Mindfulness

Anger Is Often Pointless

May 31, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Anger is often nothing more than an intense emotion caused by an apparent injustice. The destructive outcomes of anger are well known. When even a slight annoyance arises, it is capable of growing quickly and overwhelming your state of mind.

Anger results in (1) a loss of perspective and judgement, (2) impulsive and irrational behavior that is destructive to both yourself and others, and (3) loss of face, compassion, and social credibility.

Anger is often pointless, as the following Buddhist parable will illustrate.

Often, there’s no one to blame

Once upon a time, a farmer was paddling his boat upstream to deliver his produce to a distant village. It was a sultry day, so he was covered in sweat. He was in a great hurry to reach the village market.

Further on upstream, the farmer spotted another boat rapidly moving downstream toward his vessel. It looked as though this boat was going to hit him. In response, he paddled feverishly to move out of the way, but it didn’t seem to help. He yelled, “Hey, watch out!” The other boat seemed to approach him swiftly. The farmer shouted, “Hey, you’re going to hit me! Adjust your direction.” He got no response and continued to yell in vain.

As a last resort, the farmer stood up angrily waving his arms and shaking his fist. The other boat smashed right into him. He was hopping mad and cried out, “You imbecile! How could you hit my boat in the middle of this wide river? Couldn’t you hear me asking you to get out of my way? What is wrong with you?”

Then, all of a sudden, the farmer realized that the boat was empty; it had perhaps cut loose of its moorings and floated downstream with the current. He calmed down and realized that there was no one to blame but an empty boat and the river. His anger was purposeless.

Anger depletes energy and leads to loss of perspective and judgement

When you lose your inner peace, you expect that your anger can help you get even with the offending person or amend the vexing circumstances. However, responding with anger is illogical. The offending deed has already occurred, a fact your anger fails to negate. Also, your anger cannot thwart or diminish the perceived wrong.

In the New Testament, Ephesians 4:26–27 advise, “In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”

Free yourself from anger

There is no benefit to anger at all. All anger can beget is negative energy, which can aggravate an already volatile situation. Anger can also impede sound judgement and inhibit your ability to consider the negative consequences of your abrupt reactions.

The next time you’re angry, consider the following response:

Stop. Don’t respond immediately. Walk away from the situation that has instigated your anger.
Breathe deeply. Become fully aware of your state of mind. Assess what’s going on.
Calm down and compose yourself. Invoke mindfulness to appeal to your wisdom. Anger and other emotional arousals often stem from a lack of self-awareness or mindlessness, and can simmer down if you just wait long enough.
Consider the matter from other points of view. Ask if there could be other possible explanations for what happened.
Identify the reasons for your anger by asking three questions: (1) “Is this matter serious enough to get worked up about?” (2) “Is my anger necessary and warranted?” (3) “Will getting angry make a difference?”
Reflect about what response will be most effective. Try to develop a wise and measured course of action.

Idea for Impact: A low-anger life is a happier life

Patience is the definitive antidote to anger and aggression. With patience, you may not always be able to eliminate anger, but you can usually control it. Patience can build and fortify your intellectual and psychological resources.

As Proverbs 19:11 tells in the Hebrew Bible, “A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.” Ultimately, developing greater patience enhances your romantic, personal, professional, and casual relationships—as well as that all-important relationship: the one you have with yourself.

Why Doing Good Is Selfish

April 19, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Consider the following legend about Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) from J. E. Gallaher’s Best Lincoln Stories (1898.)

The Fable of Abraham Lincoln and the Pigs

Once Lincoln was traveling in a mud-wagon coach along a swampy, rural area. His fellow passenger was his good friend and US Senator Edward Dickinson Baker, who later lost his life in the Battle of Ball’s Bluff at the onset of the American Civil War.

While they were conversing in the mud-wagon coach, Lincoln remarked to Baker that in doing good and evil, all people are motivated by selfishness. Just as Baker challenged Lincoln’s assertion, their coach crossed a rickety bridge over a slough (a large swampy marsh.)

Abruptly, Lincoln and Baker glimpsed a mother pig making a terrible squeal because her piglets were stuck in the swamp, couldn’t get out, and were in danger of drowning.

Abraham Lincoln As their coach started to head away, Lincoln yelled, “Driver, can’t you stop just a moment?” The driver replied, “If the other fellow don’t object.”

With Baker’s approval, Lincoln jumped out of the wagon, ran to the slough, lifted the piglets one by one out of the swamp, and carried them to the dry bank of the swamp.

