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Acknowledge problem. Accept problem. Attempt to solve problem. Accept outcome. Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems. (no

Acknowledge problem. Accept problem. Attempt to solve problem. Accept outcome. Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems. (not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress)

dwaltrip 5y ago
My initial reaction to the idea that emotions can distract one from making progress is that there may be unaddressed issues present. Emotions are bodily signals. You could say they are the result of information processing. They don’t come from nowhere. Emotions need to be processed and responded to. Maybe we can find common ground with the idea that some emotional issues take a long time to resolve, and, in the meantime, one needs healthy coping tools which may include different ways of soothing / calming down the emotional response when one needs to be functional.
- Disruptive_Dave 5y ago
  Not OP, but I would hope the original comment was intended to imply that emotions should be _responded_ to (as you noted) and not _reacted_ to. Responding involves understanding, "naming your enemy," and contextual consideration. Reacting is thoughtless, immediate, animalistic.
  - wintermutestwin 5y ago
    Great answer! I'll post some notes I have on responding vs reacting: Reactions limit choices. Responses give choices. Reactions are unconscious, automatic, and based on negative emotions which stem from unmet needs. Responses are conscious, considered, and based upon the actual needs underlying the negative emotions. Reactions often move us further away from getting our needs met. Responses usually move us towards getting our needs met.
  - marcusestes 5y ago
    You say thoughtless, immediate, and animalistic as if it’s a bad thing;) Sometimes it’s exactly the right strategy for decision making and almost always for creativity and play.
- browningstreet 5y ago
  Look into “somatic psychotherapy”: healing the mind through the body
- throwaway98797 5y ago
  Maybe this example is helpful. I had a rock hit my car’s bumper on the highway. I could have allowed myself to feel pity or sadness. Instead i skipped the emotion of the event and said what can i do now? Accept that my car does not look the way I want it to. Find solution, which in this case was filling an insurance claim. As problems develop i hope to accept them as fact and not dwell on what I hope the world would be. ie., never getting hit in the first place or having my claim denied, having poor repair etc., whatever comes i want to accept as the true state without emotion and move onto productive measures that are within my means.
jporwal05 5y ago
I have improved so much since I started thinking this way. Once I started realising that I made a mistake and that it was really my mistake, other things, a lot of things started coming into perspective.
cartoonworld 5y ago
>Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems. > >(not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress) You got it, but then you missed it. Every single one of those great, useful, true steps is hindered by emotions. There are well-known cognitive biases and behavioral patterns (Dunning-Kreuger, Motivated Reasoning, Confirmation Bias, Learned Helplessness) that will affect your outcome while trying to conquer each of these steps. These aren't bad per-say, but a result of our biology and millions of years of evolution. If I were wagering on my own arrogantly assumed competence vs. my evolved biology.... man, I'm putting it all on Red. It is such great advice that, as you correctly state, "[Emotions] often times distract one from making progress" but this is not easy to achieve, an obvious course of action, and it feels wrong when you're in it. Even if someone told you and you believe them. Take a contrived example--PTSD. In WWI this was called "Shell Shock", and a lot of people up until yesterday and beyond are still smacking people on the back, giving the misguided, but sincere pep talk: "Walk it off, kid! Power through it! Get ahold of yourself! What's wrong with you? Why can't you take the win?" The truth of the matter is that the solution is obvious, but even if something is obvious, easy, and effective, people often simply require someone to tell them the answer and more than that, be trusted enough to let them coach them through it. Once you know, maybe it really is easy, maybe it still takes a lot of work, luck, perhaps counseling or therapy (EMDR therapy sounds like bullshit but it sure is real)
- dasyatidprime 5y ago
  To add a note to that, caricatured for demonstration: Why would you ever execute on an answer which no one with the right kind of status has told you is okay to execute on? In the harder domains of STEM? Okay, sure, maybe the answer is self-proving and once your weird innovation works great your detractors will have to eat their words. But subjective things like emotions? You know what happens to people who have some wrong emotion, don't you? Even if your conscious mind doesn't, what's underneath sure might. Highly not recommended to put it that way to yourself raw! And yet. Emotional processing infrastructure is an important part of society, and its blueprints an important part of culture. I suspect that the more densely packed our sociopsychological world is, the more the equivalent of mental building codes and city utilities are something that has to be negotiated to make life workable. Hindbrain Owners Association, anyone?
theIntuitionist 5y ago
If you view life as a series of problems to be solved, then life will become a bleak series of problems needing to be solved. The approach outlined in the parent comment here would fail to solve any essential human needs beyond a few of the most basic ones. Finding purpose, not burning out, nurturing family, communicating with others- even in professional settings- and so many other parts of being human require us to engage emotionally.
- cartoonworld 5y ago
