My initial reaction to the idea that emotions can distract one from making progress is that there may be unaddressed issues present. Emotions are bodily signals. You could say they are the result of information processing. They don’t come from nowhere. Emotions need to be processed and responded to.
Maybe we can find common ground with the idea that some emotional issues take a long time to resolve, and, in the meantime, one needs healthy coping tools which may include different ways of soothing / calming down the emotional response when one needs to be functional.
Not OP, but I would hope the original comment was intended to imply that emotions should be _responded_ to (as you noted) and not _reacted_ to. Responding involves understanding, "naming your enemy," and contextual consideration. Reacting is thoughtless, immediate, animalistic.
Great answer! I'll post some notes I have on responding vs reacting:
Reactions limit choices.
Responses give choices.
Reactions are unconscious, automatic, and based on negative emotions which stem from unmet needs.
Responses are conscious, considered, and based upon the actual needs underlying the negative emotions.
Reactions often move us further away from getting our needs met.
Responses usually move us towards getting our needs met.
I had a rock hit my car’s bumper on the highway. I could have allowed myself to feel pity or sadness. Instead i skipped the emotion of the event and said what can i do now?
Accept that my car does not look the way I want it to.
Find solution, which in this case was filling an insurance claim. As problems develop i hope to accept them as fact and not dwell on what I hope the world would be. ie., never getting hit in the first place or having my claim denied, having poor repair etc., whatever comes i want to accept as the true state without emotion and move onto productive measures that are within my means.
She is saying learn to confront discomfort/pain with self-soothing. Once you know how to address the pain associated with being seen as an inexperienced/disabled person, you can confront it in many situations.
Be it in learning from another or from a book.
Distracting emotions are part of you and have to be addressed eventually. Soothing yourself reinforces the motivation for progress and acknowledges obstacles.
"Pursuing X causes pain. It is alright. It is worthwhile. It is unavoidable and I will make due."
There are no other ways because we humans are story machines. Among the many things we do, we consume stories and produce stories and that makes up our inner world. Story require words. Talking. Assisted self-talk would be therapy. There are no sustainable ways to soothing but words. Unsustainable are the use of supplements such as magnesium glycinate (to calm the mind), etc. All roads lead to self-talk. Therapy and Mg could be used as crutches to better self-talk. That written, self-talk should not be talked about without caveat.
The caveat is this: Self-talk can only change within your mind if you can conceptualize another kind of self-talk. Like a fellow answered your question, expanded awareness is key to make space in your mind, space for another self-talk. There is this technique called the Alexander technique whose purpose is expand your awareness. By expanding your awareness, by being able to think and feel those negative feelings and thoughts and think positive ones at the same time and gently steering your mind towards the positive you can achieve a new status quo in your mind. This require words and there also is non-verbal aspect to it. Words can come in the way of feelings if they are not embodied. For example, when you tell yourself "I want to..." or "I should not..." yet behave not as the words suggest, then that means you are not embodying your words. Also, self-talk ideally as a time component attached to it. Which is where it gets a lot of strength.
"I don't like this. (awareness of the current experience) But, it is necessary to get what I want (expansion of awareness, to include a desirable future). Therefore, this pain is a sign I am making desirable progress! (new self-talk)"
Whichever road you take at the beginning, therapy, supplements, meditation, etc, know the destination you seek is better self-talk. Embodied self-talk with a time component. Also please remember, the brain takes time to create new pathways. You might be able to achieve perfect embodied self-talk with a time component, but only consistency will make it easier and eventually automatic.
This is a link towards a teacher of the Alexander Technique, he talks about awareness in greater length: https://twitter.com/m_ashcroft
If you view life as a series of problems to be solved, then life will become a bleak series of problems needing to be solved. The approach outlined in the parent comment here would fail to solve any essential human needs beyond a few of the most basic ones. Finding purpose, not burning out, nurturing family, communicating with others- even in professional settings- and so many other parts of being human require us to engage emotionally.
>If you view life as a series of problems to be solved, then life will become a bleak series of problems needing to be solved.
I disagree with this, conditionally.
It depends on how you perceive "Problems" and "Solve", as pedantic and Clinton-esque as that comes across.