When Lincoln returned to the coach, Baker remarked, “Now, Abe, where does selfishness come in this little episode?”

Lincoln replied, “Why, bless your soul, Ed, that was the very essence of selfishness. I would have had no peace of mind all day had I gone on and left that suffering old sow worrying over those pigs. I did it to get peace of mind, don’t you see?”

Psychological Egoism

Being moved by the plight of others—even the suffering of animals (or sentient beings to use Buddhist terminology) as in the aforementioned legend of Lincoln and the piglets—is considered a selfish deed per modern philosophy’s theory of ‘psychological egoism’.

Egoism has its roots in the philosophy of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BCE,) who argued that the human mind is driven by the need to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Egoism contends that deep down all our actions are motivated by what we perceive to be in our own self-interest. For example, if Tom saves Mark from drowning in a river, egoism contends that Tom’s seemingly altruistic behavior is actually motivated by his own self-interest to avoid potential social censure for not helping Mark or to be regarded a hero within his social circle.

Idea for Impact: Be Selfish, Be Generous

Mahatma Gandhi said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

The great Indian philosopher Aurobindo wrote in Towards the Light, “The secret of joy is self-giving. If any part in you is without joy, it means that it has not given itself, it wants to keep itself for itself.”

The Dalai Lama once advised, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” Per the Buddhist concept of interconnectedness, altruistic generosity encourages us to perceive others more positively. When we discover the suffering of others, we realize that those individuals could just as easily have been us. Intuitively, we contemplate “I feel their pain; I can’t let that happen” and are driven to helping others.

When we do something for others and lose ourselves in the service of others, not only do we feel closer to them, but also they feel closer to us. By focusing on giving rather than receiving and on contributing rather than consuming, our generosity can engender an outward orientation toward the world, shifting our focus away from ourselves.

As our whole perception broadens, we realize that the biggest beneficiary of our generosity is often ourselves: at the outset, we are filled with joy with the recognition that someone else is happier because of us.

Idea for Impact: If you want to feel good, help someone else.

What Is the Point of Life, If Only to Be Forgotten?

January 5, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

While traveling around the magical Norwegian Fjords and contemplating life one day last summer, I recalled a young man’s story. He had spent many years in an Indian prison despite being acquitted because everyone had forgotten about him.

Forgotten

In 1988, Pratap Nayak was arrested at the age of 14 after getting caught in a violent clash between two rival families in his village in the state of Orissa. A corrupted lower court promptly sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Thanks to the Indian judicial system’s sluggishness, it took six years for a High Court to pronounce Nayak innocent. Unfortunately, nobody informed him or the prison officials about this judgment and his lawyer had died during the intervening years. Nayak’s family had assumed helplessness and lost touch with both him and with the lawyer.

Nayak remained in jail for eight more years after acquittal until a prison system auditor realized that Nayak wasn’t supposed to still be in prison. When he was finally freed at age 28, he was astonished and said, “no one bothered about me … not even my own family.”

When Nayak was finally reunited with his impoverished family of bamboo craftsmen, his father cried, “How shall I take care of him? We don’t get enough to eat ourselves. Had he completed his education, he would have had a good job by now. They ruined his life.”

“Life’s but a walking shadow … then is heard no more”

Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, Lines 22–31) contains one of the most eloquent expressions of our lives’ cosmic insignificance:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

What Difference Does It Make What We Do with Our Lives?

Whenever I’m enjoying the splendor of the mountains and the waters—as I did in the Norwegian Fjords—and marvel at how these natural elements came to be millions of years ago, I meditate upon the fact that what we identify as our lifespan is but a tiny sliver in the grand timeline of the cosmos. We’re born, we live, we die, and then, as Shakespeare reminds us in Macbeth, we are “heard no more.”

In the grand scheme of things, everything is pointless, irrelevant, and ultimately insignificant. Our lives are impermanent and almost everything that most of us accomplish during our lives will someday become obsolete and be forgotten.

Yet, we rouse ourselves out of bed every day and engage in various activities that are all somehow tied to a purpose or mission—a mission we’ve either consciously created for ourselves or subconsciously accepted as an assignment from somebody. Central to this mission is that we hope to bring about more meaning to the lives of people around us.

This mission imbues us with a sense of purpose—invariably, it is a manifestation of a strong desire within ourselves to bring value, meaning, and joy for others and ultimately for ourselves as well. Even the prospect of smiling, complimenting, or expressing gratitude to another person feels good and adds to our own happiness because we know we’re adding more meaning to the other’s life.

