How important is resilience to individual flourishing?

 

Everyone knows that resilience is important in coping with misfortune. However, it may be more important than I had thought.

My attention was grabbed recently by a newspaper article discussing a study suggesting that people with higher levels of resilience may live up to 10 years longer. The study was discussed in an article (possibly gated) by Lucy Dean in the Australian Financial Review (8 Sept, 2024) which also draws on an interview with Justine Gatt, director of the Centre for Wellbeing, Resilience and Recovery at UNSW and Neuroscience Research Australia.

The Longevity Study

The findings of the study by Aijie Zhang et al were published in an article entitled ‘Association between psychological resilience and all-cause mortality in the Health and Retirement Study’, in BMJ Mental Health (2024;27:e301064).

The study was based on the experience of 10,569 U.S. adults aged ≥50 (mean chronological age  67 years ) in the Health and Retirement Study (2006–2008). Mortality outcomes were determined using records up to May 2021.  During that period, 3,489 all-cause deaths were recorded.

The questionnaire used to measure resilience covered qualities such as perseverance, calmness, a sense of purpose, self-reliance and the recognition that certain experiences must be faced alone.

After adjusting for potential confounding factors, the researchers observed a decrease in the risk of death by 38% in the quartile with higher psychological resilience scores, compared with the group with the lowest scores.

The authors note that their findings are consistent with studies that have shown a significant positive correlation between life goals and self-rated health, with life goals moderating the relationship between self-rated health and mortality. Maintaining a positive self-perception of ageing has a positive effect on functional health, and optimism independently protects against all-cause mortality. Other studies demonstrate that individuals with poor social relationships have an increased risk of death.

The Compass Wellbeing Scale

Justine Gatt leads a project which aims to identify the underlying markers of wellbeing and to improve understanding of the underlying mechanisms that contribute towards resilience to stress and adversity.

In this project, mental wellbeing is measured using the 26-item COMPAS‑W Wellbeing Scale which provides a ​“composite” measure of wellbeing; that is, a measure of both subjective (hedonia) and psychological wellbeing.

The COMPAS‑W scale encompasses measures of composure, own-worth, mastery, positivity, achievement and satisfaction. The existence of a relationship between the Compass scale and resilience is based on the view that factors associated with resilience, include:

• The capacity to make realistic plans and take steps to carry them out
• A positive view of yourself and confidence in your strengths and abilities
• Skills in communication and problem solving
• The capacity to manage strong feelings and impulses
• A feeling that you are a master of your environment and in control
• A general positive outlook on your life and satisfaction with everything you have achieved

Justine Gatt argues these are skills that people can learn and develop for themselves. 

The research on resilience is ongoing, but the qualities encompassed in the Compass scale are obviously worth fostering.

Does your well-being depend on your PCNs?

 

The accompanying graphic suggests that it does. It is from Michael A Bishop’s book, The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being, published in 2015.

What is a PCN? A PCN is a positive causal network, or feedback loop. The general idea behind PCNs is that a person has a high level of well-being when they are experiencing a self-perpetuating cycle of positive emotions, positive attitudes, positive traits, and successful engagement with the world.

Bishop wrote the book to provide positive psychology with a solid foundation based on “a bit of fairly conventional philosophy of science”. He argues that the philosophical literature on well-being (hedonism, informed desire theory, and Aristotelianism) is too fragmented to provide positive psychology with a solid foundation.

The author observes that positive psychology offers practical, science-based advice about well-being. The explosion of scientific research on well-being has revealed homeostatically clustered sets of feelings, emotions, attitudes and behaviors. That provides the basis for positive psychology to be viewed as the study of the structure and dynamics of PCNs.

Bishop demonstrates that much research in positive psychology can be viewed in that light.

Consistency with my view of well-being

In my view, it makes sense to view psychological well-being as being at the opposite end of the spectrum to mental illness. Felicia Hupert and Timothy So viewed it as being on the opposite end of the spectrum to anxiety and depression. Those authors identified ten symptoms of well-being: competence, emotional stability, engagement, meaning, optimism, positive emotion, positive relationships, resilience, self-esteem, and vitality. They examined relationships among those symptoms in a study using data from a representative sample of 43, 000 Europeans. (‘Flourishing Across Europe’, Soc. Ind. Res. 2013.)

The view of psychological well-being adopted by Hupert and So seems to me to be easier to understand than Michale Bishop’s view that it consists of PCNs. Nevertheless, the two views don’t conflict. At one point Bishop actually suggests that it is possible to understand PCNs by contrasting them with negative or vicious causal cycles involving negative thoughts, feelings, attitudes, behaviors and dysfunctions.

Do PCNs constitute “The Good Life”?

As a neo-Aristotelian, the main objection I have to Bishop’s book is its title.

I am not particularly concerned that Bishop’s approach might be at variance with that of psychologists who claim to have an Aristotelian approach to positive psychology. Those people are well-intentioned but the indicators they use seem to be somewhat removed from what Aristotle had in mind when he expressed the view that human flourishing is a virtuous activity of the soul.

I guess that Aristotle would see a strong positive link between virtue and PCNs. After all, he saw virtue as being about not just about doing the right thing but also taking pleasure in it. Of course, Aristotle also acknowledged that people could obtain pleasure (but not eudaimonia) without being virtuous.

That raises the question of whether it is possible for a villain to have a high level of psychological well-being. In my book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing I expressed a view implying that villains can’t have high level of psychological well-being:

“It may be possible for a villain to score highly on positive emotion and self-esteem, but I doubt that a villain could obtain a high overall score in a competently administered psychological assessment.”

I based that view on research findings relating to the dark triad.

Bishop presents a different view:

“In a culture in which cruelty is rewarded, a person naturally disposed to cruelty can have success and a high degree of well-being. This is not a consequence to jump for joy about. It’s just a sobering fact about our world that bad people can have well-being.”

Bad people can certainly have the outward signs of success in a culture in which cruelty is rewarded but I suspect that, even in that cultural context, people who take a stand against cruelty may tend to have stronger PCNs. (I could be wrong about that. It is an empirical question.)

In their book, Modernizing Aristotle’s Ethics, Roger Bissell and Vinay Kolhatkar suggest that humaneness is constitutive of a psychic state humans desire and cite evidence opposed to the widespread belief that ruthless people tend to get ahead in life, love, and especially business. (For references, please see my essay entitled ‘Is it possible for humans to flourish if they don’t live good lives?’, recently published on The Savvy Street).

