Free Will Hunting: Who are you working for really?
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.”
- The Usual Suspects
If we all happened to cherish goals of:
• watching television 2 + hours a day
• working 50 + hour weeks
• eating a poor diet made up of convenience foodstuffs
• barely moving
- Then most of society would be happily ticking off day after day of pure achievement. Evidently, there's quite a gap in what we say we want and what we end up doing. The intended hijacked by the unintended, and hardly an isolated incident.
We are the sum of our choices. Choices that are either conscious and deliberate or unconscious and passive. The brain processes about eleven billion pieces of information a second, of which we consciously process maybe forty. In filtering out eleven billion other pieces of information every single second, our experience is but a heavily edited version of what we might call reality. What we are left with is a reality. Our reality.
We may well be merely players, but if all the world's a stage, then most of the action is happening off it.
Throughout the Leftfield Training process - and for the nutrition coaching in particular - people put in some serious time and effort completing extensive paperwork and performing exercises all designed to help them decide exactly what they want, and why they want it. For the more cynically minded among us, this time and effort is further boosted by significant financial investment also. In short, they are not lacking in clarity, desire or motivation.
Even so, their needs, their wants, their must-haves, disappear. At least for a time. Always. Super-ceded by alternatives that when compared, side by side, with the intended goal are laughably insignificant.
Delivering experiences that are average at best, and more likely guilt-ridden or anxiety producing, they are still chosen over any number of different behaviours that would have moved them not necessarily towards, just not away from, their desperately sought after, yet wholly attainable dream.
What they don’t want, chosen over what they do want, every time. What the hell?
Certainly, a sheer weight of numbers is at least a part of the problem and in an age of endless distraction it becomes increasingly difficult to keep your eyes on the prize.
I intended to eat better (or insert any intention here), but:
the kids threw a tantrum at the supermarket
something came up at work and I ran out of time.
(insert any and every circumstance here)
If this situation is examined at all, it's also about here that it stops. A shrug. Simple acceptance that our goals are just casualties of the minutiae of daily life. This reinforces a feeling of helplessness and, with only ourselves to blame, casts us as the villain of the piece. But something else happens if we are prepared to dig a bit deeper, something more useful. Because there is usually a bit more to it.
Do you think that’s air your breathing?*
The law of supply and demand suggests that whatever remains post filtering from 11 billion to 40 has come to occupy some extremely valuable mental real estate, so we know that our goals can't always be front of mind.
Obviously, we have obligations and shared intentions in our lives with family and friends. If we're at work we are being paid for just that, to direct our thought and energy towards what our employer intends - what is best for the business. All of which would be fine were it possible to just place our goals on hold and return to them when able, but clearly this doesn’t happen either.
Instead, when we are (seemingly) concentrating on what we have to do, somebody else slips behind the wheel, and, as told from our list of easily ticked off daily achievements above, they are going in the opposite direction. This is an idea invariably scoffed at (hello ego), but without getting near any metaphysical argument, the existence of a multi-billion dollar advertising industry is, at the very least, a hairline crack in any idea we might have of free will. When any outside influence extends into some, if not all of our lives, then, for all intents and purposes we become slaves; a vassal handed from one overlord to the next.
Exaggeration?
If you wake up to go straight to work then your reason for getting up in the morning is not even yours. You then spend your lunchtime and other work breaks eating food that is slowly killing you, you go home and sit watching television, the sole purpose of which is to deliver advertising straight into your living room. How much of your day do you dedicate to what you want from life, any of it? And if you don't now, when, by some miracle will you?
Don’t mistake this for some naive ideology that we can all live a magical existence, farming rainbows, and riding unicorns to school. I know, you have dependents, commitments, you have obligations, things have to get done, you have bills to pay. I don’t deny this. But it’s also likely that none of that is mutually exclusive to what you want to achieve either, this is not about sidelining any commitments, those made to others, or to yourself.
Recognise that if your intentions are not front of mind, someone else’s are and your behaviour is frequently being influenced by someone or something other than you.
This is further compounded by the fact that our default response - that what we want is just incompatible with everyday life - is just a reflex defence mechanism; a psychological certainty. We can't handle the cognitive dissonance - the discrepancy between wanting to lose fat, and the drive-thru we just stopped at, and the only way to relieve it is to justify our actions after the fact. Which meshes just perfectly with those doing the damage - hey, I know you're busy, here's a drive-thru. Your best intentions get hijacked, only for you to subsequently defend it - I was so hungry I was just lucky the drive-thru was there.