Idea for Impact: The Key to a Life Well-led Is to Make as Big a Difference as You Can

The utmost measure of a life well-led is how you use your unique talents to do the most good you can. Enrich your life by trying to make a difference. Better yet, try to make the biggest difference you can. Perhaps if you’re fortunate enough—as the Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Bill Gates were/are—your contribution can create ripple effects and create an enduring legacy that lasts long after you’re gone.

If you want to be remembered and appreciated for having contributed something to the world, strive to live in the service of others and make the largest possible positive difference you can. That’s the key to a life well-led.

Your To-Do List Isn’t a Wish List: Add to It Selectively

December 15, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Poor time management is often not about a packed schedule as much as it is about an indecisive, unorganized, undisciplined mind that struggles with task management.

One persistent problem in time management is how people go about managing their to-do list, whether it’s a paper list, on an app/software, or just a mental record.

Unwieldy Buildup of Tasks

People find it easy to add things to their to-do lists. They tend to say yes to almost everything that is asked of them—because right when they are asked for something, saying “yes” involves nothing more than adding one more item to their already lengthy to-do lists.

What’s more, people can’t seem to complete and cross-off more than half of their to-do lists. The buildup of tasks is never-ending; for every task they complete, they tend to add a few more.

Consequently, they end up with a large, ever-growing task-list, which they postpone from one day to the next. No wonder they constantly feel besieged by work and get disheartened that there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.

Take Control of Your To-Do List

Be very conscious about your time.
Be very selective with what you add to your to-do list. As I mentioned in “the world’s shortest course in time management,” focus on things that you must do and avoid everything else. “An earnest purpose finds time, or makes it. It seizes on spare moments, and turns fragments to golden account,” said American Unitarian William Ellery Channing.
Learn to limit the demands on your time. Don’t say yes to everything that people ask of you.
Favor close-ended tasks over open-ended tasks. Break down complex tasks into smaller, bite-sized tasks that can be close-ended.
Associate everything on your to-do list with a date, time, and duration. Instead of adding a task to your to-do list, consider scheduling it on your calendar. Scheduling forces you to consider a task’s length and to confront how much time you actually have to devote to its completion.
Don’t tackle the tasks that you fancy instead of the ones you really need to do. Don’t focus on smaller, insignificant tasks on the pretext of making tangible progress quickly and in an attempt to avoid doing the significant projects.
Don’t wait for motivation to strike. Instead, discipline yourself and launch into action. As I mentioned in my article on the “10-Minute Dash” technique to overcome procrastination, action leads to motivation, which in turn leads to more action.

Avoid Mundane Tasks Like Richard Feynman

November 6, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out,” physicist Richard Feynman shares his thoughts and feelings about life, career, curiosity, scientific discovery, life-philosophy, and everything else.

In one essay, based on a 1981 interview for the BBC series Horizon (a video that went viral on YouTube,) Feynman shares his technique of “active irresponsibility” i.e. feigning irresponsibility to avoid mundane work in order to dedicate himself to productive work:

To do the kind of real good physics work, you do need absolutely solid lengths of time. When you’re putting ideas together which are vague and hard to remember … it needs a lot of concentration—solid time to think. If you’ve got a job administrating anything, say, then you don’t have the solid time. So I have invented another myth for myself—that I’m irresponsible. “I am actively irresponsible,” I tell everybody. “I don’t do anything.” If anybody asks me to be on a committee to take care of admissions … “No! I’m irresponsible. … I don’t give a damn about the students!” Of course I give a damn about the students, but I know that somebody else’ll do it! … because I like to do physics, and I want to see if I can still do it. I am selfish, okay? I want to do my physics.

Idea for Impact: Avoid Mundane Tasks

Delegate, defer, or avoid the ordinary and mundane elements of work that your work-life imposes upon you. These don’t contribute directly to your long-term goals and aspirations.

Often, the consequences of saying ‘no’ to things you don’t want to do aren’t as bad as you may fear.

For more on investing your time where your priorities are, read my “World’s Shortest Course on Time Management.” Refer also to my articles on time logging and time analysis for a methodical approach to find how you’re currently spending (or wasting) your time.

Leaves … Like the Lives of Mortal Men

October 23, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Spring and Autumn not only call to mind the renewal of the elements of nature but also remind us of the brevity of life and the temporal advancement of life.

