What is the inner game of stress?

‘The Inner Game of Stress’, by Timothy Gallwey (with Edward Hanzelik and John Horton) is the latest of a series of inner game books.Tim Gallwey has previously written books about the inner game involved in several sports, including tennis and golf, and the inner game of work - based on his experience as a coach and trainer. Hanzelik and Horton are medical practitioners who conduct stress seminars drawing on their understanding of the inner game as well as on their medical knowledge.

I think it would be fair to say that all of Gallwey’s books are to a large extent about avoiding the adverse effects of stress on our ability to function. This book is as much a pleasure to read as Tim Gallwey’s other inner game books. Gallwey is an expert in getting his message across by telling interesting stories based on his own personal experience. I have read all but one of his books. I wrote an article a few years ago describing how the books had helped me in dealing with a stress-related problem.

The main point in this book is that stress involves an inner game as well as external stressors. The inner game arises largely from trying to live with illusions about our own identities. It is as though an internal ‘Stress Maker’ has stolen our identities and substituted an illusion in order to create fear, doubt and confusion. The illusions woven by the ‘Stress Maker’ originate from the concepts, perceptions and expectations of other people.

The great strength of the inner game approach, it seems to me, is that it encourages the belief that each of us has a real identity (a natural self) that we, as individuals, are ultimately responsible for developing. Other people may see our identities as illusions that we have created in our own minds, but we should know better. We know intuitively how to be who and what we are when we recognize our inner resources and the opportunities for learning and enjoyment that are available in association with pursuit of our performance goals. We can learn to trust ourselves to function more successfully.

The book provides practical guidance on how to break the momentum of stress – how to stop and become aware of what you are trying to control and what you can control. It discusses the potential we have to liberate ourselves from illusions by re-assessing the meaning of experiences.

From what I have written, some readers might be concerned that the book might encourage people to become too self-centred – to question the social norms that were instilled in them during childhood and to pursue their own interests at the expense of other people. I think such concerns are misplaced. People don't question norms that they have internalized - adherence to such norms is a matter of self-respect rather than fear. The book recognizes that it is important for individuals to have deep relationships with others. One of the exercises in the book involves seeing problems in a relationship from the perspective of the other person – to understand what they may be thinking, feeling and wanting.

Much of the advice presented in the book is based on individual case studies rather than experiments involving large numbers of people. I don't think that is a huge problem as long as the readers who try the exercises suggested in the book approach them as though they are conducting little experiments of their own. That is consistent with one of the themes of the book, which is to encourage readers to become more aware of what they are doing at present and of the effects of doing things differently.

It is possible that this book, and Tim Gallwey’s other inner game books, may benefit some people more than others. On the basis of my own experience, all I can say is that the ideas in Tim Gallwey’s books have served me well.

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Anyone interested in learning more about the effects of stress on the body should click here to see a useful interactive chart.

Does the modern world make us feel like powerless creatures in the coils of an invisible monster?

‘What most alarms us in our contemporary world, what unsettles and scares us, is the extent to which the forces that shape our lives are no longer personal – they know nothing of us; and to the extent that we know nothing of them – cannot put a face on them, cannot find in them anything we recognize as human – we cannot deal with them. We feel like small, powerless creatures in the coils of an invisible monster, vast but insubstantial, that cannot be grasped or wrestled with.’ 

That quote seems to me to sum up the main point that David Malouf was making in: ‘The Happy Life; The Search for Contentment in the Modern World’, Quarterly Essay, March 2011.

In the paragraphs preceding the quoted passage, the author argues that it is possible for humans to be happy even in the most miserable conditions if they perceive their world as having human dimensions. He explains that a world with human dimensions is one that humans can recognize and encompass. In his words:

‘We start always from the body, and relate everything back to it. In a way that goes back to our most primitive beginnings, we use it to establish direction – where we are facing, where we might move to; to gauge distance – how far off an object is and how far we have got along the way towards it; to determine how each thing we are observing stands in relation to our own being – its size in relation to ours, how light or heavy it is when we try to lift it or weigh it on our palm; how much it occupies of the space we share; how it smells and tastes, how it feels to the touch or when we roll it between finger and thumb’.

