The Marshmallow Test for Adults

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The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment is a famous study where each child was told they'd get a second marshmallow if they refrained from eating the one in front of them while the investigator was out of the room.

When they followed up the children years later as adults, those who originally didn't eat the first marshmallow were shown to have achieved greater success in life.

While it has been pointed out that family backgrounds and socioeconomic situations played a role, the prominent theory remains that the delayed gratification shown by the children carried over throughout their life, and the decisions they made reflected that.

Delayed gratification (the act of resisting an impulse to take an immediately available reward in the hope of obtaining a more-valued reward in the future) can be seen in some practical situations involving the idea of sacrificing something now for a future pay-off.

"If I can sacrifice doing something fun with my friends now and study instead, I'll be able to do well in my exams and have the freedom to enjoy my summer."

"If I put in an extra few hours of work in the office for the next few weeks, I'll miss out on relaxation time in the evenings, but in a couple of months, I'll get a promotion to a job which is more enjoyable for me."

"If I don't give up in this intense running session now, I'll be fitter and better able to express myself on the sports field in a few weeks."

This manifests itself when we set future goals for ourselves. For example, losing a few pounds by eating better and starting going to the gym, or learning to play a musical instrument, or starting a new business venture.

You're amped up by the vision of the future you, and the temptation is to tell people about your goals right away. You'll get a bit of vocal support from those around you when you tell them, and you might enjoy the few likes and comments when you post about it on social media.

And it's understandable. Positive social feedback is motivating.

Steven Kotler talks about how when setting goals, the initial boost of motivation, primarily driven by dopamine, can be effectively followed up by some social interaction, with oxytocin giving us another push on after the initial motivation boost.

This feels good in the short-term, but if long-term progress is what we're interested in, then we need to think of these neurological 'hits' as being habit-forming, or encouraging of repeating whatever behaviours got us those 'hits'.

If you got them from telling people you're going to start going to the gym, or telling them you're going to start a new business, you have to ask, is the behaviour of 'telling people you're going to start' the behaviour you want to be encouraging in yourself?

Probably not. You’d probably prefer to encourage repeating the actual actions that are going to get you closer to your long-term goals.

Even if you are only trying to maximise the positive social feedback, you'll get a lot more of it when you're able to tell them that you've actually done the thing, than you'll get from talking about your intentions of starting it.

With this in mind, you might decide to refrain from telling people about your new gym routine until after you've done your first 10 sessions. You might only publicise your new blog after you've written your first 5 articles. You might tell your parents or friends about your job hunt, but only after you've sent CVs to 3 companies.

Not only will you get the positive emotion associated with more credit and support having actually achieved something, but that positive feedback will also encourage repeated instances of that behaviour in yourself. E.g. encouraging you to do 10 more gym sessions.

The more you can implement this type of thinking, forgoing the initial positive social feedback (the first marshmallow) in favour of the longer-term payoff (the second marshmallow), the more you'll be able to delay gratification in your life with respect to your goals, and generally, that's going to lead to better outcomes.

Ultimately, however, the aim is to create your own metaphorical marshmallow factory, where you're no longer reliant on the social positive feedback, and where doing the thing in itself, and moving towards your long-term goals, becomes its own reward.

Optimising Your 2 Selves

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Would you prefer to go on your dream holiday but not remember it, or never go on that holiday but have the memory that you did?

This paradox intuitively illustrates the idea of the 2 selves, outlined in Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow.

The first self in the experiencing self: You, in the moment, going about your daily activities, enjoying your food, taking out the bins, playing sport, talking with your friends.

Of course, you can't remember every second of those experiences across your lifetime in fine, video-like detail.

But the elements that do get stored in your memory make up the second self, which is the remembering self: You, when you’re thinking about your life, the experiences you've been through, and how this will affect your plans for the future.

For the initial holiday question posed, obviously what you really want is to both have the experience of the holiday and to have the positive memories of it.