The past is immutable and the future is yet tenuous and undefined. Memories of the past are full of triumphs and regrets while anticipations of the future are full of hopes and fears.

If we lose ourselves in memories of the past or fantasies about the future, we lose valuable experiences that take place in the present moment. As I mentioned in my previous article “Present Perfect,” we don’t remain completely in the present.

The change of seasons reminds us of the Buddhist concepts of transience and impermanence—that everything is impermanent—everything, including our own selves. Somehow, we refrain from acknowledging our own impermanence and resist confronting our own mortality.

In Homer’s epic The Iliad, men die at an astonishing pace in various battles. During the Trojan War, when the Achaean commander Diomedes confronts the Trojan lieutenant Glaucus, the latter reflects,

Like the generation of leaves, the lives of mortal men.
Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,
now the living timber bursts with the new buds
and spring comes round again. And so with men:
as one generation comes to life, another dies away.

Source: “The Iliad” (6:171) by Homer, tr. Robert Fagles

Idea for Impact: The passage of time induces us to confront our own mortality. Considering our own morality is a useful tool to guide our present actions. It reminds us to appreciate and live each moment purposefully and wisely.

The Futility of Attachment to Expected Results

August 4, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

The Futility of Attachment to Expected Results

Attachments Can Cause Suffering

Hindu and Buddhist philosophies posit that focusing on the rewards or outcomes of one’s actions is a prominent cause of emotional bondage in our material existence.

Buddhism holds that, above all, desire (selfish craving or tanha) and ignorance (unawareness or avidya) lie at the root of suffering (unsatisfactoriness or dukkha.) Desire is the yearning for hedonistic pleasure, affection, possessions, relationships, power, and even immortality.

The Bhagavad Gita on Detachment from Fruits of Labor

कर्मण्ये वाधिकारस्ते म फलेषु कदाचना।
कर्मफलेह्तुर भुरमा ते संगोस्त्वकर्मानी॥
—श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता 2:47

karmaṇy evādhikāras te mā phaleṣu kadācana
mā karma-phala-hetur bhūr mā te sańgo ‘stv akarmaṇi
—Bhagavad Gita 2:47

Translation: “To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive; neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction.” [Source: “Bhagavadgita” by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan]

“The wise are not bound by desire for rewards”

This verse suggests that the anticipated results of actions should not be the motivation for the performance of those actions.

Expounding this verse, the Hindu philosopher Madhvacharya (1238–1317) advocated godliness through right actions:

All rewards are factually independently ordained by the Supreme Lord … therefore, it is not correct to imagine that any reward which one receives is due only to one’s own efforts. … So one who is spiritually situated performs actions unattached to reward. Verily such is the way of action. … Actions performed without desire as a matter of duty are full of wisdom. … One should understand that it is fallacious to believe that one is the ultimate controller of their own destiny because the Supreme Lord ultimately ordains all results.

Hinduism (and Buddhism) actively advocates right conduct to attain definitive rewards: liberation (moksha, mukti, or nirvana) and salvation. Another Hindu philosopher Adi Shankaracharya explained that hankering for the fruits of labor results in entrapment in the cycle of birth and death, thus inhibiting liberation from the cycle of rebirth.

Buddhism encourages virtuous actions (in addition to the eschewal of bad actions) to beget positive karma for favorable rebirth and perhaps nirvana. While the abovementioned verse discourages attachment to outcomes, it does not imply that a person who performs actions without attachment to the rewards will not receive its rewards.

The Bhagavad Gita on Letting Go: The Power of Detachment

श्रेयो हि ज्ञानमभ्यासाज्ज्ञानाद्ध्यानं विशिष्यते।
ध्यानात्कर्मफलत्यागस्त्यागाच्छान्तिरनन्तरम्॥
—श्रीमद्भगवद्गीता 12:12

śreyo hi jñānam abhyāsāj jñānād dhyānaḿ viśiṣyate
dhyānāt karma-phala-tyāgas tyāgāc chāntir anantaram
—Bhagavad Gita 12:12

Translation: “Better indeed is knowledge than the practice of concentration; better than knowledge is meditation; better than meditation is the renunciation of the fruit of action; on renunciation follows immediately peace.” [Source: “Bhagavadgita” (1948) by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan]

Describing the psychological and spiritual benefits of renunciation of the rewards of actions (“karma-phala-tyagas,”) the Hindu Philosopher Madhvacharya explains this verse:

Superior to meditation with knowledge is non-attachment to performing actions for rewards and the renunciation of the rewards of actions coupled with bhakti or exclusive devotion to the Supreme Lord. … All one’s activities should be intended as an offering to the Supreme Lord because from such activities realization dawns and renunciation of the rewards of action arises and liberation from material existence manifests and the Supreme peace is attained.