I feel in awe of people who manage to maintain tranquillity in the most miserable conditions. It is probably correct to say that such people do experience the sources of human misery as having human dimensions – they feel uncertainty, discomfort, pain, fear and anger just like the rest of us – but they are not overwhelmed by such feelings. The fact that they have normal human feelings doesn’t mean, however, that they necessarily see major sources of human misery – extreme climatic events, for example – as having human dimensions.

Irrespective of their capacity to maintain tranquillity in the face of misfortune, our ancestors saw God (or the gods) as the most likely explanation for extreme climatic events – and just about everything else they experienced. Malouf acknowledges this, but he suggests that when we were in the hands of the gods we had stories that made these distant beings human and brought them close. Of the gods, he writes:

‘They watched over us and were concerned, though in moments of wilfulness or boredom they might also torment us as “wanton boys” do flies. We had our ways of obtaining their help as intermediaries. We could deal with them’.

By contrast:

‘The Economy is impersonal. It lacks manageable dimensions. We have discovered no mythology to account for its moods. Our only source of information about it, the Media and their swarm of commentators, bring us “reports”, but these do not help: a possible breakdown in the system, a new crisis, the descent on Greece or Ireland or Portugal, like Jove’s eagle, of the IMF. We are kept in a state of permanent low level anxiety broken only by outbreaks of alarm’.

I admire David Malouf’s writing style, but I have a couple of problems with this line of reasoning. First, personal gods left good people bewildered as to why bad things were happening to them. Remember the biblical story of Job, the virtuous man who suffered from ‘acts of God’. Job was not a happy chappy – he cursed the day he was born. My reading of the story is that Job tried to deal with God, but that didn’t work. Job found tranquillity only after he accepted that God was not a person that he could deal with. He had to learn to accept that some factors affecting his life were beyond his capacity to understand and influence.

Second, many people seem to have difficulty in accepting that economic forces are impersonal. Economic crises, in particular, are often viewed in very personal terms – for example, in terms of the excessive greed of human agents, such as Wall Street bankers, or even in terms of conspiracies involving bankers and politicians. Modern conspiracy theories have their demons (and super-heroes) in much the same way as ancient religions had their personal gods.

One of the features of the modern world is that the role of the personal gods has tended to be displaced impersonal scientific explanations of the forces that shape our lives. Do these scientific explanations leave people feeling unsettled? I don’t think so. Psychological evidence discussed by Timothy Wilson (in his book ‘Redirect’, discussed recently on this blog) indicates that people who are affected by negative events tend to feel worse when they are uncertain about the nature of those events and why they occurred.  Reducing uncertainty about negative events is a good way to bounce back from those events.

It seems to me that it is the uncertainty associated with recent economic crises that has made them particularly unsettling. With the onset of the global financial crisis there was a great deal of public discussion among economists about the inadequacy of existing scientific explanations of what was happening. When leading economists admit that they can’t understand an economic crisis, other people have good reason to feel unsettled. Over the last couple of years, however, there has been growing support among economists for the idea that (unconventional) monetary policy can be influential in shaping expectations about the growth of aggregate demand, even when interest rates are very low. This provides grounds for optimism that the world will be able to avoid a major economic downturn over the next few years. (At the same time, as I suggested in a post a few weeks ago, there are still some grounds for concern that the European Central Bank will maintain deflationary policies that will exacerbate the financial crisis in Europe and impact adversely on the world economy.)

More robust scientific explanations of economic crises could be expected to help the people who have adversely affected to adjust to their misfortune, but would they not still feel like small, powerless creatures in the coils of an invisible monster? Quite possibly.  Yet, a better understanding of the economic forces involved may give them reason to hope for better outcomes in future. A surfer who is dumped by a wave might feel like a powerless creature in the coils of a monster, even if he has some understanding of wave mechanics. But his understanding of why he was dumped might give him reason to hope that in future he is more likely to experience the exhilaration of riding the wave.