Irrespective of whether bad people can have high PCNs, no Aristotelian could accept that they are flourishing. The view that bad people can live “good” lives is also opposed to the folk view of what it means to live a good life. (Please see the essay cited above for references and discussion.)

Conclusions

In his book, The Good Life, Michael Bishop argues that positive psychology should be viewed as the study of the structure and dynamics of positive causal networks (PCNs). PCNs are self-perpetuating cycles of positive emotions, positive attitudes, positive traits, and successful engagement with the world.

The view that psychological well-being is deeply rooted in strong PCNs seems to be consistent with the view that it lies on the opposite end of the spectrum to anxiety and depression.

The title of Bishop’s book is at variance with his view that it is possible for bad people to have strong PCNs. I am not convinced that it is possible for bad people to have high PCNs. Irrespective of whether that is so, however, people of bad character certainly do not live “the good life”.

Do people obtain more benefit from a walk in the park than from a walk in the suburbs?

 

I have previously written on this blog about the relationship between nature connectedness and happiness. In one essay, written in 2015, I referred to a meta-study (by  Diana Bowler et al) which suggested that exercise in natural environments promotes greater emotional health benefits – in terms of feelings of energy, and less anxiety, anger, fatigue and sadness - than exercise in an artificial environment. 

Since that study was undertaken there has been further research on the benefits people obtain from exercise in the natural environment.  I focus here on the conclusions of a review of experimental studies on psychological benefits of outdoor physical activity in natural versus urban environments. The review was authored by Claire Wicks , Jo Barton , Sheina Orbell , and Leanne Andrews, and published in Appl Psychol Health Well Being, 2022 Aug;14(3):1037-1061.

Natural versus Urban Environments

The authors identified 24 experimental studies which met their eligibility criteria, including a focus on psychological outcomes, broadly defined to include well-being, self-esteem, depression, anxiety, mood, and stress.

In the included studies, the natural environment includes forest, grasslands, nature reserves and urban parks. The urban environment includes commercial districts, city areas and residential streets.

The most common physical activity in the studies was walking.

The authors hypothesized that physical activity in nature would provide more favourable results for all psychological outcomes.

I focus here on the narrative synthesis of findings which was conducted across all studies. The authors conclude:

“Although there are some inconsistencies across outcomes, this analysis revealed results generally supporting our hypothesis. The majority of tests showed greater benefits following green exercise for anxiety, anger/hostility, energy, general affect and engagement, whereas four out of 10 tests found in favour of the natural environment for depression and one in four for tranquillity. Where studies did not find in favour of the natural environment, the results often indicated either favourable changes in both conditions or no changes in either condition.”

A personal view

I believe that most humans have deep-seated intuitions about their kinship (relatedness) to other living things. That led me, in Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, to agree with the view that living in harmony with nature is intrinsic to individual flourishing and should be acknowledged as one of the basic goods of a flourishing human.  If living in harmony with nature is intrinsic to individual flourishing, I think it is reasonable to expect that exercising in the natural environment would provide greater psychological benefits than exercising in urban environments.

I walk regularly in a park close to where I live and obtain psychological benefits from doing so. I try to persuade others to do likewise.

However, I think my testimony about the benefits I obtain from walking in natural environments might be treated with some skepticism because of my belief that living in harmony with nature is intrinsic to individual flourishing. It is possible to argue that the psychological benefits that I obtain can be attributed to acting in accordance with my beliefs rather than to the impact of nature.

I am drawing attention to the findings of survey discussed above in the hope that it will receive serious consideration. Hopefully, it will induce more people to obtain the benefits of a walk in the park, and some of them will be led to view living in harmony with nature as intrinsic to their personal flourishing.

Did Hayek acknowledge the importance of individual self-direction in his vision of spontaneous order?

 

One of the reasons why Friedrich Hayek’s vision of spontaneous order is more attractive than collectivist alternatives is because it offers individuals greater opportunities for self-directed flourishing. However, the question arises of whether Hayek may have undermined the appeal of his vision by presenting a view of the limitations of human reason that leaves little room for individual self-direction.

In exploring this question, I sketch out the importance of self-direction to human flourishing, Hayek’s objections to constructivist rationalism, Hayek’s reverence for tradition and social evolution, Hayek’s attitude to free will, and the role of human agency in Hayek’s account of spontaneous order.

Importance of self-direction

 In helping make the case that “self-direction is the central necessary constituent or ingredient of human flourishing” Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen quote Aristotle and Henry Veatch, a leading neo-Aristotelian of the 20^th century. Veatch writes:

“Is it not evident that not only does a human being not attain his natural end by an automatic process of development and maturity after the manner of a plant or animal? In addition, no human being ever attains his natural end or perfection save by his own personal effort and exertion. No one other than the human individual – no agency of society, of family, of friends, or of whatever can make or determine or program an individual to be a good man, or program him to live the life that a human being ought to live. Instead, attaining one’s natural end as a human person is nothing if not a ‘do-it-yourself’ job.” (The Perfectionist Turn, 51-2)

The errors of constructivist rationalists

Chris Sciabarra makes an important point about Hayek’s anti-rationalistic beliefs:

“His enemy is not reason but the constructivists who have “historically again and again given birth to a revolt against reason”. (Total Freedom, 131)

Hayek observes that constructivist rationalists - enthusiasts for a deliberately planned society - tend to base their case on the synoptic delusion, “the fiction that all the relevant facts are known to some one mind, and that it is possible to construct from this knowledge of the particulars a desirable social order”. (LLL, v1, 14) Hayek argues that by over-estimating the powers of reason, constructivist rationalism has given birth to a revolt against the wisdom embodied in abstract rules, including rules of just conduct, which tell us what not to do. (LLL, V1, 31-34) The abstract rules protect individuals from arbitrary violence by others and enable them to try to build for themselves a protected domain with which nobody else is allowed to interfere and within which they can use their own knowledge for their own purposes. (LLL, V3, 163)

Hayek’s reverence for tradition and social evolution

In my view, Hayek sometimes went too far in downplaying the ability of humans to understand the significance of abstract rules. For example, in one instance he claimed that “submission to undesigned rules and conventions whose significance we largely do not understand, this reverence for the traditional, that the rationalistic mind finds so uncongenial, … is indispensable for the working of a free society”. (COL, 63) It seems to me that most people are capable of understanding the purposes served by rules of just conduct. It makes more sense to explain those purposes than to suggest that reverence for the traditional should be sufficient reason for compliance.

