Up in the Air!

I watched a movie called 'Up in the Air' yesterday. Aside from a few things, I learnt that heartfelt, romantic and feel good movies are not just called chick flicks but they are also called guy-cry films. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with people, when did all of this become about men and women. Why are emotions such a bad thing or something people so scared of? Personally, I respect men who can truly feel and exhibit emotions as opposed to pretend stoic men. And why are emotions only associated with women? Because being ballsy enough to own up to your emotions makes you a pussy? Whatever, don't take my cursing too seriously. I do swear a lot though.

Anyway...let's talk about more serious things. There are 3 main characters in the movie -

Photo Credit: bangdoll@flickr

1) Ryan (played by George Clooney), the commitment-phobic, always working-always traveling guy who wants more miles on his cards than the breaths he takes for living. He fires people for a living and always tries to tell people why life should be light and drama free.

2) Alex (played by Vera Farmiga), the female equivalent of Ryan, an older single woman, well atleast she makes you feel so for a while but she is actually a traveling salesman (LOL) who is married and has kids but is trying to live a fake imaginary life when she travels where she is single and having casual fun.

3) Natalie (played by Anna Kendrick, the Pitch Perfect girl), the young, fresh out of college, nerdy top of class well educated girl who is ambitious yet so emotionally invested in concepts like love, settling, marriage, commitment etc. In other words she still has respect for emotions.

Why am I writing about these people? Well, as I watched the movie, I just realized I could relate to 2 out of these 3 characters and was able to relate to a lot to the 3rd character only because I encounter a lot of them everyday. I started out like Natalie, naive and believing romance, love, true love, commitment, and how love can change the whole world, even when my brain told me to go fuck myself. Then after a few breakups (crappy ones) at one point I began to become Ryan. Ryan is the older but frustrated version of Natalie who could never find or give commitment, who convinced himself that life sucks but it would sound cooler if you say you are single by choice and begins to run and hide from emotions (even though deep in he still is a Natalie). Don't get me wrong, love is not bad, but lovers can be bad.

And then there is Alex. There are so many fakers out there who are married (or in a relationship) and yet truly deep inside want to be single, unhappily married (and chances are their spouses don't even know that) and just want to get out of their mundane lives and don't have the guts to do that, so they try to live a fake second parallel life where they are single. They may or may not try to screw you (Ryan or Natalie) over completely, but they always have a ready get out of jail free card that says, hey this was supposed to be casual, I can't be in a relationship with anyone, I am married, I love you but I can't leave my spouse, in another lifetime we would be together...blah blah blah and oh my favorite one is - I am still trying to find myself...are you fucking kidding me? I don't blame the Alex's of the world, they are screwed up and delusional and can even break up with over phone and still ask you if they can be friends with you. I blame all the Ryan's and Natalie's out there who think they have to settle either too soon in the game or too late in the game and think they have to settle and compromise for no real reason. There are tons of people like Alex who are never going to leave their partners but would be more than happy to drag you and drown you into their low, full-of-self-pity lives. Oh and by the way, there are a lot of single Alex's too who are never ever going to commit to you or take you too seriously and are still 'finding themselves' because they like the idea of being your bf or gf or partner or whatever but without the actual responsibilities. 'Casual' is often the equivalent of bullshit in my opinion.

Reality is that emotional vulnerability is a very risky thing. This is especially the case when you have had bitter experiences in relationships - romantic or platonic or even family related. But without it, you can never truly experience anything. If you cannot open yourselves up to enjoy something, you won't have a fully mindful experience. After all, mindfulness is not telling you to go become a monk (though that is not a bad option at all, I still consider it often, but no point, if you are doing that to escape emotions), but rather to accept yourself, others and the world in general and look at things as they are. Love is the most beautiful feeling but is also capable of throwing immense pain and suffering. Love is about giving and not taking and is not a source that is going to be extinguished and non-replenishable. So you if you truly love to love then there is no stopping you, just accept that it can lead to pain and joy at the same time and each failed relationship comes with a lot of lessons and will teach you when to back off and when to invest emotional energy and when to completely walk away and never look back. And since we are talking about giving love to others, what you need to realize is that you must give a lot of that love to yourself. If you accept yourself, nourish yourself and be kind to yourself, good things will automatically get attracted to you and screw it if they don't, you have yourself to love you. Be happy with yourself and by yourself if need be but do that before trying to share your love with others. Moral of the story - Don't let the Natalie inside you die a premature death by feeding yourself bullshit stories even if they come from a place of self preservation, life is too short to live like a stone.