Perceiving your "problems" not as barriers that hinder your progress, but identifying winnable opportunities in your own capabilities is a hallmark of the Growth Mindset[0] This is such a good quality, one that everyone can cultivate given the motivation and effort.
Any choice we make that is grounded in subjective decision making suffers from this reframing. And, i'd posit that the vast majority of choices are fundamentally subjective. Just take a moment when engaged in "problem solving" and ask yourself "why?", then question that answer again. You get to motivation, identity , "needs" (and not just the basic food and shelter needs) or some other emotion very quickly this way.
Is choosing a life partner a "problem"? What about something as simple as choosing what to wear in the morning or what beer you want from the bar? Even within traditional engineering problems so much of our decision making process can only be evaluated subjectively. Some examples are: naming variables (your compiler doesn't care what you name them), making choices around encapsulation (there are very often many possible ways to do this. we frequently chose the "simplest"- a subjective assessment), choosing a framework or language (a decision which is one part right tool for the job one part joining a likeminded community), etc.
At the root of it, we're emotional beings, not logical ones. Outsource the logical problems to computers, machines, institutions and focus on what makes you human. Otherwise somebody else will make the important choices for you in ways you certainly wouldn't chose for yourself.
Yes, and emotions help you choose good “anything”s. There’s always an emotional superstructure- yours, or somebody else can choose for you, based on their own motivations.
Ok that is a valid truth, however the growth mindset embedded in the sentence "I can become good at anything." is not that.
Its that maybe you can't become the fastest man on earth. That guy exists, his name is Usain Bolt. However, you can for sure get good at sprinting, even if you are missing parts of your legs. That guy is Oscar Pistorious. Maybe you have COPD and you can't? Well, you might need to adjust "good" to be a winnable opportunity in your capabilities. Maybe this is walking to the mailbox. If you couldn't walk to the mailbox last week, I'd call that "good".
Here is the opportunity for the emotional part you mentioned to arise, so yeah, I agree.
Emotions, sure. You can become good at managing your emotions. You can become good at navigating and integrating the superstructure of society into positive outcomes in your own life. You can become good at public speaking and swimming and programming.
You likely will not be able to become the best in the world at anything at all, but you can become good at anything.
What is the rational behind your first sentence? Solving problems is progress, and that is anything but bleak.
> Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems.
I don't think you're reading what the parent comment is actually saying. Finding purpose, not burning out, etc are all categorically problems and the common goal is to solve them. Don't get buried in emotion due to _having_ the problems.
How much satisfaction do you really get from checking something off the list? There was some motivation that put the item on the list in the first place, and 9 time out of 10, that motivation goes back to an emotional drive of some sort. Ignoring that motivation during the process of satisfying it is fundamentally missing the point.
I don't think anybody is arguing against querying your emotions as part of choosing how to solve a problem. What OP specifically advised against was "wast[ing] cycles on the emotions of having problems". You will always have problems. Some worse, some nicer. Sometimes more, sometimes fewer. But your feelings about that fact won't help you move forward.
That's why approaching problems with an unemotional mindset is very effective. I can be mad that the bus was too early, or that my shipment wasn't delivered, or that I received a rejection. It's fine and healthy to feel those emotions. But they just tell you that something is wrong, without putting you any closer to fixing what's wrong.
> Finding purpose
Finding purpose comes from choosing which series of problems you are going to solve. Happiness isn't some final resting state you reach, it's more or less directly tied to solving problems. So framing is really important for making sure you actually face problems that can be solved.
In a post scarcity world, framing everything as a problem puts you in a needless optimization loop. Emotions tell you why, logic can only answer how, which won’t get you out of the loop.
I’m not making a point for or against employing emotions in problem solving, I’m advocating for an awareness that all “logical” thought fits into a larger emotional context- just the opposite of op who structures their process as a pure logical process. Ironically, I’d call the notion of a purely logical process devoid of emotions a fantasy.
>Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems.
>
>(not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress)
You got it, but then you missed it.
Every single one of those great, useful, true steps is hindered by emotions. There are well-known cognitive biases and behavioral patterns (Dunning-Kreuger, Motivated Reasoning, Confirmation Bias, Learned Helplessness) that will affect your outcome while trying to conquer each of these steps. These aren't bad per-say, but a result of our biology and millions of years of evolution. If I were wagering on my own arrogantly assumed competence vs. my evolved biology.... man, I'm putting it all on Red.
