The words that you use influence the way that you think about things, which in turn influence the language that you use. This creates a feedback loop that you can intentionally break out of if you choose to do so.
If the above sentence rings true for you then you might want to just skip this whole post. It’s a lot of paragraphs to say 3 words.
This Is An Abnormal Post
This is a pretty "philosophical" post within which I talk about abstract and fuzzy things like "emotion" and "ownership". I don’t normally share lines of thought of this variety with others, and I much less publish them publicly. While I do spend a lot of time thinking about and writing about this type of thing, I frequently don’t even refer to my "philosophical" writings …
The words that you use influence the way that you think about things, which in turn influence the language that you use. This creates a feedback loop that you can intentionally break out of if you choose to do so.
If the above sentence rings true for you then you might want to just skip this whole post. It’s a lot of paragraphs to say 3 words.
This Is An Abnormal Post
This is a pretty "philosophical" post within which I talk about abstract and fuzzy things like "emotion" and "ownership". I don’t normally share lines of thought of this variety with others, and I much less publish them publicly. While I do spend a lot of time thinking about and writing about this type of thing, I frequently don’t even refer to my "philosophical" writings after I have put them down, be it in ink or in bits. It is valuable to assess why I usually don’t do this and then address why I am doing it this time.
I don't think that the term "philosophical" is quite right for this but I can't think of a better word so I'll just put it in quotes.
I find the writing process to be beneficial to the thinking process. The thinking flows into the writing, which flows back into the thinking. This creates a feedback loop which causes both things (the writing and the thinking) to change. I am of the opinion that this change is usually for the better, although sometimes things can get caught in a negative feedback loop. You can think way faster than you can write, and by forcing yourself to write down what you are thinking, you functionally force yourself to think slower. Thinking slower is usually thinking better. Writing is even slower than typing and so forces you to slown down your thinking even more, which (in my experience) leads to less jumping around in thought. Additionally, when you read a sentence, you assess it from an outside perspective. Writing down your thoughts is an effective way to see your thoughts from an outsider’s perspective. For these reasons (and because I just like writing lots of words), I write down my "philosophical" thoughts and opinions.
Maybe the first draft of everything should be done in pen. Plus a pen and paper can't run out of battery on a long flight.
That being said, I don’t normally refer to my philosophical writings much after I have written them down. When I do, I usually find myself thinking one of two things:
- This is so obvious that it didn’t need to be written down.
- This is stupid.
And for this reason I don’t normally share my writings with friends or family except when they are requested, and I very rarely publish them on the open Internet. The last time that I did was in the post on this blog about imposter syndrome, and I still sometimes think that I shouldn’t have published that. This post was specifically requested by a close friend of mine. During a car drive, we had a long conversation about the topic of emotional ownership and speech influencing thought. He asked me if I had some blog that he doesn’t read (you’re looking at it), and requested that I please elucidate my thoughts and post it so that he can read it. I typically would just send it directly to the requestor, but this is a lot of words to get lost in a chatlog and he did specically request that I send it to him in blog format.
Speech Influences Thought
The way that you say things betrays the way that you think about things. On a facial level, this is the whole point of language as an invention. It goes deeper, however. The vocabulary that you use reveals a great deal of information about your personal history and your presuppositions. The easiest example for this is regional accents. If someone uses the term "wicked" to mean cool, you might be able to assume that they are from America’s Northeast. If they use the word "jojos" to refer to potato wedges, they may well be from the Pacific Northwest (or apparently the upper Midwest). People who say "sodapop" instead of "soda" or "pop" are probably from or influenced by Portland, Oregon. These of course are not always true, but they illustrate an example effectively. If you say "you made me sad" when you feel sadness, you are also parading the additional information that you hold the other person responsible for the emotion in your mind. The point here is that word choice is "leaky" in a secrecy-sense.