  >If you view life as a series of problems to be solved, then life will become a bleak series of problems needing to be solved. I disagree with this, conditionally. It depends on how you perceive "Problems" and "Solve", as pedantic and Clinton-esque as that comes across. Perceiving your "problems" not as barriers that hinder your progress, but identifying winnable opportunities in your own capabilities is a hallmark of the Growth Mindset[0] This is such a good quality, one that everyone can cultivate given the motivation and effort. [0] - https://fs.blog/2015/03/carol-dweck-mindset/ https://fs.blog/2015/03/carol-dweck-mindset/
  - theIntuitionist 5y ago
    Any choice we make that is grounded in subjective decision making suffers from this reframing. And, i'd posit that the vast majority of choices are fundamentally subjective. Just take a moment when engaged in "problem solving" and ask yourself "why?", then question that answer again. You get to motivation, identity , "needs" (and not just the basic food and shelter needs) or some other emotion very quickly this way. Is choosing a life partner a "problem"? What about something as simple as choosing what to wear in the morning or what beer you want from the bar? Even within traditional engineering problems so much of our decision making process can only be evaluated subjectively. Some examples are: naming variables (your compiler doesn't care what you name them), making choices around encapsulation (there are very often many possible ways to do this. we frequently chose the "simplest"- a subjective assessment), choosing a framework or language (a decision which is one part right tool for the job one part joining a likeminded community), etc. At the root of it, we're emotional beings, not logical ones. Outsource the logical problems to computers, machines, institutions and focus on what makes you human. Otherwise somebody else will make the important choices for you in ways you certainly wouldn't chose for yourself.
Xc43 5y ago
She is saying more than that. She is saying learn to confront discomfort/pain with self-soothing. Once you know how to address the pain associated with being seen as an inexperienced/disabled person, you can confront it in many situations. Be it in learning from another or from a book. Distracting emotions are part of you and have to be addressed eventually. Soothing yourself reinforces the motivation for progress and acknowledges obstacles. "Pursuing X causes pain. It is alright. It is worthwhile. It is unavoidable and I will make due."
- twirligigue 5y ago
  So the way to self-soothe is with self-talk? Are there any other ways?
  - erikpukinskis 5y ago
    Meditation? My therapist is always encouraging me in uncomfortable moments to feel my body, and widen my awareness beyond narrative, into my senses. Not sure if that counts as “self soothing”? But it helps achieve the ends OP is seeking.
  - Xc43 5y ago
    1)Yes, with a caveat. 2)There are no other ways. There are no other ways because we humans are story machines. Among the many things we do, we consume stories and produce stories and that makes up our inner world. Story require words. Talking. Assisted self-talk would be therapy. There are no sustainable ways to soothing but words. Unsustainable are the use of supplements such as magnesium glycinate (to calm the mind), etc. All roads lead to self-talk. Therapy and Mg could be used as crutches to better self-talk. That written, self-talk should not be talked about without caveat. The caveat is this: Self-talk can only change within your mind if you can conceptualize another kind of self-talk. Like a fellow answered your question, expanded awareness is key to make space in your mind, space for another self-talk. There is this technique called the Alexander technique whose purpose is expand your awareness. By expanding your awareness, by being able to think and feel those negative feelings and thoughts and think positive ones at the same time and gently steering your mind towards the positive you can achieve a new status quo in your mind. This require words and there also is non-verbal aspect to it. Words can come in the way of feelings if they are not embodied. For example, when you tell yourself "I want to..." or "I should not..." yet behave not as the words suggest, then that means you are not embodying your words. Also, self-talk ideally as a time component attached to it. Which is where it gets a lot of strength. "I don't like this. (awareness of the current experience) But, it is necessary to get what I want (expansion of awareness, to include a desirable future). Therefore, this pain is a sign I am making desirable progress! (new self-talk)" Whichever road you take at the beginning, therapy, supplements, meditation, etc, know the destination you seek is better self-talk. Embodied self-talk with a time component. Also please remember, the brain takes time to create new pathways. You might be able to achieve perfect embodied self-talk with a time component, but only consistency will make it easier and eventually automatic. This is a link towards a teacher of the Alexander Technique, he talks about awareness in greater length: https://twitter.com/m_ashcroft https://twitter.com/m_ashcroft
heytherebud69 5y ago
Mind sharing where that process is from? I like it.
- throwaway98797 5y ago
  i’m not sure where i stole this from. my best guess is a combo of the following books / leaders. 1. High output management (andy grove of intel fame) 2. Charlie Munger’s Psychology of Human Misjudgment 3. Ben Franklin autobiography
dandelany 5y ago
This oversimplifies but there is some truth to it too. I am mentoring two junior devs at the moment, one at work and one friend. In some ways I really miss & envy the happiness they feel when we get something to work. One of them finally got a D3 chart to render correctly and got up from his chair and started whooping and throwing his fists in the air - I was grinning from ear to ear. But then I realized the flip side of this - every time we run new code and it produces an error, I hear “AUGh what the FUCK?!! D:” I have been at this for ~15 years. I see a new error, I feel nothing. Better that way. But I still take a minute to crack a smile when I get something working for the first time :)
- throwaway98797 5y ago
  when you banish the negative emotions the positive disappear as well. the oppressive tranquility is nice…but we long for the joy of success we no longer can feel just know