The emphasis which Hayek placed on group selection in the evolutionary process also downplays the potential role of reason. Hayek argues that rules of just conduct evolved because the groups which practiced them were more successful and displaced others. (LLL, V1, 18) James Buchanan pointed out that there is no reason to believe that group survival will always lead to a more beneficial state of affairs. Chris Sciabarra makes the same point, also noting that Hayek does not provide an objective standard by which to judge as desirable or undesirable the consequences of spontaneous orders. (Total Freedom, 131)

Buchanan suggests that Hayek’s skepticism about the ability of humans to rationally design social institutions, including constitutions, precludes any attempt at reform. In their excellent discussion of this point, Peter Boettke and Scott King suggest that the issue has been confused by conflating the question of the origin of institutions with questions relating to the development and improvement of institutions. They note that Hayek is open to attempts to improve spontaneous orders through small revisions in the overall rules. (I refer to the chapter entitled ‘Hayek and the Hayekians on the Political Order of a Free People’, in Hayek’s Tensions: Reexamining the Political Economy and Philosophy of F. A. Hayek, edited by Stefanie Haeffele, Solomon M. Stein, and Virgil Henry Storr.)

Hayek’s attitude to free will

Discussions of Hayek’s attitude to free will often begins with his venture into theoretical psychology in The Sensory Order, published in 1952. When I read the ‘Philosophical Consequences’ chapter of that book, about 30 years ago, I gained the impression that Hayek was an advocate of free will. Hayek certainly rejects the idea that it is possible to explain why people hold particular views, at particular moments, from knowledge of their material circumstances. Immediately afterwards, in discussing free will more explicitly, Hayek asserts:

“To us human decisions must always appear as the result of the whole human personality – that means the whole of the persons mind – which, as we have seen, we cannot reduce to something else.” (See page 250 of “The Essence of Hayek”, 1984 by W. Glenn Campbell (Foreword), Kurt R. Leube (Editor), Chiaki Nishiyama (Editor).

Hayek based his argument against microphysical reductionism on the belief that the human brain can never fully explain its own operations. Paul Lewis has suggested that if Hayek had relied more fully on the ideas of organismic biologists he would have been able to develop an emergentist argument against microphysical reductionism, thus providing a stronger basis for use of concepts such as goals and purposes. (See Lewis’s chapter entitled ‘Tensions and Ambiguities in Hayek’s Social Theory’ in Hayek’s Tensions, cited above. Those who are interested in reading a philosophical emergentist argument for free will can find one in the The Metaphysics of Emergence, by Richard Campbell. I reviewed the book here.)

In The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek offers a potted summary of the free will debate. He notes that the concept of universal determinism that dominated 19th century science seemed to eliminate the possibility of free will. He also notes that physicists have now abandoned universal determinism but doubts that this affects “the puzzle about the freedom of the will”. He then states:

“It appears that the assertion that the will is free has as little meaning as its denial and that the whole issue is a phantom problem, a dispute about words in which the contestants have not made clear what an affirmative or negative answer would imply.”

However, Hayek’s subsequent discussion of the conclusions generally drawn by determinists and voluntarists about their respective positions leaves little doubt about where he stands:

“The determinists usually argue that, because men’s actions are completely determined by natural causes, there can be no justification for holding them responsible or praising or blaming their actions. The voluntarists, on the other hand, contend that, because there exists in man some agent standing outside the chain of cause or effect, this agent is the bearer of responsibility and the legitimate object of praise and blame. Now there can be little doubt that, so far as these practical conclusions are concerned, the voluntarists are more nearly right, while the determinists are merely confused.” (COL, 72-73)

In discussing the difference between “inner freedom” and the absence of coercion, Hayek had already made clear his belief that it is possible for a person to be guided by “considered will”, “reason or lasting conviction, rather than by momentary impulse or circumstance”. He adds:

“If a person does not succeed in doing what, after sober reflection, he decides to do, if his intentions or strength desert him at the decisive moment and he fails to do what he somehow wishes to do, we may say that he is ‘unfree,’ the slave of his passions.” (COL, 15)

Later, Hayek asserts:

“The recognition that each person has his own scale of values which we ought to respect, even if we do not approve of it, is part of the conception of the value of the individual personality. (COL, 79)

The role of individual human agency

In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek wrote:

“Freedom to order our own conduct in the sphere where material circumstances force a choice upon us, and responsibility for the arrangement of our own life according to our own conscience, is the air in which alone moral sense grows and in which moral values are daily re-created in the free decision of the individual. Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to bear the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.” (231-2)

That statement seems to me to be broadly consistent with the do-it-yourself job of being a good person, as described by Henry Veatch. However, some of the things that Hayek wrote later give a different impression. In The Constitution of Liberty, he advocated submission to rules and conventions, quoting David Hume’s assertion that “the rules of morality are not the conclusions of our reason”. (63) In Law, Legislation and Liberty, Hayek writes:

“Man is as much a rule-following animal as a purpose-seeking one.”

Mario Rizzo has suggests (in a paper entitled, ‘F.A. Hayek and the Rationality of Individual Choice’) that Hayek’s mature views about rationality should be understood in terms of a general framework acknowledging that humans are both purposeful agents and rule-followers. In emphasizing the importance of rule-following behaviour, Hayek didn’t abandon individual rationality. Even at the purely individual level, leaving aside the need to coordinate plans with others, rule-following makes sense because we live in a world of uncertainty and because our minds have limited capacities to know and compute.

Hayek seems to have rarely considered individual agency apart from the spontaneous order. The following paragraph provides a good summary of his perspective:

“What makes men members of the same civilization and enables them to live and work together in peace is that in the pursuit of their individual ends the particular monetary impulses which impel their efforts towards concrete results are guided and restrained by the same abstract rules. If emotion and impulse tells them what they want, the conventional rules tell them how they will be able and be allowed to achieve it.”

Personal perspective

Did Friedrich Hayek undermine the appeal of his vision by presenting a view of the limitations of human reason that leaves little room for individual self-direction? In his efforts to counter constructivist rationalism, I think Hayek inadvertently understated the role of human reason in individual flourishing. However, if individuals have greater potential for self-directed flourishing than Hayek thought possible, that makes spontaneous order a more attractive option.

