Intrinsic Value

Every action that you perform is linked to some sort of stimulus. This stimulus is some force that makes you want to behave in a particular manner. There are those driving forces which we are born with, such as the desire to seek food when hungry, and there are learned driving forces, such as the desire to obtain money. Every learned driving force is a result of the association of that action with obtaining one of the basic goals. For example, in an attempt to get food you realize that you need money. This event happens often enough that you begin to realize that in order to get food you must seek money first. After a while the desire for money is disassociated from food and becomes valuable on its own. This would happen when someone realizes that they can use money to obtain other things besides just food. Once this happens the desire to seek money become internalized, since you no longer need the desire for food to cause you to seek money. Money becomes its own motivator and is no longer solely extrinsically valuable because of what it can bring you, but is intrinsically valuable because you desire it without thought of what it can bring you.

The important thing to note here is the process by which something becomes intrinsically valuable. Everything besides our very basic of needs must have external motivation. Behavior is like a child. When it is young it must be nurtured and cared for. Many people neglect the behaviors that they are trying to instill in themselves and the behavior is lost. So how do you nurture your behavior? You must use it to achieve a goal, something that you already identify as intrinsically valuable. For example, suppose there are two people who want to lose weight. One person decides to lose weight because its not healthy for them. The other person wants to attract a girl. Why would one fail and the other succeed? The person who is seeking to lose weight because its healthy probably does not intrinsically value life. This is not to say they don't want to live. Rather, they have never had the fear of losing their life that they would do anything to stay alive. They take their life for granted because it doesn't feel like its in danger. The second person however, very likely has realized that he likes girls and that he would like to date one. He has probably already internalized the desire to seek a mate. As a result his goal is more valuable to him and so the behavior that is going to allow him to attain his goal becomes more valuable as well.

There is a second step though, before the behavior is learned with lasting power. Using the example before, what happens when the second person obtains his goal and gets a girlfriend? Satisfaction is the death of desire. If the goal that was driving the behavior is gone the behavior will die unless it has some other stimulus. This is where the generalization of the goal for the behavior is necessary. You must disassociate this behavior from the original goal and attach it to many goals. Ask yourself what are some things that are valuable about my current behavior besides my main goal? Think about what valuable things you can do because of those positive results. By doing this you are identifying other reasons to continue in your behavior. With these many forces pushing you to maintain your behavior you are no longer dependent upon any one stimulus. If you get that girlfriend you still have other reasons to maintain a healthy lifestyle. For example, you realize that while you're losing weight you're also becoming stronger and more athletic. Before when you tried to play sports it was so difficult because you were out of shape, but now it is easily in the realm of possibility. You also realize that because you can play more sports you can interact with your friends and strengthen your relationships through bonding.

There is one last thing I want to go into in relation to generalizing your driving force. There is an idea called the six degrees of separation. Basically, through your relationships you know everybody else in the world through by no more than six degrees also the human web. When you attempt to build a behavior, you should attempt to build a degree of separation between your driving forces. Continuing in the previous example, if you attach the desire to be able to run fast as a driving force for exercising and you've attached running fast because it allows you to run marathons better, which you run because you support charities, you are associating all of these behaviors together. You are essentially building a chain of behaviors that each reinforce the step that precedes it. However eventually, you associate exercising with allowing you to support charities. At this point even if you removed the desire to run fast, exercising would still be valuable. By creating this degree of separation between a behavior and a desired result you eventually build a web of desired behaviors that are mutually reinforcing of each other. Think of it again in the six degrees of separation where everyone you know introduces you to everyone they know. If you repeat that, you will eventually know everyone. By building relationships between behaviors in a chain you are building closely related behaviors that also become reinforcers. Once you have done this your behavior will become such a great part of your being, such that the only way to remove it is to destroy a dozen other behaviors simultaneously. You will have made that behavior intrinsically valuable to you because it is indistinguishable from who you are because of all the other behaviors you have which compliment it.

Off the Wagon

I've sort of fallen off the wagon with updating this blog. However, I haven't shortened my sight on my goals. I have continued to read, though not as often as my month of reading. My goal for the month after that was to start working seriously on my side project that I hope to eventually morph into a full time business. I'm one of the people who doesn't like to count their eggs before they're hatched, so I won't be going into full detail about exactly what that entails. I will say however, that it is a combination of the four domains of knowledge I'll be leaving college with, which are Software Engineering, Psychology, Business, and Fitness.

My goal for this month is to stop living like a slob. I tend to clean in spurts which a few and far between. Which means most of the time I'm living in a mess. So this month and hopefully everyday hereafter I will make a conscious decision to immediately clean up a mess as soon as I notice it. By doing this I hope to reduce the need for a full blown cleaning session since the large scale messes I typically clean will be reduced.

Fortune Cookie

I ordered Chinese food this weekend and got two fortune cookies. The first goes like this. "Your fate is in no one else but you, no other hands but yours." I found this profound, not because it was something new, but because it acts as CONFIRMATION to something I already believe. I've heard it said that it takes ten compliments to overcome one negative comment. I believe the same goes for ideas, in that it is easy to start to doubt an idea and it is always encouraging to hear from another source that the idea is not wrong.