In other words, you want to optimise both your experiences in the moment (the experiencing self) and your memories about those experiences (the remembering self).

But optimising one doesn't necessarily optimise the other.

When it comes to optimising the experiencing self, the temptation is to aim for as much pleasure as possible, in which case we could be led down the line of junk food, drugs, and whatever other guilty pleasures feel good in the moment.

However, this would be short-lived, and the experiencing self would eventually suffer as a result of these actions, as anyone who has had a hangover, or anyone who has caught themselves in the mirror after a few months of bad eating, will testify to.

Instead, the concept of Flow, attributed to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, comes to mind. (Read my article on flow here).

The "Flow state" is found during experiences where you are voluntarily being challenged to the limits of your skills, in a way that causes you to lose a sense of time, yourself, and external issues. This “Flow” can be seen as synonymous with the feeling of ‘meaning’.

You might find it in an intense sporting event where you are being pushed to your limits, or while studying a subject that is just slightly beyond your current knowledge, or in a variety of other tasks where you're being challenged enough for it to be exciting, but not so challenging to be overwhelming.

The remembering self on the other hand is more concerned with your conceptual framework of what has happened in your life, your internal story about yourself, and your place in the world.

In order to optimise this, should you simply aim to have positive memories and thoughts about your past, trying to delete all the negative memories you have?

Firstly, you probably couldn't do that even if you wanted to. If I tell you to NOT think about a pink elephant, of course that's the first thing you think of, and the more you try, the more it sticks in your head.

But even if you could, would you want to?

Often you look back at tough experiences and memories and are glad they happened, in hindsight: A break-up might have led to you meeting your future wife. A loss in the championship final might have made you work harder and improve as an athlete. Even cancer survivors sometimes report that going through that experience caused them to have a more positive outlook on their lives subsequently.

Instead of wanting only positive memories, what we really want is to see our lives as meaningful and having a purpose, even if that means having a few bumps in the road along the way (or that you're currently at a bump in the road!).

A useful conceptualisation of this is in Joseph Campbell's work on the Hero's Journey. (Read more here).

He proposes that the reason we relate to the best stories in literature and movies is that we automatically put ourselves in the position of the story's hero, whose journey is in some way analogous to our own lives, going through trials and tribulations along the way en route to the desired outcome.

We see that journey from the call to adventure, the refusal of the call, the crossing of the threshold into the unknown, meeting a mentor, going into the deep abyss, coming out with the prize, and crossing back into the ordinary world, with the knowledge of how to navigate both worlds.

Some study of the hero's journey will be required to see how that all applies to your own life, but the simple idea of seeing your life as a story in which you are the hero, as opposed to an outside character in the story, or worse, the victim, is likely to be useful.

Putting these concepts together, the way to optimise your 2 selves is by seeing your life as a hero's journey, made up of as many flow states as possible.

You want to spend your days doing things that feel meaningful, whilst having a general feeling of purpose when you sit back and think about your life.

Thinking Big and Small

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Our perception of reality is some combination of the actual events, and how we process them.

How we process reality is in some part involuntary (due to our biology, previous experiences etc.) and in some part voluntary.

The voluntary part is seen in how we choose to view an experience in a certain way. For example, you might get hit by a car and choose to see yourself as unlucky for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or you might choose to see yourself as lucky for surviving.

To the extent that we can use this voluntary aspect, it can be used to help us tackle two common emotional issues many of us have from time to time.

The first is the feeling of overwhelm, and the second is the feeling of nihilism.

The feeling of overwhelm is associated with a sense of seriousness, importance, fear, high emotions, and the inability to cope with the current stressors.

Nihilism is the sense that life has no meaning, and on a personal level, tends to lead to feelings of pessimism, lack of desire to take action, and the sense that what you do doesn't matter.

These are two ends of a spectrum, the middle of which would be made up of a variation on how seriously you take yourself and the world.

