Two Different Times of an Event, was: Thinking about habits

We can think about a habit when it is not being triggered; and we can think about it when it is being triggered. The context of the thinking in those two cases is radically different and as might be expected so are the thoughts. It might be interesting to write down both kinds of thoughs and compare them.

~ And / Or ~

We can anticipate an event and then examine how our response to the event compares with the anticipation.

~ And / Or ~

We can anticipate a response from the world to an event we cause, and then compare what response we actually get, and how that feels compared to our anticipation.

Comments

Seth says

M 2010-11-20 05:42:18 14593

I am still trying to grok what you are looking for. What question are you contemplating? "Right Answers for right questions lie in wait "(Hex 44,#1 & Hex 7,#1) .

yeah me too. It is a study of the differences between the environment of planning, and the environment of doing. But after some thought here i have become aware of some problems related to such a study. For one thing the evidences must be gleaned from (1) memory, or (2) writing about thoughts and feelings , or (3) recording of actions. All of those are ducently subjective and their production can alter what can happens. In a true scientific study the observer would not be the observee. But that is not going to happen here.

Like i mentioned before there are some obvious differences in the two environments:
(1) planning is absent the desire, and (2) doing is far more detailed. But i am not really interested in the obvious, rather some subtle heretofor undiscovered dynamic that i usually miss. Perchance to discover some effective kind of marker that can be placed from the one environment to the other. I know NLP has these; but i'm not too crazy about them; and i'm looking instead for something that most likely only i can do.

I made this item more as a marker for myself, but you certainly are welcome to interact with it.

Seth says

M 2010-11-18 10:04:10 14593

Did you ever process the Tony Robbins Questions material I scanned for you? Basically, if you want change you ponder the questions (by category of rules) in both states & notice the answers & differences between the 2 states (before/after) or in your case (before/during) & by the time you finish - if you have been honest with yourself - you have made the NLP changes to your psyche. Easier said than done.

no, didn't read it. But it's not before and after than concerns me here ... it's triggered and not triggered. For example, as you lie in bed in the morning, thinking about the habits of the day in which you are about to enter, those habits are not being triggered (cued) ... the context in which they are activated does not exist. Whereas when you are at the moment in your day in which the behavior usually happens, the habit has been triggered. At that point your thinking about that habit is like totally different than it was when you were in the bed thinking about it. More important perhaps is your feeling about the action that will or will not happen at the moment. You might want to correlate this thinking with your own about being in the now.

Seth says

M 2010-11-18 12:14:01 14593

If indeed you are looking for the context for a habit being triggered or not then perhaps you will be specific for what you would do with that once you grok the on/off switch.

Well actually i'm almost always already quite aware of the on/off context under which a habit is triggered ... so, no, i am certainly not looking for that. What i am studying is how my thinking and feeling about the thing changes from when the trigger is not present to when it is present. For example, just to state an obvious difference, when the stimulus (trigger) is present and there is some visceral reward for the behavior, rationalizations for doing it naturally pop into my mind ... but no so very much when the stimulus is absent. That is the base level of this, and it should not be controversial ... i would suspect that it is the same for you. What i would be after here would be more subtle differences that are not quite so obvious ... perhaps also in cases of quote good unquote habits and habits where AC might use the term "chains".

Seth says

M 2010-11-18 11:34:54 14593

If you haven't read it yet, then you are unaware of the wealth of information about yourself & the habits or states & the rules you have that make them OK. The question thingy can be extended to any past, present or future state (habit, behavior, resourceful moment).

yeah ill read it when i get my tuit

... but i really don't expect, it's wisdom aside, it will bear on the actual topic in this item, and i guess you don't intend to help me with that. You see this is a very specific thing that i am targeting here, i'm not just looking for ways to change habits.

Seth says

M 2010-11-19 07:46:48 14593

seth 2010-11-18 13:30:09 14593

M 2010-11-18 12:14:01 14593

If indeed you are looking for the context for a habit being triggered or not then perhaps you will be specific for what you would do with that once you grok the on/off switch.

