Neurosis Be Gone!

The older I've become, the more neurotic I've become. When it comes to making decisions from choosing a job or what food to eat, I've become more indecisive and more analytical all my decisions. The early jobs I've chosen in high school were chosen without much thought. I didn't do extensive internet searches about every little thing the jobs entail. I didn't look up the potential health hazards. I just thought, "I'm going to do this job to make some money." And that was it. Nowadays, choosing a job involves extensive research of various aspects of the job. I've essentially added many more variables to consider for nearly every decision. Part of this indecisiveness and compulsion to do extensive research stems from the expansion of information available on the internet coupled with past bad decisions that have caused negative consequences. Over the years, I've experienced certain health issues stemming from poor decisions in the past. From drug use damaging my brain, to listening to loud music causing tinnitis, I've come to a point where I don't want to damage my health anymore than necessary, as I know how compromised health can deteriorate my quality of life. Also, after having an appendectomy, I've become more aware about the fragility of life and how it's important to make health lifestyle changes in order to reduce the fragility of life.

It's good to do research and do one's due diligence when making decisions, but one can get overly caught up in the decision making process which can lead to great mental distress. I need to just do the research then make a decision without endlessly going back and forth between choices. Making a decision requires a degree of faith of a certain outcome, but there's no guarantee things will turn out as expected. I need to learn to let go of trying to have near-total control of my life and just accept whatever the outcomes of my decisions are. Life is too short to get bogged down in the decision making process.All this over-analyzing has caused mental distress, possible health problems and an overal unfulfilling life. When the mind gets stuck in analysis paralysis and gets bogged down in tedious decision-making , life feels like wearing a heavy cumbersome suit of armor that saps the enjoyment out of every moment. It's hard to breath and enjoy life when the mind is preoccupied with the endless variables of the numerous choices one can make. Neurosis be gone!

Negative thinking could be bad for your health

Negative thinking could be bad for your health. It could lead to physiological changes in the body such as releasing high levels of cortisol in the blood, increasing blood pressure, increasing fatty build up in arteries along with other physiological changes in the body that could compromise one's health. Also, people who are prone to negative thinking are less likely to exercise regularly and eat healthily; so they are likely to experience a double whammy from negative automatic physiological responses and decreased motivation to live a healthy lifestyle. So is it enough to just think more positive thoughts to reduce the risk of getting or worsening diseases? I'm pretty sure that may help a bit, but there's probably more to it than that. Exercising, eating healthily, meditating, living mindfully, yoga, achieving moderately difficult cognitive tasks with great meaning and having close meaningful relationships all help to assist people to think more positively, which could then lower their risk for certain diseases. If you are interested in the potential impacts of negative thinking on health, check out the links below:


Psychological Stress Impairs Early Wound Repair Following Surgery
Study: Negative Outlook Appears to Raise Risk of Heart Disease, Death
The Health Hazards of Pessimism
Skip the Vitamins, Use Optimism to Lift Immune System
LIFELONG HEALTH Unhappiness Is a Disease That Often Shortens Life

Overdosing on Self-Help

I've been on a self-help -- as in anything related to philosophy, psychology or personal development -- binge lately, and I think it's time to go on a self-help fast. The information overload I've been experiencing is making me mentally tired and confused. I need to focus on taking action instead of just thinking about what to do.

I've been addicted to self-help type books and websites for over tens years now, and I don't think it's really helped me all that much. I've come to realize that I've been co-dependent on external information to come up with coping skills; instead of finding ways to prosper from within, I've been constantly seeking solutions from outside myself without doing much serious self-reflection.

Self-help has become an addiction that has led me to voraciously seek eternal happiness. This addiction has a very poor success rate because I think I've been jamming my mind with too much self-help without proper reflection and action. Self-help isn't inherently bad and could probably help, but I need to slow down to allow myself to process things and be pro-active instead of passively ruminating and being so self-absorbed.

I'm going to refrain from reading, listening and watching about anything related to self-help for a while. I will also deflect self-help info that happens to comes my way. I will write about it from time to time, but in a more self-reflective manner by analyzing my experiences and observations with the intention to create solid theories on human behavior, especially my own behavior.

Theories

UCLA Professor of psychology Ben Karney likens theories to maps during a lecture on Theories and Intimate Relationships. Just like maps, theories are highly compressed explanations of phenomena of the world that help guide our behaviors. Theories are more than just a collection of facts, it's organized knowledge that helps reduce the complexities of phenomena into more manageable and simplified parts.

During the second part of the lecture, professor Thomas Bradbury likens theories to drawings of cartoon caricatures where certain features are exaggerated; they depict reality in a distorted and exaggerated manner by taking away certain details and exaggerating certain ones. Exaggerating certain features and doing away with other details allows one to clearly see certain regularities in nature.

I'm often dismissive of theories because they tend to be flawed and contradictory. But I need to realize just as there are no perfect maps or perfect drawings, there are almost no perfect theories especially when it comes to social, psychological and philosophical theories. If you were to create a massive 3d map of the world with a 1:1 scale with all the details of the actual landscape, you'd have have the world. But what good would such a massive and detailed map be with helping to navigate a city or Machu Pichu? Compressing and simplifying the world into a smaller map allows one to navigate the world more easily.

Human nature is extremely complex and can be interpreted in numerous ways. We can never fully understand every single little detail of human nature, but we seek out patterns, draw inferences from observing human behavior and create theories that help explain aspects of human behavior. This flies in the face of the adage to never generalize. But if we never generalize, the pictures on the screen are mere random pixels, climate doesn't exist because weather is completely random and text in a book are just random characters with no meaning.