In assessing Hayek’s views on the role of self-direction in individual flourishing it is important to recognize that advising individuals how best they could flourish was incidental to his main purpose. One way to illustrate that is by reference to my book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing. I draw fairly extensively upon Hayek’s wisdom in the first part of that book in discussing topics such as the definition of liberty, rules of just conduct, transmission of ancient law to the modern world, and evolution of social norms.

I only mention Hayek’s contribution once in the chapter discussing the challenge of self-direction. His views are referred to in that context not to emphasize the difficulty of self-direction but to counter the view that we (humans) are prone systematically to make serious mistakes in the individualized pursuit of happiness. I draw attention to the fact that Hayek urged respect for social norms that embody the experience of generations in advocating a legal and social order consistent with pursuit of happiness by individuals. (150-1)

In retrospect, I could also possibly have drawn on Hayek to point out implications of the fact that reasoning is cognitively demanding. In pursuing our personal goals it often makes more to sense for us to choose rules (norms) to follow, based on our own previous experience and the experience of others, than to attempt to reason our way through life by treating every issue that arises as though nothing similar has ever previously been encountered in human history.  

Do you live in harmony with your daimon?

 

Some readers will be wondering what the question means. What is this daimon? How does it relate to eudaimonia? How can you identify your daimon?

Your daimon

In his book, Personal Destinies, David L Norton explains that your daimon is your innate potentiality – a unique “ideal of perfection”. Every person has this innate potentiality as well as an empirical actuality. Self-actualization is the process of discovering your daimon and living in harmony with it.

Norton suggests that people begin to discover their daimon during adolescence. He argues that autonomous self-awareness first occurs in the form of one’s awareness of being misidentified by other people. (That is clear in a passage quoted in the preceding essay on this blog.) Adolescence is a period of exploration and experiment when mistakes are inevitable. Exploration and experiment are part of the process by which individuals may discover their daimon and obtain the maturity to choose to live in harmony with it – to live an integral life.

Integrity is the consummate virtue. It is “living one’s own truth”. An integral life follows from choosing “wholeheartedly” the self one shall strive to become.

Eudaimonia

I have been accustomed to thinking of eudaimonia in terms of the good life, or self-actualization. As indicated in the passage quoted above, however, Norton draws attention to the distinct feeling of eudaimonia that constitutes its intrinsic reward. He describes that feeling as “being where one wants to be, doing what one wants to do”, as well as the feeling of being where one must be, and wholeheartedly doing what one must do. (pp 216, 222). The feeling of eudaimonia signals that the present activity of the individual is in harmony with his daimon. (p 5).

By contrast, the dysdaimonic individual is impelled to two different directions at the one time:

“The dysdaimonic individual is perpetually distracted, being only in a part of himself where you find him while part of himself is somewhere else, his ‘here’ and ‘there’ being not continuous but contradictory.” (p 221)

Norton suggests that eudaimonia is fully present whenever a person is living in truth to himself or herself. Eudaimonia is as much present for the individual who has just set foot upon his path, as for the accomplished genius of self-actualization. I particularly like this sentence:

“It would make good sense to say that to set foot upon one’s path is as good as arriving at the end, provided we recognize that a condition of being on one’s path is to be engaged at walking”. (p 239)

Norton’s book begins with a quotation from Carl Jung, who speaks of the daimon as an “inner voice” that has determined the direction of his life. Norton recognises that we may be apprehensive that “an ear turned towards our inwardness will detect at most only meaningless murmurings”. Many people who read the book will no doubt have a desire to listen to their daimon but might still have some difficulty in hearing its voice, amid all the meaningless inner murmurings that are seeking their attention.

How can you identify your daimon?

As a philosopher, David Norton could not have gone much further than he has in this book in helping readers to identify and follow their personal daimons. Anyone wishing to proceed further might find some contributions from positive psychology to be of assistance. In what follows, I briefly mention some approaches that I think are helpful.

Two relevant approaches which I discussed briefly in Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing involve identifying personal values and character strengths. Stephen Hayes developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help people to identify the personal values that they want to guide them in important aspects of their lives. Russ Harris, a therapist who has written extensively about ACT, has written a book, The Happiness Trap, which I reviewed here. Harris’ book is highly relevant to some of the issues discussed by David Norton.

Martin Seligman and Christopher Petersen identified 24 character strengths that they view as the routes by which virtues can be achieved. People can obtain useful information about themselves by responding to a questionnaire at the VIA Institute of Character, and having the responses fed back in summary form.

At a more personal level, I should mention the help I have obtained from the “inner game” books written by Tim Gallwey, a sports and business coach. Gallwey’s books (described here) are pertinent because they deal with performance problems that arise when an individual becomes confused by inner voices that conflict with his or her authentic inner voice. Gallwey suggests many techniques to help people to maintain focused attention on the task at hand, avoid self-doubt, and exercise free and conscious choice when that is appropriate. People are helped to discover their true identity as they master this “inner game”. My podcast episode, entitled “Tim Gallwey, my inner game guru”, can be found here.

Conclusions

David Norton’s book, Personal Destinies, provides an insightful account of the nature of eudaimonia. He explains it as a distinct feeling as well as the condition of actualizing one’s innate potentiality.

I have suggested some contributions from positive psychology that I think are helpful in complementing the approach adopted in this book.

What is wrong with Sartre's view of self-creation?

 

I have read a great deal of the fiction written by Jean Paul Sartre, but my knowledge of his philosophical works is second-hand. I read Nausea, The Age of Reason, The Reprieve, and Iron in the Soul, when I was in my 20’s. Those novels still sit on my bookshelves along side novels by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Ayn Rand.

The only Sartre novel that left a lasting impression on me is Iron in the Soul. I have a vague recollection of the plot of Part One that novel. It ends with Mathieu Delarue, an academic who became a soldier in the French army, taking part in a futile military operation after France had been defeated by Germany during World War II. The purpose of this military operation was apparently to use up ammunition. Part One ends with Delarue declaring that he is free, even though it seems that his life is about to end.

At the time I read the book I would have been impressed that Delarue had found inner freedom by doing something decisive, but I doubt that I contemplated whether he had discovered himself or created himself.

It is only in the last decade or so that I have pondered whether personal development is best described as a discovery process, or a creative process. David L Norton’s book, Personal Destinies: A philosophy of personal individualism (1976) has recently prompted me to think further on the topic. I will begin with a general discussion of Norton’s view of personal destinies before considering his view of Sartre’s position.