The extent to which these emotions are under voluntary control is consistently debated within psychology, and it may be different based on each person.

For example, people with clinical depression may have less voluntary control over their emotions and actions due to biological reasons, leading to a vicious circle, keeping those people stuck.

For the rest of us, we have at least some voluntary control, and we can use this in two contrasting ways in the cases of overwhelm and nihilism.

The feeling of overwhelm can often lead to inaction due to fear, based on how much importance you've placed on what's going on. In this case, it can be useful to look at the big picture, and zoom out, to the point where you no longer feel that what you're doing right now is the most important thing in the world, allowing you to act, rather than staying stuck out of fear.

"Zooming out" could mean reminding yourself of the number of people in the world, the size of the world in our solar system, the fact that there are millions of solar systems out there, and so on, which can give you that perspective of the relative smallness of your problems.

Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" video is an excellent simulation of this.

For people who already feel like their effect on the world is pointlessly small, this same advice could send them down an even darker road.

For those people, it would be a better idea to find ways to remind yourself that what you do actually does matter. That might be by reminding yourself that your actions not only affect you, but also those around you, both directly, and by the example you show to those around you. Thinking of yourself as one node in a network of all the people in the world can be a useful way of thinking about this.

Jordan Peterson said, "You’re a node in a network. You’ll know 1,000 people in your life, and they’ll know 1,000 people in their life. That’s 1 person away from 1 million. That’s 2 persons away from 1 billion. You’re connected more than you think. The things you do and don’t do matter more than you think."

The reality of a given situation could require you to tell yourself a different story based on what you need at that moment.

Whatever voluntary control you have over that can be used to your advantage, in the situations of overwhelm and nihilism, as well as other areas, but we must also be careful that we're not lying to ourselves and shirking responsibility by using it in the wrong contexts.

Why Optimists Can Run for Longer

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If you haven't thought much about the concept of pain, you might assume it's a simple matter of an impact at the skin level (e.g. stubbing your toe) causing a pain signal to be sent to the brain, resulting in a negative experience.

But a few examples quickly indicate that pain is much more complex than that.

Phantom limb pain is a common condition felt by those who've lost a limb but still feel pain where the limb used to be.

The placebo effect can cause reduced pain in someone given a pill, even if the pill contains no pain-relieving chemicals.

An athlete might get a kick to the leg and barely feel it in a match, where it would have had him hobbling to work if it happened on his daily commute.

These examples, among many others, indicate that the brain not only is a signal-receiving machine for pain, but also plays a contributing role in how the pain is experienced.

Nociceptors are cells that sense tissue damage (at the skin for example), which send an electrical signal to cells in the spinal cord, which then pass an electrical signal onto the brain, alerting it of the tissue damage at the first region. So far, this sounds similar to the simple explanation outlined previously.

However, at that junction where the nociceptor cell passes the message to the spinal cord, other cells, such as those coming down from the brain itself, have the opportunity to give their input, either increasing the electrical signal to be passed on to the brain (increasing the perceived pain) or decreasing the signal (decreasing the perceived pain).

Put simply, the brain can have an effect on the pain signal, before the signal gets the chance to reach the brain.

The nature of that effect is partly dependant on your current external circumstances, what you're body is currently doing, your perception of, and attitude towards, what is happening, and even your mood.

This is illustrated by the fact that people who are depressed or even just high in negative emotion tend to perceive more pain from a given stimulus than other people do.

This may be useful information in the context of intense exercise, where occasionally battling through the pain of a burning chest or heavy legs during endurance exercise may be necessary to elicit the physical fitness adaptation you're aiming for.

Could developing a positive attitude, or smiling, or positive self-talk cause the brain to send signals to intercept that pain signal somewhat, decreasing your perception of pain, and helping you run for longer?

A study was done where runners experienced less physical exertion and lower heart rate on a run where they were asked to use "cognition reappraisal" (not necessarily viewing the experience more positively, but aiming to view it more dispassionately, almost as if you were a scientist observing your experience from the outside) vs. a run at the same speed without such instructions.