Let Go of Attachments to Results

Idea for Impact: Let Go of Attachments to Results

Having no expectations of actions and lowering your expectations of people is liberating and can lead you to a happier life, not to mention of better relationships.

In terms of pursuing goals, freeing yourself from attachments to a particular outcome has to do with comprehending that there are certain things you cannot control. The attachment to a result takes hold when you believe that in order to be happy, you “must have it,” or you “should reach a goal.” Equally this attachment also arises from the anxious anticipation of a strong negative feeling if you do not reach your goal.

Alas, this attitude of letting go of attachment to results is not easy to implement. Psychologically, human beings are habitually driven by our hopes for the future, by desires from our relationships, and by a variety of other optimistic constructs like knowledge, power, status, and glory.

You can start by letting go of your attachments by redefining the form you think the results should come in. That way, should you not achieve the goal as you wish, you will remain content. Though it is an intimidating thought, remembering that many things are outside your span of control can help you let go of steep expectations.

Rather than limit the focus of your goal, a healthy approach is to consider instead your anticipated results as preferred results. By deliberating, “I prefer to have this outcome,” you can be open to anything that happens—good or bad. When good stuff happens, you can count your blessings. When bad stuff happens, you can just change direction without whining and self-pitying about how bad stuff was not supposed to happen you. Lowering expectations and detaching yourself from specific outcomes can reduce disappointment when things don’t go just as you desired.

Complement this philosophy of actions (karma or work) and results from the Bhagavad Gita with,

Artist Vincent van Gogh’s Calvinistic belief that work, like religion, was a way to communion with God.
General Dwight Eisenhower’s awareness that, after ordering his troops across the English Channel during World War II, the success of the invasion of Normandy was no longer in his own hands—that one could control efforts but not outcomes.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to my friend Venkatasubramanian, founder of the Bangalore-based Vyoma Linguistic Labs for help with this article. Vyoma is a non-profit organization devoted to the translation, preservation, and dissemination of rare classic Indian texts. It also produces Sanskrit learning products.

Control Your Efforts, Not the Outcomes

June 30, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

During World War II, President Dwight Eisenhower (1890–1969) was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces. On 2-June-1944, he issued a memo to his troops just before the Allied invasion of Normandy:

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely. … The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle.

We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

Under Eisenhower’s leadership, the Allied forces had meticulously planned Operation Overlord for over a year. For months, Eisenhower’s troops not only rehearsed their D-Day roles and routines, but also went to exceptional lengths to uphold the secrecy of their plans and deceive the German forces about troop movement. The Allied forces even plotted to cut off all roads and rail lines leading to the coast of Normandy and thus block reinforcements for the German troops.

Some things are simply beyond your control—you can only do your best

Despite all the strategizing and training, the success of the Allied invasion depended on the weather across the English Channel—their success essentially rested on something beyond their control.

The Allied aircrafts sought air superiority and would be unable to locate targets if low clouds covered Normandy. In addition, if the tides were high or the seas heavy, the troops would be unable to launch their landing crafts. The success or failure of their landings hinged entirely on suitable weather.

Eisenhower tentatively planned to send his troops across the English Channel on 5-June. The day before, however, the troops predicted cloudy skies, rain, and heavy seas that were inappropriate for the invasion. Eisenhower decided to postpone the invasion by a day, when the forecasted weather was to be more suitable than on 5-June, but not necessarily perfect for his plans. If he did not invade on 6-June, the tides would not favor an invasion for another two weeks, which would possibly give the Germans enough time to get wind of the Allies’ plan.

Eisenhower gave the marching orders for 6-June. It was then that he realized that the success of the invasion was no longer in his hands. Its outcome depended on 160,000 allied troops, thousands of commanders, and hundreds of lieutenants. Eisenhower had done everything in his power to coordinate their efforts and create conditions conducive to the mission’s success. After issuing his orders, all he could do was let those conditions come to fruition on their own terms. After all his efforts, he could not control the outcomes—he let go of the outcomes.