Why occupy Sydney?

‘So, you think I am in favour of occupying Wall Street, do you? What makes you think that?’

I knew it was Jim as soon as he spoke, but it took me a moment to work out where his voice was coming from. When Jim wants to have a discussion with you, he seems to appear from nowhere and just start asking questions. I suppose he thinks that gives him some kind of advantage. It doesn’t work! Everyone I know just ignores his opening questions and goes through the usual preliminaries of saying hello and asking after his health while they compose a response.

Jim had obviously read a brief comment on my last post in which I had speculated that he might be in favour of occupying Wall Street, but not Sydney. I reminded Jim about our previous discussions about banking and limited liability. In our previous discussion about banking Jim had suggested that it was a scam for banks to promise to repay deposits on demand even though they knew that they would be unable to meet that promise if all depositors asked for their money at the same time. In our discussion about limited liability, Jim had suggested that it was wrong to allow owners of banks to gamble with borrowed money, secure in the knowledge that if their gambles do not pay off then the most they stand to lose is the value of their shares. I also mentioned that when banks have been declared by governments to be ‘too big to fail’, bankers have a strong incentive to take abnormal risks because they know that they will be bailed out by governments if they make large losses. I ended by telling Jim that I could picture him in Wall Street carrying a placard saying ‘Bankers are Wankers!’.

Jim seemed satisfied with my explanation, but when I had finished he asked: ‘So, doesn’t all that apply to Australia as well as the US? Don’t you think I should be in favour of occupying Sydney, too?’

I tried to explain that prudential regulation seems to have worked reasonably well in Australia, so there doesn’t seem to be much to protest about in terms of the way the financial system is working in this country.

Jim’s response was quite robust and is not quotable verbatim. After deleting expletives I think the message he was giving me was that although I tell people that I am a libertarian, he thinks I am actually a neo-socialist because I am in favour of some prudential regulation of the finance sector. (Jim can call me a neo-socialist if he likes – it makes a change from being called a neo-liberal. My views on banking regulation are actually fairly close to those of Adam Smith, so I am in good company.) Jim ended his outburst by telling me that while I was entitled to my own views, I should refrain from misrepresenting his views.

‘Well, does that means you actually support the Occupy Sydney movement?’, I asked.

Jim didn’t respond for a long time. Eventually, he asked, ‘What are the Occupy Sydney people actually on about?’ I wasn’t sure, but I suggested that the main theme of the Occupy movement all over the world seemed to be the injustice of unequal distribution of wealth and power – particularly the idea that the top 1% of the population in many countries tend to benefit disproportionately from economic growth.

‘And who do you think is responsible for that?’ Jim said. ‘It is the 99% who are responsible for making the 1% wealthy. We make a few film stars fabulously wealthy by going to the movies that they star in. We make a few sporting heroes fabulously wealthy by watching the games they play and buying the products they endorse. The same system applies in the business world. The CEO of a successful company develops a reputation as a star performer just like film stars and sporting heroes. Successful companies are only successful because the 99% buy the goods they produce’.

‘So’, I said, ‘you don’t think there is anything to protest about?’

Jim said, ‘No, that’s not what I mean. The Occupy Movement should be protesting about celebrity culture and the vacuousness of consumerism. They should be poking fun at the idea that a good is worth buying just because it is popular and that entertainment is worth watching just because the performer is a star. They should be asking people whether they actually get pleasure by helping Kim Kardashian to become wealthier’.

I was left wondering why Jim was picking on Kim Kardashian. One possibility that crossed my mind is that she might have green hair. Jim doesn’t like green hair.

Does Sophie know she is dumping on free trade?

When Jim asked me to have a drink with him I didn’t expect to be just sitting there watching him read ‘The Australian’ - and certainly not one that was a couple of days out of date. But when I looked more closely, he wasn’t actually reading. He was just scanning as though he was looking for something.