Is your destiny in your genes?

While reading the first chapter of Personal Destinies, I balked at Norton’s injunction to "accept your destiny".

I accept the author's argument that self-actualization requires a person to discover the daimon within, and to live in accordance with it. I have no problem with injunctions to "know thyself", "choose yourself", and to "become what you are". However, being told to "accept your destiny" seems more challenging.

What does Norton mean?

Norton suggests that from the moment of birth, it is the destiny of each individual to actualise their potential in a particular way. If they live in accord with their destiny they become like the heroes of a Greek tragedy, showing undeviating consistency of character as they meet their fate.

He is suggesting that individuals are destined to have a unique personal character if they follow their daimon. He is not suggesting that the individual’s fate is pre-determined.

Why did I object?

My first objection was that accepting one's destiny seems opposed to accepting personal responsibility for one's choices. Norton explains that is not so. Individuals are free to choose to adhere to their destiny or to deviate from it.

I think my second objection has more substance. I have seen individuals change their character through their own actions. Genes play an important role in determining our destinies, but they are not the only determinant. Brain plasticity seems to enable people to change their destinies, for good or ill.

I recommend David Eagleman’s book, Livewired: the inside story of the ever-changing brain, to anyone who needs to be persuaded that genes are not destiny. As previously discussed on this blog, Eagleman, a neuroscientist, makes the point that the human brain arrives in the world unfinished: “despite some genetic pre-specification, nature’s approach to growing a brain relies on receiving a vast set of experiences, such as social interaction, conversation, play, exposure to the world, and the rest of the landscape of normal human affairs”.

It may even be possible for adults who follow their daimons to create more "potential" to actualize. If that is correct, it makes sense to think of personal development as involving self-creation as well as self-discovery. In the post already mentioned, I referred to the approach offered by Gena Gorlin, a psychologist, as an example of self-directed personal development. Gorlin has referred to her approach as a call to self-creation.

What is the problem with Sartre’s view?

Sartre argues that humans are “condemned to be free”. Each self constitutes itself as a “fundamental project” which is a product of free choice.

Norton explains that Sartre’s view of self-creation stems from the idea that whatever may be given to consciousness can appear in consciousness only as a meaning, and meanings are the product of consciousness itself. A person is nothing until he or she (or ?) chooses an identity. Human reality owes nothing to “inner nature”. There are no innate capabilities. “Talent is nothing other than acquired ability deriving from activity that is engaged in by choice.”

Norton suggests that autonomous self-awareness first appears in adolescence as a discovery rather than as a creation:

“In adolescence, autonomous self-awareness first occurs in the form of one’s awareness of being misidentified by the other. … Throughout childhood the individual has unquestioningly accepted adult identification of himself, usually that of his parents. Now, however, it is in the parental identification that the adolescent recognizes misidentification …. . Beneath this sense of misidentification and responsible for it is the adolescent’s new-found awareness that only he can speak. The moment is portentous and felt to be such. By its tone of  “from this moment and forever-more,” it signals a future very different from the past, it marks a disruption of the personal continuum. At the same time misidentification by others cannot be corrected because the new found “inner self” of the adolescent as yet has no voice with which to speak to the world, it is but a murmur within, audible to one person alone, and this helplessness projects itself as “fated to be misunderstood.” (p 111)

That passage brings back some memories of adolescence. And, even now, that feeling of being “fated to be misunderstood” sometimes returns to me.

An internet search suggests to me that developmental psychologists commonly believe that autonomous self-awareness first occurs during adolescence between the ages of 12 and 18 years. That stage of life often involves a great deal of experimentation leading to self-discovery.

The attraction of Sartre’s view of self-creation is that it appears to offer unlimited opportunities to individuals choose their identity. In arguing that human freedom is freedom for self-discovery and self-adherence, Norton suggests that Sartre’s advocacy of absolute freedom is actually a capitulation to “the forces of alienation at work in contemporary life”:

“The man who has no authentic feelings, and must on every occasion manufacture his feelings, is no exemplar of freedom but rather the self-alienated product of special conditions of life today.” (p 116).

Sensible self-creation

The main difference between Gena Gorlin’s approach to self-development and that of Sartre is that Gorlin does not claim that it is necessary to choose an identity before becoming a self-aware person. The existence of a person is presupposed in the builder’s mindset that Gorlin advocates:

“A person chooses what she wants to build, and she holds herself accountable for the work of building it.”

Robert Kegan’s concepts of self-authorship and self-transformation also seem to me to be sensible approaches to self-creation. Most adults have socialized minds – they are faithful followers and team players. Those with self-authoring minds are in the next largest group. They are self-directed and can generate an internal belief system.  Only a tiny percentage have self-transforming minds, capable of stepping back from, and reflecting upon the limits of personal ideology. I included some discussion of Rober Kegan’s concepts in Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing.

Conclusions

David L Norton’s book, Personal Destinies, has prompted me to think further on the topic of whether personal development is best described as a discovery process or a creative process. Norton’s view that personal destinies are determined at birth does not leave any room for self-creation. The existence of brain plasticity suggests, however, that it may make sense for psychologists to view personal development as having a creative component.

Norton offers an illuminating account of what is wrong with Sartre’s extreme view that it is necessary to choose an identity before being aware of being a person. Norton seems to me to be correct in suggesting that autonomous self-awareness occurs as a discovery process during adolescence.

Sensible advocates of self-creation do not claim that it is necessary to choose an identity before becoming aware of being an individual person.

Do clinical delusions have anything in common with a mythology mindset?

 

In my discussion of Steven Pinker’s book, Rationality, I referred to his observation that people tend to have a reality mindset in the world of immediate experience and a mythology mindset when discussing issues in the public sphere. Although that is an accurate observation about a general tendency, delusions are also fairly common in the world of immediate experience.

The delusions that most of us experience are fairly harmless. For example, it may not do you much harm to believe that you are happier than average, even if you aren’t. That common delusion may help to explain why so many people walk around with smiles on their faces.

For some unfortunate people, however, the world of immediate experience includes delusional beliefs that are symptomatic of mental ill-health. These are referred to as clinical delusions.

The question I ask above has been prompted by my reading of Lisa Bortolotti’s recent book, Why Delusions Matter. Lisa Bortolotti is a philosopher who specializes in the philosophy of the cognitive sciences, including issues relating to mental illness. She observes that there is a strong overlap between clinical and non-clinical delusional beliefs. The non-clinical delusional beliefs that she discusses include beliefs that Pinker would associate with a mythology mindset.