Anecdotal experience backs this up for me, with the addition of some positive self-talk also helping to decrease the physical exertion I've felt during the run.

I'm not aware of any extensive research showing this to be a consistent outcome, but based on what I've outlined above, it wouldn't be surprising.

Either way, it's probably worth trying. With a more positive approach, even if your performance doesn't improve in that session, you're likely to enjoy it more (or at least hate it less), potentially leading to increased engagement in upcoming training sessions, and the cumulative improvements that come with that.

It's Not About the Cups

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It was the first time I’d tasted coffee that tasted of something other than just coffee. This one happened to have the slightest hint of blueberries. It’s hard to believe that this could be the case until you’ve tasted a coffee that’s grown, roasted, and brewed specifically to highlight the slight sweetness contained in a coffee bean.

They had shelves full of different coffees, some with tasting notes of nuts and caramel, some of peaches and lemons, and many in between.

As I sat in the Belfast coffee shop, I felt like I was somewhere special. I had made the pilgrimage, walking 30 minutes from my student accommodation, just to try out this place that had been recommended by a friend that was well-informed on coffee matters.

Bear in mind that this was at a time where Starbucks was seen as new and trendy. This new coffee shop was beyond that, only frequented by the most in-the-know young professionals and local hipsters.

The coffee was more expensive, and served in smaller cups than Starbucks, and on further investigation of the cups, they were high-quality and made specifically with coffee drinkers in mind. You felt that the coffee from these cups had to be special, unlike the huge mugs from the Starbucks around the corner.

As it’s popularity grew, various similar coffee shops started popping up, using the same type of coffee beans, similar interior design, and of course, those same cups.

This was a positive in my eyes. I could now have a similar coffee-drinking experience in various parts of the city. But I always felt that these other shops were good, but not quite as good, versions of the original coffee shop I first went to.

But then, a few months later I came across another coffee shop that was nothing like these others, and I got that same feeling I had the first time I made that original pilgrimage.

The same feeling, even though in this one, the coffee was completely different - they only used one blend that the owner had tasted on holidays and needed to bring to her hometown. The decor was a world apart. And alas, the cups were different.

No doubt, the people opening the various offshoots of the first coffee shop were trying to create the same feeling they’d also had on their first visit, and maybe they made the mistake of thinking that feeling was a result of the coffee selection, or the exposed ceilings, or the cups.

I likely would have made that same mistake had I been tasked with opening a coffee shop at that time.

But it wasn’t about those things. It was the fact that this was something new and original. Someone had taken the risk of putting something out there that they liked, in spite of the fact that there was nothing out there like it.

This reminds me of when I was a teenager, trying to copy some of the older lads I grew up around. I thought the clothes they wore were cool, and asked for similar ones when it came to Christmas. I tried to copy phrases they were using. I went home and downloaded the music I’d heard them listening to. The urge to copy things you see as inspirational is part of how you create yourself.

But it’s very easy to make the mistake of copying specifics, rather than the overarching philosophy, and in doing so, you can simply become a lesser version of someone else, rather than focussing on becoming the best version of you.

When we admire something or someone, it’s usually about the originality, or the fact that they’re brave enough to do, say, or create something without knowing how it’ll be accepted.

It’s not about the specific things they’re doing or saying. It’s not about the specific way it looks. It’s not about the cups.

Finding Meaning in Knowing Yourself

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Religious and traditional teachings have historically provided a rulebook and blueprint for how to live life in a productive, meaningful way that united you with other people under a common set of goals and principles.

This, along with the potential rewards you could receive if you were adherent, brought a sense of meaning to many people.

But the atrocities carried out under the banner of religions in recent times have been enough to push many people out of churches and other places of worship.