If you have spec'd out the trigger mechanism as a response to stimuli then are you now examining the entire difference in state between the acting out of a habit & the contemplating acting out that habit in the future ?

I say, no, primarily you are not; because it is not feasible to map out the entire mechanism and hold it in your awareness all at once ... at least i can't do that. Then too it seems to me that you are ignoring the fact that we make up and synthesize thoughts and feelings ... whether in response to stimulus or just on a whim. Those made up thoughts and feelings are not entirely regular and pre-determined but might tap into our most creative impulses.

If i ever get a good example, one that i can share, and have sufficient awareness of, and the courage to express it, i will write down the two narratives and we can compare them. I think that might be a good exercise to raise my awareness.

Seth says

source: from last nights planning
Here is an experiment. I will plan a response to you in my bed at night. I will then go to my desk and open an email to you and write that response down from memory. Then later i will open fastblogit and make my real response as i normally would however i will include this response verbatim in quoted text correctly sourced to the email prior to my real response.

After making the actual comments i'll actually send you the email exactly as written last night ... for this comment there will be no difference except this one sentence.

Seth says

M 2010-11-20 09:33:56 14593

In my language you are probably looking for that elusive way that the will gets torched off - the match head that ignites action, something that I have been searching for since early childhood. GW & you have said "Just Do It!", but then why are you still looking? NLP just anchors the motion in when a particular state is detected; similar to a state-machine. I think self-anchoring (from the heart

) is what is needed.

source: from last night's planning
Did i not disabuse you of that notion in X above? How can i be studying the "spark to action" when the context for action (trigger) has not even arrived? How can i study the "spark to action" of a cooking event or a talk with my wife when i am not in the kitchen or not even talking to my wife?

Well since apparently if i have not already disabused you of that notion in mine of 2010-11-18 13:30:09 above, perhaps you could answer the questions: How can i be studying the "spark to action" when the context for action (trigger) has not even arrived? How can i study the "spark to action" of a cooking event or a talk with my wife when i am not in the kitchen or not even talking to my wife?

So, no, that is another topic ... an interesting one, no doubt, but still not this topic.

Again, my topic here is about how the environment of thinking about doing something differs from the environment of actually doing something.

But if you want to delve into the spark to action itself, we can do that here too ... might be a bit confusing ... but it can be done ... just keep the two topics separated in your mind enough so that you can communicate which you are referring to. This paragraph is about the spark. I just got an idea about that. Instead of studying the spark itself, grock it by focusing on it nemisis ... the delay ... the procrastination of a action ... the hesitation itself. Perhaps if you can grock that better, you will also grock the actual spark.

C says

seth 2010-11-22 10:56:49 14593

C 2010-11-21 10:17:40 14593

... you have yet to implement the auspicious title in 14275

... and what would you suppose that an implementation of A New Respect for The Specific would look like?

Easy, you would become more specific in what you are asking.

Seth says

C 2010-11-21 10:17:40 14593

I am quite confused as to exactly what you wanted to discuss with yourself or possibly me!

OTOH, I tried to get more specifity when I asked:

(remember this above?) seth: ...
If you have spec'd out the trigger mechanism as a response to stimuli then are you now examining the entire difference in state between the acting out of a habit & the contemplating acting out that habit in the future ?

... I guess you went tangental on the word "entire" or

... you have yet to implement the auspicious title in 14275
... if all you were interested in was

seth (above): ...
Again, my topic here is about how the environment of thinking about doing something differs from the environment of actually doing something.

... please explain how it differs from what I expressed up above except you use the word environment & I use state which are mostly equivalent when the context is behavior & motivation.

Well for one thing, by my understanding, the sentence "if you know the map of the trigger mechanism as a response to stimuli then are you now examining the entire difference in state between the acting out of a habit & the contemplating acting out that habit in the future" is just false. The map of the trigger mechanism itself tells you almost nothing about the map of the *contemplation* of the deed. In a way that is my whole point here. When you think about doing something you are in a totally different mental environment than when you actually do it. Now i suppose that as you train your ability to visualize, the two environments can approach similarity ... but bear in mind that they are never the same ... and usually, when your not trying to visualize the deed in detail, they will be radically different.