In time, the hard-fought cross-channel invasion was successful—Eisenhower won his wager with the weather. The invasion of Normandy proved to be a turning point in World War II. Despite formidable obstacles and thousands of casualties, the Allied troops prevailed over the German forces in landing at the coast of Normandy. Within days, Allied forces quickly consolidated at the beachheads and built up troops. Within two months, they broke out from their beachheads in Normandy and advanced on the Axis powers. The Allies liberated Europe when German troops surrendered unconditionally on 8-May-1945.

Control Your Efforts---Not the Outcomes

Idea for Impact: Focus on effort and lower your expectations of the outcomes

The wise among us understand what’s within their control and what’s not. They recognize that “you win some, you lose some.”

Success and results are not often within your span of control. However, you can control your effort and ability to create the conditions for success. Focus on your efforts, then let those conditions unfold.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna instructed Arjuna, “set thy heart upon thy work but never its reward” (verse 2:47.) And the Buddha counseled his followers to lower their expectations in order to achieve happiness, a belief that is not without proof in the hurly-burly world we live in.

Moreover, even if you can, don’t go overboard with your efforts. Push yourself to the max only when the stakes are big enough. As I mentioned in a previous article, a 110% effort may not fetch more rewards than an 80% or a 90% effort.

Be committed to your job, but don’t overly invest in it.

Lessons from the Princeton Seminary Experiment: People in a Rush are Less Likely to Help Others (and Themselves)

June 16, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi 3 Comments

Vincent van Gogh's The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix)

In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37 in the New Testament,) a Samaritan helps a traveler assaulted by robbers and left half dead by the side of the road. Prior to the Samaritan, a priest and a Levite pass the injured traveler and fail to notice him. Conceivably, the priest and Levite’s contempt was because they didn’t sincerely follow those same virtues they espoused as religious functionaries. Possibly, they were in a hurry or were occupied with busy, important—even religious—thoughts. Perhaps the Samaritan was in less of a hurry since he wasn’t as socially important as the priest or Levite and was therefore not expected to be somewhere.

The Princeton Seminary Experiment

Inspired by the parable of the Good Samaritan, Princeton social psychologists John Darley and Dan Batson conducted a remarkable experiment in the 1970s on time pressure and helpful behavior. They studied how students of the Princeton Theological Seminary conducted themselves when asked to deliver a sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan.

The students were to give the sermon in a studio a building across campus and would be evaluated by their supervisors. The researchers were curious about whether time pressure would affect the seminary students’ helpful nature. After all, the students were being trained to become ordained priests; they are presumably inclined to help others.

As each student finalized his preparation in a classroom, the researchers inflicted an element of time constraint upon them by giving them one of three instructions:

“You’re late. They were expecting you a few minutes ago…You’d better hurry. It shouldn’t take but just a minute.” This was the high-hurry condition.
“The (studio) assistant is ready for you, so please go right over.” This was the intermediate-hurry condition.
“It’ll be a few minutes before they’re ready for you, but you might as well head on over. If you have to wait over there, it shouldn’t be long.” This was the low-hurry condition.

As each student walked by himself from the preparation classroom to the studio, he encountered a ‘victim’ in a deserted alleyway just like the wounded traveler in the parable of the Good Samaritan. This victim (actually an associate of the experimenters) appeared destitute, was slouched and coughing and clearly in need of assistance. The seminarians were thus offered a chance to apply what they were about to preach.

“Conflict, rather than callousness, can explain their failure to stop.”

Researchers were interested in determining if their imposed time pressure affected the seminarians’ response to a distressed stranger. Remarkably, only 10% of the students in the high-hurry situation stopped to help the victim. 45% of the students in the intermediate-hurry and 63% of the students in the low-hurry situations helped the victim.

The researchers concluded, “A person not in a hurry may stop and offer help to a person in distress. A person in a hurry is likely to keep going. Ironically, he is likely to keep going even if he is hurrying to speak on the parable of the Good Samaritan, thus inadvertently confirming the point of the parable… Thinking about the Good Samaritan did not increase helping behavior, but being in a hurry decreased it.”

In light of their training and calling, the seminarians’ failure of bystander intervention is probably not due to indifference, self-centeredness, or contempt. (Compare with the plot of the series finale of American sitcom Seinfeld, where Jerry and friends are prosecuted for failure of duty to rescue.) The dominant cause is time pressure. Most of the students who believed they had enough time to stop did so. In contrast, the vast majority of those who thought they were late did not stop to help. In other words, the perception of time pressure or “having limited time” resulted in behaviors incongruent to their education and career: the devotion to help others. Time pressure triggered these well-intentioned students to behave in ways that, upon reflection, they would find disgraceful. The weight of a time constraint caused the students to put their immediate concern of being on time before the wellbeing of someone in need.