dwaltrip 5y ago

My initial reaction to the idea that emotions can distract one from making progress is that there may be unaddressed issues present. Emotions are bodily signals. You could say they are the result of information processing. They don’t come from nowhere. Emotions need to be processed and responded to. Maybe we can find common ground with the idea that some emotional issues take a long time to resolve, and, in the meantime, one needs healthy coping tools which may include different ways of soothing / calming down the emotional response when one needs to be functional.

Disruptive_Dave 5y ago
Not OP, but I would hope the original comment was intended to imply that emotions should be _responded_ to (as you noted) and not _reacted_ to. Responding involves understanding, "naming your enemy," and contextual consideration. Reacting is thoughtless, immediate, animalistic.
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  Great answer! I'll post some notes I have on responding vs reacting: Reactions limit choices. Responses give choices. Reactions are unconscious, automatic, and based on negative emotions which stem from unmet needs. Responses are conscious, considered, and based upon the actual needs underlying the negative emotions. Reactions often move us further away from getting our needs met. Responses usually move us towards getting our needs met.
- marcusestes 5y ago
  You say thoughtless, immediate, and animalistic as if it’s a bad thing;) Sometimes it’s exactly the right strategy for decision making and almost always for creativity and play.
browningstreet 5y ago
Look into “somatic psychotherapy”: healing the mind through the body
throwaway98797 5y ago
Maybe this example is helpful. I had a rock hit my car’s bumper on the highway. I could have allowed myself to feel pity or sadness. Instead i skipped the emotion of the event and said what can i do now? Accept that my car does not look the way I want it to. Find solution, which in this case was filling an insurance claim. As problems develop i hope to accept them as fact and not dwell on what I hope the world would be. ie., never getting hit in the first place or having my claim denied, having poor repair etc., whatever comes i want to accept as the true state without emotion and move onto productive measures that are within my means.