A conversation context

Bortolotti notes that in any discussion between two people, you have a speaker and an interpreter swapping roles as the conversation proceeds. The speaker says something and the interpreter listens, making inferences about the speaker’s beliefs, desires, feelings, hopes and intentions on the basis of the speaker’s words, facial expression, tone of voice, previous behaviour and so on.

Interpretation becomes challenging when the interpreter suspects that the speaker may be delusional. The interpreter rarely has the information needed to assess that the speaker’s beliefs are false, so falsity cannot be a necessary condition for attribution of delusionality.

Three elements are often involved when the interpreter judges the speaker to be delusional:

• Implausibility: The interpreter finds the speaker’s beliefs to be implausible.
• Unshakeability: Speakers do not give up their beliefs in the face of counterarguments and counterevidence.
• Identity: The beliefs seem important to the image that speakers have of themselves.

Clinical delusions

Bortolotti offers what she describes as an “agency-in-context” model to explain clinical delusions. She explains:

“The adoption and maintenance of delusional beliefs are due to many factors combining aspects of who you are and what your story is (your genes, reasoning biases, personality, lack of scientific literacy, etc.) and aspects of how epistemic practices operate in the society where you live.”

The epistemic practices she refers to include what we learn at school about knowledge acquisition, and the stigma that makes it difficult for people with delusional beliefs to participate fully in public life.

There is no doubt that persecutory delusions are harmful to the speaker and others. They undermine the ability of speakers to respond appropriately to events, and often erode their relationships with others.

However, Lisa Bortolotti suggests that it is important for interpreters to understand that most delusions offer some benefits for speakers. Delusions “let speakers see the world as they want the world to be; make speakers feel important and interesting; or give meaning to speakers’ lives, configuring exciting missions for them to accomplish”.

Interpreters also need to understand that the underlying problems of speakers don’t disappear when they obtain insight about their delusions. They may become depressed when they approach reality without the filter of their delusional beliefs.

There is not much to be gained by attempting to reason with people whose beliefs are unshakeable. Bortolotti suggests that it is probably more productive for the interpreter and speaker to share stories rather than exchanging reasons for beliefs. Exchanging stories can show how delusional beliefs emerged as reactions to situations that were difficult to manage. While sharing stories, interpreters have opportunities “to practice curiosity and empathy in finding out more” about underlying problems.

Conspiracy delusions

From an interpreter’s viewpoint, a speaker’s beliefs about the existence of conspiracies often have similar characteristics to clinical delusions. They are implausible, unshakeable, and closely tied to the speaker’s self-image.

Bortolotti emphasizes that those who hold conspiracy delusions often claim to have special knowledge of events – they claim to be experts, or to know who the real experts are. Identifying as a member of a group is often also important. Non-members often refer to members of such groups in a derogatory way e.g. QAnon supporters and anti-vaxxers. However, people are often attracted to conspiracy delusions promoted by like-minded people whom they trust. The act of sharing a delusional story can be a signal of commitment to a particular group.

Comments

Lisa Bortolotti’s book has improved my understanding of delusions in a couple of different ways. First, it has given me a better appreciation that delusions offer some benefits to the people who hold them, and those benefits help to explain the unshakeability of delusional beliefs.

Second, viewing delusions within the context of a conversation between a speaker and an interpreter is helpful in drawing attention to the value judgements involved in assessing whether the speaker’s beliefs are delusional.

My main criticism of the book is that the author seems to me to be biased in favour of “the official version” of events, even though she acknowledges that contrary beliefs are sometimes vindicated. The most obvious example bias is her apparent reluctance to give credence to the possibility that Covid19 may have originated in a lab in Wuhan.

I am pleased that my reading of the book did not leave me with the impression that the author believes that it is delusional to have an unshakeable belief in the importance of the search for truth. In emphasizing that value judgements are involved in assessing whether beliefs are delusional, Lisa Bortolotti seems to me to be providing readers with a better understanding of the meaning attached to the concept of delusion in clinical and non-clinical settings, rather than casting doubt on the existence of reality.

Is Vipassana meditation consistent with self-acceptance?

Vipassana is an ancient form of meditation based on practice of equanimity in observation of physical sensations and thoughts. As people who practice Vipassana observe sensations arise and pass away, they experience a lessening of both aversion of unpleasant sensations, and of craving for pleasant sensations.  The Vipassana tradition has been kept alive since the time of the Buddha, and popularized over the last 50 years by S. N. Goenka, who died in 2013. The practice is taught in 10 day residential courses.

People who hold views that are incompatible with the Buddhist principle of anatta, or no self, are not excluded from attending Vipassana courses. I have practiced Vipassana meditation, with varying consistency, for about 25 years, and associate the practice with self-acceptance rather than loss of a sense of self. Moments of self-forgetfulness, accompanying feelings of goodwill towards other beings, could be described as quieting the ego rather than abandoning it. It seems to me that Scott Barry Kaufman may be on the right track in his suggestion that “those with the quietest ego defenses often have the strongest sense of self”. (See Transcend, p 204-5).

However, when Goenkaji was asked why he only spoke of the ego in negative terms, he replied:

“Now it seems to you that there must be an 'I' who feels, but after beginning to practice Vipassana, you will reach the stage where the ego dissolves. Then your question will disappear! For conventional purposes, yes, we cannot run away from using words like 'I' or 'mine' etc. But clinging to them, taking them as real in an ultimate sense will only bring suffering.”  

That raises interesting issues. In this article I will briefly discuss the concept of no-self, illustrate similarity between the practice of Vipassana and a psychologist’s approach to self-acceptance, consider how Vipassana meditation might be viewed from an Aristotelian perspective, and end with some observations about the nature of the inner game involved in acquiring equanimity and practical wisdom.

The No-self idea

In their book, Classical Indian Philosophy, Peter Adamson and Jonardon Ganeri note that the Buddha sought to differentiate his view from those who say that we are identical to our bodies and from those who say we have souls that lack connection to anything else. They write:

“To express his own view, the Buddha offered similes: a person is not like the thread running through a necklace of pearls, but like the flowing of a river or the flickering of a candle flame.”

The river metaphor captures the idea that to grasp on to feelings, perceptions, or mental fabrications of the self is as futile as it would be for a person to try to avoid being swept down a swiftly flowing river by grasping on to grasses etc. growing on the banks.