Seth says

C 2010-11-22 12:21:11 14593

Actually in sports like tennis or racketball the time lapse between the thought of acting & the acting itself is infinitesimal. Ask a fighter pilots about how much reaction time they have to react to a threat.

Yep that's true. Those kind of reactions need to be programmed in the muscles. Part of my plastic habit is making coffee in the morning ... pooring the water so that it does not drip ... not forgetting to close up cannister ... getting those little things perfected are fun ... and watching how they go down each day differently with my moods or the tides is also part of my little joys in life.

But that is not all that very much related to the topic in this item. Did you get how i illustrated what i am talking about in The context of my contemplation of Mango Quinoa, Supper Tomorrow ?

Seth says

C 2010-11-22 13:21:21 14593

Nope! If you are trying to do a scientific method study of something you should state your premises or theory or something - expectations - & then determine what you will collect as data.

Surely you can't be so trite as to be proving or illustrating that time & location changes your perspectives on some task you want to accomplish.

There is no thesis to be proved. My interest is just to discover something new. It is very hard to use the scientific method to discover something that you don't even know what is. The thing to do is to invent a psychic-projector-machine-gadget, and then flash back and forth very rapidly between the two contexts ... maybe something would show up that you wouldn't expect to see. Ok ... ok ... i know ... i know ... i'm really reaching for it here.

Seth says

C 2010-11-22 14:12:52 14593

So, as I see it you are expecting a distinguishable change in context between contemplation of doing something (like cooking a dish) & the actual doing the cooking of that dish, eh? What happens if you find out that the only context there is is you & there is no change ?

Oh interesting comment you've made there ... and a very telling one ... it shows how you are expecting something totally different than i would be expecting.

actually if that happened i would look to see if i couldn't deconfuse my thinking. Logically, and i know that logic doesn't always work with this kind of stuff, there cannot be a change and no change at the same time. The "you" (observer) may not change ... but something does ...

Seth says

C 2010-11-23 06:12:55 14593

seth 2010-11-23 02:33:17 14593

C 2010-11-22 14:44:39 14593

BTW, I have noticed an subconscious or otherwise forgetfulness of the original desire to do something vs the desire to find new information in the current moment i.e. NOW.

i don't know what you mean here. Could you elaborate?

A good example is a desire to get certain things from the store & then getting some & not others. Why? The other day I had to go back for grits. It turned out that the way I made the grits (cheesy w/ milk) to go with salmon cakes (w/tamarind mayo) & asparagus was a mistake, but was that a subconscious to avoid the mistake? Grits was actually on my list. It's not a biggy.

Oh yes definitely

. The real life deeds are always far more detailed, and the planning and intending are always vague and unsure. We make different choices when we do things and loose some of the original intentions. Sometimes we win, sometimes we loose, sometimes we would have done better to stick with the original intentions. All good stuff ... haven't discovered anything yet ... i'll write out my intentions for todays maeal in as much detail as i can afford ... and see how it works out.

Mark de LA says

One of my fascinations is etymology & the meaning of words. I hold that there is wisdom within words & the whole of language. While working on 14621 which has already passed from the river on facebook (thanks Seth), I ran into this list from visual thesaurus which may (or not) assist student quests & the scientific method.