Not only does this disclose ideas to other people, it also reinforces the ideas in your own mind. Your conception of reality is just one of many possible interpretations. Reality is a chaotic mess that you and I impose order onto. You take in information from your senses and build up an idea of how the world is. Hearing other people express the same idea reinforces your idea and makes you feel more comfortable with its "trueness". This is the basis for how filter bubbles exist and doesn’t need to be rehashed here. When you speak your idea out loud, you also hear yourself say it much in the same way that you read the sentences that you write. This hearing also reinforces your idea.
If you find that some thought is damaging do you, changing the way that you think about it may be able to stop its damage. You may see this and think "well I just need to stop the damaging thought from happening", but in many cases this is unrealistic. You will find yourself damaged by other humans and by the world as a whole. If you rely on others to stop your thoughts, then you will find yourself disappointed. This is because other people can be unreliable and difficult to change. To do so will require a lot of work. It will also require a lot of work to change yourself. However, the work done by the outside world would be a charity from the rest of the world to you. This charity is not owed and shouldn’t be expected. The work done inside yourself is an investment that pays immediate dividends.
Saying "you made me sad" not only discloses to the other party that you feel that they are responsible for your sadness, it also reinforces this sentiment in yourself. You feel the emotion of sadness and assign it as an effect that has been caused by another person. By making them responsible for making you sad, you also make them responsible for making you happy. This functionally takes the ability to make yourself happy out of your own hands, forcing you into a state of dependence or reliance. If you depend on someone else to make you happy, then you are giving control of yourself over to that other person.
An effective way to change how you think about something is to change the way that you talk about it. By using different words to frame the reality that you are experiencing, you change the way that you experience it.
Some Lucid Examples
The above is a bit whishy-washy and abstract. Some actionable examples are in order.
Debby vs Negative Self-Talk
A friend once mentioned that he would sometimes feel depressed about his situation in life. He saw a manner in which he could immediately improve things, yet did not take action. In response to this, he described what he called a "stupid HR bitch" (hereafter Debby) in his mind that would talk down to him about this. She would call him stupid and lazy, say that he would never ammount to or achieve anything, and generally degrade him. He would occasionally reflect on this turn of events and call Debby by her name, attributing the thoughts to her.
This manner of framing places blame on Debby for her bullying behavior. It places responsibility on her to change. The problem with this is immediately apparent: Debby doesn’t exist. She is an imaginary mental construct living entirely within the realm of thought. Instead of an imaginary friend, my buddy had created an imaginary enemy.
This manner of framing the situation was hindering any of his efforts to remedy it. He needed to change the way that he thought about the situation, but he was reinforcing the way that he thought about the situation every time that he thought about or spoke about the situation. This pattern of thought was keeping him at the bottom of the hole and preventing him from building the ladder to get out. Changing the vocabulary used to frame the situation can help in building the ladder.
I suggest changing the framing from "Debby" to "Negative Self-Talk". This has the advantage of placing the onus to change on the thinker instead of the thought. Debby is a seemingly external, unaccountable, and uncontrolable force who is beholden to no one. Negative self-talk is something that you do personally and I think that the naming accomplishes several helpful things.
First and foremost, it identifies the pattern as negative. It is possible to think "maybe Debby is right" or "maybe Debby isn’t so bad", but something named "Negative..." will always be negative and undesireable. Using choice words with pre-determined "goodness" in this manner is often done to shut down opposing viewpoints in politics and debate, so its effectiveness is well-proven. Take (for example) the "pro-choice" vs "pro-life" argument in abortion. One side frames their opponents as hating choice and freedom, therefore loving slavery. The other side frames their opponents as hating life, therefore loving death (or killing). This tactic gets the job done in framing the way that people think about the issue.
Secondly, it identifies the involved parties more accurately than "Debby". It places the origin of the activity squarely on the responsible individual, the self. Debby is an "external" party who is unaccountable. But in reality the negative thoughts origintate in your mind and live entirely in your mind. The only active party is yourself. Identifying the active parties, who are capable of change (and who it is realistic to expect change from), is a helpful step in effecting the change.