I am attracted to a different river metaphor which reconciles my observation that impermanence is pervasive with my inability to doubt my own existence, and perception of my “self” as having continuity (at least while I remain alive). I have written previously about Richard Campbell’s suggestion, in his book The Metaphysics of Emergence, that Plato may have misrepresented Heraclitus in claiming he said, “You cannot step into the same river twice”. Heraclites may have been trying to convey the insight that the river stays the same even though it consists of changing waters. Campbell suggests that rivers exemplify “that the continued existence of things depends on their continually changing”. It makes sense to understand consciousness as a flow, and to perceive ourselves as complex processing systems.

Self-acceptance

In explaining Vipassana meditation, Goenkaji emphasized that attempts to escape from misery by diverting the mind to another object did not provide lasting benefits. He explained:

“The object of meditation should not be an imaginary object, it should be reality—reality as it is. One has to work with whatever reality has manifested itself now, whatever one experiences within the framework of one's own body.”

It seems to me that the Vipassana approach of observing thoughts and sensations with equanimity has much in common with the approach to self-acceptance recommended by the psychologist, Nathaniel Branden, in The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem:

“At the most fundamental level, I accept myself. I accept the reality of my thoughts, even when I cannot endorse them and would not choose to act on them; I do not deny or disown them. I can accept my feelings and emotions without necessarily liking, approving of, or being controlled by them; I do not deny or disown them.” (p 163)

An Aristotelian perspective

It is clear from the passage quoted at the beginning of this article that Aristotle thought it inconceivable that a person could doubt his or her own existence.

However, Vipassana’s emphasis on equanimity as a desirable frame of mind has much in common with Aristotle’s view of temperance as a virtue. An equanimous person could be expected to be temperate in emotional expression – to be able to avoid excessive anger, fear etc. The techniques involved are also similar in respect of the emphasis placed on practice of the relevant frame of mind and associated behaviors.

As I see it, one possible difference between an equanimous person and a temperate person is that the latter would be less inclined to accept that there should be no craving. In accordance with Aristotle’s teaching, a temperate person could exercise his practical wisdom to crave the things he ought, to the extent he ought, as he ought, and when he ought.

Nevertheless, I have not found the practice of Vipassana meditation to be an obstacle to exercising practical wisdom to pursue personal goals enthusiastically. When I meditate conscientiously early in the morning that tends to promote clarity of thinking which serves me well later in the day.

The inner game

How is it that a person who lacks peace of mind (equanimity) can learn to observe troubling sensations and thoughts with equanimity? How can it be possible to adopt a frame of mind which requires the exercise of a quality that you perceive yourself to lack? It seems to me that the people who do such things must be drawing on inner resources that they didn’t fully realize that they had.

Tim Gallwey, the inner game guru, has helped many people to draw upon resources that they didn’t realize they had. Gallwey is recognized as a pioneer of sports psychology, and is the author of books applying inner game concepts to a range of activities including tennis, golf, work, and stress management. The aim of the inner game is to improve the internal dialogue that people carry around with them. For example, if an individual’s internal dialogue is infected by self-doubt, they can improve their performance in sport by observing what happens when they trust their unconscious minds to coordinate their muscles.

The general pattern of the inner game is to recognize that performance is being adversely affected by mental interference associated with false beliefs about one’s self – the lack of a desired quality – and then to observe what happens when that quality is expressed. People improve their performance as they discover qualities, or inner resources, that they didn’t know they had.  (Readers who want to know more about Tim Gallwey’s inner game approach may be interested to listen to a podcast I have prepared.)

The point that needs to be emphasized is that if we assert that we are inherently lacking in desired qualities (wisdom, temperance, integrity, courage, self-trust etc.) we are fooling ourselves. We all have potential to demonstrate qualities that we perceive to be lacking by asking ourselves what we would be thinking or doing if we believed that we possessed those qualities to a greater extent than at present.

So, I ask myself: If I was a wiser person, what would I be thinking right now? I am thinking that it would be wise to end this now and leave readers to contemplate their answers to that question. 

How has the Neoplatonism of my youth influenced my current beliefs?

 

The kid in the photo believed that the material world is an illusion. Those beliefs about the nature of reality probably led him to be somewhat less materialistic than he would otherwise have been. However, an observer would have had to look closely to find any evidence that he, and his school colleagues who held similar beliefs, were behaving as though they did not believe the account of reality provided by their sense organs. They didn’t attempt to survive without food, to defy gravity by jumping off tall buildings, or to do much else to suggest that they had a different view of reality than most other teenagers living in Australia in 1960. The main difference an astute observer would have seen was their practice of treating illness as an error of thinking and viewing medical intervention as unnecessary and undesirable under most circumstances.

I am writing this article because a few people who have known me at different times of my life might be interested to know something about the process by which my beliefs have changed over the years.

Youthful preoccupations

When I was a child, I liked sitting on the gate post of a fence separating our garden from the farmyard. That was my favorite spot for observing what the horses, sheep dogs, cows, pet lambs, humans etc. were doing in the farmyard. One day when I was sitting there – I would have been about 6 years old - my father told me that everything I saw in the farmyard was an illusion. I thought at first that he was joking, but he was in the process of informing me that he had decided to attend the Christian Science church and had arranged for me to attend their Sunday school.

Over subsequent years, I gradually became immersed in the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, and her book, Science and Health (S&H). The final 3 years of my secondary education were spent as a border at Huntingtower, a school run by Christian Scientists in the Melbourne suburb of Mount Waverley. At that time, the school only accepted students who had a family background in Christian Science. Huntingtower still has a focus on the individual personal development of students and provides excellent educational opportunities. I am grateful that one of my aunts paid the fees to enable me to attend that school.

I have long been aware that there was some similarity between Mrs. Eddy’s teachings and the philosophy of Plato. I now see a closer resemblance to the Neoplatonism of Plotinus. Plotinus believed that “The One”, the absolutely simple first principle of all, was the cause of being for everything else in the universe.  Mrs. Eddy wrote: 

“Principle and its idea is one, and this one is God, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent Being, and His reflection is man and the universe” (S&H, 465-6).

The Neoplatonists saw life’s purpose as being “to bring back the god in us to the divine in the All”. Mrs. Eddy urged her followers:

“We must form perfect models in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives. Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness, love — the kingdom of heaven — reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until they finally disappear” (S&H, 248).

