Musings Report #13 3-29-14 How Do We Actually Change Something Important in our Lives?

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How Do We Actually Change Something Important in our Lives?

By now you know that the process of transformation/change is of great interest to me, both as a study of systems dynamics and as a practical tool to help me advance/improve as an individual.

Recent Musings have delved into various aspects of change: creativity, stress/dissent and the way willpower can be invested in changing habits:
Musings Report #2 1-12-14 Can all problems be solved by creativity?
Musings Report #8 2-22-14 The Healthy Role of Exertion/Stress/Dissent
Musings Report #9 3-1-14 Investing in Ourselves

A recent discussion thread on PeakProsperity.com (re: my latest podcast with Chris Martenson--sorry, it's behind their paywall) started me thinking about the role of personality in "how we change" and also the cause of our resistance to change.

The discussion touched on the Myers-Briggs personality test and the possibility that certain personality types were more open to change via insight, while others were less likely to institute changes based on insight alone. Famed psychiatrist Carl Jung proposed that humans use four principal psychological functions to process experience: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. The test seeks to divide those who predominantly rely on one or two of the functions into various personality types.

In other words, certain personality types may be more deeply impacted by an intellectual insight or understanding than others. For example, some people may be predisposed to gain an insight into the role of fitness in health and start a fitness program based solely on that insight/knowledge, while others will have to experience a heart attack before changing their daily habits.

Still others might only respond to an intervention, i.e. being confronted with some destructive habits that demand to be changed immediately lest the damage become irreversible.

In the big picture, this discussion informs large-scale changes such as how humans respond to systemic trends such as climate change, higher energy costs, the end of work, and so on. On a personal level, it informs our understanding of how we change something important in our own lives.

While insight, knowledge and direct experience are all important motivational starting points, I suspect that the key to transformation is to design a process that brings about the change we want.

In a similar way, a creative solution to a problem might occur to us, but the implementation of that solution typically requires a process.

In everyday life, processes are habits or checklists: the process of improving fitness results from fitness routines becoming habits.

We resist change for all sorts of reasons, starting with our built-in naturally selected preference to stick with whatever has worked in the past (conservation of existing processes) because trying something new requires an investment--and that entails risk, because the investment might yield no gain at all.

But we may also resist making productive changes because the motivators being presented don't activate our personality type. We may want to change but lack the ability to develop a process that yields the desired output (a new habit, a new routine, etc.)

Individual change/transformation remains a mysterious process, for it involves all sorts of dynamics that operate beneath the surface of our conscious lives. We resist, resist, resist and then suddenly conjure up the wherewithal to start changing something important in our lives. It seems much has to happen beneath the surface before we reach that inflection point.

Summary of the Blog This Past Week

How to Build Bone Mass (Tacos) (3/29/14)

The Golden Era of the 1950s/60s Was an Anomaly, Not the Default Setting (3/28/14)

Dear Keynesians: Your Sad Devotion to Your Failed Religion Hasn't Conjured Up a Recovery--Here's Why (3/27/14)

Does Our System Select for Incompetent Sociopaths? (3/26/14)

The Incompetence of the Federal Reserve and Deep State Is Unavoidable (3/25/14)

What's the Primary Cause of Wealth Inequality? Financialization (3/24/14)

Wealth inequality is a hot topic, and this week I delved into the primary causes: financialization, Keynesian policies and structural changes in the economy. One other key topic was addressed: tacos!

Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week

I am approaching the completion of my next book on getting a job in a changing economy. It requires an obsessive-compulsive focus and a manic ability to keep going. In other words, it helps to be a bit insane....

Market Musings

While gold pulls back from its early run-up and stocks meander in a trendless but volatile funk, commodities have broken out. Check out this chart of the CRB index:

I laid out the basic case for higher commodity prices even as the global economy weakens last summer: Why Oil Could Move Higher--Much Higher.

This breakout confirms the idea that demand for essential commodities is "sticky" and doesn't decline at the same rate as asset prices. In other words, a 30% fall in stocks will hurt Porsche sales far more than it will affect consumption of grain, as the wealthy hurt by falling equity valuations consume a tiny percentage of global grain stores. Some smart analysts disagree with me on this, but I think we'll know who is right and who is wrong by late 2015/early 2016.

From Left Field

Au Revoir, Entrepreneurs -- France is losing the young entrepreneurial class

Are the Suburbs Making People Live Paycheck to Paycheck? "Households without any cash savings are twice as likely to be wealthy as poor" -- let's call it asset-rich, cash-poor....

Message To The Fed: Here Are A Few Things That You Can't Do -- f'ristance, fixing the real economy

Are Nation-States Beginning to Splinter? And if so, is this inevitable?

Perspectives Of Famous Places Will Change The Way You See Them Forever -- check out the Pyramids of Giza...

Tiny House on a trailer, well-designed -- lots of cabinets for storage...

Why I've ditched statins for good -- one physician's personal experience

Who Needs a Boss? worker-owned cooperatives -- an old idea becoming new again?

Portals to the Past - Tangier's old city (photos, via Katharine K.)

Exercises to Strengthen Bones -- mentioned in the blog

The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage "American students need to improve in math and science—but not because there's a surplus of jobs in those fields."

Explore More Than 3,000 Miles of Tunnels Beneath Montreal (via Joel M.)

"There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare." Sun Tzu

Thanks for reading--

charles