I tried your exercise again and apparently I can go into noticing within about one second (tried that repeatedly; when starting to count mentally I almost instantly notice my counting and the resulting noticing the noticing).
In particular I noticed that each change of thought is accompanied by a ‘halo’ where the new focus of attention (a sound, a feeling, a visual impression) is kind of highlighted, attenuated. For visual features I almost think I can see the halo (as if a contrast enhancing filter were put upon the feature). But I have to add a disclaimer: This could all be an artifact of my noticing.
If you goal is to improve heated dialogs I’m not sure this will help or rather I’m unclear what your next steps after noticing are. Sure you state your feelings. And then? It probably depends on your partner but for me my noticing didn’t help much. Actually it made matters worse. My ex-wife was frustrated that she couldn’t reach me with her emotions. She could have better dealt with me mirroring her anger and ‘fighting it out’.
Emotions have one important function: Emotions measure subjective importance. It is not possible to objectively discuss importance. It is possible to give factual information like: “X is cheaper”, “Y is more beautiful”, “Z is nearer”. But how to weigh these remains subjective. Even if you try to assign weights. And then there is not always time to enumerate all the factual points much less the weights. So I learned that apparently some things are more important to her than to me by the strength of her emotion.
Emotions have one important function: Emotions measure subjective importance.
The entire continent of Australia is more important to me than my little toe, but guess which one has more sway on my emotions? Emotions are behavior-modifiers—they approximate “rational” behavior in the ancestral environment. [lesswrong’s definition of rational as goal-optimizating behavior. Emotions are irrational as per the normal definition because they are involuntary and don’t involve deliberative reasoning].
My ex-wife was frustrated that she couldn’t reach me with her emotions. She could have better dealt with me mirroring her anger and ‘fighting it out’.
It’s up to your meta-cognition to decide when it’s best to clamp down on emotions and when to ramp them up. The instinctive thing to do for most people is to clamp down as much as possible and then give up at some point, and I’m guessing evolution selected on negative-emotion-intensity and emotion-clamping-ability under the condition that everyone maximally clamps negative emotions because they hurt. As a result our clamping abilities are exactly, slightly under, or slightly over the maximum clamping strength we need in life.
I think this, combined with the fact that the modern environment is more stressful means, means most people aught to try to train themselves to strengthen that clamp down that muscle more, and correctly so. But there are some whose clamping muscles are just fine, and now they’re ready for Step 2 which is learning when the correct time to not clamp is.
This looks like a rerun of Meditation Trains Metacognition.
I tried your exercise again and apparently I can go into noticing within about one second (tried that repeatedly; when starting to count mentally I almost instantly notice my counting and the resulting noticing the noticing).
In particular I noticed that each change of thought is accompanied by a ‘halo’ where the new focus of attention (a sound, a feeling, a visual impression) is kind of highlighted, attenuated. For visual features I almost think I can see the halo (as if a contrast enhancing filter were put upon the feature). But I have to add a disclaimer: This could all be an artifact of my noticing.
If you goal is to improve heated dialogs I’m not sure this will help or rather I’m unclear what your next steps after noticing are. Sure you state your feelings. And then? It probably depends on your partner but for me my noticing didn’t help much. Actually it made matters worse. My ex-wife was frustrated that she couldn’t reach me with her emotions. She could have better dealt with me mirroring her anger and ‘fighting it out’.
Emotions have one important function: Emotions measure subjective importance. It is not possible to objectively discuss importance. It is possible to give factual information like: “X is cheaper”, “Y is more beautiful”, “Z is nearer”. But how to weigh these remains subjective. Even if you try to assign weights. And then there is not always time to enumerate all the factual points much less the weights. So I learned that apparently some things are more important to her than to me by the strength of her emotion.
See also the related links Two Weeks of Meditation can Reduce Mind Wandering and Improve Mental Performance and Meditation: a self-experiment.
What’s novel about this post on meditation is that it taboos the word ‘meditation’. I kinda like that.
The entire continent of Australia is more important to me than my little toe, but guess which one has more sway on my emotions? Emotions are behavior-modifiers—they approximate “rational” behavior in the ancestral environment. [lesswrong’s definition of rational as goal-optimizating behavior. Emotions are irrational as per the normal definition because they are involuntary and don’t involve deliberative reasoning].
It’s up to your meta-cognition to decide when it’s best to clamp down on emotions and when to ramp them up. The instinctive thing to do for most people is to clamp down as much as possible and then give up at some point, and I’m guessing evolution selected on negative-emotion-intensity and emotion-clamping-ability under the condition that everyone maximally clamps negative emotions because they hurt. As a result our clamping abilities are exactly, slightly under, or slightly over the maximum clamping strength we need in life.
I think this, combined with the fact that the modern environment is more stressful means, means most people aught to try to train themselves to strengthen that clamp down that muscle more, and correctly so. But there are some whose clamping muscles are just fine, and now they’re ready for Step 2 which is learning when the correct time to not clamp is.