We’re in such hurry that we don’t stop to help ourselves

“I’m Late, I’m Late for a very important date,
No time to say hello. Goodbye.
I’m late, I’m late, I’m late, and when I wave,
I lose the time I save.”
—White Rabbit in the Disney musical “Alice in Wonderland” (1951)

The Princeton Seminary Experiment offers an even more personal lesson. As the researchers in this experiment expound, when we speed up and feel rushed, we experience a phenomenon known as “narrowing of the cognitive map.” That is, we miss details, we are not present enough in the moment to notice what is really important and we do not make the most beneficial choices for ourselves.

As we make our way through life, not only do we not stop to help others—we also do not stop to help ourselves. We neglect our own needs. We fail to nurture ourselves. We surrender, we settle, we lose hope. We compromise ourselves and become what we often settle for.

Our noisy world and busy lives constantly make us hurry as somebody always depends on us being somewhere. We constantly rush from place to place as if our lives depended upon it. We rush while doing just about everything. We are at the mercy of commitments often imposed by others.

Life moves quickly. And we’ll have missed it.

We fail to nurture ourselves We’re too busy, we’re too hurried and we’re too rushed. When people place demands on our time, our first resort is to cut out that which is most valuable. We are so busy meeting deadlines that we cannot make time for our loved ones. We abandon physical exercise to get to meetings on time. We avoid medical checkups critical to our well-being. We engage in behaviors that can put ourselves at risk for negative consequences in the future.

As our world continues to accelerate and our pace of life picks up speed, the clock’s finger turns inescapably. Life moves on by quickly, and soon enough we’ll have missed it entirely.

Idea for Impact: Be ever-conscious of the fact that time is the currency of your life

The German theologian and anti-Nazi descendent Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) wrote in his “Letters and Papers from Prison”, “As time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable, the thought of any lost time troubles us whenever we look back. Time lost is time in which we have failed to live a full human life, gain experience, learn, create, enjoy, and suffer; it is time that has not been filled up, but left empty.”

Make the best use of your time. Interrupt your busy life to help yourself by living more fully in the present. Nurture yourself. Your needs belong to the top.

A Timeout from Busyness // Book Summary of Pico Iyer’s ‘The Art of Stillness’

January 27, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Escape from the Mayhem

Our everyday lives are so busy. Our days are so full. Our world is so noisy.

We fill our lives with activities. We are at the mercy of our commitments. We have an incessant need to be occupied. We hasten. We seek to do something—anything.

Often, our identities are defined by mere ‘doing,’ not ‘being.’ Many of us struggle to find a few minutes to just sit quietly and clear our heads. We cannot afford some space to think and just be. We hardly ever pause to contemplate our experiences or reflect on the life we’ve been missing in a world overwhelmed by distractions.

Distractions disrupt our peace. The French scientist and Christian philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in Pensees, “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries, and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries” and added that “the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.”

To counter all of our exhilarating movement, we must balance it with an escape. We need space and stillness. When we remain still, we are struck by the realization that our noisy outer world is nothing but a reflection of our cluttered inner world.

Stillness: “Clarity and Sanity and the Joys that Endure”

Celebrated globetrotter and travel writer Pico Iyer’s “The Art of Stillness,” an expansion of his TED talk, is an inspiring analysis of the need to escape the persistent distractibility of the mundane. Iyer makes a persuasive argument for the startling pleasures of “sitting still as a way of falling in love with the world and everything in it.”

Pico Iyer and his family lives in a modest home in the countryside near Kyoto without internet, television, mobile phones, or even cars.

The book’s promo includes excerpts from Iyer’s talk:

We all know that in our undermined lives, one of the things most undermined is ourselves. Many of us have the sensation that we are standing about two inches away from a huge canvass. It’s noisy. It’s crowded. And it’s changing every second. And that screen is our lives. It’s only by stepping back and holding still, that we can begin to see what the canvass means.

One of the first things you learn when you travel is that nowhere is magical unless you can bring the right eyes to it. I find that the best way I could develop more attentive and more appreciative eyes was, oddly to go nowhere … just by sitting still.

In the age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still.

The Importance of Taking a Timeout From Busyness

Subtitled “Adventures in Going Nowhere,” Iyer’s insightful 64-page book provides several examples of stillness in practice. Iyer gives us glimpses into the lives of a privileged few who have found peace.