Break the monotony - Let there be life!!

I have been having a bit of confusion and doubts about life in general (trust me, I have a lot of that). I set myself some goals too far in the future. Now, mind you, these are not bad goals and having a vision in general is not bad at all. But sometimes I have these emotional outbursts where I get too excited about things or lose passion altogether for things (blame the goddamned disorder). Lately I have been kind of having a mid-life crisis, even though I am not sure I am old enough for a mid life crisis yet, but you get the point. I was confused, and heck I may still be a little confused, because I want to go back to school (for a PhD, already have my two trophy Masters), but I also want to travel, get a new job, move to a new sunny city, live a fairly luxurious life, and about my single status - I am perpetually confused about that.

With all this said, I had been spending the last few weeks just completely stressed out, confused and basically feeling like a loser and feeling very unhappy. I had stressed myself out to the point where I started getting persistent headaches, and the goals I set for myself suddenly began to feel like giant icebergs increasing the stress all the more. The result, I couldn't enjoy the simple things I normally enjoy doing. I lost 37 lbs in the last year and now I am in a good shape that I should be proud of, but guess what I haven't even gone shopping to buy some clothes that now will fit me or take selfies and post them (so childish). Similarly, I have hardly been going out, having fun or doing anything which makes me even remotely happy. And thanks to the east coast weather (I know it is an excuse) I haven't been traveling much either and life pretty much has been feeling claustrophobic. I just realized that all I really want is to break the monotony. A special mention here to a friend who made me reconsider my stress by simply stating some of the obvious. I give too many fucks about things which don't necessarily matter (got this from the subtle art of not giving a fuck). I get bored easily, I need constant intellectual stimulation and communing with nature. So I decided to list down a few little really simple things that make me happy and change my mood. Here are a few random things for example.I think everyone of us should do this little exercise every now, just to bring ourselves back to reality. These are just simple things, not your grand death goals -

1) Go to a beach, stare the water.
2) Go hiking up a mountain and stare at the ground below.
3) Go shopping, throw money on clothes and shoes and makeup (which I almost never wear).
4) Read a nice book.
5) Paint something.

Having been caught up with all my thoughts, confusions and doubts, I forgot that all I needed to do was to break the monotony of just going to work and coming back home and to simply stop being overwhelmed and worrying about how hard some of my goals are, how well or poorly planned my steps towards my goals are and even getting confused if the goals I have set for myself are truly things I want. All I needed to do was to just stop thinking and do one of the few silly things that would make me happy.

"Break the Monotony, Do something strange" (CC BY-ND 2.0) by MAXTACY®

I am not saying you should stop working towards your goals. Sometimes all you need to do is to take a break from your own self. Mindfully appreciating the simple pleasures of life does wonders and helps us enjoy the journey towards our goals instead of postponing our happiness until we achieve something, which, trust me is a recipe for failure and psychology will back me up on that. Instead we get caught up in the vicious circle of perpetual overthinking and getting nowhere. Even a car needs servicing every now and then, why then we as humans think we are exempt from breaks and re-servicing at times? You don't have to become the next Zuckerberg or Mother Teresa overnight. Just go start working out, take a new class, get a new hair cut, go to your building roof top and shout at the top of your voice, whatever it is, just break the monotony, do it today, do it now. Go do something and don't let yourself drown in your own dead sea of overthinking, stress, anxiety and monotony. Just break the cycle and go do something silly.

A simple restart!

Sometimes the simplest solution to your computer problems is to just restart the computer. Well, in essence that is just what I am doing to this blog. The last time I published something on here was over about 5 years ago and of course I looked through the drafts in here, there were several of them created subsequently but just not published.

A great deal has happened in the last 5 years, I have grown 5 years older (duh!), I was almost unemployed twice, had to sleep in a car for a while, got cheated on, changed a couple of apartments, moved closer to the river (as I always wanted to), traveled to several places including even a Euro-trip and so on. These last 5 years just like the few years before that have seen a lot of ups and downs.