You can be certain there will be some answer for every single one of these moments. Forever an answer as to how you should spend your time, your money and your attention. But it's probably not your answer.
With stealth and neuromarketing now complementing the muzak and mirrors, there is no end to devices purposed to lull us into a stupor, pitches that circumvent our conscious, rational thought. We like to assure ourselves that we don't fall prey to these machinations. Not us. Our steel-trap stormtrooper mind would have quickly nipped The Rebellion in the bud, shutting down Obi-Wan's Jedi mind trick at gunpoint;
- shut it, old man, these ARE the droids I’m looking for.**
But, as Verbal warns us in the quote from The Usual Suspects, above; not even entertaining the idea that we might be subject to it, makes us the perfect dupe.
Consider the supermarket scenario from above. Did the tantrum have anything to do with chocolate, sweets or a toy at the supermarket? Well, let's say that even in a best-case scenario and you never even purchased the chocolate, your life has still been influenced via a marketing team that successfully recruited your kids.
It does not absolve us of personal responsibility but do you still see it as just a triviality of daily life that sidelined your training, your state of mind? Are you still the villain of the piece?
It's all too easy to draw off into some tangential Fight Club-esque conspiracy at this point, but it's unnecessary. The purpose here is not to raise existential questions of the dominion of consciousness or even to paint the ad industry as the bad guy, just to recognise that it happens, and use that knowledge to serve us. For once.
Clearly we can be influenced. And if we can be, we are being. And by everyone, that has the opportunity. From buying a can of soft drink to not walking on the grass, behind every billboard, jingle, and urban design is somebody’s idea of what they want you to do. The more invisible it is, the more effective it is.
If you understand you are actively being denied what you want, then perhaps that might elicit a different response. Maybe then you will be more prepared to fight for it. Any outcome is better than meek surrender. Whether you value any concept of self, and especially if you doubt this degree of influence over you, in either case, test it. Look closer at what determines your choices, and in exposing examples of this happening in your life, at the very least it will serve to make you a harder target.
First, we need to do something to keep our goals front of mind; a reminder that our conscious thought has left the building, a trigger to snap us back into the present. The same idea as pasting your goal on the bathroom mirror, but, unless you work in your bathroom, a note on the mirror is not going to be much good to you on a Tuesday at lunchtime.
I have tried various methods but suggest you try a coloured plaster or tape on your finger. Every time you notice it, conduct a 10 second, 2 question, review.
[This is your own little personal courtroom with you on the witness stand. You have a strictly by the numbers prosecuting attorney asking the questions, and they are not going to take any shit.]
___
Just the facts, ma’am/sir.
1. What, if anything, has happened since your last review, that when looked at in isolation would suggest you have zero interest in attaining your said goal. Note - this does not mean you must have moved towards it but was there anything that pushed it further away?
2. Where did that behaviour stem from?
No further questions, you may step down.
___
This all hinges on the fact that your cue (to step into the courtroom), must be unusual enough to interrupt and drag you back to your conscious mind. The problem is that you will rapidly get used to whatever you might choose and will simply (unconsciously again) overlook it. With the coloured plaster, I have had the best success with changing the colour and finger it’s on, daily.
We can then become more aware of where our mind is at any given moment, but in tracing back to the source, we identify triggers for unwanted behaviour also. Simple, but disturbing.
There are no prizes for guessing that meditation and exercise are said to be the best ways in which we are able to develop further this skill of mindfulness, but the idea here is not to set about changing things, this is purely reconnaissance - know your enemy.
Necessarily, most of what we do will always be made on an unconscious level. Without this editing and grouping of decision-making your life would move at glacial pace - you wouldn't even yet be removing your hand from the snooze button this morning. But, if you cannot bring the decisions that settle what you want out of life to the surface, you leave it all in someone else’s hands. Good luck with that.
If you want free will then you have to practice it. But first you have to find it.
[And now, with a heavy dose of irony, some advertising]
Whereas other nutrition advice might start and end with ‘nutrition’, it is in learning to develop this awareness that underlies Leftfield Nutrition Coaching.
Simply because it's not what you know that’s hurting you.
It's not even what you don't know that's hurting you.
The proteins, the calories, the macros, fruits, vegetables, energy balance, sugars, fats, blah, blah, blah - without awareness, it's nothing more than cannon fodder.
Discover your best nutritional practice.
*A reference to The Matrix, but if you don’t understand it there's no need to be concerned, that is air you’re breathing. As you were.
**A Star Wars reference, nevermind if you don’t get it - move along, these aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
REFERENCES
Adam Ferrier, The Advertising Effect - How to Change Behaviour
FURTHER READING