Along with this, a more scientific way of thinking, which has brought many benefits and resulted in huge technological advances, has also pushed out a lot of religious thinking. People of this mindset will say there is no ‘proof’ of God, and therefore that it should all be thrown out.

Of course, to progress as a society, we need to question what’s come before, but by disregarding the blueprint that once existed, we’re left without that sense of meaning and purpose that it once brought.

This isn’t something unique to the last couple of generations.

In Rollo May’s book from the 1950s “Man in Search for Himself”, he wrote about how when the established guiding principles of religious tradition break down, we look for guiding principles elsewhere.

He writes about how people turned to the approval of society and external validation as a means of finding meaning or principles: making your way up the corporate ladder, buying the latest car, following the latest trend, and ascribing to the latest popular political movement. (The latter setting up conditions for the terrors of Nazism and Communism that were happening in the decades before and after that period.)

We see the same thing today, where people have become obsessed with politics, where both sides seem to think that if their particular charismatic leader gets into charge, their life and the lives of other people will be drastically improved.

Social media has become in large part a platform for publicising our achievements, holidays, and latest purchases, as well as a comparison site for seeing how our own lives compare to others’.

We’re looking to other people to determine what we should or shouldn’t be doing.

But of course, the world is made up of people who mostly have just as little insight into how to live life as you do. So, inevitably, you come to realise that society doesn’t have the answers.

And when you realise that, there’s only really one place left to turn to:

Yourself.

“Mastering others is strength; Mastering yourself is true power.” -Lao Tzu

“Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there.” -Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor (A. D. 161–180)

“I am not yet able to know myself; so it seems to me ridiculous, when I do not yet know that, to investigate irrelevant things. Care first about the greatest perfection of the soul.” -Socrates

But looking inwards can be tough. Maybe you realise that you don’t really know who you are, what you actually want from life, what you enjoy doing, what you’re good at, what work you want to do, how you behave towards other people.

On further inspection, you begin to realise that you are flawed and that you are not all that you could be. But still, you don’t know what to do with yourself.

“If only I knew what I should be doing, then I’d be able to just go and do it!”, you think.

At this point, anxiety is a common response, and one attempt to relieve this is to avoid dealing with reality, turning to frequent alcohol or drug abuse to numb that pain, like so many do. At a lower level, you can distract yourself with the endless entertainment available through the internet.

But that angst doesn’t go away. Eventually, you find yourself alone, contemplating this lack of sense of identity or self, and if you don’t deal with it, it can go down a dark road, where you begin to question the meaning of life itself, and if there really is any point to it all.

This is the point where Rollo May says self-discovery is where we should turn to.

We can start to ask ourselves questions to start the process of discovering more about ourselves, writing the answers down (journaling) for more clarity.

Questions like:

“What do I want my life to look like?”
“What kind of person do I want to be?”
“What experiences do I get joy from?”
“What behaviours am I currently doing that make me feel depressed?”
“What are my relationships like?”
“What work do I enjoy doing?”

That’s the self-discovery part. Next comes self-development, where we take the information we find out about ourselves and aim to develop on it.

“What would I need to work on to be a better person?”
“What daily habits would I need to put in place to get to where I want to be?”
“What skills can I learn to put myself in the best position to do work I enjoy?”
“Do I need to address an ongoing issue I’ve been having with a loved one?”
“What are the next steps I can take?”

There are hundreds of questions just like this that you could be asking of yourself, and taking action on the answers is going to be equally as important, so the most important step is to start.

However, the main goal of self-discovery and self-development is self-fulfilment, and if you don’t know what you should be doing with your life, maybe going through this process is that thing you should be doing right now.

I don’t think you find meaning in life by asking, “What is the meaning of life?”

I think one way that you find meaning is by getting to know yourself (your tendencies, likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses, interests, guiding principles etc.), developing the parts of you that need to be developed, and as that better-developed version of yourself, doing the things that feel meaningful to you, as they present themselves.