jporwal05 5y ago

I have improved so much since I started thinking this way. Once I started realising that I made a mistake and that it was really my mistake, other things, a lot of things started coming into perspective.

cartoonworld 5y ago

>Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems. > >(not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress) You got it, but then you missed it. Every single one of those great, useful, true steps is hindered by emotions. There are well-known cognitive biases and behavioral patterns (Dunning-Kreuger, Motivated Reasoning, Confirmation Bias, Learned Helplessness) that will affect your outcome while trying to conquer each of these steps. These aren't bad per-say, but a result of our biology and millions of years of evolution. If I were wagering on my own arrogantly assumed competence vs. my evolved biology.... man, I'm putting it all on Red. It is such great advice that, as you correctly state, "[Emotions] often times distract one from making progress" but this is not easy to achieve, an obvious course of action, and it feels wrong when you're in it. Even if someone told you and you believe them. Take a contrived example--PTSD. In WWI this was called "Shell Shock", and a lot of people up until yesterday and beyond are still smacking people on the back, giving the misguided, but sincere pep talk: "Walk it off, kid! Power through it! Get ahold of yourself! What's wrong with you? Why can't you take the win?" The truth of the matter is that the solution is obvious, but even if something is obvious, easy, and effective, people often simply require someone to tell them the answer and more than that, be trusted enough to let them coach them through it. Once you know, maybe it really is easy, maybe it still takes a lot of work, luck, perhaps counseling or therapy (EMDR therapy sounds like bullshit but it sure is real)

dasyatidprime 5y ago
To add a note to that, caricatured for demonstration: Why would you ever execute on an answer which no one with the right kind of status has told you is okay to execute on? In the harder domains of STEM? Okay, sure, maybe the answer is self-proving and once your weird innovation works great your detractors will have to eat their words. But subjective things like emotions? You know what happens to people who have some wrong emotion, don't you? Even if your conscious mind doesn't, what's underneath sure might. Highly not recommended to put it that way to yourself raw! And yet. Emotional processing infrastructure is an important part of society, and its blueprints an important part of culture. I suspect that the more densely packed our sociopsychological world is, the more the equivalent of mental building codes and city utilities are something that has to be negotiated to make life workable. Hindbrain Owners Association, anyone?

theIntuitionist 5y ago

If you view life as a series of problems to be solved, then life will become a bleak series of problems needing to be solved. The approach outlined in the parent comment here would fail to solve any essential human needs beyond a few of the most basic ones. Finding purpose, not burning out, nurturing family, communicating with others- even in professional settings- and so many other parts of being human require us to engage emotionally.

cartoonworld 5y ago
>If you view life as a series of problems to be solved, then life will become a bleak series of problems needing to be solved. I disagree with this, conditionally. It depends on how you perceive "Problems" and "Solve", as pedantic and Clinton-esque as that comes across. Perceiving your "problems" not as barriers that hinder your progress, but identifying winnable opportunities in your own capabilities is a hallmark of the Growth Mindset[0] This is such a good quality, one that everyone can cultivate given the motivation and effort. [0] - https://fs.blog/2015/03/carol-dweck-mindset/ https://fs.blog/2015/03/carol-dweck-mindset/
- theIntuitionist 5y ago
  Any choice we make that is grounded in subjective decision making suffers from this reframing. And, i'd posit that the vast majority of choices are fundamentally subjective. Just take a moment when engaged in "problem solving" and ask yourself "why?", then question that answer again. You get to motivation, identity , "needs" (and not just the basic food and shelter needs) or some other emotion very quickly this way. Is choosing a life partner a "problem"? What about something as simple as choosing what to wear in the morning or what beer you want from the bar? Even within traditional engineering problems so much of our decision making process can only be evaluated subjectively. Some examples are: naming variables (your compiler doesn't care what you name them), making choices around encapsulation (there are very often many possible ways to do this. we frequently chose the "simplest"- a subjective assessment), choosing a framework or language (a decision which is one part right tool for the job one part joining a likeminded community), etc. At the root of it, we're emotional beings, not logical ones. Outsource the logical problems to computers, machines, institutions and focus on what makes you human. Otherwise somebody else will make the important choices for you in ways you certainly wouldn't chose for yourself.

