Distinctions

An extraordinarily powerful book, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Nobel prize-winning author Daniel Kahman (reviewed in this issue of Distinctions) brilliantly and succinctly lays out the blindness caused by speed that gets hidden by the structure of our nervous system.

From the book, here’s a partial list of the chronic mistakes our fast thinking makes:

• It suppresses doubt and neglects ambiguity.
• It concludes that something must be true if it is associated with pleasant feelings and reduced vigilance/lack of perceived threat in the nervous system (this is how we get conned, manipulated and seduced by “good people”).
• It focuses on existing evidence and neglects absent evidence (we don’t look into longer-term causes and conditions, forget context, don’t even ask what happened just before or what will happen immediately next).
• It responds more strongly to losses than to gains (called “loss aversion”) leading to success amnesia and exaggerated planning and fears.
• It infers and invents causes and intentions—innumerable relational messes begin here.
• It generates a limited set of basic assessments (called “common sense”) and leading to ridiculous statements like “How hard is it to be US President?” because we only have a very limited idea of what it takes given our extremely limited views following from our very small set of possible assessments/ observations.
• It makes sense of behaviors/situations immediately and comes to quick conclusions because associative memory gets activated—we don’t notice the uniqueness of the moment.
• It substitutes an easier question for a difficult one, dumbing down our response, taking us out of a full encounter with someone/the full situation (e.g. “Do I love you? Well, I really like the way you dance and you are such a good cook”).

The list goes on. And we are for the most part blind to these events for the reasons cited above.

Which of these do you fall into? How could you find out?

Perhaps you’re seeing some of the benefits of our Integral Coaching methods in the context of this conversation. Asking clients to stop and reflect, as we do with all of our clients, is inviting them to step out of fast/automatic thinking and acting and instead take a slower, deeper, longer-term view of their responses and behaviors. As they do this, clients can ameliorate some of the prejudice built into fast thinking and see through at least some of their mistakes, especially those that “feel right.”

Meditative and other practices, such as yin yoga and Tai Chi, systematically slow down the nervous system, allowing more of the wisdom of our slower thinking to come forward. Having regular breaks from relentless work blunts the momentum of our racing minds.

What have you found that works for you and your clients?

Are you onto yourself in this area?

Many of the messes we are in the middle of arise because we are unaware of the mischief of our fast/automatic thinking. For most of us, we have important work to attend to around this topic. Let’s start—slowly.

Our upcoming Roundtable in San Francisco will address this topic. The practice of the quarter, poems that follow and the already mentioned book review take up the topic from different angles.

Take care of yourself.

Love,

During this last period of time:

• When did I act quickly, automatically and at the same time inaccurately? (For example, what comment did I generalize mistakenly? What fast, inaccurate prediction did I make about what someone would say or do?)
• What causality, intentionality did I quickly assign that turned out to be inaccurate?

At the end of this period please make a list of 5 to 10 recurring mistakes your fast mind makes.

In the middle third of this practice time please diligently cultivate a quieter, calmer mind by:

• Starting, reinvigorating or intensifying your meditation practice
• Taking more time off to renew yourself and have fun
• Spending more time than usual with people that you feel deeply relaxed with

Keep noticing, please, if this is having any effect on your list of 5 to 10 recurring fast mind mistakes.

In the final third of the practice time please select one of the 5 to 10 inaccurate responses to study for a half a day to a day at a time.

• Look for it and see if you can catch yourself in the middle of it and then respond more carefully and accurately.
• Take some reflection time at the end of each day and keep cultivating, refining your ability to catch the automaticity as it occurs.

Living

Denise Levertov

The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun,
each day the last day.

A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.

from Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me …

Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?
Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel’d with doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

In all people I see myself, none more, and not one a barley-corn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

I know I am solid and sound,
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter’s compass,
I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at night.

I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.)

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

The Minnesota ICF has awarded Sydney Paredes (2002) the 2015 Gaston Award for lifetime service to the coaching profession. Congratulations, Sydney, on this well-deserved achievement!

Angie O’Donnell (2006) was quoted in a recent Boston Sunday Globe article, “How high-powered women handle stress.” (And she should know!) You can read the article here. Well done, Angie.

Brett Penfil (2009) was interviewed for the September issue of Checking In, the monthly newsletter for the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of ICF. Among other topics she addresses the common question about coaching versus therapy. Read more here.