The other fortune cookie I received reads, "If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything." Often times I find myself looking for something familiar and easy rather than something that is challenging. By doing so, I'm LIMITING myself from new experiences and interesting topics. That is partially the reason for my first months challenge. I want to build a habit that encourages me to learn new things and expand my horizons. It is EASY to become complacent. Just the other day my room mate was telling me how this new class of his was hard. He hadn't taken the class in sequence before it and so most of the material was new for him. I told him that he was luckier than all his other class mates, because he had the opportunity to learn everything his classmates did in the previous class and this one while only taking the one class. Always remember, every CHALLENGE is an OPPORTUNITY to learn.

Also, as a side note, if you didn't see my tweet. I'm reading Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk instead of What Do You Want To Do With Your Life by Hans Glint.

Five Seconds

I recently was watching part of the pilot episode of Lost and heard something I had taken for granted before. I really have to give the writers credit for this inspiring little story that's about to follow.

When I was in residency, my first solo procedure was a spinal surgery on a sixteen year-old kid. Girl. At the end of it -- thirteen hours later - I was closing her up... and I... I accidentally ripped her dural sack -- you know what that is?

It's at the base of the spine, where all the nerves come together. Membrane as thin as tissue. So it ripped open -- the nerves just spilled out like angel hair pasta -- her spinal fluid flowing out and I just... froze. 'Cause I knew. If I didn't get those nerves back in that sack and sew it up... those thirteen hours were for nothing, that girl would be paralyzed.

I had about a minute. And all the assistants were just watching me, I could feel their eyes. And the terror was so... crazy, so real... and I knew I had to deal with it. So I just made a choice. I'd let the fear in. Let it take over. Let it do its thing. But only for five seconds. That's all I was gonna give it. So I started to count to five. I could feel it inside -- like when you drink a milkshake on a hot day. One, two, three, four, five. And it was gone. I got back to work. Sewed her up. She was fine.

I think everyone has something like that. A moment where you establish your relationship with fear. And either you learn to deal with it... or you don't.
-- Lost - Pilot Transcript

When did you decide your relationship with fear would be? Or did you not deal with it? Our choices define us, but it is important to remember that we can always make a different choice. Are you going to let fear dictate your life or are you going to dictate to fear its role in your life?

Guard Your Mind

Negativity is like a disease with a high susceptibility rate. People who surround themselves with it will inherently be affected by it, just as a person who is in the company of the ill will themselves become ill. A very strong minded person could potentially withstand negative thought for a time, but even the strongest cannot resist forever. Negativity is also very common and generally comes from those we are most close with. It is for this reason, that everyone must make themselves aware of their environment and if there need be a change, they should make it hastily.

I will close with a quote from Napoleon Hill:

Without doubt, the most common weakness of all human beings is the habit of leaving their minds open to the negative influence of other people. This weakness is all the more damaging, because most people do not recognize that they are cursed by it, and many who acknowledge it, neglect or refuse to correct the evil until it becomes an uncontrolled part of their daily habits.

State of Mind

As I've begun to better myself, I've found one fact to be consistently believed by those that offer advice. That is, that all actions are controlled by your state of mind. It is the ONLY thing that limits any person from achieving success. Think HARD about that last sentence. It is the ONLY thing keeping anyone from success. I emphasize the "only" to point out the fact that many people, including myself, often limit themselves because of forces that are out of their control. However, these external forces DO NOT limit anyones possibilities. It is simply your state of mind that is creating the limit.

As an example consider two people. The first absolutely hates math because he isn't good at it. He avoids it at every chance he gets, because he would rather not deal with it. The second absolutely hates math because he isn't good at it. He attempts it at every chance he gets, because he would rather be better at it. Which person do you think would do better on a math test? They both have the same adversity, but they both take a separate approach to the problem. The first has chosen the most basic and simple of human instinct, flight. The second has chosen the harder route, which is to fight his obstacle. A person who CONSISTENTLY PERSEVERES will always know more success than a person who does not.

This was inspired by this quote:

If you demand riches, determine what form, and how much will be required to satisfy you. You know the road that leads to riches. You have been given a road map which, if followed, will keep you on that road. If you neglect to make the start, or stop before you arrive, no one will be to blame, but YOU. This responsibility is yours. No alibi will save you from accepting the responsibility if you now fail or refuse to demand riches of Life, because the acceptance calls for but one thing -- incidentally, the only thing you can control -- and that is a STATE OF MIND. A state of mind is something that one assumes. It cannot be purchased, it must be created.
- Napoleon Hill

Wrench in the Works

I had a little hiccup over the past few days with my goal. On Thursday I only read half of chapter 7 since it was a pretty long chapter; about 40 pages. On Friday I just didn't read at all. I didn't like that very much and set out to fix it. So Saturday I caught up my reading up to Friday (Chapters 7 - 8). Then this morning I knocked out Saturday and Sunday's reading so that I am now back on track.

This circumstance has brought up an important point though. I've decided to refine my goal. Instead of plainly reading a chapter a day, I'll instead read a chapter a day up until 30 pages. At that point I will either split the chapter in half or break it up in some logical manner based on the chapters natural divisions. Really the only reason I specified chapters is because that is how many books are naturally divided. However, my real goal is really only to read a manageable amount each day. I hope this new system will work out better.