‘Ah, here it is’ he said at last. ‘What do you think of Sophie Mirabella?’

Sophie Mirabella is the federal opposition spokeswoman on innovation, industry and science. I told Jim that I thought Sophie was a clever lawyer. I said I would rather have her on my side of the argument than as an opponent.

‘What about the dumping issue?’ Jim asked.

I said that in my view she was out of order when she dumped on Julia Gillard a few months ago by comparing her to Muammar Gaddafi.

Jim replied: ‘Nah, I mean anti-dumping policy – preventing foreigners from selling goods here at prices lower than they charge in their home markets. Sophie writes here that dumping seeks to exploit Australia’s commitment to free trade and is a distortion of our domestic market’.

‘That’s crap!’ I said. ‘It is quite normal for firms to be able to sell goods in their home markets at prices that are higher than they can obtain in international markets. How could our domestic market be distorted by importing goods at the world price?’

Jim ignored my response and read on. After a minute, he said: ‘Sophie says that when Abbott comes to power she is going to provide for preliminary affirmative determinations (PADs) to “create a shift in the balance of anti-dumping investigations, requiring the foreign producer to prove its conduct hasn’t hurt the Australian industry”. What do you think of that?’

It was hard to know where to start. I could have said it seemed to me to be a peculiar legal principle to ask anyone to prove something that they are not capable of knowing. Instead, I reflected a little on the difficulty that lawyers often seem to have in coming to terms with economic issues. I said: ‘I think Sophie makes the same mistake that a lot of lawyers make when they get involved in economic issues. They see an economic practice that they can’t understand and assume that it must be unfair. In this instance, they see firms selling in export markets at a lower price than in their home markets and jump to the conclusion that they are engaged in some kind of unfair practice, such as predatory pricing. They don’t consider that the firms might be able to obtain higher prices on home market sales because of brand loyalty and other home market advantages. Her efforts to shift the balance in favour of domestic industry will just encourage the rent seekers.

Jim replied: ‘You don’t have a very high opinion of the ability of lawyers to understand economics, do you?’

When I protested to the effect that I think some lawyers have an excellent grasp of economics, he asked me to name one. The name that came to mind immediately was Richard Epstein. (Actually, that stretches the truth a little. I find that names rarely come to mind immediately. Richard Epstein’s name came to mind after just a moment’s reflection.)

Jim asked: ‘So, what does Richard Epstein say about anti-dumping policy?’ I mentioned that I had recently read a short article he wrote about the concept of fair trade that seemed relevant. I suggested that Epstein had made the point that it doesn’t make sense to view business practices in international trade as unfair that would be considered quite normal in inter-state trade within the United States. (When I just re-read Epstein’s article, ‘The “Fair” Trade Delusion’, however, I find that he didn’t quite use those words. And he seems to be implying that FTAs promote free trade – which is hard to sustain. But I am digressing - and at risk of spoiling my story!)

Jim’s line of questioning then took a surprising turn. He asked: ‘Do you think Craig Emerson would understand that the benefits of inter-state and international trade are basically the same?’

Craig Emerson, the current Minister for Trade, has a PhD in economics from a respectable university and knows quite a lot about international economics. I said I was sure that he would know that the benefits of trade between, say, Victoria and Western Australia would not be any less if Western Australia was in a different country.

Jim then said: ‘Then don’t you think you and your mates in Canberra should stop picking on Craig Emerson? How would you like to have Sophie Mirabella running trade policy? Or, perhaps even Doug Cameron, or Bob Katter?’

I responded that it must be time for me to buy Jim a drink.

On reflection, how can anyone respond to a suggestion that what seems to be a disappointment is actually a blessing compared with something worse that might happen? Even the GFC could look like a blessing compared to the aftermath of the European meltdown that the world might experience over the next few months if everything that could go wrong does go wrong. When I think about the approach that Sophie is proposing to take with anti-dumping policy, Craig does seem like a little blessing. My problem is that I thought having Craig in control of trade policy might be a huge blessing for the Australian economy, rather than just a little one.