A model transformation?

In my last post I promised to tell how a visualization instantly changed my diet. I'll keep it brief.

I don't know when I first tasted shrimp, but whenever it was, shrimp immediately became one of my favorite things to eat.

Now, however, I have not eaten shrimp for YEARS.

Did I stop liking the taste? Nope. My guess is that if I tried it now, I would enjoy the taste as much as ever.

So what happened? Simple. I was listening to the radio one day, and someone said something that created an image in my mind, an image that instantly turned me off to shrimp forever.

If you enjoy shrimp, and want to continue doing so, you may want to stop reading now. Seriously.

I don't remember the speaker's exact wording. I also don't remember the speaker's name, or for that matter, the name of the program on which he spoke. I do remember that what he said came down to this: crustaceans are basically underwater cockroaches. Shrimp? Oversized underwater cockroach. Lobster? GIGANTIC underwater cockroach.

That created an image in my mind of eating cockroaches, which evoked such disgust that I have not eaten shrimp since.

That is my favorite example of personal change from my own life, because it was instantaneous and absolute. There was no struggle. The decision not to eat oversized cockroaches was one of the easiest I've ever made.

In a way, the dynamic involved could be viewed as the complement of the dynamic that Danish poet/mathematician/designer Piet Hein described:

Mere good intentions go for naught. /The balance we must strike / consists of liking what we ought /and doing what we like.

In this case, I instantly found myself disliking what I ought, and have ever since refused to do what I dislike. I have often wished that I could effect other changes in my life as readily as I did that one. More than that, I have often suspected that I can effect other changes in my life as readily as I did that one, by making tempting things repulsive. But I haven't gained that skill yet.

Have you experienced an instance of instantaneous, absolute change? How did it happen?

I Didn't Intend To Write This, Until I Did

Lately I have been toying with the idea that all behavior comes down to one of two things: intention or distraction. At any given moment, you are either pursuing a clear intention, or you are being distracted from doing so.

More than that, it has occurred to me that perhaps all of the things that I say have kept me from reaching my goals - fear of failure, fear of success, discouragement, confusion, ignorance - boil down to one thing: distraction. That anything that draws attention away from achieving an intention is just a form of distraction.

Even an intention serves as a distraction from other intentions; but at least pursuing any given intention strengthens the intentional muscles, so to speak. It's the periods of time without conscious intention that suck the power out of my life. So, lately, I have been monitoring myself, by simply asking myself occasionally, "What am I intending right now?"

It's a bracing question, and sometimes asking it helps me to shift gears - to re-focus on an intention.

That's what started me writing this piece - I caught myself being unintentional, and decided to give my attention to writing about intention. Which I've wanted to do for a while, anyway.

So here we are. This is what I am working/playing with:

1. All behavior may be described as enacting an intention, or engaging in distraction from intention.
2. By the very act of giving my attention to something, I either advance an intention, or I distract myself from intentions.
3. I can choose at any moment how to direct my attention. 

That last proposition seems huge to me. The ability to choose what to give our attention to may be the greatest power we possess - and I think that for most of us, it is undervalued, overlooked, and underdeveloped (it may be severely curtailed or even shut down in people with malfunctioning brains).

Indeed, the ability to choose what to give our attention to may be described as the ability to distract ourselves from distractions, according to Columbia psychology professor Walter Mischel.

Mischel authored "the marshmallow test," an experiment in the 1960s and 70s (when he was at Stanford), in which young children could receive a marshmallow (or cookie) immediately or receive two by waiting 15 minutes. The self-control exhibited by the children who waited has been linked to them generally going on to live more successful lives.

In a New York Times piece about Mr. Mischel's work, Pamela Druckerman writes (italics mine):

Part of what adults need to learn about self-control is in those videos of 5-year-olds. The children who succeed turn their backs on the cookie, push it away, pretend it’s something nonedible like a piece of wood, or invent a song. Instead of staring down the cookie, they transform it into something with less of a throbbing pull on them.
Adults can use similar methods of distraction and distancing, he says. Don’t eye the basket of bread; just take it off the table. In moments of emotional distress, imagine that you’re viewing yourself from outside, or consider what someone else would do in your place. When a waiter offers chocolate mousse, imagine that a cockroach has just crawled across it.

That chunk of advice could be useful for almost anyone at some point - I'll tell you in my next post how a visualization changed my eating habits instantly years ago. For Christians, I think "Imagine that you're viewing yourself from outside" is downright Biblical.

Consider that in Ephesians, Paul goes to considerable length to establish that Christians are, as parts of Christ, seated at the right hand of God in the heavenly realms. Anyone who really believes that of him/herself is bound to view everything in this life as from the outside - at least occasionally, if not perpetually.

This is the literal meaning of "ecstasy" - mentally standing outside of oneself (it is not specifically an emotional state, although that has been attached to it). So I'll go ahead and say that having an ecstatic mind is part and parcel of being Christian, and that the most apparent benefit of said mind is self-control.*

In any case, many people, Christian or not, could benefit from Paul's instruction to exercise care in what we give our attention to:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things. (Philippians 4:8)

May more and more of your attention be given to conscious intentions.

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*How would a group of people who believe this interact with each other?