that it is one of the most nuclear-powered tools in our toolkit.
I astound myself each and every day with this lever's power. I always knew, as we all do, that thinking was the crux of my problems. What I didn't know was that with practice I could really get leverage over my thoughts. I once believed that you can't cure a sick mind with a sick mind
– but I now believe most strongly that this is only true in pathological cases.
Unless we are quite mentally ill, our minds can fix themselves. In fact, I believe the mind is a self-healing organism and if we just get out of our own way, it will heal itself very well. We have to let it heal, and allow it to shake up its own Etch A Sketch.
The worst thing we can do is to demand that it fix itself 'yesterday'. Your brain evolved in jungles and savannahs, not in 21st century cities. We want instant coffee, instant everything, but few things in Nature grow or heal instantly. Think of your brain healing its thinking and feelings at about the same rate as grass growing. Yes, it's slow, but the great news is that it does grow. Ask any home owner with a broken lawn mower.
These days, I allow my brain weeks or months at least to cotton onto a new concept, particularly if it is a profound one. When I realised the extent to which I could correct my thinking with my thinking, I wanted to change all my thinking overnight
– but no habits change that quickly, especially at my age. So now, I practise patience with my own mental healing, at the same time as demanding certain standards. I am the wizard of my own mind. I am a Cult of One
– I determine how I shall think. I do have a belief in other, greater Powers in the Universe (more on this later), but I believe that my intentions are good (so I trust myself
– Precept 2) and I am getting better at taking responsibility for my own thinking.
In case you wonder what it is I'm saying we should practise, I'm not going to say much more. I really think we all know it deep down, which is why I have been concise with the Outrageous Generalisations. Your own intuition of what the red paragraphs mean is more stickable in your mind than any explication I can give. So, please think on them closely in coming days
– return to this page daily, I would suggest – or else I'll have to come back and write some boring treatise on my hypotheses, and that would be such a drag for me as well as you.
Unless I'm very much mistaken, a person who really applies these hypotheses, will make startling discoveries within days, hours or minutes. These discoveries will be far greater examples of the path to happiness and mental power than anything I could add. Let me please repeat my hypotheses:
Wilson's two Outrageous Generalisations:
1) Our affective (feeling) aspect largely creates the bodily environment for the generation of our thoughts;
2) Our cognitive (rational, knowing, thinking) aspect has the complete freedom to choose (a) what we feel, and (b) what we think. It can get leverage on whatever thoughts we believe to be unhealthy or bad, and eradicate them in time. We can transplant better thoughts where the outmoded ones formerly took up space, rent free, in our heads. The more we practise, the faster we will succeed in changing and feeling better.
If you are working through this manual, I just ask that before we come to our next chapter, you consider the red bit conscientiously and repeatedly. Take my words apart; unpack their meaning (ohmygawd, I sound like a postmodern sociologist
– sorry!). What – if they should happen to be true – could they mean in your own head?
Unless I'm way off track, I think you will make important discoveries with the concepts of
- freedom
- choice
- healthy thoughts
- leverage, and
- transplanting.
I hope so. Try it out before next chapter, really try it, but hang loose and have
fun with it, But please, take note of Rule 62: don't take yourself too seriously. And remember, we don't have to have fancy-shmancy, complicated theories about it, nor do we have to be clever to do this
– in fact, and I conclude on this: it's better if we don't!
Abundance and gratitude,
Pip
The
FeelGood Manual is now
available as a printed book
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