That story that keeps replaying
Your story, that story that keeps replaying, the
interaction of your expectations and what happens,
the narrative, the disappointments and the way you
process it...
It’s all invented.
Ambien, the popular sleep aid, doesn’t actually help
people sleep much more (in one study, it boosted
sleep by 18 minutes a night). No, the reason it works is
that it’s an amnesiac.
Ambien makes you forget that you didn’t get a good
night’s sleep.
Because a huge side affect of sleeplessness is the
invented story we tell ourselves about how tired we
are. Ambien doesn’t help us sleep, it just destroys the
negative story about not sleeping.
It’s all invented. It’s still real, the pain is real, the
frustration is real, but the story that’s causing it all
is something we made up, and something we can
change. The pain is real, and so is a path to changing
it.
Free will and the play-by-play in your
head
Back to freedom and what it means.
Everyone I’ve ever asked has had the same experience
with the voice in their head. They tell me that the little
man (or woman) who’s up there, constantly chattering,
makes the important decisions. “I feel like having some
ice cream,” he says, and so we have some ice cream.
It’s this voiceover that considers options, debates
outcomes, and ultimately decides. Or at least it feels
that way.
But Dan Dennett and other philosophers and
researchers have demonstrated that this isn’t true.
Here’s how to think about it: Dave Hodge (substitute
your favorite sportscaster) is doing the play-by-play for
a baseball game. Now, take a video recording of the
game and move Dave’s play-by-play forward by about
six seconds. Instead of Dave describing what happens
after the play (the way it usually works), in our sped-up
version, Dave says something and then it happens.
“Suzuki is on the mound, winds up for the pitch, it’s
a strike...” we hear Hodge say. And then, we watch
Suzuki wind and throw a pitch.
This, of course, is silly. We all know that the announcer
doesn’t tell the player what to do; we know that the
player does something and then the announcer
describes it.
Guess what? That’s how the voice works. It does playby-play.
That voice in your head is describing what you’re about
to do after a different part of your brain has already
initiated that action
And that’s how we drive ourselves nuts, and why
we hide and why it’s hard to be free. Because the
chattering voice in our head is busy pretending it has
agency, when in fact, all it’s doing is going along for the
ride.
Take a second to digest that, because it will change
everything. Your body decides, the voice inside your
brain narrates.
Of course, there’s a cycle. The voice in your head then
pushes back on the rest of your body, often causing
stress, or second-guessing, or hesitation. It’s only when
we learn not to banish the voice but to dance with it
that we’re able to do our best work.