Do you see yourself as being a pretty good person? Of course you do – most everyone does – and is.
So why do we fall short of our best intentions so often?
The unfortunate truth is that we are not designed to be mindful – we have been dealt an evolutionary hand that inclines us to be mindless.
Fortunately, this does not mean that we’re destined to always act in a mindless manner. By being aware of this hand we’ve been dealt we can take steps to minimize its unhelpful tendencies.
Stepping Into the Shoes of a Neanderthal
To help understand these evolutionary influences, let’s consider what would have been important for the survival of our Neanderthal forebears:
Trait #1: The ability to sense potential danger
Back at the dawn of civilization when life-threatening danger was an existential risk, it would have been safer to judge a situation harshly and be wrong than to let down your guard and be wrong.
So, with this as our inherited inclination, we tend to be judgmental:
- We tend to judge others’ behaviour and, with some frequency, find it wanting because it differs from how we would behave in the same situation. We tend to maintain a running internal dialogue about how others behave, dress, eat, drive – all in an effort to protect our deeply-held views of how the world should work.
- We’re also self-critical. Why? Because we fear being judged by others and having them find us wanting. We desperately want to fit in and be accepted. This is evidenced by our near-universal fear of public speaking, a prime example of not wanting to be seen as “flawed” in front of others. In our own eyes we’re often not pretty enough, or tall enough, or smart enough, or good enough, or …..
- We’re also prone to zeroing in on the “bad” things in our life rather than focusing on the “good” things. For example, we’re vacationing at a beautiful Caribbean resort and what do we fixate on? That the waiter is too slow bringing us our drinks, or that it’s too hot, or too cold, or too windy. We are cursed with what is known as a ‘negativity bias‘, the tendency to focus on the bad rather than on the good.
- When we think about the future we’re often anxious, fretting over what could go wrong. And despite experience to the contrary, we fail to learn that the future tends to turn out just fine and that we were fully up to its challenge.
So, a mechanism that kept our ancestors safe from life-threatening danger now inclines us to be judgmental.
Trait #2: The ability to quickly react to and flee from potential danger.
When faced with potentially life-threatening danger it would have been essential to react immediately. This would not be the time to carefully ponder the wisest way forward.
As a result, all animals (including us humans) developed the ability to react unthinkingly, habitually, and automatically. This is our stress response – the fight-flight-freeze mechanism – driven by one of the oldest parts of our brain, the amygdala. While quick, the amygdala is decidedly not wise.
To be wise we need to access the newest part of our brain – the pre-frontal cortex (PFC), responsible for our executive functioning (emotional control, impulse control, and creativity).
Unfortunately, when we are upset (even by the most trivial of circumstances) our PFC goes off-line and we lose access to our wisdom – just when we need it most. And what do we do when this happens? We think and act mindlessly.
So, once again, that which helped keep our ancient ancestors alive now inclines us to be unwise, reactive individuals which results in some of our most cringe-inducing behavior and stupefyingly bad decisions.
The good news is that there are tell-tale signs when our stress response is about to take our wisdom off-line and turn us into the equivalent of Neanderthals. We experience:
- a furrowed brow
- downturned, pursed lips
- a faster heart beat
- a tightening of the muscles, especially the jaw
- a dry mouth
- faster, shallower breathing
- an empty feeling in the gut
We need to become sensitized to these sensations and, when they occur, use them as our signal to not continue down that path.
Specifically, we should pause, breathe slowly and deeply, smile, relax our tight muscles, and slow down our thinking.
Doing so activates our calming parasympathetic nervous system, shuts down the amygdala, and helps us access our PFC and its inherent wisdom.
In a calmer, clearer state of mind, we choose to respond to life rather than react to it unthinkingly.
Trait #3: Protecting our own
From an evolutionary standpoint, passing one’s genes on to the next generation is the prime directive. How is this best accomplished? By being selfish – looking after yourself first, then those who share most of your genes, and then those who would step forward to raise your offspring should you die prematurely. In other words, look out for Number One, then relatives, then friends.
Of course, this is a description of being self-centred and indifferent toward those you don’t know. Little surprise that neither of these traits is compatible with being mindful.
As confirmation of these tendencies one interesting study ran a variation of the Trolley problem the essence of which is to force a participant to decide whether to sacrifice one individual for the sake of saving multiple others.
Given what we now know, it should come as no surprise that test participants were more willing to sacrifice non-relatives. In addition, the closer the relation the less likely they were to sacrifice that person for the survival of multiple “others”.
Aware of our tendency to be self-centered, selfish, and nepotistic, we can instead foster the opposite traits – to be generous, considerate, kind, thoughtful, caring, and helpful – toward everyone, not just those within our limited charmed circle.
Trait #4: The ability to automate repeated tasks
We have a built-in mechanism that turns repeated actions over to the subconscious part of our brain (e.g. learning how to type, learning to play a musical instrument, or learning to play a new sport).
