So if you Have This Problem, what do you do about it?
The short answer? Alter the identity-level beliefs that are telling you that you suck and have to compensate for that suckiness, replacing them with functional beliefs about how to behave.
Most of the identity-level stuff comes from mirrored parental attitudes and beliefs, like for example if a parent constantly monitors you doing homework, admonishing you to finish, the attitude this teaches is that if you’re left to your own devices you won’t finish anything, because you suck. So you learn to hover over yourself in a similarly critical fashion, and to not do things unless someone is hovering.
Not only that, but you’ll negatively reinforce more functional behaviors, like rewarding yourself for progress. That is, it’ll seem stupid or immoral or something, because on a subconsious level you feel “but I suck, and anyway I won’t do it unless there’s hovering and feeling like I suck.” So even if you try it, your internal reinforcement will quickly extinguish the behavior. (i.e., this is how meta-akrasia works, for people with this type of problem.)
The specific antidote to a behavior like this is to begin by assuming that the person(s) who taught it to you intended for you to feel and believe as you do, and then imagine what they would have done differently, had they intended something else. For example, if the parent in this example believed you were inherently motivated to succeed at things and didn’t require somebody to crack the whip to make you do it, then they would have been far more likely to offer encouragement, using a different voice tone than the same parent who offers encouragement while believing you will fail.
(Btw, current experimental evidence indicates that voice tone alone is sufficient to substantially influence adult performance on a puzzle, in the direction of “expected to fail” vs “expected to succeed”, even with identical word choices. It’s logical to assume that with 1) suggestible children, 2) word choice, 3) facial expressions and body language, and 4) repeated exposure, adults can easily program children to share the adults’ opinion of the child’s chances of success at something, such as ability to be persistent or degree of motivation to succeed.)
Anyway, this is all the very short answer to what is rather a lot of steps to do in practice. For one thing, a prerequisite skill is being able to imagine the alternative adult behaviors and how you would behave differently had you grown up in that altered environment. (Not to merely intellectually speculate (far mode), but to actually imagine (near mode), as if you were actually experiencing the things imagined.)
Another is being able to troubleshoot objections that arise. (Objections being your brain sending up warning flags or bad feelings about the things you’re trying to imagine, indicating that your attempted change violates one of your other principles or would lead to other problems in your brain’s estimation—these usually lead to other beliefs or expectations that need to be altered first, before you can finish the one you were working on, or indicate something missing from the altered belief or behavior, like if you are taking away the bad stuff but not putting enough good stuff in.)
So if you Have This Problem, what do you do about it?
The short answer? Alter the identity-level beliefs that are telling you that you suck and have to compensate for that suckiness, replacing them with functional beliefs about how to behave.
Most of the identity-level stuff comes from mirrored parental attitudes and beliefs, like for example if a parent constantly monitors you doing homework, admonishing you to finish, the attitude this teaches is that if you’re left to your own devices you won’t finish anything, because you suck. So you learn to hover over yourself in a similarly critical fashion, and to not do things unless someone is hovering.
Not only that, but you’ll negatively reinforce more functional behaviors, like rewarding yourself for progress. That is, it’ll seem stupid or immoral or something, because on a subconsious level you feel “but I suck, and anyway I won’t do it unless there’s hovering and feeling like I suck.” So even if you try it, your internal reinforcement will quickly extinguish the behavior. (i.e., this is how meta-akrasia works, for people with this type of problem.)
The specific antidote to a behavior like this is to begin by assuming that the person(s) who taught it to you intended for you to feel and believe as you do, and then imagine what they would have done differently, had they intended something else. For example, if the parent in this example believed you were inherently motivated to succeed at things and didn’t require somebody to crack the whip to make you do it, then they would have been far more likely to offer encouragement, using a different voice tone than the same parent who offers encouragement while believing you will fail.
(Btw, current experimental evidence indicates that voice tone alone is sufficient to substantially influence adult performance on a puzzle, in the direction of “expected to fail” vs “expected to succeed”, even with identical word choices. It’s logical to assume that with 1) suggestible children, 2) word choice, 3) facial expressions and body language, and 4) repeated exposure, adults can easily program children to share the adults’ opinion of the child’s chances of success at something, such as ability to be persistent or degree of motivation to succeed.)
Anyway, this is all the very short answer to what is rather a lot of steps to do in practice. For one thing, a prerequisite skill is being able to imagine the alternative adult behaviors and how you would behave differently had you grown up in that altered environment. (Not to merely intellectually speculate (far mode), but to actually imagine (near mode), as if you were actually experiencing the things imagined.)
Another is being able to troubleshoot objections that arise. (Objections being your brain sending up warning flags or bad feelings about the things you’re trying to imagine, indicating that your attempted change violates one of your other principles or would lead to other problems in your brain’s estimation—these usually lead to other beliefs or expectations that need to be altered first, before you can finish the one you were working on, or indicate something missing from the altered belief or behavior, like if you are taking away the bad stuff but not putting enough good stuff in.)
This sounds like it would be good advice if I could figure out how to implement it. (As you said, it’s the short answer.)