Xc43 5y ago

She is saying more than that. She is saying learn to confront discomfort/pain with self-soothing. Once you know how to address the pain associated with being seen as an inexperienced/disabled person, you can confront it in many situations. Be it in learning from another or from a book. Distracting emotions are part of you and have to be addressed eventually. Soothing yourself reinforces the motivation for progress and acknowledges obstacles. "Pursuing X causes pain. It is alright. It is worthwhile. It is unavoidable and I will make due."

twirligigue 5y ago
So the way to self-soothe is with self-talk? Are there any other ways?
- erikpukinskis 5y ago
  Meditation? My therapist is always encouraging me in uncomfortable moments to feel my body, and widen my awareness beyond narrative, into my senses. Not sure if that counts as “self soothing”? But it helps achieve the ends OP is seeking.
- Xc43 5y ago
  1)Yes, with a caveat. 2)There are no other ways. There are no other ways because we humans are story machines. Among the many things we do, we consume stories and produce stories and that makes up our inner world. Story require words. Talking. Assisted self-talk would be therapy. There are no sustainable ways to soothing but words. Unsustainable are the use of supplements such as magnesium glycinate (to calm the mind), etc. All roads lead to self-talk. Therapy and Mg could be used as crutches to better self-talk. That written, self-talk should not be talked about without caveat. The caveat is this: Self-talk can only change within your mind if you can conceptualize another kind of self-talk. Like a fellow answered your question, expanded awareness is key to make space in your mind, space for another self-talk. There is this technique called the Alexander technique whose purpose is expand your awareness. By expanding your awareness, by being able to think and feel those negative feelings and thoughts and think positive ones at the same time and gently steering your mind towards the positive you can achieve a new status quo in your mind. This require words and there also is non-verbal aspect to it. Words can come in the way of feelings if they are not embodied. For example, when you tell yourself "I want to..." or "I should not..." yet behave not as the words suggest, then that means you are not embodying your words. Also, self-talk ideally as a time component attached to it. Which is where it gets a lot of strength. "I don't like this. (awareness of the current experience) But, it is necessary to get what I want (expansion of awareness, to include a desirable future). Therefore, this pain is a sign I am making desirable progress! (new self-talk)" Whichever road you take at the beginning, therapy, supplements, meditation, etc, know the destination you seek is better self-talk. Embodied self-talk with a time component. Also please remember, the brain takes time to create new pathways. You might be able to achieve perfect embodied self-talk with a time component, but only consistency will make it easier and eventually automatic. This is a link towards a teacher of the Alexander Technique, he talks about awareness in greater length: https://twitter.com/m_ashcroft https://twitter.com/m_ashcroft

heytherebud69 5y ago

Mind sharing where that process is from? I like it.

throwaway98797 5y ago
i’m not sure where i stole this from. my best guess is a combo of the following books / leaders. 1. High output management (andy grove of intel fame) 2. Charlie Munger’s Psychology of Human Misjudgment 3. Ben Franklin autobiography

dandelany 5y ago

This oversimplifies but there is some truth to it too. I am mentoring two junior devs at the moment, one at work and one friend. In some ways I really miss & envy the happiness they feel when we get something to work. One of them finally got a D3 chart to render correctly and got up from his chair and started whooping and throwing his fists in the air - I was grinning from ear to ear. But then I realized the flip side of this - every time we run new code and it produces an error, I hear “AUGh what the FUCK?!! D:” I have been at this for ~15 years. I see a new error, I feel nothing. Better that way. But I still take a minute to crack a smile when I get something working for the first time :)

throwaway98797 5y ago
when you banish the negative emotions the positive disappear as well. the oppressive tranquility is nice…but we long for the joy of success we no longer can feel just know