Self-Involvement

I'm self-involved. I've spent countless hours writing stream of consciousness prose that at its best veers towards thinly veiled autobiography and at its worst is reams of me complaining about not making more of myself and the challenges of being born smart, male, white and privileged. Oh the horror of not having had to overcome adversity! The shit stinks but it's who I am.

So I'm very interested in the scientific study of motivation.

Recently a study came out that hit the lay press that says "If you want to achieve something, keep it to yourself, because telling others about our goals actually undermines the likelihood we'll achieve them" Something along the lines of bullshitting to our friends and loved ones about our big plans gives us a neurochemical jolt of "success" so we actually don't feel as driven to do the much harder work of acting on achieving our goals. I know that feeling. I've spent countless nights drinking with my good time buddies lying to each other about the movies we're going to make, the stand up comedy we'll perform, or the transformative and incredibly redeeming new direction we're about to embark on. And some of these ideas are fairly detailed and actionable. In the hands of non-bullshit artists they could have created several fortunes by now and probably incidentally cured cancer.

A second bit of science or what passes in the lay press as science that's been making the rounds is that listening to people complain makes us stupid. Some kind of study has been done in which people's mental acuity was tested, they were then exposed to someone complaining, and when they tried the maze again they starved before finding the cheese. Holy does this mean I have to thin out my rolodex and unfriend a whack of face bookers! Or apply for special parking as I list to full dimmer.

Because, shockingly, amongst my hard drinking brilliant yet unsuccessful intimates, next to dreaming in colour is bitching, and it's a less than Amazing Race to know which we've indulged in more vigorously.

Now the silver lining of all this is forewarned is forearmed, and like with negative introspection and depression, knowing these things are bad gives us some leverage to avoid them. In my reams of self involved journal writing I've 'flagged' negativity - when I've found myself bitching in circles I'll write 'red flag' and take a moment to step back and move onto something else. I've learned also to practice gratitude - if there's one thing I've learned from the shit storm that holding a family of five together can put you through is to be grateful for what you have. Because we'll all be dead soon and whatever passes for our family life could easily blow up and find us spread to the four winds or worse. So I practice being grateful.

And as for not bullshitting about my plans and being more proactive? That one I'm not sure if I've developed actual better practices for. I put more stuff out in the world - that's progress - I've learned to accept that my process to date involves a lot of navel gazing but that if I gaze long enough I grow tired of describing lint and move onto more shaped material.

I may never be decisive and constantly in motion - but I am kind of suspicious of people like that anyway. Most decisions that are worth a good god damn should be thought about pretty thoroughly. Charging forward for the sake of moving is kind of Kardashian. There are countless examples of celebrities who's need for attention so eclipses what they actually have to offer the world that they are essentially just flinging shit on the walls and hollering for people to notice.

So perhaps I'll keep muddling. I'm english after all, apparently it's something we're known for.