The Nonlinear Library LW - How I internalized my achievements to better deal with negative feelings by Raymond Koopmanschap
Feb 28, 2024
10:15
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How I internalized my achievements to better deal with negative feelings, published by Raymond Koopmanschap on February 28, 2024 on LessWrong.
Whenever I struggle to make progress on an important goal, I feel bad. I get feelings of frustration, impatience, and apathy. I think to myself, "I have wasted all this time, and I will never get it back." The resulting behavior during these moments does not help either; my impatience makes it hard to concentrate, so I often work on more engaging tasks rather than the essential ones I ideally want to focus on.
I also tend to push through; even if I feel tired, I want to make progress at all costs. I force myself to work, which results in decreased motivation, making it hard to make actual progress.
Thanks to a practice called HEAL, introduced in the book Hardwiring Happiness by Rick Hanson, I now deal much better with this situation. HEAL stands for Having a beneficial experience, Enriching it, Absorbing it, and optionally Linking it to a negative experience. To dive straight in and use HEAL in practice, you can explore this guided HEAL meditation.
More meditations can be found here, at the end of the Hardwiring Happiness book, and most of the meditations I found useful are in his Foundations of Wellbeing course (you can apply for scholarships).
The book suggests that behavior like my frustration can be caused by some underlying unmet need, resulting in compulsively trying to fulfill this need. This information and introspective techniques like Focusing helped me discover that these negative feelings came from some unmet need to feel worthwhile and recognized, but the problem was that I heavily tied my self-worth to the amount of progress I made.
HEAL allowed me to fulfill this need and thereby soothe these negative feelings by generating positive experiences of past accomplishments and letting the truth of these facts sink in by enriching and absorbing the experience, allowing me to see that I have made significant progress and am proud of what I have achieved. This helped me put these negative thoughts in perspective and let me realize on a deeper level that I am OK and capable of achieving meaningful things.
I feel calmer after doing this practice; it allows me to disengage from negative thought loops. When I have more distance from a negative thought, I ask myself what I can learn from this feeling and what is helpful for me at this moment, be it going for a short walk, talking with a friend about my frustration, or refocusing on the important task I wanted to accomplish.
Another benefit is that it helps me focus on the positive aspects that excite me and guide me toward what I want to create. One post that does a good job of clarifying why this can be useful is replacing fear.
HEAL can be used for many unhelpful thoughts or feelings. Using HEAL, we can internalize self-confidence when feeling fear about a presentation or job interview, motivation to overcome procrastination, self-acceptance to lessen the burdens of imposter syndrome, assertiveness when entering a difficult conversation, and courage to pursue that startup idea we always wanted to pursue.
How I applied the HEAL method
To soothe these negative thoughts of frustration, impatience, and apathy that I encounter when not making enough progress, I called to mind instances where I was honestly satisfied with my accomplishments. This is the first step in the HEAL process: Having a beneficial experience. I recalled a moment after giving a workshop where someone told me they found the workshop valuable and eye-opening.
Next, I Enriched this experience by holding it in my mind for a dozen seconds, vividly imagining the scenario, feeling everything I felt then, and clarifying why this was a meaningful experience for me.
Third is the Absorbing step, where I let this expe...
Whenever I struggle to make progress on an important goal, I feel bad. I get feelings of frustration, impatience, and apathy. I think to myself, "I have wasted all this time, and I will never get it back." The resulting behavior during these moments does not help either; my impatience makes it hard to concentrate, so I often work on more engaging tasks rather than the essential ones I ideally want to focus on.
I also tend to push through; even if I feel tired, I want to make progress at all costs. I force myself to work, which results in decreased motivation, making it hard to make actual progress.
Thanks to a practice called HEAL, introduced in the book Hardwiring Happiness by Rick Hanson, I now deal much better with this situation. HEAL stands for Having a beneficial experience, Enriching it, Absorbing it, and optionally Linking it to a negative experience. To dive straight in and use HEAL in practice, you can explore this guided HEAL meditation.
More meditations can be found here, at the end of the Hardwiring Happiness book, and most of the meditations I found useful are in his Foundations of Wellbeing course (you can apply for scholarships).
The book suggests that behavior like my frustration can be caused by some underlying unmet need, resulting in compulsively trying to fulfill this need. This information and introspective techniques like Focusing helped me discover that these negative feelings came from some unmet need to feel worthwhile and recognized, but the problem was that I heavily tied my self-worth to the amount of progress I made.
HEAL allowed me to fulfill this need and thereby soothe these negative feelings by generating positive experiences of past accomplishments and letting the truth of these facts sink in by enriching and absorbing the experience, allowing me to see that I have made significant progress and am proud of what I have achieved. This helped me put these negative thoughts in perspective and let me realize on a deeper level that I am OK and capable of achieving meaningful things.
I feel calmer after doing this practice; it allows me to disengage from negative thought loops. When I have more distance from a negative thought, I ask myself what I can learn from this feeling and what is helpful for me at this moment, be it going for a short walk, talking with a friend about my frustration, or refocusing on the important task I wanted to accomplish.
Another benefit is that it helps me focus on the positive aspects that excite me and guide me toward what I want to create. One post that does a good job of clarifying why this can be useful is replacing fear.
HEAL can be used for many unhelpful thoughts or feelings. Using HEAL, we can internalize self-confidence when feeling fear about a presentation or job interview, motivation to overcome procrastination, self-acceptance to lessen the burdens of imposter syndrome, assertiveness when entering a difficult conversation, and courage to pursue that startup idea we always wanted to pursue.
How I applied the HEAL method
To soothe these negative thoughts of frustration, impatience, and apathy that I encounter when not making enough progress, I called to mind instances where I was honestly satisfied with my accomplishments. This is the first step in the HEAL process: Having a beneficial experience. I recalled a moment after giving a workshop where someone told me they found the workshop valuable and eye-opening.
Next, I Enriched this experience by holding it in my mind for a dozen seconds, vividly imagining the scenario, feeling everything I felt then, and clarifying why this was a meaningful experience for me.
Third is the Absorbing step, where I let this expe...