And you don’t have to wait to the end of this process to find meaning, because there is no point where you finally “Find yourself” or “Fulfil yourself”.

Instead, the meaning can be found during the process, in things like:

• Journalling and thinking about these types of questions.

• Reading about how great thinkers have dealt with these types of questions. i.e. Reading philosophy.

• Having conversations that help you clear these things up..

• Working on skills that are challenging but fulfilling, and that will develop you.

• Educating yourself on topics related to your work or interests.

• Doing the work that presents itself as meaningful to you.

How to Study (Because School Didn't Teach us How)

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Considering that most of our success in school is judged by how well we do in exams, which is largely determined by how well we study and retain the information given to us, you’d think there would have been some lessons in how to actually do that.

In recent years since school, I’ve had to find a way of studying that worked for me in order to ensure I was consistently updating my knowledge so that I was providing high-quality information for my clients, and as I embark on a new academic venture, I’ve found myself seeking study methods to suit the more structured approach of formal education.

I’ve created a structure for myself based on various methods I’d come across in this process, and I’ll outline it below in as simple a way as I can manage.

Of course, there is a lot more to passing your course of study than just studying. There is also exam prep, assignment work, presentation work, and more, so bear in mind that this system covers specifically those times where you’re sitting down to go through large chunks of information, like you might see in a textbook or lecture notes.

Note: One particular professor, Professor Marty Lobdell, was particularly influential on the system I outline below, and his video on studying is well worth a watch.

I’ve divided the process into 6 Rs:

1. Remind

It can be useful to think about why you’re actually studying, both from a short-term point of view (you want to pass the exam, you don’t want to feel like you’re falling behind in class etc.), and the long-term view (you want to get a job that you enjoy and pays you well, whilst providing for your family).

Taking a couple of minutes to remind yourself of these things, or whatever other motivations you have, can help with the short-term motivation to go through the toughest barrier of all, getting started, and can also give you an extra bit of vigour to spur on your efforts throughout.

2. Relocate

It is sometimes said that ‘environment dictates performance’ (e.g. an athlete is likely to perform better in a packed-out stadium than in his back garden).

Having a space dedicated to studying allows you to not only distance yourself from potential distractions and people vying for your attention, but also allows you to create a high-performance environment (like the athlete in the stadium) for studying.

If you don’t have access to a space like this, another technique is to use a talisman, something that you only use during the act of studying, such as a specific lamp, stopwatch/timer (more on that soon), or pen, knowing that once this object comes out, it’s time for focussing on studying.

Music-wise, something that doesn’t have lyrics is best so that you aren’t distracted from the words you’re trying to read, so either classical (not to everyone’s taste) or ‘lo-fi beats’ are good options.

3. Run & Rest

Generally, you can only concentrate on an intellectual task for so long before your attention starts to wane.  However, if you implement short breaks, you can refresh your focus for another work block, and the rest period doesn’t have to last as long as the work period in order to feel the benefit.

One technique for making use of this idea is called the Pomodoro (Italian for tomato, and based on tomato-shaped kitchen timers) technique. This technique involves 25 minutes of work followed by a 5 minute break.

This means that instead of a 2-3 hour, dragged out study block that's constantly interrupted by social media and messages, and tainted by the subsequent feeling of guilt and unproductivity, you actually get solid blocks of work done, whilst getting to your messages and social media updates during your breaks, guilt-free, if that's how you chose to use them.

The optimal times might differ for each person, so it’s worth playing about with, but 25-5 is a good starting point. This can be timed by a phone alarm or timer or stopwatch, but there are also apps available that take care of it for you.

4. Read

My studying in the past generally consisted of reading through textbooks, hoping something would stick, and highlighting almost every single line (meaning nothing was actually highlighted).

There is a better way of consuming information.