For example, legendary singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen discovered the supreme seduction of a monastic life. In 1994, after constant indulgence as an incessant traveler and international heartthrob, Cohen moved to the Mt. Baldy Zen Center in California, embarked on five years of seclusion, served as an aide to the now-107-year-old Japanese Zen teacher Kyozan Joshu Sasaki, and got ordained as a Zen Buddhist monk.

Leonard Cohen had come to this Old World redoubt to make a life—an art—out of stillness. And he was working on simplifying himself as fiercely as he might on the verses of one of his songs, which he spends more than ten years polishing to perfection. The week I was visiting, he was essentially spending seven days and nights in a bare meditation hall, sitting stock-still. … Sitting still, he said with unexpected passion, was “the real deep entertainment” he had found in his sixty-one years on the planet. “Real profound and voluptuous and delicious entertainment. The real feast that is available within this activity.” … “This seems to me the most luxurious and sumptuous response to the emptiness of my own existence.”

Typically lofty and pitiless words; living on such close terms with silence clearly hadn’t diminished his gift for golden sentences. But the words carried weight when coming from one who seemed to have tasted all the pleasures that the world has to offer.

…

Sitting still with his aged Japanese friend, sipping Courvoisier, and listening to the crickets deep into the night, was the closest he’d come to finding lasting happiness, the kind that doesn’t change even when life throws up one of its regular challenges and disruptions.

…

Going nowhere, as Cohen described it, was the grand adventure that makes sense of everywhere else.

From the Mayhem of Thought & Action to The Stillness of Being

Iyer contends that the best place to visit in these frenzied, over-connected times is nowhere:

At some point, all the horizontal trips in the world stop compensating for the need to go deep, into somewhere challenging and unexpected; movement makes most sense when grounded in stillness. In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing could feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.

…

Going nowhere … isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.

…

It’s only by taking myself away from clutter and distraction that I can begin to hear something out of earshot and recall that listening is much more invigorating than giving voice to all the thoughts and prejudices that anyway keep me company twenty-four hours a day. And it’s only by going nowhere—by sitting still or letting my mind relax—that I find that the thoughts that come to me unbidden are far fresher and more imaginative than the ones I consciously seek out.

Iyer’s “The Art of Stillness” isn’t a self-help manual and doesn’t give specific, actionable advice on how to achieve stillness. Quiet reflection and mindfulness meditation could move one’s mind in the direction of uplifting tranquility and natural stillness.

Idea for Impact: Occasionally, Try to Not Do Anything and Just Be

Take a break from your day to reflect, to recharge and to reassess. Take a vacation from your accelerated life. Just be with yourself, genuinely center, and quiet the mind.

You can achieve this centered state and contemplate when your exterior is noiseless. Then, during those still and silent moments you can come to terms with your experiences and struggles, your hopes and despairs, your ideas and judgments, your fears and fantasies.

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Mindfulness

Often, there’s no one to blame

Anger depletes energy and leads to loss of perspective and judgement

Free yourself from anger

Idea for Impact: A low-anger life is a happier life

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The Fable of Abraham Lincoln and the Pigs

Psychological Egoism

Idea for Impact: Be Selfish, Be Generous

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Forgotten

“Life’s but a walking shadow … then is heard no more”

What Difference Does It Make What We Do with Our Lives?

Idea for Impact: The Key to a Life Well-led Is to Make as Big a Difference as You Can

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Unwieldy Buildup of Tasks

Take Control of Your To-Do List

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Idea for Impact: Avoid Mundane Tasks

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Attachments Can Cause Suffering

The Bhagavad Gita on Detachment from Fruits of Labor

“The wise are not bound by desire for rewards”

The Bhagavad Gita on Letting Go: The Power of Detachment

Idea for Impact: Let Go of Attachments to Results

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Some things are simply beyond your control—you can only do your best

Idea for Impact: Focus on effort and lower your expectations of the outcomes

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The Princeton Seminary Experiment

“Conflict, rather than callousness, can explain their failure to stop.”

We’re in such hurry that we don’t stop to help ourselves

Life moves quickly. And we’ll have missed it.

Idea for Impact: Be ever-conscious of the fact that time is the currency of your life

Wondering what to read next?

Escape from the Mayhem

Stillness: “Clarity and Sanity and the Joys that Endure”

The Importance of Taking a Timeout From Busyness

From the Mayhem of Thought & Action to The Stillness of Being

Idea for Impact: Occasionally, Try to Not Do Anything and Just Be

Wondering what to read next?