It is such great advice that, as you correctly state, "[Emotions] often times distract one from making progress" but this is not easy to achieve, an obvious course of action, and it feels wrong when you're in it. Even if someone told you and you believe them.
Take a contrived example--PTSD. In WWI this was called "Shell Shock", and a lot of people up until yesterday and beyond are still smacking people on the back, giving the misguided, but sincere pep talk: "Walk it off, kid! Power through it! Get ahold of yourself! What's wrong with you? Why can't you take the win?"
The truth of the matter is that the solution is obvious, but even if something is obvious, easy, and effective, people often simply require someone to tell them the answer and more than that, be trusted enough to let them coach them through it. Once you know, maybe it really is easy, maybe it still takes a lot of work, luck, perhaps counseling or therapy (EMDR therapy sounds like bullshit but it sure is real)
To add a note to that, caricatured for demonstration: Why would you ever execute on an answer which no one with the right kind of status has told you is okay to execute on?
In the harder domains of STEM? Okay, sure, maybe the answer is self-proving and once your weird innovation works great your detractors will have to eat their words. But subjective things like emotions? You know what happens to people who have some wrong emotion, don't you? Even if your conscious mind doesn't, what's underneath sure might. Highly not recommended to put it that way to yourself raw! And yet.
Emotional processing infrastructure is an important part of society, and its blueprints an important part of culture. I suspect that the more densely packed our sociopsychological world is, the more the equivalent of mental building codes and city utilities are something that has to be negotiated to make life workable. Hindbrain Owners Association, anyone?
Great point about of the value of mentorship, legacy, chain of knowledge. The emotional landscape can be complicated, scary, and full of conflicting information. Having a trusted example of something working is a huge advantage.
Take Donald Trump as a (not entirely positive) case study. Without the example of his father, he would never have had the confidence to be so scummy and provocative, or to desecrate the role of president.
I'm sure there are plenty of nice examples out there too. That's just where my head jumped to off the bat.
Seems a bit weird to conflate emotion with cognitive biases.
Sure emotions aren't particularly intelligent, in particular they almost entirely ignore consequence, but that doesn't mean you should ignore them, it just means you should not use your current emotion to plan the future. You should however use your future emotions to plan your current course of action, because otherwise what's the point?
I am not intending to conflate emotions with cognitive bias, although since both are product of the brain they are of course related. I see why you thought that, my apologies, I may have skipped something important there.
It's just that your emotions about a particular attribute or situation will possibly be subject to and definitely interact with various cognitive bias.
Someone who is bad at reciting book reports might infer they are just not good at public speaking. Because they believe it is so, they may attribute their failures to this quality that they believe they possess.
But what if the failure isn't an attribute like being bad at speaking, but a side effect of normal anxiousness and inexperience? Will he or she recognize this, or are they likely to harbor a bias or explanation that confirms their belief? Would they be motivated to reason about why they are no good at it, and therefor shouldn't join the debate team in order to avoid experiencing speaking anxiety?
When the English teacher later asks them to read a passage, might they feel shame and resentment towards the teacher and themselves? If they feel the shame and resentment, I think they might experience cognitive dissonance, and reason that they are bad at speaking, they have stage fright. That would explain the fear and anger.
Finally, how likely are they to simply trust their mom who suggests they stick it out, and try to get a passing grade in their public speaking course?
This oversimplifies but there is some truth to it too.
I am mentoring two junior devs at the moment, one at work and one friend. In some ways I really miss & envy the happiness they feel when we get something to work. One of them finally got a D3 chart to render correctly and got up from his chair and started whooping and throwing his fists in the air - I was grinning from ear to ear.
But then I realized the flip side of this - every time we run new code and it produces an error, I hear “AUGh what the FUCK?!! D:”
I have been at this for ~15 years. I see a new error, I feel nothing. Better that way. But I still take a minute to crack a smile when I get something working for the first time :)
I have improved so much since I started thinking this way. Once I started realising that I made a mistake and that it was really my mistake, other things, a lot of things started coming into perspective.
Maybe we can find common ground with the idea that some emotional issues take a long time to resolve, and, in the meantime, one needs healthy coping tools which may include different ways of soothing / calming down the emotional response when one needs to be functional.