If the last decade has taught me anything, it is that sometimes life is just a bitch and at other times it is not, but you have to just keep going on, accept yourself and stop giving into inhibitions and self limiting beliefs (and stalkers too). I am going to resume my journey of writing random crap on here and hell, I might even publish some of the drafts in here. Don't let anyone or anything take the light away from you, keep on shining!! 

When in doubt - Do the right thing!

Someone I respect a lot used to always tell me - " When in doubt, do the right thing!" If only everything were so easy in life....

I recently had a discussion with a friend for a while about two approaches to decision making, judgments and handling doubts. First of the approaches was to trust your instincts and in other words 'doing what your heart says', which this friend of mine said that he follows for the most part. The second approach is the what I would call the researcher approach, look for data (to support or deny hypothesis) and make a decision after all data, all options have been carefully analyzed and what not. I do personally feel that over time I have slowly started falling into the second category. Blame it on academics, research, psychology or life experiences. But I definitely was the other way around too and at times I still follow my instincts.

So what do you do when you for instance have to choose a new candidate for a job, have to choose your life partner, make an investment etc etc etc? Would you rely on your instincts or would you take a rational approach to things in life? According to David Myers, a social psychologist whose textbook on Social Psychology is one of my favorites - intuitions have both merits and demerits. To define intuition as he discusses, intuition is something which develops over time with time and expertise, it is a form of automatic processing, a quick easy way of responding to things, more like an 'unreasoned' thought. Consider cooking, driving or even doing math, what begins as an effortful task in the beginning using all of your concentration then slowly becomes automatic. Your mom after ages of cooking might keep looking into your eyes and talking while she is effortlessly chopping the vegetables without even looking at them. Driving is another example of a form of automatic processing where as you become a more experienced driver, the less you feel the need to seriously concentrate on the act of driving. Intuition is a form of reflex action, you don't have to consciously sit and think to jerk your finger away when it touches fire. Intuition is more like heuristic, which you use for your convenience to put less time into thinking. I am not arguing that intuition is bad. In fact intuition works pretty well in many cases. And as mentioned here, intuition could develop over time as you become better at something. Speaking about intuition this way, I guess we think that intuition can be something that can probably be learned.

Researchers Nalini Ambady and Bob Rosenthal, showed students clips as short as few seconds and asked them to make judgments about a teacher's abilities and as they found in several studies later as well, that often we make our judgments in real thin slices of time as short as a few seconds without even thinking much and a lot of times we are right too. But...Would you totally rely just on those thin slice snap judgments? Would you want to give others benefit of doubt or would you decide then and there at the very first second for instance that your boyfriend is cheating on you without thinking more rationally about it? We overestimate our ability to predict behaviors of us as well as others. As Myers says we are more 'confident' in some of our responses than 'correct'.  Affective forecasting which I have written about in the past in one of my posts, is a classic example of how much we can err when it comes to predicting our feelings and emotions at a future time. Similarly we try to predict our future behavior too often failing miserably. We tell ourselves that we will work on reducing our weight and then try to predict that we will be working on weight loss (as if that is the only thing you have to do in life), buy all sorts of fruits, vegetables, healthy stuff and what not and ultimately actually end up eating at a restaurant instead of eating at home because of lack of time. Not that this is the case with everyone but we often we try to even postpone our 'predicted' future behavior (I will start my diet from Monday..or I will start going to gym starting next week) and in the end probably never behave the way we had predicted we would. With us not really doing a great job with predictions, would it not be smart to wait and think for a second than just deciding something based on gut feeling?

Intuitions or gut instinct should perhaps not be ignored altogether but at the same should be taken more with a pinch of salt at times. An intuition could often be a mere assumption or snap judgment or just a cynical view that we now unknowingly have, based on our past experiences. Intuition could also be some part of our mind trying to tell us something is good or bad. I guess the point is, intuition should probably be a starting point for further inquiry as Myers puts it. In case of fight or flight situations, intuitions probably help you better than careful analysis. If someone is a feet away from you with a knife in their hand to stab you, of course, the easier option is to use your mental heuristic or intuition to save yourself right away than to sit and perform analysis. Life situations unfortunately are not always black and white as someone directly coming with a knife to stab you. There are so many gray areas and it depends on what is at stake. . That said - when in doubt, do the right thing. Intuition is perhaps a starting point for further analysis. On the surface something may seem right or wrong in a second but often times a little critical evaluation of our intuitions could really save us. Data doesn't lie, at least for the most part. So it is not a bad idea to sit and evaluate things. I agree it takes more cognitive energy and resources compared to just going by your gut feeling, but I think it is worth it in many cases. For instance, I would rather hire one or two good employees after careful analysis and consideration than hire ten useless employees purely based on intuition.