It starts with taking a couple of minutes to scan over the chapter or large section of information you’re planning on covering during the study session, asking questions along the way (What does that diagram mean? How are these section titles connected? How does that word that I recognise relate to this topic?). The idea here isn’t to answer those questions when scanning, but to program your brain to focus and go looking for answers when it comes to the next step, which is actually reading the information. As you read, you then summarise each smaller section in a way that makes sense to you. This will force you to actively consume the information as you read it, rather than passively consuming it. Finally, as a bonus, teaching the information (whether you actually teach it to someone or pretend to teach it to the wall), exposes areas you might not fully understand, but also forces you to make the information more digestible.

5. Remember

Obviously the most important part of all of this is actually remembering the information.

Rote memorisation (simply memorising the information as it is) is useful for facts and figures, and this can be enhanced by using mnemonics (memory aids) e.g. Never Eat Shredded Wheat to remember North, East, South, and West. This can also include things like interacting images (e.g. Imagining someone with a wind vane on their head refusing to eat shredded wheat), rhymes, graphs, etc.

For concepts, however, rote learning isn’t as effective, and instead, relating these new concepts to concepts from areas we already understand well can be useful. E.g. If I'm trying to learn about how in economics, demand for a product goes up when supply is low, I might think about how much more I would want food if there was only a small amount to go around at my family dinner table.

6. Reward

It’s going to take more than one study session to do enough work to pass the exam, so creating a habit is crucial.

Any habit circuit is completed with a reward, so treating yourself to a post-study beer, or Netflix show, or call with a friend can mean that next time you go to sit down to study, it might be that bit easier to get started, knowing there is a reward at the end, even if the satisfaction of a productive study session itself isn’t enough of a reward.

Becoming Judgemental Through Self-improvement

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Whatever you are trying to improve in yourself becomes a filter through which you see the world.

You’re trying to improve your nutrition, and you start to automatically see things as hindrances or helpers towards that outcome.

Parties are no longer just an opportunity for fun. They are also now something to be worked around nutritionally. Meals become more than just something to enjoy. They become investments in your fitness goals.

Along with that, the habits of close family and friends, which last week were completely acceptable to you, can start to come under criticism from you on your newfound high-horse.

Everyone’s social media habits become so much more dangerous now that you’re on a digital detox.

Your partner’s Friday night bottle of wine is a cause for concern all of a sudden now that you’ve cut your drinking down.

Your mate’s morning routine (he doesn’t have one) means his life is a mess, now that you’re 3 days into your new 5am wake-up habit.

Your newfound (albeit worthy) goal of improving yourself gives you cover for insulting others, or at least thinking poorly of them in your head.

(And if from this article, you start to judge those who you see judging others, you’ve made the same mistake again.)

Instead, let’s look at why this impulse to put others down for habits you were partaking in a few months ago isn’t a good use of your mental bandwidth.

One of the real reasons you’re criticising those around you is because deep-down you probably regret all the times you’ve seen those behaviours in yourself, and regret having not taken action sooner, and it’s easier to place for your frustration with those regrets onto those who are reminding you of that behaviour, rather than taking ownership and accepting your previous failings. More than that, you know you still have those tendencies in you, and you dislike that element of yourself.

The initial motivation for starting to improve yourself was that you wanted to become the person who eats well, or trains regularly, or is present when they’re with people, or gets up early.

You might even want people to know that you’re that person. And that’s all good, until it becomes the sole reason behind your self-improvement efforts.

You might even be criticising others as a means of getting credit for the changes you’re making. “What you’re doing is bad, and by opposing it, I’m letting you know I’m good.”

But you haven’t proven anything yet. You haven’t embodied the new behaviour for any impressive length of time. You’re trying to take a shortcut to getting the credit and recognition you want, before you deserve it.

You can’t delay the gratification (which may never come) of people seeing the improvements in you for themselves.

If that hits home, there’s another question to ask: Is the goal of your self-improvement to simply get the credit from others?

If that’s the case, you’re leaving the fate of your happiness in their hands. But what if you never get the credit? Will your efforts have been worth it? Even if you do get the credit, then what?