With all the information that exists about human behavior, all I can do is, "Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own." as Bruce Lee said. Our minds are finite in its capacity to understand the world and we are prone to errors, biases and all sorts of faulty reasoning. But we can have  general theories with elements of truths about the world that can help us navigate it. I'm going to be more observant of my and other people's behavior and create my own theories about humans keeping in mind to not take them overly seriously and allow the theories to be subject to change. I'll try to not fall for errors of reasoning but will refrain from trying to create perfect theories (or I'll end up creating no theories).

Mind Not Matter

Bart: Uh, Dad?
Homer: What.
Bart: What is the mind? Is it just a system of impulses? Or is it something tangible?
Homer: Relax. What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind! Haha!

The Arizona desert is a hell hole inferno with a Martian landscape, or is the Arizona desert a majestically beautiful work of natural art? Both interpretations are correct and wrong depending on one's perspective. The Arizona landscape exists as something independent of the mind, but humans attach meaning to it with the filters of their minds. We experience natural automatic reactions to certain landscapes, and we use subjective words to describe how we feel about our reactions. The problem with language is it's often a highly imprecise mechanism for describing our thoughts and feelings. When I think about the Arizona desert, I alternate between feelings of hell hole inferno and beautiful art. I also think many other things. But I think I think too much about trivial stuff.

I often think about seeking near absolute truth about certain things such as the extremes of perception change. One part of my mind tries to prove or discount the idea that we can be in 100% control of our perceptions. If we are able to overcome most phobias by altering our perceptions, can't we alter our perceptions for nearly everything? Can't we just think of everything as wonderful? If happiness comes from within and is independent of external factors, why do anything at all? Why strive? Zen Buddhists strive for stuff those hypocrites! Why not just lie in bed all day if striving is so bad? But I think I am just thinking and analyzing way too much and getting bogged down in unnecessary details and repeating them over and over. Instead of taking certain philosophical theories to their extreme logical conclusions and pointing out inconsistencies of theories, I just need to listen to myself, experiment, and see what and doesn't work for me, then move on from there. Enough with this overthinking the same things over and over again. The absurdity of my over thinking led me to do a extensive Google search about overthinking, which made me overthink about overthinking to the tenth power! Agh!

From now on, I will just try to go with the flow and seek the middle way. If I think want something, I'll think about it for no more than a few minutes instead of hours, days or longer. I often ponder if I truly absolutely down to my bare bone marrow want something. I create long pros and cons list, think about the moral merits of buying it, ask myself if it's a want or need, coax myself into believing I'm being materialistic and can do without it, etc. My mind just spirals into a vortex that considers numerous factors over and over again. I just need to pause, stop overthinking and be more action-oriented and not live in my mind so much.

I also need to stop trying to find near-absolute truth and near-absolute consistency. Life is messy and unpredictable with lots of gray area. I can't absolutely know with the precision of the atomic clock what my true feelings and perceptions are. Humans are complex creatures who do a lot things and say a lot of things, but oftentimes what we say and do not mesh. That's okay. Humans can't be absolutely perfect and know precisely what we want and obtain all they want with ease. I just have to accept that fact and stop trying to understand myself as some predictable and easily understandable robot. 

Occupy Semantics

Businessman, author and financial commentator Peter Schiff wore a sign at OWS that read along the lines of: "I'm a part of the 1%. Let's talk". Schiff told a protester he pays half his income in taxes and how he has around 150 employees. He also asked a protester if she would like to be a part of the 1% and if she wanted more money. She didn't respond but I'm sure she wouldn't mind it. Then there are those, such as Piers Morgan, who try to paint Michael Moore as a hypocrite for being in the 1% yet protesting against corrupt corporations. Too bad Michael Moore constantly denies being a part of the 1% and often tries to change the subject; he should just own up to being in the top 1% and explain that not all 1%'ers are evil. Ron Paul said it best when he mentioned he isn't against capitalism, but he's against corporatism. I'm sure most people are against corporate corruption, but their political ideologies compel them to react a certain way; generally economic conservatives arguing against OWS and economic liberals arguing for it.  This has led people to argue past each other while they actually agree that corporate corruption needs to end. Instead, conservatives feel the need to defend free-market capitalism while liberals feel the need to decry it. Most agree capitalism is a good thing but differ in opinion on how it should be regulated. Many arguments are about the minitae of capitalism and turn into arguments of semantics.

People are also intent on blaming one or a few entities at the exclusion of others. Conservatives tend to blame 'the people' for acting irrationally. They also blame gov't regulations for impeding on the free market. Liberals tend to blame corporations for being greedy. The Tea Party and OWS have a similar goal of ending corporate corruption, but the Tea Party scapegoats the government while the OWS scapegoats corporations. Corporations, the government and 'the people' are all to blame in varying degrees with most of blame placed on corrupt corporations and gov't while the people are also to blame.

Not all 1%'ers are evil and greedy tax evaders and not all 99%'ers are do-gooders who diligently pay all their taxes. Dividing people into the 1% and 99% has led some to have an us against them mentality that looks down on their opponent. But that's the nature theories; they are intended to rough and condensed guides like a map. Unfortunately, many people have confused the map for the terrain and have taken the 99% versus the 1% greedy argument too literally. Often when a person demonizes the 1%, someone counters by mentioning the do-gooders of the 1% to demonstrate the benevolence of the 1%. Or when a person praises the 1%, someone will counter by mentioning the corrupt members of the 1%.

Occupy Wall Street

Summary of my thoughts on Occupy Wall Street (OWS)
- Not all 99%'ers are good and uncorrupt
- Not all 1%'ers are bad and corrupt
- All corrupt entities should be held accountable for their corruption and should be punished accordingly