But the friend I mentioned in the very first paragraph also mentioned that if you keep analyzing everything you are going to lose out on simple happiness from small things. True, very true. But whether trusting your intuitions alone without much analysis is associated with long term happiness  is something that is still not very clear to me.

What is love?

Is love giving or taking? 

Is love talking or listening?

Is love physical or emotional? 

Is love a pain or a gain?

Is love explaining or understanding?

Is love happiness or sadness?

Is love acceptance or denial?

Is love finding faults with others or accepting people with their flaws?

Sometimes or rather most of the time I have no idea what love is. In my opinion love is something that would make your life beautiful, something that would make you better and bring the best in you. Love is something that would make share your joys and sorrows with someone.  But if all this is true, why is love such a pain? Love is probably just a mirage, a perception which is more deceiving than true. 

On the spur of the moment!

I think creativity atleast with respect to writing down or speaking your thoughts has a lot to do with doing it on the spur of the moment. More often than not creative thoughts and ideas for me come out best when I just do them on the spur of the moment. For instance consider blogging - I get these random ideas and thoughts which I want to blog about. If I don't blog about it right away or atleast ASAP, the chain of thoughts loses the original charm. I have even tried to quickly put down some bullet points and save the blogpost to come back and finish 

it later, but it has not helped me much. This just reminds me of a Sanskrit line, the translation of which goes like this -
"जिस बात को कहना चाहते हो उसे सही समय पर सही तरह से कह दो, नहीं तो स मय उस बात का रस पीजाता है!" 
I think I am trying to tell myself not to delay expressing what I want to express - that is what twitter, gplus and blog are for (sorry I don't have a FB account ;). 

Affective Forecasting!

After trying to finish this since the mid of the past semester (thanks to my really busy schedule) I have decided to finally finish this post.

Affective forecasting is one of the most interesting topics that I studied about in this past semester. This could also be called one form of cognitive dissonance. To explain this, lets go to the fox and grapes story when the fox keeps trying to reach the grapes and eventually tells itself that the grapes are sour and moves on. Perhaps all our lives, we keep developing such little theories to help ourselves move on in life.

Research suggests that we are not the best at predicting our future emotional states. We are guided by our present feelings in deciding how we might feel in the future. These are best explained with examples. Ever since I learnt about this topic, every now and then I am reminded about how affective forecasting has affected me in life.

Take for instance, a romantic relationship. In my opinion more often than not romantic 'love' is a great example of affective forecasting. Perhaps when you fall head over heels in 'love' with someone you tend to overestimate your emotional feelings for that person. There are impact biases of such feelings. Or in other words we wrongly estimate our levels of future happiness. When in love, the first kind of impact bias is when you tend to feel that being with that person will bring you all the happiness you ever wanted in your life and that life without them would be impossible to imagine. A second bias is that when you break up with that person, you tend to underestimate your capability of resilience or in other words capability to get over the broken relationship. Research suggests that the first bias could lead to depression when you affectively forecast your future emotions and your expectations of the other unconsciously keeps increasing and there is a high probability that you might eventually feel that your ever growing expectations are not being met. While the second bias surprisingly works the other way around where you underestimate your capabilities and surprise yourself with respect to how you handled your break up. Of course there are exceptions to this.

These biases and affective forecasting are not limited to love, but love just in my opinion is an awesome example of affective forecasting. Other examples could include spending a lot on something that you think would give you pleasure but that you end up rarely using it. Even running after money or other hedonic pleasures are often a case of affective forecasting.

Affective forecasting can influence your life both negatively and positively. It could both help us move on in life by helping or depress us. Nevertheless, I believe affective forecasting offers an opportunity for companies to marketing their products better. I guess I would update this post after researching a little bit further about this.