This is obviously a very useful system as it makes us more efficient at such tasks. Imagine a caveman having to think about each individual muscle movement involved in tossing a spear accurately at a moving target – starvation would quickly result.
So, through practice, this automating system makes repetitive tasks easy, requiring near-zero conscious thinking.
However, problems arise when we cede too much of our life to this automatic mode; we fail to see the roses, let alone stop to smell them. Much of life becomes invisible to us.
We’ve all experienced this – we’re driving to work along the same route we’ve used the past umpteen years. Being repetitive, the task of negotiating the journey is handed off to our subconscious and under the guidance of this automated system we arrive safely at our office but without any real recollection of the terrain we’ve just traversed.
The sunny day, scudding clouds, passing birds, interesting people, beautiful foliage, while in full view are, for all intents and purposes, invisible to us.
Instead we’re lost in our little thoughts of the past, the future, or spaced out in utter fantasy (how often do we uselessly replay past conversations or do imaginary run-throughs of future ones).
If we are not careful – if we are not mindful – much of our life is lost in the trance of automated behaviour.
In a life spanning 90 years we are, in effect, dead at 50 having lived much of our life only marginally aware of our surroundings – only marginally aware of what is actually happening in each moment lived.
Trait #5: The drive to do, achieve, and acquire
It has been surmised that the unpleasant feeling we call boredom is actually the essential trait that drove our ancient ancestors to get off their collective butts and innovate for the survival of our species.
Think of it this way – any species for whom doing nothing all day felt totally fantastic – well, they were the ones quickly expunged from the evolutionary record.
So, while we take the act of “doing things” for granted, it nonetheless is still driven by biological nudges and impulses. In this instance being the desire to relieve the unpleasant feeling of boredom.
In addition, we also inherited a system that makes us feel good when we are about to acquire a reward (e.g. food, sex, or buying something we crave). In anticipation of a reward we receive a hit of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that sends signals to the pleasure centres of our brain.
Put these two systems together – pain for not doing and pleasure for doing – and we are primed as a species to accomplish a great deal.
However, there is a dark side to all this doing and acquiring, this being that there is no logical end to it. We do, do, do, accomplish, accomplish, accomplish, and acquire, acquire, acquire and yet still feel empty.
Why? Because no matter how much we do, no matter how much we accomplish, and no matter how much we acquire, it’s never enough.
As soon as we stop “doing”, the unpleasantness comes back and our craving for another hit of pleasure sends us back for more – we become addicted to “doing”.
It is this feeling of always falling short that lies at the heart of society’s chronic anxiety, stress, and pervasive dissatisfaction with life – a sense that no matter how fast we go or how much we do, accomplish, or acquire, we never quite ‘make it’ in life; we are chronically discontent.
Our Evolutionary Inheritance: Mindlessness
So, these five traits, each one a part of our evolutionary inheritance, incline us to behave mindlessly:
- We are inclined to be critical and judgmental of others, ourselves, and situations we encounter.
- We pay greater heed to the few negative things in life rather than the many positive things.
- We react to life unthinkingly, habitually, and automatically.
- We are prone to be self-centred and selfish.
- We are lacking in compassion for those who are not our close relatives or friends.
- We cede much of our conscious awareness – much of our life – to automated actions.
- We are chronically discontent and, therefore, endure a never-ending cycle of doing, achieving, and acquiring.
Needless to say, this is not a great way to live a life.
“I began to wonder whether people were thinking at all. Decades of research later, I have found the answer is a resounding “NO”. Mindlessness is pervasive. In fact, I believe virtually all of our problems – personal, interpersonal, professional, and societal – either directly or indirectly, stem from mindlessness.”
Dr. Ellen Langer, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University and author of, “Mindfulness”
The Solution: Mindful Awareness
As mentioned earlier, biology is not destiny. We can take steps to ameliorate the negative aspects of these otherwise useful traits. How?
- By acknowledging their existence.
- By sensitizing ourselves to their negative side effects.
- By altering our behavior when we sense they are about to influence us to act in a mindless manner.
Only by applying mindful awareness to our base tendencies can we save ourselves from wasting much of life in a fog of mindless behaviour.
Of course, we’re only human, and so will inevitably fall short of our best intentions from time to time. However, that’s why it’s called mindfulness practice. And, with dedicated practice, the frequency of our mindless moments diminishes.
Compassion, Not Judgment
As this essay has made clear, our inherited mindlessness compels us to extend compassion, rather than anger, toward those whose behavior we find offensive; because none of us chose our evolutionary inheritance and it’s not our fault that we are inclined to be mindless.
And the result of extending a compassion that recognizes the innocence of our human frailties? A kinder, gentler, fairer, more understanding, and more peaceful world for all of us.
Warmest wishes,
Rob @ Living a Mindful Life