Or, are you wanting to improve yourself because you know that you’re not all you can be? That you can’t bear the feeling in you that you’re not living up to your potential? That you know you can have a better life and help those around you more if you are better?

If that’s the case, forget about whether or not you get the credit. Forget about showing others how good you are by reminding them of their flaws. Focus on being better, regardless of whether or not anyone notices.

You’ll notice.

The Psychology of Feeling Good

If you’d prefer to listen to this article, click here (Podcast link).

Looking back over times where you were most happy, you probably notice that the thought “I am now happy” was not going through your head. It’s usually something you only notice in hindsight.

In fact, not having to think about whether you were happy or not was probably one of the best things about that moment.

The word ‘happiness’ doesn’t do these moments justice, and given its ambiguous meanings, it might be better to refer to these moments as moments when your life is how you would wish it to be.

In these moments, you lose a sense of time, and maybe even a sense of yourself. Simply put, you’re fully engaged in what is happening there and then.

The state you are in in these moments can be referred to as a “Flow-state” in the words of psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who introduced the concept in his book, “Flow”.

He says that these states are usually a result of being involved voluntarily in something challenging and worthwhile that is right at the limit of your current skillset, neither too far beyond it nor too far below it.

Finding flow involves skating that line where you aren’t bored by something that is too easy (sitting on the couch scrolling social media for hours), nor are you anxious and frustrated by taking on something too far beyond what you’re capable of (trying to go ocean swimming, when you can’t even swim a length of the pool).

That’s a far stretch from what we often think of as happiness, but it’s pretty spot on for our new concept of moving towards life as you wish it to be.

You might find this Flow-state in an important work task that challenges you but is still just within your ability, which you know will make a difference to your own progress in the company, as well as benefiting the company.

You might find it in a deep conversation with a friend, where you are exchanging new information with each other, helping you update your knowledge about yourself and the other person, whilst you both work out what’s going on with each other’s lives, and what your next steps in the world should be.

You might find it in a sporting event where your opponents are pushing you to your limit, but you know that if you give it your all, you have a good chance of winning.

It could be in something as simple as creating a new spreadsheet system in work, or organising your wardrobe, or watching a really good series that has complex plots and characters.

It would be hard to argue that wanting to have more of those moments in our lives would be a bad idea. So how do we cultivate more?

Self-knowledge is important here, in recognising the parts of your life where you’ve regularly, or at least previously, experienced Flow, as these will be an indication of what to replicate. Seeking out new ways of experiencing Flow is important too, particularly if you can’t think of many examples from your life.

With that said, there are a few things you can put in place to ensure what you’re setting out to do is more likely to be a Flow experience, according the Csikszentmihalyi:

• 1. Set goals with milestones/subgoals.

• 2. Measure progress.

• 3. Concentrate on what you’re doing during each part of the process.

• 4. Develop skills to match any new opportunities that arise.

• 5. Raise stakes if the activity becomes boring.

This could be applied to something big like changing career or starting a business, where you might be setting goals and measuring progress around how much money you want to make, for example, or training for a marathon, where goals and progress markers will be based around miles per week, paces etc. Alternatively, this could be used to make seemingly simple or potentially boring tasks more enjoyable (think: painting the house, planting a garden, doing an assignment, spending time with family).

The beauty of this is that you determine your success or failure, or rather, your feeling of Flow determines it.

This is different than what you usually might use to determine success (Earning more than someone else, beating a race time simply because other people deem it good, painting a picture a specific way only because you think other people won’t criticise it that way.)

If you’re getting into that Flow-state as much as possible, through seeking things that bring it about naturally, and by cultivating it in your everyday life, almost by definition, your life is likely to be improved, or we could say, you’re likely to be happier.

Plus, the likelihood is that you’re not only spending your time productively, utilising your skills closer to their maximum, but you’re also improving everything around you, big and small, and that’s likely to have a positive effect on others.