Secular pursuits

I abandoned Neoplatonism at the end of my teen years. At that time, I didn’t consciously reject that belief system even though I can remember becoming increasingly frustrated at the difficulty of attempting to follow Mrs. Eddy’s injunction: “Stand porter at the door of thought” (S&H, 392). My social life and academic interests made me less inclined to spend time engaging in what I was coming to view as speculations about the nature of “ultimate reality”.  I was beginning to study economics, so my thinking focused increasingly on how human aspirations could best be met. At that time, I became interested in the writings of J S Mill on liberty and utilitarianism.

Over the years, my philosophic interests developed along with a work career focused on public policy relating to economic development, international trade, productivity growth and technological progress. That led to increasing interest in the role of liberty in economic progress, and human flourishing more generally.

As a consequence of my interest in human flourishing, I have come to view Aristotle as the greatest of the philosophers of Ancient Greece. My book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, explains the framework of my current thinking.

These days, the idea that the evidence of our senses is illusory seems as strange to me as it was when I was the child sitting on the gate post. Our senses provide the direct experience of reality that members of our species require to thrive. Since we are conscious beings, we are aware of our own use of maps, and models (both metaphorical and actual) to communicate and reason about what we experience. However, we also know that maps and models do not always correspond to reality. The search for truth is about seeking better maps and models.

The lurking questions

There were two questions lurking in the back of my mind after I had abandoned Neoplatonism. First, how could a change in thinking bring about the healing of serious illnesses which seemed to have a physical cause? Second, why did the same techniques sometimes fail to provide the lasting healings hoped for in respect of disorders that seemed to have a psychological rather than physical cause?

I do not doubt the veracity of most of the large number of testimonials that church members presented about healings that they experienced. As I remember it, most of the church members I knew either had personal experience of healings themselves or were family members of people who had obtained healings. The prevalence of healings seems to me to be the most obvious factor explaining the rapid growth of this church in the first half of the 20^th century, when medical science was less advanced than it is today. Advances in medicine provide the most obvious explanation for the decline in church membership in recent decades.

I think the answer to my first question lies in the potential impact of a change of an individual’s thinking on their body’s natural defences against disease. For example, a substantial amount of evidence has accumulated about the relationship between psychological stress and the human immune system. There is a lot of advice available about the importance of stress management in maintaining good health, and about how to manage stress via physical exercise, breathing exercises, yoga, meditation, and so forth. However, I don’t think many people give enough attention to the potential for negative thinking associated with medication to influence its efficacy. Before you decide to take any medication prescribed to you, it seems to me to be wise to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of how the medication works and the impacts that most users experience. If that doesn’t provide a basis for you to expect positive outcomes, perhaps you should seek another opinion.

My answer to the question of why lasting healings didn’t always occur in respect of psychological disorders is that an appropriate change of thinking had not actually occurred. That was not necessarily attributable to insufficient vigilance as “porter at the door of thought”. In my own experience, I think the opposite was the case. Trying hard to keep fear of stuttering and blocking out of my mind resulted in greater fear of disfluency than I would otherwise have experienced.  The reason for that became clear when someone suggested that I try the “don’t think of a pink elephant” exercise. The exercise consists of trying very hard not to think about pink elephants and then observing what images come to mind. Deliberate attempts to suppress thoughts makes them more likely to occupy your mind.

The questions lurking in the back of my mind made me receptive to Neuro-Semantics – a model of how we create and embody meaning developed by Michael Hall and Bobby Bodenhamer - when I learned about it 20 years ago. For present purposes, I think the message of Neuro-Semantics can best be  illustrated by the following quote from an article by Michael Hall entitled, “The Inner Game of Frame”:   

‘The frames we set about our experiences are much, much, much more important and critical than our experiences.  In this, “there is no good or bad but thinking makes it so” as Shakespeare noted.  In this, “men are not disturbed by things, they are disturbed by their interpretation of things.”  In this, “as we think in our heart, so we are.”  In this we have the cognitive-behavioral foundation for human functioning.’

Readers of my book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, will find a reference to Hall’s views on the importance of frames of meaning in the discussion of why people do not always move on to satisfying higher needs, as Abraham Maslow suggested they would, once their basic needs have been met (p 168-9).

Beyond utilitarianism

One aspect of Mrs. Eddy’s teachings that I have held on to is the idea that the identity of the individual person is a metaphysical concept. Mrs. Eddy made the point persuasively as follows:

‘If the real man is in the material body, you take away a portion of the man when you amputate a limb; the surgeon destroys manhood, and worms annihilate it. But the loss of a limb or injury to a tissue is sometimes the quickener of manliness; and the unfortunate cripple may present more nobility than the statuesque athlete, — teaching us by his very deprivations, that “a man’s a man, for a’ that.” ‘ (S&H, 172)

The Neoplatonism of my youth has also left me receptive to the idea that to fully flourish we need to be willing to transcend utilitarian preoccupations. That idea is, of course, also present in Aristotle’s view that practice of the virtues is central to individual flourishing. In Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, I summarised my current view as follows:

“Liberty and technological progress give us potential to obtain more of the basic goods of flourishing humans. To fully flourish, however, we need to be willing to transcend utilitarian preoccupations and to contemplate what our human nature requires of us as individuals. Perhaps it is in our nature to bring wonder into our lives by seeking the essence of truth, beauty, and goodness. If so, we may take pleasure in doing that, whilst rejecting the idea that it is appropriate to employ the metrics of pleasure and pain to assess the worth of our endeavors” (197).

Postscript

I neglected to mention my guru, Tim Gallwey. I have been a fan of Tim Gallwey's books for more than 20 years. I found "The Inner Game of Golf" particularly helpful in aspects of my life that have little to do with golf. Tim Gallwey's insights about the inner game of golf helped me to see some personal problems in perspective. (By the way, I play golf about once a year and play no better might be expected!)

Tim Gallwey describes how people tend to interfere with their performance in activities requiring muscle coordination when they respond to self-doubt by "trying harder". Trying harder often entails increasing muscle tension. Gallwey's books offer practical suggestions to circumvent self-doubt.

Tim Gallwey says: “We all have inner resources beyond what we realize”.  You discover your true identity as you draw on those resource to master the inner game.

In this video Tim Gallwey talks about the personal philosophy that motivates him.

My podcast episode entitled, "Tim Gallwey, my Inner Game guru", can be found here.