Lastly, it identifies what the actual behavior is. It’s just talk. In real life (outside the confines of the mind), Debby may have actual power. She may be able to demote you or fire you. She could make your life more difficult. She has more than just talk. But by calling the talk what it is (just talk), some influence is removed from it. Sticks and stones may break my bones (and Debby may fire me), but words will never hurt me.
In this manner, changing the way that you frame a pattern of thought can help you to change it.
There Is A Child Kicking My Seat
The usefulness of this technique doesn’t stop at purely ephemeral and mental concepts. It can help you during physical inconvenience and discomfort.
As I type this, I am sitting in an airplane on a flight across the country. I don’t particularly want to be on this flight. I am returning home to:
- an overprovisioned workload in my job
- an overprovisioned workload at home
- people who are upset with me personally
- a wildfire that is filling the air with smoke and may be burning down my house at this very moment
- a prevailing culture that despises "my type" of people
And I am leaving good friends who I rarely see, low prices on most things, and agreeable weather.
I am in a middle seat, the plane is hitting turbulence and the view out the window is pure white clouds to the horizon. My flight is completely full, with not a single open seat. There is a family with several infants spread across 3 rows, surrounding me. I don’t really want to be here.
The infants are screaming at the top of their lungs (really hitting that screech point where you wonder how they can get that high) for extended periods of time and are kicking my seat. There isn’t anywhere that I could move, since all seats are occupied and nobody in their right mind would trade with me. It is extremely easy to fall into the framing of "these kids are ruining my time" or even just "these kids are annoying me". Letting these negative emotions ferment and fester would only serve to negatively impact my mental state, since there is no action that I can take to remedy the situation. Instead, I can change the way that I think about it.
I don’t really want to be here, I would rather be where I started from. The kids don’t really want to be here either. That’s why they’re kicking and screaming. Children also tend to have exceedingly accurate insights into things. They are able to see a more raw version of the world, unclouded by past expereince, and often find truths that fly right over the head of most adults. Having a child agree (unprompted) with your assessment of some situation is quite satisfying. These kids agree with me. They aren’t annoying me, they are validating me.
Emotional Ownership
Things that you can exert immediate control over are (in a functional / egoism sense) your property. They are not the property of someone else because someone else cannot control them. The watch on my wrist is mine and mine alone. If the current function on the display needs to change, I am the one who changes it. Nobody else can change my watch because I wouldn’t let them, they would be unable to. This is the case for all physical property. It is also the case for emotions.
By saying that someone or something else "made you" feel a certain way, you place ownership and responsibility for that feeling on an external actor. If this feeling is negative, it implies a responsibility to the effecting party to remedy the negativity. If it is positive, it implies a desire for the effecting party to continue in the future.
Emotions start in your body (mostly in your mind I think) and they exist entirely within your body and then they eventually die without having left your body. They are thoughts. They are the most "your property" that something can possibly be. As such, nobody else is capable of thrusting an emotion into you. Your emotions arise as an internal reaction to external stimulus. Consider the example of:
You made me feel sad when you said that you hate me
versus:
I felt sad when you said that you hated me
The former places the responsibility for an internal phenomenon (sadness) on an external actor (you). The latter places this internal phenomonon (sadness) on the internal actor (I) and still places the actual action (said that you hated me) on the external actor (you). This manner of framing is not only technically correct, it puts you in control of your own emotions because they are something that you do, not something that is done to you.
By framing the way that I think about emotions in this way, I have been able to overcome a huge number of counter-productive and time-consuming thoughts. Instead of festering on some person who did me wrong and how upset they made me, I can instead recognize that the way I feel about the situation is entirely dependent on how I frame it. I can take ownership over my own emotional state and spend less time being miserable. Being miserable sucks and I generally prefer to avoid it if at all possible. Negative emotions such as hatred and disdain will turn your heart inside out and make you evil, so being able to take control over them is unimaginably useful.