Seth says

C 2010-11-23 10:48:25 14593

seth 2010-11-23 10:33:17 14593

source: M above
A good example is a desire to get certain things from the store & then getting some & not others. Why? The other day I had to go back for grits. It turned out that the way I made the grits (cheesy w/ milk) to go with salmon cakes (w/tamarind mayo) & asparagus was a mistake, but was that a subconscious to avoid the mistake? Grits was actually on my list.

interesting ... this is definitely the area in which we could find the kind of stuff that might be there ... then again it might not. How was the tamarind mayo with salmon cakes and asparagus? So you seem to be saying that your subconscious knew in advance that you would be making a mistake the way you would be cooking the grits ... and so avoided buying them? What mistake did you make in cooking the grits?

hmmm ... how would i cook "cheesy grits" ? I'd just cook according to the package directions ... then when grits were almost ready to take off stove, i'd stir in some grated cheese. But i doubt that i would try to do it with milk. How'd that work out ?

I followed a Paula Deen (FoodTv.com) recipe - like I said it was a mistake. Neither T nor I liked it. Paula put much more butter & even bacon in the result. She used milk, quick grits, more butter, cream & bacon. The milk in the grits was the mistake. Not a low fat experience!

The grits wouldn't even fry up the next day beyond a soft slimy mess.

Grits pie ? Well i guess we know why Paula is a fat girl

. So maybe you were subconsciously avoiding all that fat. I tried a cookie recipe from her recently ... we didnt't like it either.

Seth says

So some things have bubbled up in my little experiment on item 14614

... the first is fairly obvious stuff ... the second maybe not so very ...

writing down intentions, and publishing them, makes them easier to meet
even if my intentions are completely met, i will still not experience what i wanted.

Seth says

Here is another thing to add to my list of obvious differences (changes) between the planning (expecting, anticipating, visualizing ) environment and the doing environment ...

During planning, i am not able to predict the mood with which i will do the deed. I plan an event in the minutest detail and actually execute that detail accurately ... however that does not mean that my expereice will be as anticipated ... because of the old "you can't go home again" phenomena.

Seth says

M 2010-11-26 09:46:42 14593

Moods & states are provoked by context - it's not a precision thingy.

The red assertion is true. The blue assertions is true of all predictions.

Seth says

M 2010-11-26 09:26:47 14593

seth 2010-11-26 09:24:45 14593

M 2010-11-26 08:44:55 14593

seth 2010-11-26 07:30:48 14593

Here is another thing to add to my list of obvious differences (changes) between the planning (expecting, anticipating, visualizing ) environment and the doing environment ...

During planning, i am not able to predict the mood with which i will do the deed. I plan an event in the minutest detail and actually execute that detail accurately ... however that does not mean that my expereice will be as anticipated ... because of the old "you can't go home again" phenomena.

I wonder how you can plan a mood that you will have..

Moods have causes and if you know their antecedents, you can obviously predict their occurrences. This shouldn't be controversial.

Yes! I think I will have a mood of total ecstasy next Tuesday at noon!

Well yes, if you know that such a mood usually follows some particular meditation that you intend to do next Tuesday, then you have provided a case in point.

Seth says

It has dawned on me that what i am groping for here is larger than the rather narrow box i started with; consequently i have expanded the topic as indicated in the body of the item itself.

This item is about studying and becoming aware of two different aspects of an action: the before the event anticipation and planning of it; and the context of the actual action and what happens then and how it feels. But there are two aspects of both of those two times: the one is what i am aware of and can effect; and the other is what the world does. The former is somewhat in my control; the latter is not at all in my control ... the world and other people in the world will do what they do, and feel how they feel, independently of my actions and anticipations, and in almost all cases quite unrelated to them.

Seth says

Here is another way of playing with this. Instead of judging the target behavior in relation to the planning and anticipation of it, judge the planning and anticipation in relation to the actual target behavior. Ask yourself which is right or wrong ... is it the meta awareness about something ... or the thing, the behavior itself. I'm thinking here that it is the thing itself.

Seth says

thing is this procedure it is way just too much in the metaworld. it is rational analysis before and/or after the fact. i have found that most of the knowledge contained in the procedure is quite well known at the moment the deed is to be done (or not done). to actually alter the behavior more is needed than just the knowledge. the question is what?

Seth says

seth 2014-07-25 13:24:56 14593

perhaps discussion here.

Two Different Times of an Event, was: Thinking about habits

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